Preventing Staph Infections

So what does a staph infection of the notorious "Super Bug" have to do with a blog related to time management and organization? Glad you asked!

I can hardly turn on my television without hearing about an outbreak of staph or horror stories about its effects. If I listen to enough of it, I am almost afraid to leave the house for fear of how I might be infected at every turn.

Thank goodness for those who do not stop there. They go a step further to tell me how to prevent infection. More importantly, they make it easy enough that I will actually do it: Wash your hands and put a Band-Aid over open wounds. That sounds simple. I can do that!

This simple advice reminds me of the "Pareto Principle." Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist around the turn of the 20th century. Pareto observed that 80% of the wealth of Italy was held by 20% of the population, and that the remaining 80% of the population accounted for only 20% of the wealth. That observation has become known as “Pareto’s Principle,” or the “80/20 Rule.” It has been applied in many circles. A salesman may find that 80% of his sales are made to 20% of his customers. In your school, you may find 80% of the discipline problems coming from 20% of the students.

How can I ensure I will not contract the “Super Bug”? News accounts are full of detailed cleaning measures I could take. In fact, taking measures to avoid the infection could turn into a full-time job. Instead, I could pay attention to the Pareto Principle. Washing my hands and covering wounds won’t give me a 100% guarantee, but it does give me something simple that will greatly reduce my changes of infection..

What is going on in your life that seems to be taking 80% of your time yet yielding 20% (or less) of your results? Get rid of it! OK, maybe easier said than done. Let me rephrase. Examine it—closely. Some may have to stay. Some has been hanging around because that’s the way you have always done things.

Less time spent on what does not matter leaves more time to spend on that 20% which yields the 80% of your results. When is the last time you washed you hands? I think I will go do that now!

Clock's not right? Leave it alone!

This morning was a little perplexing. The alarm clock beside the bed said one time. The VCR in the same room, however, read one hour earlier. Likewise, the time on the security system also displayed a time one hour earlier than the alarm clock. Extended Daylight Saving Time strikes again! The makers of our VCRs, computers, security systems, and the like did us a favor by programming them to automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time. But then, Congress came along and changed the starting and ending dates for DTS!

I have written about this new wrinkle which entered our lives in the spring with posts here and here which talk about preparing ourselves. What if we didn’t prepare? What if we wake up and find clocks displaying the wrong time? I have an easy answer for you---do nothing! Let me clarify that one: Do nothing--at least for now.

Yes, you could go and manually roll the time forward on these various time pieces and have every clock in your world in perfect sync. Guess what will happen in exactly one week? When DST does kick in, you are going to have to turn right around and set each of these timepieces back one hour. So, “Part 1” of my three-part advice is to simply leave well enough alone. In one week, those time pieces are going to be reading the correct time. You will probably also find that your newer electronic devices will self-adjust.

My second piece of advice applies to those of us who live by digital calendars such as the one on Outlook, BlackBerry, or Palm. Be aware that the appointments for the next one week may be an hour off. In addition, since the time displayed may be an hour off, any alarms you have set are also going to chime an hour too soon. My point is that for exactly one week you need to double-check appointments so that you know which entries are the "real deal" and which are the imposters.

Finally, you can steps to prepare so that when arrives March, the Extended Daylight Saving Time bug does either does not strike, or its effects are minimized. (Remember, in March, DST kicks in 3 weeks earlier than before.) The earlier links in this article describe a patch for the BlackBerry which fixes the problem. Microsoft has addressed the issue concerning computers in articles such as this.

The good news is you don’t have to do any of this now. You have until March (but be sure to jot something in your signature tool now, while you are thinking about it). Who knows, by March, you may have replaced that VCR, computer, coffeemaker, security system, or fancy wristwatch anyway!

Managing school the easy way—Part II Break big projects down into little parts.

