School Daze...

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Aug 10, 2009 2:40PM

Today is a bummer of a day for 90,000 students across Chicago: the school year has begun. 132 schools across the Chicago Public School System are on the system's Track E schedule which is a year-round calendar. The students on Track E still have the same number of school days of other students but instead of the typical 10-week summer vacation, they'll have shorter breaks several times throughout the year. Chi-Town Daily News has more on the evolution to the year-round schedule.

But there's more: as teachers come back to school as well, they'll find some new restrictions on ways they can communicate with students. Chicago Now blog District 299 reports that CPS has banned teachers from using private email, Facebook, Twitter, and cell phones to communicate with students and their families. The blog even posts one anonymous teacher's issues with the CPS' overall tech policies. Now, we don't know how not being able to use Facebook and Twitter will really get in the way of teaching; we managed to get through school just fine without those. On the other hand, kids these days are way tech-savvy and maybe these sites are becoming an important way to reach them. If you're a teacher, let us know your opinion of this new policy in the comments and if you use these social media tools to connect with your students.