Reminder: CU4Tech Conference – Thursday at BTW

Unit 4 has officially changed the venue, so if you were planning to attend, it is at BTW. Don’t go to the other place, despite what the flyer says. 🙂

From Stephanie Stuart:

​Champaign Unit 4 School District’s Educational Technology Department will host the second annual CU4 Technology Conference this Thursday, August 7^th  at Booker T. Washington STEM Academy from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The conference will feature 45 presenters with over 62 sessions that participants can chose to attend focused on technology in the classroom.

 

Media are invited to attend this event.

Please feel free to reach out to Educational Technology Director David Hohman (hohmanda@champaignschools.org) or our team of Educational Technology Coaches (u4itc@champaignschools.org.) ​

You can also visit the event website at the following link: bit.ly/cu4techcon14 [old venue listed here]

 

Unit 4 news article: http://www.champaignschools.org/news-room/article/8236

Cu4Tech weebly site: http://cu4tech.weebly.com/

Facilities Community Meeting (Futures Conference, take 2)

I just happened to be browsing the futurefacilities website (since I have not been receiving updates, and I still haven’t got the RSS figured out – it is wordpress afterall), and lookie what I noticed, a brand-new, surprise community meeting about future facilities.

“There was a good turnout at the Futures Conference on November 1st, but we wanted to provide another opportunity for small group discussion for those who were not able to attend.”

I am really glad they are doing this; even though it is on a Thursday, at least this time it is later in the evening and both food and childcare is being provided. And it is at BTW. Good move.

 

Since this one is only two hours, I am thinking the “presentation” portion of it is significantly reduced.

 

For this event, I would love to see those of us who are over-zealous to begin with to start recruiting/encouraging others to go. 🙂 I strongly believe that the Steering Committee needs to hear from a lot of other people over and above those of us they normally hear from. Problem is, I don’t know exactly how to make that happen. While holding another as-yet unadvertised community meeting is a good way to go, I still want to see DeJong hold smaller meetups in various areas in our community (and maybe even one or two in Spanish). This is a good step in the right direction, though. Kudos for that.

Results from May 3rd "Walk as One" (Beardsley Park / BTW)

On May 3rd, the Champaign Community Coalition organized the first “Walk as One” event in conjuction with the “Supper with the Superintendent”.

I have finally received the feedback that was collect from that event, and I have made it available here (click on the picture above). I was pleasantly surprised to learn that 44 cards were returned. As you can tell, the most predominant need selected (from a list of preset options) was that for summer camp for the child(ren). Quite interesting. The freeform comments run the gamut and also show an interesting cross-section of concerns.

The next big question is “So what?” What was done about all these concerns that were expressed? Are new summer camps being planned? What about the parent that wants to transfer or the one that has questions about registration and curriculum? Has anyone reached out to the self-identified president of the Neighborhood Association?

Overall, fascinating stuff!

Source: Joan Walls, City of Champaign

Save the date: May 3rd Supper with the Super

At last night’s PTA Council meeting, Dr. Wiegand mentioned another “Supper with the Superintendent”, to be held at BTW. Among other things, a special guest will be new Police Chief Anthony Cobb, as well as a “walk the neighborhood”.

New website for Magnet schools

Fresh from Unit 4’s Facebook:

http://unit4magnets.org/

 

Not too shabby; decent layout, nice javascript buttons, 6 nav buttons, each with one or two pages behind it. Simple, gets the job done. Kinda strange that it does not link to any other external pages – not even Unit 4’s own pages.

 

And just in time for tonight’s forum.