DIRECTOR' S CORNER
What a great time of year to be an educator! It is a time of renewed energy and looking forward to the current students moving on, then initial planning for the next school year. As you plan, please be aware of the Utah Rural School summer conference at SUU July 11-13. This year the planning committee has focused on building student resilience and Personalized learning. The committee has scheduled for Christian Moore on July 11, followed by Anthony Kim from Ed. Elements on July 12. It is the hope of the URSA board that administrators will support this conference by attending with a team of teachers. Thank you for everything that each of you do!
Jason Strate, CUES Director
URSA
Don't forget the annual URSA conference will be held July 11-13 in Cedar City. There are a few changes to note for this year’s conference.
The conference will be held on July 11-13onthecampusofSUUin Cedar City.
- The format will change to half a day on July 11, full day on July 12, and half a day on July 13.
- On July 11 no meal will be provided, July 12 lunch will be provided in the Student Union Building, and July 13 food trucks will be available.
- The conference will begin rotating each year between USU Eastern Price, Snow College in Richfield, and SUU in Cedar City.
CUSA
Snow College is partnering with CUES to provide the 2nd annual Central Utah Student Art Show. This year’s show will be held at the Snow College Art Gallery in Ephraim and the opening night will be Friday, May 4th from 6-8 PM. Students from Sevier, Piute, Wayne, So. Sanpete, North Sanpete, Juab, Tintic, Millard and also Wasatch Academy are invited to participate. There will be 2 divisions; 7-9 grades and 10-12 grades with 4 categories of 2-D, 3-D, All Media, and Photography. State Representative Carl Albrecht will be on hand to present awards at the opening night reception. The gallery will be open to the public from May 7 to May 18th, weekdays from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
Snow College will be a generous supporter of the show offering a scholarship for “Best of Show” along with some tuition awards for their Summer Snow Art program. Central Valley Medical Center and Cache Valley Bank in Nephi have also shown their support by sponsoring Purchase Awards. Other awards and certificates will be awarded in each category.
Please plan some time to attend this year’s show and enjoy the variety of art that will be displayed. We have amazing students in our region and this is a great opportunity for them to showcase their talents.
Tech Tip-
Templates. Did you know that you can access templates in your Google Docs? Besides having ready-made templates for resumes, proposals, letters, agendas, newsletters, brochures, reports, etc., you also have the ability to create our own templates to use throughout your organization. You can now have one standardized IEP report for all teachers to use, for example. This link will walk you through the steps for accessing templates as well as submitting your own template. Templates are also available in Sheets, Forms, and Slides
OverDrive
The CUES Overdrive digital library has been a great success with most of the schools in the CUES region! Student use of the digital library continues to grow each quarter. CUES recently sponsored a program we called “Donuts on CUES” for schools in the region. We assigned each district a month, then during that month if schools had at least as many book checkouts as they had students enrolled, at the end of the month CUES would supply donuts for every student in the school.
This was a fun contest for all and each district had schools achieve the number set for them. CUES delivered over 350 dozen donuts to students to show appreciation for them reaching the goals set.
During the time of the contest, the number of books being checked out on Overdrive increased by 30%. We are always looking for a new way to promote the Overdrive digital library. We entered the information about our "Donuts on CUES" promotion in an Overdrive Marketplace contest and we were selected as one of the 10 winning entries. We received $500 toward new content materials for our library.
Overdrive is a great way for you to promote summer reading to your students. The Overdrive library is open and available for students all summer long, in fact, it is open 24/7 so they can have great reading choices available with easy access to download to personal devices. A large selection of reading and audiobooks for all ages and interest levels can be found. Check it out!
SUMMER TRAINING WORKSHOPS
CUES has some fantastic learning opportunities planned this summer! All regional teachers are welcome to take any course for relicensure hours or simply for content knowledge. Online and in-person courses will be offered, as well as time will be set aside for Canvas work sessions.
In case you didn't know, for a small $21 fee, any of the Ed. Tech Endorsement courses (which anybody can take) can be used for 1,5000 level graduate SUU credit, which can be applied for salary lance change and/or a Masters in Instructional Technology Degree from Southern Utah University.
Click HERE for more information and to register. Or, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with any questions.