The Voice

I have no doubt you have all heard "The Voice" come over the loud speaker of your first period class at one time or another gently and pleasantly reminding you to submit your attendance.  :-)  I've heard some very funny (and some not-so-funny) stories regarding "The Voice".  So for today's Tech Tip I thought I'd take a few minutes to highlight some interesting facts regarding attendance that you may not know.

• Each and every morning The Voice has to make approximately 10 calls, gently and pleasantly reminding people to submit their attendance.  At the same time The Voice is also signing kids in who are tardy and answering the telephone that seems to ring constantly in the morning.  As you might imagine this makes the first half-hour of the day a pretty hectic time for the guidance department.  If you haven't had a chance to witness the morning activities in guidance I suggest you try to.  I promise it will give you a new respect for The Voice.

• In order to determine who has and who hasn't submitted their attendance The Voice has to run an ipass report -- and keep running it until it tells her that everyone has submitted their attendance.  Until all teachers have submitted their attendance she cannot move on with her day.

• After all teachers have submitted their attendance a report is run for the counselors that lists their students who are absent.  The counselors then call each student's parents to let them know they are not in school.  This is one of the reasons why it's so important for your attendance to be accurate -- as you can imagine it's not good for us to be calling a parent telling them their child is not in school when they really are.  This also sometimes happens if an accurate field trip list isn't provided to guidance -- the student will be marked absent by their first period teacher yet they're not on the field trip list.  The counselor will call the student's parents only to be told that, yes, the student did go to school today but is on a field trip. Again, not good.

• In the event of an emergency, the attendance list is used to know who is in the building and who isn't. It's imperative that, if needed, we are able to provide emergency personnel with an accurate list of every person in the building.  Which is why it's also important for staff to be sure to sign in and out each time they have to leave the building.

• Although you are not required to enter period attendance into iPass each block, it is very important that you do take attendance each period and report any missing students to guidance immediately.  Also, if someone is marked absent but is in your class we need to know that as well.  

• Period 9...  remember that kids with a purple pass need to report to their regularly scheduled 9th period class and then sign out to go to the teacher that gave them the purple pass.  If you do not ensure the students are signing out we have no way of knowing where that student is... again, in case of an emergency, or if the parent comes in to dismiss the student it makes it almost impossible to find the kid.

I hope this little attendance tip helps to remind you how important it is to take accurate and timely attendance.  Have a great week!

Is anybody out there?

After looking at the view count of my weekly Tech Tip I have to ask.. is anybody out there?  C'mon people.. give me a click would ya?  :-)

Hopefully you've looked at the new online bulletin and have noticed that SSVT now has a twitter account.  Have you looked into twitter yet?  For a very long time I shunned twitter, thinking it was just a venue for tweens to discuss their latest crush.  I recently gave in and created a twitter account and, I'm almost embarrassed to admit, I'm addicted.  I'm finding that twitter is an excellent way to keep abreast of just about any topic you can possibly imagine.

One of my favorite feeds to follow is #edchat.  It's the most popular hashtag for educational content.  I guarantee if you create a twitter account and search for #edchat you will find at least one article that you will be interested in reading.

I urge you to set up a twitter account and just have a look around.  How do you get started?

1. Go to http://www.twitter.com and sign up for a new account.
2. Once registered follow SSVT by entering @SouthShoreVoc into the search box at the top of the page.  Once you find the account click "follow".
3. Next, start searching for interesting content.  Searching for #edchat will show you all the #edchat tweets.

Click here to watch a video specifically for educators on getting started with twitter.  Yes, I found the video on twitter :-)

I hope to be able to follow many of you soon, wouldn't it be great to have an active #ssvt? You might not be able to answer that now, but trust me, it would!

Happy tweeting -- yes, it's called "tweeting" not "twitting.  Don't say twitting because, as my daughter pointed out to me, that's just WRONG.