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.

Keeping a Date-and-Time-Stamped Journal on Your Computer

For those who are near a computer pretty much throughout the day and and need to keep a running records of phone calls fielded or any other type of journal info, this tip may be just hit the spot.

I can't remember where I originally saw this idea. The best I could find through a Google search was this page (Scroll about half-way down the page.), and since I do subscribe to that magazine, that's probably where I saw it.

The idea is known as the "Captain's Log," and it makes use of the Notepad accessory that comes with Windows. On Windows XP, go to Start>All Programs>Accessories>Notepad. Open Notepad and type ".LOG" (without the quotation marks and in all caps) on the first line and then hit a couple of times. Save the file on the desktop with an appropriate name. I like "Captains Log."

Every time you open the file, the current date and time will be displayed on your document. Enter your documentation and save.

The Principalship from A-Z

My friend Barbara Blackburn has just published another in her set of "A-Z" books. This one is entitled The Principalship from A-Z. (Click the link to see the table of contents and read several sample chapters.) The chapter on Juggling Priorities is particularly relevant to this blog. Barbara has included some of the ideas from Get Organized! and included the book in the "If You Would Like More Information" section of the chapter.

Excel Part 4-If Then Statements

"If-then" is a common formula. Once you have the hang of this formula, you will find yourself using it in many situations. They called this video "Conditional Formatting," but it's really not. If you understand the formula used when they calculate the letter grades, CONGRATULATIONS, you would really have the hang of it!

Click here to go to the tutorial.

Workshop for R. L. Young Faculty

"Life doesn't have to be hard" was the theme of a short workshop for the faculty at R.L. Young Elementary School here in Talladega, AL. There are tricks and tools that can reduce the monotony and help us get our lives in order. Often, the tools are already laying around; we just need to know how to use them.

In about 20 minutes, teachers had a good grasp of how to create data with the Renaissance Place dashboard and how to get e-mail from "In to Empty" using Outlook's drag and drop feature. If you would like to read more about the workshop, here is the post from R. L. Young's blog.

Air and Simple Gifts

I didn't know exactly what to write about this inspiring moment from today's inauguration. One of the comments about it left on YouTube did it for me:

When I heard Yo-Yo Ma was in it, I knew it was going to be good.
When I heard Itzhak was in it, I sat up a little bit straighter.
And when I heard it was arranged by John Williams,
in those 5 minutes, you could not have done anything
to take my eyes away.

If seems that when we as a people gather at an important event, music becomes not only a important element but an element long remembered after the event is over. For my entire adult life, John Williams has brought us music that has entertained, inspired, and moved emotions. Today was certainly no exception.

Excel Part 3-Autofill, Formulas, Formatting, Sorting

This tutorial gives examples of Autofill, writing formulas to find sums, percentages, averages, maximums, and minimums.The examples also shows how to sort rows, resize fonts, and merge cells.

Click here to go to the tutorial.

Syncing Google Calendar to Outlook

This post covers two points:

• The ability to sync Outlook with a Google Calendar
• The rationale for doing so

I was surprised at how easy the process was. If you are sitting at a computer which houses your Outlook data, you are about 5 minutes away from being able to see your Outlook dates on Google Calendar.

You must first have a Google account. The next step is to create a Google calendar. You will see a list of Google features. If "Calendar" is not one of them, look for "More" and click there. Once you have created a Google calendar, you can now sync with Outlook.

Click here to see an easy article that takes you through the process.

I was prompted to download and run an installer. On my desktop, I then had a shortcut which would take me straight to the Google Calendar. In the Windows System Tray, I had an icon which allows me to edit settings and manually sync. It was that simple.

Why would you want to be able to sync Outlook with a Google Calendar?

• One tremendous advantage I see is that if someone else has some responsibility for managing your appointments, Google Calendar is the perfect way for that person to view and add to your calendar. To begin, the other person would need to sit at the computer which actually houses the Outlook pst file on it and go to their Google calendar. That will set up the link between that particular Outlook pst file (the file where Outlook data is kept) and that particular Google calendar. From there on, that second person can view and add items from his/her own work station and the results appear on the Outlook calendar.

• Similarly, one spouse may want to create a Google Calendar to view the other's Outlook calendar.

• A person who houses their calendar on Outlook yet does not sync it to a smartphone could certainly benefit. Syncing Outlook to a Google Calendar gives the ability to view it from anywhere. In particular, web access from a smartphone would keep a person in touch with their calendar just by pulling the smartphone from their pocket.

I do not think that a Google calendar is the answer for everyone. Personally, syncing my BlackBerry to Outlook gives me my calendar, tasks with all of the related details, a very complete list of contacts, and tones of "Notes" information, and it's all a couple of clicks away. I am not dependent upon quality or availablility of cell phone reception in order to see where I am supposed to be or what I am supposed to be doing. For many others, a Google Calendar synced to Outlook may just be what the doctor ordered.

Follow Your Dreams

Excel Part 2--Setting Up A Budget

A budget is a pretty standard Excel example to work through. This example shows how to add labels in Excel, enter numbers, format the numbers as money, total the amounts rows, and total the amounts in columns.

Click here to go to the tutorial.