Text and Email Alert Systems Can Increase Home - School Communication

My colleague the Techomnivore often talks about and has shared in his blog information about how Notification tools are increasing parental involvement in their child’s school life. Though I haven't had personal experience with schools that are using these systems, I do believe that cell phones provide a powerful resource as a home-school connection tool. I was recently contacted by one such service that is available free (with advertising). If this is something your school might want to investigate, here is an overview of Schoohoo, one such service. You can read the Techomivore's post for additional resources.

Innovative educators who are looking for ways to better communicate with parents, students, faculty and staff may be interested in looking into Schoohoo. They offer a free web based service at www.schoohoo.com that allows schools of any size to send text message and email alerts to parents, students, faculty, and staff. Developed by parents of elementary school students, they set out initially to just make a system that made sense for their own school district in Champaign, Illinois. They had come up with the idea years ago, but it wasn't until an emergency lockdown in their elementary schools that they put their own financial resources into developing an easy to use and universal program that any school could make use of.

Jonathan Hoover, Executive Director shared that, "We wanted to build a system that was easy for everyone to use, from both sides - that of the school district and that of the parent". To that end, the software is entirely web based, and yes - entirely free. Eventually they hope to get local sponsors behind them, to append a brief text only message at the end of the alert - maybe from a local grocery store, class ring jeweler, or other school-approved vendor. Until then, they’ve put their own funds into it and with low operating costs they can keep it going for years without a hiccup. They've also kept it very easy for schools in several ways. One important feature is that schools don't have to maintain the contact list - parents register via the Schoohoo website and "subscribe" to the school or schools they want to receive messages from. These schools can be across several districts, public and/or private, and the parents only have one contact form to maintain - leaving the schools free to simply inform them of the service and send alerts.

Mr. Hoover is happy to answer any questions you may have - he jokes that it often takes a couple of conversations before people get that it really is free, and that Schoohoo is truly just out to do some good in tough economic times. He can be reached at Jonathan@Schoohoo.com, or you can leave a message with Schoohoo’s answering service at 217-819-4678.

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Google Launches YouTube Edu

I recently wrote YouTube University – An Interesting Opportunity for Innovative Students and Teachers. Well now this idea is getting a boost as recently reported in the Wall Street Journal's story YouTube Edu Launches. From the story:

"YouTube launched a new section of its site Thursday that organizes the video channels of more than 100 colleges and universities.

The section, called YouTube Edu, is the result of about a year’s work on the part of Google employees using their 20% time for outside projects, said Obadiah Greenberg, a partner manager at YouTube. Several of the search giant’s products and services, including Google News and its social-networking site Orkut, had a similar start."

The popular educational blog ReadWriteWeb said this:

This is a great idea and we expect that young people who discover it will appreciate it. At first glance it looks better to us than iTunes University. This could genuinely help young people make more informed decisions about what schools to apply to. There's also a lot of great content on the site for anyone to learn from. If you like academic videos, make sure to check out Academic Earth as well.

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Note to pre-k to 12 educators. Youtube has mixed the edu content in with the rest of the site – no separate URL, no dedicated directory. This makes it impossible for school systems like the NYC DOE to unfilter just the edu content. This may be an intentional strategy on the part of Youtube to try to get the whole site unblocked rather than provide a separate, dedicated space for instructional content. As a result it will be difficult for schools to take advantage of this resource across a school. Innovative educators may be able to come up with creative workarounds such as computers that are on an unfiltered line specifically for these students who would be monitored, or this can be an afterschool option for some students like the one in my post YouTube University – An Interesting Opportunity for Innovative Students and Teachers.

To read ideas on how this site can impact education visit the discussion at Youtube EDU.

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April is Not Just Tax Season, It's Also Financial Literacy Month

As the big tax day approaches, financial literacy, the economy and personal finance is certainly on all of our minds. So, what great timing for a teachable moment! I guess whomever makes up random holidays agrees because April has been named Financial Literacy month.

Of course innovative educators will want some ideas of how to make this learning engaging to their students. I've found a couple ways to do so.

Remix America has launched their “Coping with the Economy” challenge. This initiative is designed to provide a forum for all Americans – young and old – to tell their stories of the economic crisis. Inspired by the “Is Anybody Listening?” video by a high-school class in Pomona, Remix America created the “Coping with the Economy” initiative as a forum for young Americans to come together and discuss the issues that are most important to them.

Remix America is definitely an organization that cares about what innovative educators think. For this challenge, they’ve also included (on my suggestion!) an oral history lesson plan for teachers who wish to do a “Coping with the Economy” oral history assignment of their own.

Another resource is Thinkfinity. They are sharing free lesson plans, videos, photos and student activities.

Included in the collection are the following materials:
1) http://edsitement.neh.gov/Spotlights/spotlight-hardtimes.asp lets students see, via several video clips of FDR’s speeches, how America dealt with hard financial times during the Depression.
2) URL=http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=172 displays compound interest calculator suitable for students as young as in the third grade.
3) And by playing this fun you’re going to college game, players get information about different ways of funding college.

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