As adults, we remember fondly the English teacher who assigned the term paper (due 2 months hence), and then said, “I want you to turn in your topic this Friday, and outline the next Friday, a dozen note cards the next Friday...” That teacher knew that left to our own devices, we would put off the seemingly overwhelming task until the last minute and then throw something together. She made us break the big job into manageable parts. What are the big projects for our students? Perhaps making the Accelerated Reader “100 Club,” earning the badge in scouting, or making a sports team are a student’s goals. For each one, there is a very next step. When the little steps are defined and handled, the big projects fall into place.

A student planner is the perfect tool for project planning. Begin by turning to the date the big project is due. Put that due date in the planner. Now start working backwards from that date. Assign a date for each step along the way and write in the appropriate square in the planner. Before you know it, you will have working your way to the beginning of the project and have deadline for taking that first step. As the old saying goes, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Therefore, the second step towards managing school the easy way is to break big projects down into little parts.

Managing School the Easy Way (Part 1)

A number of years ago, I composed an article for a parent newsletter entitle "Managing School the Easy Way" when I was serving as principal at Graham Elementary School. I am breaking that article down into 5 relative short posts, the first of which appears here.

Managing School the Easy Way (Part I)

Experienced teachers will tell us that school success and intelligence do not always go hand-in-hand. Often, very bright young people don’t remember to do assignments, lose their work, and spend inordinate amounts of time frantically looking for things on a messy desk.

At the same time, other students breeze through school. They seem to make school look easy, but not because they are necessarily smarter than their peers. They have acquired some very easy, very teachable habits. Over the next several weeks, I will share some suggestions which make navigating school much easier.

The first of these tips is to write down the things you have to do as soon as they occur to you. Try to simply remember everything you have to do and you are headed for trouble. Even young people today have many activities on which you must focus your attention—homework, athletic practices, family activities, and chores are just some of the obligations you have. The easy thing to do is let pencil and paper do the remembering. Get it on paper and you can get it off your mind! A student planner is the perfect tool for this purpose. The big advantage of using such a book is that all commitments are in one place.

The planner should not just be for school assignments. It can and should be the one place which traps every responsibility you have. As you list athletic games and practices, after-school activities, school projects as well as day-to-day assignments, you begin to see the big picture and can begin to budget your time.

Therefore, the first step towards managing school the easy way is to write down things you have to do as soon as they occur to you.

"Dribs and drabs" and chunks of time

The Effective Executive by Dr. Peter Drucker ranks as one of my all-time favorite books. Copyrighted in 1966, its advice in the area of time management rings even truer today than it did 40 years ago. “Effective executives…do not start with their tasks. They start with their time,” say Drucker.

One of my favorite lines from the book is when Drucker says, “To have dribs and drabs of time of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours.” The point is that we cannot get anything of real value done without “time in fairly large chunks.”

Finding those fairly large chunks of time is difficult for those in the school business. For teachers, most have only a 30-minute block of discretionary time per day. Administrators often find their days so fragmented that nothing is accomplished by the end of a day.

Difficult, yes. Impossible, no. Thank goodness that answer is no! Once we give in to the notion that our days consist of fragmented “dribs and drabs,” we must give in to the notion that we will simply not be effective in our jobs.

Who and what are the obstacles which stand between you and those large chunks of time? Keeping that thought first and foremost in your mind for a few days will quickly reveal answers as your day unfolds. Postponing checking e-mail, letting voicemail catch the phone calls, and closing the door to dissuade drop-in visitors are time-honored techniques. Above all, if you had the large chunks of time, what would you do with them? If the answer to that question is hazy, there will be little motivation to make tomorrow any different than today.

On the other hand, if you have a passion for a project, the project has been planned, and you know exactly where to jump in, somehow the ability to block out of the rest of the world becomes easier.

What’s your passion right now? What’s standing in the way of your pursuing it? What are you waiting for? Turn Drucker’s “dribs and drabs” into large chunks of gold!

