You can run, but you can’t hide!

You can run, but you can’t hide!

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/burwash_calligrapher/4245260593/

Back to school this fall season meant back in the classroom for me. Ever since I went to the MLTI Student Conference last May2010, I was yearning for life as a classroom teacher again. Be careful what you wish for, my wish came true. There was an opening at our local high school and here I am. High school resource room teacher/facilitator!

You will be hearing lots of stories this year about high school, special education, universal design for learning, assistive technology and our google domain.

We decided to begin with making some changes in our support study. We now have a Skills Cafe. This is organic, flexible and as one of my peers says  crunchy. Ask the students what they think, they have a few more descriptors like this is not what I want to do, why do I have to do this, this is dumb, and many  more. Anything to get out of being organized and collaborative. However, we have a plan and we are sticking to it. I should mention that some students thought it was cool, especially since they can add things to the calendar like football games, field hockey, drama, and marching band. I will be busy trying to attend something for each student!

  Our first step was to get all students into the google domain, with a shared calendar, shared folder for their assignments and a place to check their email. We accomplished this in a two week span.  At the end of the second week, I left messages in all their email accounts with a good job email and if necessary a reminder to complete missing assignments. I can peek at their grades and see what is missing, send them an email reminder, talk with their teachers and all this from one stop at my computer.

This is going to be a year long journey. We will have some challenges, some celebrations and some student success stories. If you have something to share along these lines leave a comment, let’s build this together and share with others.

Resources:
My new blog Learning Cafe a door to the future http://learningcafe-doortothefuture.blogspot.com/

Our twitter:  Door2Future

Our moodle page:   http://moodle.wocsd.org/course/view.php?id=199

Our Twitter Feed goes right to the blog and to our Facebook page.

iPad in Skills Cafe!

Morning duty cheryloakes image creative commons

The past two weeks in Skills Cafe have been an adventure, a challenge, a place where good learning is happening, a place where students and teachers are struggling to find balance in our work as collaborative workers and a place where all of us are looking at how best to get to our next steps.

We have worked on getting our students to use the Moodle as an online workspace. This will help them prepare for the next part of any education. There are so many online courses I am sure all of them will participate in one within the next 12 months.

We have worked with our students to enroll them into our google domain with the hope that we will be able to be in touch with them more than one block a day. This is a place where we can share calendars, share essays, have conversations in email and a place to stay connected.

We have worked with them on how to organize and plan their week so that they can manage all the fun stuff about high school, sports and after school activities. On occasions we have run out of computers in the room and a student has been looking for definition and the ipad has been a quick resource, then we downloaded a few Algebra app, more about which ones after we rate them.

The Skills Cafe has been open for business and we are busy.

Welcome to the Learning Cafe-door to the future!

This post serves to announce a blog for my resource room students and families at Wells High School, Maine. I will post articles and references that I am using as I set up a resource room for our digital students. I will pose questions and ask for the wisdom of the crowd. I hope my students, parents, educators and friends will help build this site as a resource to all. Thanks to Istvan for this unique photo. http://www.flickr.com/photos/i_csuhai/2984029909/