One small step...

Along with the announcement of upgraded Edline features (our grading program) to include a centralized course hub, calendars, discussion boards (albeit archaic ones)and online access to grades, our school is also going to be staring a new initiative oveq this summer into the next year.

We will be sending txt messages to any student who ops into the program. These will range from reminders about school events, vocabulary words of the day, quotes, etc. Many of the faculty are both confused and outraged that we would be using something like txt messaging to reach the students. Then again, this is also the same group that can't believe that we would willingly allow students access to their grades through their own individual portals.

That group aside, I'm happy to see some forward thinking ideas coming out of the IT and administration with regards to different uses of technology. While I think that we could be doing so much more to increase student access, we are at least taking some small steps in the right direction.

I just wish we would go all in with Google Apps for Education and get each of these students their own email address and build from there.