Extended Daylight Saving Time Revisited

The Daylight Saving Time Problem is still for real! I had written about this problem back in the spring. That post is here. The idea is this: Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time starts 3 weeks earlier and ends 1 week later than in previous years. This year, Daylight Saving Time ends on November 4th.

What that means for many handheld users is that they will need a "patch" in order for the time to show correctly on their handhelds. Without the patch, the time on the handheld will "fall back" a week to early.

Are you a victim of the Extended Daylight Saving Time demon? To find out, look at appointments you have on your handheld between October 28 and November 3. Look at the same appointments on Outlook. Are the times the same? If so, your device is OK. If the two are an hour off, you will need a patch.

1. For BlackBerry users, to get the patch, do this:
2. Close BlackBerry Desktop software
3. Disconnect Blackberry from computer.
4. Go to http://www.blackberry.com/DST2007/patch/index2.shtml
5. Scroll down until you come to a link labeled "DST Patch Loader" and click the link.
   You will get a message asking you to install an Active X Control. Click on the yellow strip at the top of the page to allow this to happen.
6. Connect your BlackBerry to your computer.
7. A button will appear that says "Install DST Patch." Click on it.
8. The patch will download. Be patient. The process will take several minutes and the little "progress bar" may appear to be frozen, but do not worry. Just give it some time.
9. When the process finishes, you are returned to the the screen that has the button asking you to install the DST Patch. It sure would be nice if you got some sort of message telling you that you were finished, but you don't. I am sure there are going to be many people who hit the button again, but at least YOU won't be doing that.
10. You can now disconnect your BlackBerry from the computer. You will find that a little hour glass is spinning on the screen. It may spin for 15 minutes. Don't worry. When it finally stops spinning, you are done!

At this point, the appointments on your BlackBerry and those on Outlook will at the least be the same. It does not mean they are correct. You will need to look at each one to determine if it is correct or an hour off. Make corrections as needed. The next time you sync, the corrections will transfer.

Sleep on it

Last night as I was watching the Alabama football team go down in defeat, I was going down to defeat at the hands of a spreadsheet I had been so proud of. It was a masterpiece in the art of taking a paperwork nightmare imposed from the State Department of Education and turning it into a simple, paperless procedure.

The fly in the ointment was a formula--one formula. I knew what I wanted to happen but didn't know of an Excel formula which would do it. A Google search revealed other people searching for exactly the same formula, but it seemed what I wanted didn't exist.

As the the 4th quarter was drawing to a close, an idea occurred to me that would work. It wasn't elegant. It wasn't pretty. But, it would work. Two to three hours was a good estimate of the time required to make the needed adjustments--major adjustments. As the ga,e proceeded into overtime, I realized I was looking at a task which would require far more time and energy than was available. As the opposing team scored the winning touchdown, I was making notes about where I would pick up in the morning. Then, I went to bed.

How many times in our lives have we been given the advice to "sleep on it"? While I slept, evidently my brain kept working--and did so at a very creative level. The next morning, I awoke with another idea to solve the "missing formula" problem. This one was elegant, very elegant. Better yet, the modifications took exactly five minutes to make. Best of all, the solution worked!

Tomorrow, I am meeting with one of my favorite people in the education world. Last spring she had described to me how she had papers scattered all over her living room floor in an attempt to tackle this one report. It was not a pretty picture! I can't wait to see her reaction when we go over how this spreadsheet works and I give her a copy of it.

I guess this story has two morals. The first is that when confronted with the paper avalanche, we must train ourselves to look to technology for a solution. So often, it's there. The second message is perhaps there is something to handing over our problems to our creative subconscious. Perhaps it is the force which can take today's insurmountable problems and turn them into tomorrow's solutions.

Student planners

I participate in several time management/personal productivity discussion groups. The exchange of ideas healthy and even when disagreement arises, I think we all come away a little smarter.

