New sletter-January 2011
WELCOME
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Training Tips
1
Customer Support
2
A Bit about Blogging
2
Quick Looks • Contact Customer Support at 877-347-0461, extension 2 or via email at support@commleanring.com • Need additional supplies for your existing Course Kits, see our newly designed shopping cart. It’s super easy to use! • Check out our new blog at www.CommLearning.com
Welcome to our new customer newsletter! One strategy of making new years’ resolutions stick is broadcasting them publicly. So I want to resolve to improve our consistency in publishing our newsletter for 2011. So with that, you can expect to see this newsletter coming your way around the 15th of each month. I hope you'll find it valuable and it proves to be a good vehicle to stay in touch. We want to focus on a couple of regular features designed to help you get the most from your Course Kits and preview new things coming down the line. Additionally, I'm always coming across interesting programming ideas which I inherently view through the lens of "how would this work after school?" And "would it be engaging, would it be easy for teachers to understand or how difficult would that be to roll out?"
TRAINING
This is our customer map in green, we’re working hard to fill in the rest. If you know anyone in the other states let us know!
This month I want to tell you about a neat service that offers a free blogging platform for schools. I think blogging can be a great tool to spread the news about all the wonderful things going on in your program directly to parents, community members and funders. You can never under-estimate the value of good public relations! So enjoy and as always if you have any questions or concerns please don't hesitate to contact me. Sincerely,
Mike DeBritz mdebritz@CommLearning.com 1-877-347-0461
TIPS
We know how challenging it is to deliver training for your teachers and update new teachers as they come on board throughout the year. To help orient new and returning teachers to our materials, we have developed a comprehensive set of Training Tips for
each Course Kit topic. Training Tips are designed to answer many of the most relevant questions teachers will ask when they're assigned to teach new topics like forensics or screenwriting. Continued →
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The Latest
New sletter-January 2011
TRAINING
TIPS CONTINUED
A number of you have already spoken or corresponded with our newest employee, Linda Johnson, but we'll take this time to formally introduce her. Linda is an educator with degrees in Math and the Natural Sciences who has taught math at the secondary level and has run academic intervention programs. She is very enthusiastic and loves to get kids excited about learning. Linda has been busy working on additional training materials, a new math program and developing train-the-trainer models to help you deploy training. Linda can be reached at ljohnson @commlearning.com or via phone at 877-347-0461.
Training Tips can be found on each product page on our web site, underneath the heading "Tools for Teaching." (example above). Additionally, under the "Lesson Extensions" heading you will find a number of downloadable PDF's that include word searches, crossword puzzles and other fun activities utilizing the vocabulary introduced in each Course Kit topic. Let us know if you find them helpful at info@commlearning.com
A BIT
ABOUT BLOGGING
Blogging has really taken off over the last couple of years with a number of great tools that are both easy and free to use for schools. We have been following the development of Edublogs (http://edublogs.org/) for some time now and see this as a very unique offering for school blogs. The simplicity of blogs really lends itself to after school programs by allowing site leaders to deliver news directly to their community.
If you've already solved the “Cookie Jar Mystery”, now is the time to move to the next step with the “Cookie Jar Case.” It's everything your need to run a mock trial, with all the tools to get your kids ready to take their case to court!
The Edublog team focuses solely on educational content, so the likelihood of your hosted blog being blocked on a school network is very low. And because it's targeted to educators, they've built a large number of clear, step-by-step tutorials that make getting started close to painless. See their “Introduction to Blogging”(http:// theedublogger.com/files/2010/12/ edublogs_introblogging-262ybbo.pdf) if you'd like to learn more about the world of blogging.
Now wouldn't this make a great project for your older students, put them in charge of posting articles and updates. This way they can gain valuable skills and you get to broadcast all the great things happening in your program...that sounds like a win-win! Blogging has been on our minds for a while and now seemed as good a time as ever to dive in, take a look at (http:// www.commlearning.com/_blog/ Adventures_in_After_School_ Learning_Blog) and let us know what you think!