New Tech: Take 2

Here it is a little later and it seems that Blackboard is coming. I stopped by a training today (the same one that I already went to) to get started, and have someone around that knew what they were doing. It seems that the district has researched a bit and found that adding large numbers of students, doesn't increase the cost that much. Now, every middle and high school student will have logins. Without these, the program wasn't that great...now, it's all good.
I am very impressed that this passed the powers that be, and am quite happy. While those of us at the middle school don't really have the infrastructure to really capitalize on all the offerings, it will be a vast improvement. This will open up the floodgates for many.
There will be those who will not take advantage of this and those who will refrain from any deviation from the norm, but there are so many who will use this to their full capacity too. Just like anything else, some will be interested and others that won't. At any rate, I'm happy that this has passed and will be available.
I'm currently laying out the skeleton of my course and look forward to adding the fleshy, interesting aspects over the summer. Now that it's official, I guess it's time to take care of all that I can over the summer.
There has been no official announcement regarding my new curricular partner, whether it will be full time, 1/2 time, 1/4 time etc, or who's really in running, but I'm hoping for someone I can work with and develop the class with. Things are changing and so must this class. I was told to keep the changes to a minimum this year and wait to see what the next PSSA test looks like, but I think it's time for a few tweaks until I can develop something new. It will be a good test of BB and how the students embrace the possibilities. Only time will tell. At least this is a step in the right direction.
Tomorrow I'll be back in the training session to see what else I can do. A little support is nice...and so is the option of taking off whenever I want to...sometimes sitting at a computer when the weather is perfect just isn't a good idea!
More later I'm sure.