One of the things about these groups is that you never know when something you write off the cuff, totally on the spur of the moment, resonates with someone else. Such is the case with a reply on the subject of helping students be more organized. Tonight I found the idea struck a chord and a fellow blogger quoted what I had to say on his blog. The link is here, and the post goes as follows:

Everyone open your planners...
I absolutely love when I find pieces like this where schools at the administrative level down are grasping basic organizational concepts and teaching the kids how to do them. Oh if I had only been taught these skills in school…

— In AnalogGTD@yahoogroups.com, “Dr. Frank Buck” wrote:
Deb,
One of the best things I did as an elementary principal was to purchase student planners for the entire student body. As far securing funding, I was able to get a couple of small grants a couple years. School systems also receive some federal finding earmarked for parental involvement. Our use of the planners qualified for that.

The secret was getting all teachers to use them and use them in much the same way. Teachers had to stop telling students “Now, don’t forget to…” and instead to say, “Everyone open your planner. On tomorrow’s square, write down (whatever).” At the beginning of the week, my morning announcements would include events coming up. My comments would always start with’ “Open your planners.” I would tell them what to write, where to write it, and then tell them that when they saw those few key words what it would remind them to do.

Teachers used the planners to write a quick note to parents, knowing that the planner would be the one thing every parent would look at every night. (We really stressed that to parents, so after a while, the value of the planner as an easy way to keep parents informed just became part of the culture of the school.)

About half of being successful in school is organization. As for the other half, well, most of that is organization as well.
Frank

Yes, the planners worked like a charm for us. If I were to accept another principalship (and most certainly if it were a secondary principalship) establishing student planners would be among the first orders of business. Everybody talks about how they need to be more organized and manage their time better. Yet, nobody teaches this. Simple time-management tools can, and should, be part of the culture of schools.

Be quick...but don't hurry

Sometimes, the best thing to do is jump into a task and get it done. Sometimes, the best thing to do is step back, relax, and plan. Yesterday was a prime example for me.

With about an hour and a half left before time to go home, I started a project involving the assimilation of data which had just become available. My goal was to enter the appropriate parts of the data onto our school system's "Balanced Scorecard" and get the updated scorecard to principals as soon as possible.

"No better time than the present to just knock the whole thing out," I thought. For about the next hour, I put shoulder to the wheel watching the clock all along. The clock seemed to be going faster than the progress on the task at hand. In addition, two phone calls which had to be made before leaving weighed heavily on my mind.

With 30 minutes until time to leave the office, it was obvious I had severely underestimated the time required for the task. Furthermore, I was not enjoying what I was doing. At this juncture in my life, I have pretty much come to the conclusion that being happy doing what I am doing in the moment ought to be a primary focus. Furthermore, I felt frazzled. I found myself feverishly looking for a particular flash drive only to find it was in the pocket of the coat I was presently wearing!

I made a decision which may turn out to be the best decision I make all weekend. I put the project in the briefcase. That left me 30 minutes to plan my weekend and my Monday. I left the office with a clear picture of what I wanted to accomplish that evening, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon, first thing in the office Monday, early Monday, late morning Monday, and Monday afternoon. I had also charted pretty clearly what I wanted to tackle Tuesday. Finally, I had blasted into the future quite a few things sitting on the task list that stood no chance of being handled in the next few days.

Saturday morning, I put the flash drive in the computer at home, pulled the printouts from the briefcase, and resumed the data project. Just yesterday, I was watching the clock wondering what I had done to deserve such torture. This morning, I was having fun. I was relaxed and listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, an episode of Mission Organization, and a Jay Leno, all from a VCR tape from earlier in the week playing in the background to keep me company.

During my 23-minute commute to and from work, I have listened to many books on tape and CD. Yesterday's ordeal brings to mind one of them: Be Quick But Don't Hurry. The book was written by a former UCLA basketball player who recounted his days under legendary coach John Wooden. The title refers to a piece of advice Wooden gave his players. At first glance, it seems contradictory. In actuality, it's right on the money.

