International Society for Technology in Education - a great professional development opportunity!
Summer is always the time to review your professional development options and to determine your plan for professional development for the upcoming school year. I thought this would be a great opportunity to share more about ISTE, yet another professional organization for technology-minded educators!
If you're not familiar with ISTE, take a few moments to browse their website at http://www.iste.org/. You'll find yourself immersed in the variety of information available to ISTE members. You might even take the leap and join! Membership is comparable in cost to other professional organizations for teachers.
My motto regarding professional development is that the benefits one reaps from membership in any professional organization far outweigh the cost. I frequently find myself in conversation with colleagues who have made the decision not to join or renew their membership in an organization because of the cost involved. As a result, I am often defending my decision to join or renew my membership because of the benefits, real and perceived, that I receive each and every year. Not only do I receive the publications and have the opportunity to attend awesome conferences and events, but I also find the networking and connections to like-minded educators to be exceptional and well worth my small membership dues investment. I look at professional organizations just like I look at technology and its application in the classroom--we must be equally, if not more, prepared than our students and organizations like ISTE help us to be the best we can possibly be.
Professional growth is priceless and staying in tune with technology and its application to education is invaluable. Those teachers who take that extra step to involve themselves in professional development in organizations like ISTE become innovators and leaders in our profession. Be a leader in your classroom and make a pact today to develop your professional development portfolio for the upcoming year!
Are young people today really prepared for the financial challenges that go along with a college education?
Being involved in administration at an institution of higher education, I frequently find myself observing just how unprepared or underprepared young people really are about the financial challenges that will face them when they head off to college.
Students often find themselves overborrowing on college loans and living off the excess funding they receive. In career college settings where the average student age is approximately 26 years old, students even go so far as using excess student loan funding as a source of income to pay living expenses and to take care of everyday needs. To make the picture even more bleak, these sames students see nothing wrong with overextending themselves financially and even hopping school to school to try and increase the availability of funding available to them. Is this really what these young people should be doing? What, if anything, did these young people learn about personal finance education in their younger years?
This is an all too common phenomenon occurring every day in colleges and universities across the country. As educators, we simply must do better to help students better understand the financial challenges ahead. Default rates on student loans are at an all-time high and starting salaries of recent graduates are less and less commensurate with the accumulation of debt with which many graduates embark on their new chosen careers.
With back to school time just around the corner, be sure you build your lesson plans for next school year to include lessons and activities that present college funding options, explain the cost of education, and also prepare young people to deal with the student loan payments that are sure to come upon graduation.
I hope everyone is having a terrific summer thus far and hope you are energizing yourself in preparation for a new year of learning in personal finance education and social media in the classroom!
A great resource for social media news!
On a lazy (and very hot) Sunday morning, I stumbled across a useful website, Social Media Club (Link: http://socialmediaclub.org/). Something that intrigued me about this website was the variety of information it offered. The site offers a blog, a journal, a user newsletter, tips on social media education, and you can even create a local chapter of the Social Media Club--what a great way to bring social media into the classroom!
This site got me thinking about another social media idea--a social media-oriented student organization. Students are already so immersed in the social media generation and having a local school club that offers them both added learning experiences and social interaction with their peers and teachers brings learning full circle into a real-world application. Our students today most likely will be involved in some form or fashion of social media in the course of their future careers. Why not offer them an outlet that helps them develop social media etiquette and develop social media campaigns?
I think there are some real possibilities with this idea! I'm curious what my educator followers have to say about such a club. Is this something that could be implemented fairly simply and be successful? Let me know your thoughts!
