Good Luck, Bands!

This is post is dedicated to the band of Zora Ellis Jr. High and Talladega High School as they prepare for next week's Alabama State Concert Band Assessment.

Excel Part 7--Inserting a Header or Footer

This tutorial show how to insert a header or footer into Excel.

Click here to go to the tutorial.

Famous Failures

Google Tricks

Google has a number of little-known tricks. This post from Lifehacker.com was the third most popular post of 2008 from that site. It contains 10 tricks worth knowing.

Congratulations Linda Peveler!

It's always good when a friend receives a well-deserved honor. Congratulations to Linda Peveler for being named "Assistant Principal of the Year" by the Alabama Association of Secondary Principals.

Linda and I worked together at Columbiana Middle School. As a teacher, she was a superb teacher who had her finger on the pulse of the school. She was a tremendous help to me during those years that I served as assistant principal at that school. As an administrator, Linda has found that balance between firmness and kindness. Unafraid to make a decision, yet careful to think it through first, Linda is one of the best. She deserves this honor! Linda serves as assistant principal at Oak Mountain Middle School in Shelby County.

Click here to see the article from the Birmingham News.

Excel Part 6--Charting Reading Fluency

This tutorial uses, a teacher constructs a spreadsheet and graph charting progess on reading fluency.

Click here to go to the tutorial.

The Law of Attraction

Introducing "One True Media"

The ability to add pictures and do so easily is one of the advantages of a blog over other types of communication. If we have a large number of pictures, a "slide show" allows us to display those pictures in a small amount of space.

I have used Photobucket and Animoto on this blog. I included them in a list of my Top Ten Web-Based Tools. That list was published in Barbara Blackburn's recent book The Principalship from A-Z.

A good friend put me on to another option: One True Media.

To compare and contrast:

• All three offer free accounts.
• Animoto and One True Media allow you to add music. In fact, One True Media automatically assigns a music track and allows you to change it. Photobucket has no musical option.
• Animoto's free account limits the length of the slideshow to 30 seconds. One True Media and Photobucket seem to be unlimited inthe length of the presentation.
• Animoto mixes the pictures in a very imaginate way. One True Media may have editing capabilities, but if it allows you to do what Animoto does, it would take some work.

Below is a sample of each. Judge for yourself which you like best:

One True Media:

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Animoto



Photobucket

Becoming a Computer Expert

This diagram from the Teach & Learning Blog was hilarious. Primarily, it's so funny because it's so true.

The Secret Motivational Movie

As we move through the first two months of a new year, what if every day could be like this? What if just a few more days could be like this?



What if we realized that we have more opportunity to shape the events in our lives than we are presently using?

Excel Part 5--Creating Graphs

A picture is worth a thousand words. Excel makes presenting a picture of your data easy.

Click here to go to the tutorial.