When we are relaxed and "in our zone," we can be quick. Everything flows. Everything is effortless. The activity is fun. When we hurry, we make mistakes. We stumble and find ourselves having to re-do and re-think.

Yesterday, I was trying to hurry. Today, I was quick. The task was the same. The difference is yesterday was work while today was play.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is jump into a task and get it done. Sometimes, the best thing to do is step back, relax, and plan. I think I just got better at distinguishing the one from the other.

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.

- James Michener

iGoogle

I have made the statement more times than I can count that "I learned something every day this summer." That statement holds true in a number of arenas, but especially in the area of technology. One of the neatest things from my summer experiences is discovering "iGoogle."

I shared all of this information in an e-mail with a friend, so to kill two birds with one stone, here is basically and copy/paste of that e-mail for others who might like to have iGoogle as a home page. Here is how to set it up:

1. Go to Google
2. In the upper right corner, click on "iGoogle". (If, by chance, in the upper right corner it says "Classic Home," then never mind, you are already at iGoogle.)
3. Click on "Sign in" in the upper right corner.
4. Sign in if you have a Google account, or create a Google account (it's free).
   

Here is what I have on mine:

1. Google Bookmarks-You can add to or take away as you see fit. I gave you pretty much what I have.
2. The movies at the local theater or you can click where it says "Movies" and see what's on in other locations.
3. The weather is particular to our city.
4. Driving directions starting with my place of work as the default starting point. (You can change the default on any of these by clicking the little down arrow and choosing "Edit settings.")
5. Same with the Map Search. My work location is right in the center.
6. I have list of GoogleDocs which I can share with other individuals or with the whole world.
7. There are other things you can add by clicking on "Add stuff" just above the Inspirational Quotes. (What a handy word "stuff" is!)
8. You can get rid of any of the "stuff" by clicking on the "x."
9. You can re-arrange where each window is located by clicking and dragging it somewhere else on the screen.
10. There are different "themes" for how the top of the page will look. Click on "Select theme" right beside "Add stuff." Some themes will change appearance with the time of day and others change according to the weather in your particular area. How cool is that?
    

I have this set as my homepage, and...
At home, I have this set as my homepage, and...
My laptop is set with this as my homepage, which means...
...for those sites I go to all the time or the GoogleDocs I have, I don't have to bookmark them on three different computers, and...
...If I am away from home and on a computer in a public library, someone else's school, etc., I can go to Google, click iGoogle, log in, and I am looking at my bookmarks, my GoogleDocs, and the whole nine yeards just the same as if I was sitting in my office.
So..there it is. Have fun!

Say "yes" or say "no," you are always saying both

Education is a "helping" profession, and those who embark on a career in this arena have the natural tendency to say "yes." Whether the request is to provide extra help to a student, serve on a committee, complete whatever paperwork appears, or do all of these at the same time, we are a people who tend to say "yes" first and figure out how we will accomplish it later. After all, doesn't saying "no" make us seem uninterested, uncaring, and selfish?

In today's world, the demands on one's time generally exceed the time available. Choices must be made as to what gets done and what is left undone. When we say "yes" to one request, we are ultimately saying "no" to all else available to us at the moment. Therefore, the question becomes not one of whether we say "yes" or say "no," but which request get which answer.

Why is it that when we are saying "yes," so often we wind up feeling bad. Perhaps the answer is that, at some level, we realize more important responsibilities received a "no."

This past week, a principal related to me a situation where a veteran teacher was approached during instructional time by an agency representative with the request to compose a memo and to do so right then. Saying "yes" to this request meant saying "no" to the instruction which should be happening in that classroom. The teacher wrote the memo yet felt bad about having to choose to between two poor alternatives--saying "no" to the agency representatives or saying "no" to the students.

