Please join me and Adobe for a webinar on Tuesday, August 10th at 3 pm EDT where I will share all about the integration of Canvas LMS and Adobe Spark. Register to attend.

As we start, this year have you taken a moment to pause and think about your goals for this school year? What are your professional goals? What are your personal goals for creating a balance between work and home? If not, take a moment now. Jot them on a post-it and post them somewhere on your workstation, so you see them.

An important part of the UDL Framework is supporting students in setting their own learning goals. There are so many different approaches to goal setting, with SMART goals being one of the most common. Use the template below in Canva if you have student accounts, or download the image and set it as a background image in Google Jamboard or Slides.

Another way to have students communicate their goals it to write their May/June self a letter. Here is a Canva template for a PostCard to have students use to write a note to themselves about their goals. On the front they can add an image of themself or something they love. On the back they can write a note to themself with their goal. Here is mine:

I’m going back to school this fall to earn my certificate in Educational Leadership. This is the first time in over a decade that I will be “doing school.” I have learned so much about learning during that time, and I am excited to put some new strategies into action.

For this fall semester, I bought all ebooks that I can read and highlight with my Kindle app. I then found an app called Readwise (50% discount for educators) that will export all my Kindle highlights to Notion (free Pro accounts for educators), where I could then organize and utilize them for writing.

I also upgraded to Grammarly premium because this is an area of weakness for me.

I had the great pleasure of being on the Tech it Up Podcast last week with Dr. Mac. You can listen in the tweeted link below.