Category: Exploring Tech

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Important Update from Remind.com!

If you are a teacher using the Remind service you need to read this! You will have to share this information with your students.

We’re sorry to write with a disappointing update. As you might remember from this summer, Rogers Canada was planning to charge Remind a fee that made it impossible for us to continue supporting text messaging for anyone with a Rogers wireless plan. Now, Bell Canada has decided to charge Remind a similar fee as well.

Please read on for all the important details—we promise to keep this as short as we can.

What’s happening?
To offer our text messaging service free of charge, Remind has always paid for each text that users receive or send. Now, Rogers and Bell are charging us additional fees intended for companies that send spam over their networks. Remind messages aren’t spam, but our efforts to resolve the issue with the telecoms haven’t been successful.

As a result, the Rogers and Bell fees increase our costs of supporting SMS in Canada to at least 25X our current cost. This isn’t financially feasible for us to support, and it’s forcing us to end Remind text messaging for everyone who has a wireless plan on the Rogers and Bell networks.

How will this affect you?
Beginning January 28, 2019, people in your classes who normally get Remind texts will no longer receive your messages if they have wireless plans with Rogers, Bell, or their respective subsidiaries.

What can you do?
To make sure people in your classes continue receiving your messages, encourage them to download the mobile app or enable email notifications. Our team’s also working hard on a solution that allows your classes to continue to use Remind by text, and we’ll share more details with you before January 28.

In the meantime, we’ll keep fighting to make sure Canadian educators, students, and parents have access to effective communication. To do this, we need your help: If using Remind has made a positive impact in your classroom, at your school, or anywhere in between, please ask Rogers and Bell to reverse the fee here: www.remind.com/canada-carrier-fees

We’re very grateful for your support, and we’ll be in touch soon with an update.

Sincerely,
The Remind team

Lunch and Learn

Periodically I will post a “Lunch and Learn” day on the daybook, which will be used for any of the following reasons:

  • for anyone falling behind in their assignments (i.e. with a mark below ~60%)
  • for anyone chronically late
  • for anyone who has missed a number of classes and may need extra assistance to catch up

Attendance will be mandatory for anyone asked to attend one of these sessions.

Late Arrivals

I don’t have a formal policy about late arrivals, but late arrivals will be recorded and if it becomes a recurring problem (>2 times), there will be consequences, ranging from staying behind after class to detentions.

Remember that if you arrive late you will be disrupting the class and will likely have missed important content about the day.

Just don’t be late!

(See also Lunch and Learn)

[teacher link]

Discussion Forum Instructions

Each student needs to provide at least one comment and two replies and/or questions.

Your main comment should reflect something interesting and noteworthy you have read in the article or heard in the podcast. Your comment must be at least one complete and proper sentence and demonstrate your understanding of the article/podcast.

Try not to repeat what others have said or asked (so do this assignment early!).

If someone already has two comments then comment on someone else. If you really want to comment, then just comment on one extra person. When the assignment is complete, everyone should have at least two replies and/or questions on their comment.

The assignment is marked out of 9 — 3 marks for your initial comment and 6 for your two (or more) responses to others. I will be marking for spelling, grammar, relevancy, and appropriateness. Keep all responses friendly and supportive.

Late Submission Policy

The general policy for late submissions is that 5% of your achieved mark will be deducted per day to a maximum of 15% for grades 9-10 and a maximum of 25% for grades 11-12 (DSBN policy). There may be exceptions to this, depending on the specific circumstances.

If assignments are posted online and can be done from home, absence due to a school activity does not extend the deadline.

If the situation warrants that an assignment can no longer be handed in, the mark will be a zero beyond that.

(You will only be given a reasonable amount of time to submit a late assignment. Don’t expect to be handing in assignments two or three weeks after they are due!)

Land Acknowledgment

We will begin this course by acknowledging that we are meeting on aboriginal land that has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples from the beginning.

As settlers, we’re grateful for the opportunity to meet here and we thank all the generations of people who have taken care of this land – for thousands of years.

Long before today, as we gather here, there have been aboriginal peoples who have been the stewards of this place.

In particular, we acknowledge – the traditional territory of Anishinaabeg, Ojibway/Chippewa and Haudenosaunee peoples.

We recognize and deeply appreciate their historic connection to this place. We also recognize the contributions of Métis, Inuit, and other Indigenous peoples have made, both in shaping and strengthening this community in particular, and our province and country as a whole.

As settlers, this recognition of the contributions and historic importance of Indigenous peoples must also be clearly and overtly connected to our collective commitment to make the promise and the challenge of Truth and Reconciliation real in our communities, and in particular to bring justice for murdered and missing indigenous women and girls across our country.

Land Acknowledgement

We will begin this course by acknowledging that we are meeting on aboriginal land that has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples from the beginning.

As settlers, we’re grateful for the opportunity to meet here and we thank all the generations of people who have taken care of this land – for thousands of years.

Long before today, as we gather here, there have been aboriginal peoples who have been the stewards of this place.

In particular, we acknowledge – the traditional territory of Anishinaabeg, Ojibway/Chippewa and Haudenosaunee peoples.

We recognize and deeply appreciate their historic connection to this place. We also recognize the contributions of Métis, Inuit, and other Indigenous peoples have made, both in shaping and strengthening this community in particular, and our province and country as a whole.

As settlers, this recognition of the contributions and historic importance of Indigenous peoples must also be clearly and overtly connected to our collective commitment to make the promise and the challenge of Truth and Reconciliation real in our communities, and in particular to bring justice for murdered and missing indigenous women and girls across our country.

[Credit to https://ofl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017.05.31-Traditional-Territory-Acknowledgement-in-Ont.pdf]