We need not feel bad about saying "no." In fact, it is a necessary tool in our arsenal of time-management tools. Without the word "no," our time will never be our own. Instead, it will be free for asking by those who scream longest and loudest and present themselves at our doorstep the most often.

As school leaders, we help those around us reach their goals by helping them understand than saying "no" is not only OK, it is an absolute necessity if they are ever to accomplish anything of significance.

Today, you will encounter opportunities to make the day significant. You will also encounter the trivial disguised in royal garb. Will you be able to distinguish the one from the other? Will you be able to say "no" to the one and "yes" to the other. Say "yes" or say "no," you are always saying both.

Preparing for accreditation visit and our first wiki

Our school system is preparing for a District SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) Accreditation visit later this school year. One of the projects at hand is to articulate how our school system meets each of the 7 SACS standards and their indicators. We have formed 7 committees of 4-5 people, each being charged with developing ideas to support one of the standards.

Other than sitting down together in the same room, how can a group share their ideas over time? Our answer will be to use a wiki. This afternoon, the group will be introduced to this concept using this video:



We are going to use a "Peanut Butter Wiki" and devote one page to each of the standards. AS our project unfolds and there is really something to see, I will keep you updated here.

Thanks to Pattie Thomas, my colleague for talking me into the idea, and Dr. Jan Borelli who had posted this same video to her blog, giving me a wonderful way to introduce this concept to our committee members. A special thanks to those at Common Craft who produced this and other outstanding instructional videos.

New name...same purpose

As of today, this blog has a new title! The driving reason for the change is in preparation for the publication of a new book.

Over a decade ago, I found myself reading practically everything on the subject of time management I could find. The research all fed a dissertation entitled A Study of the Time Management Practices of Alabama Principals. The work that led to that dissertation also spawned the original workshop I started in 1997, a workshop that has evolved over the years as the needs of the participaints have grown and changed.

A little less than a year, Bob Sickles, President of Eye on Education, contacted me. After having read my article in "The 24 Hour Principal" issue of Principal magazine and reading parts of this blog, Bob contacted me about the possibility of writing a book. What followed has been a wonderful journey as I have attempted to harness the verbal message presented for the last 10 years in a face-to-face format and transform it into the written word for an larger audience.

What make this book different from other books on organization or time management already on the market? This book makes a contribution to the literature in two ways:

First, it is written with the school leader in mind. Books typically approach the subject from the standpoint of the business world. We must take and adapt them for our purposes. The scenarios in this book are from education and the problems addressed are the real problems which face us every day.

Secondly, the book provides a comprehensive system for getting organized and managing time. Many books provide a smogasboard of suggestions and stop there. This book goes further and ties it all together. We handle the paper, the ideas, the digital data, and the people aspects of the job.

Making a decision about the title was actually one of the last tasks. The idea on which we finally settled--Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders was a suggestion for one of the people who reviewed the manuscript.

As of now, the expected date of publication is this Christmas!

One of the real pleasures of my career in education has been the privilege of serving as an "Editorial Adviser" for the National Association of Elementary School Principals. One of the last acts in this role was responding to a request to share something for this "best practices" issue of Principal magazine. For about the last 20 years, technology has played a significant role in making my job easier, whether the role was that of a band director, an aspiring administrator looking for ways to help other people in the building, a middle school assistant principal, a principal, or now as a central office administrator.

You can view the article here. For more along the same line, I invite you to read my article on Saving Time and Paper with Basic Technology which appeared earlier this year in Principal magazine.

Maintenance requests go "Web 2.0"

Maintenance requests have been a source of frustration in my school for as long as I have been there (going on 11 years now). The paper form is completed and forwarded to the maintenance department. What happens after that is sometimes anyone's guess. Ours was a system beyond "tweaking."

What we needed was something totally different. What would a better system look like? First and foremost, it would let all involved in the process see the "big picture." The superintendent would be able to see the totality of requests--what had been completed, and what was outstanding. Those who schedule the work should be able to see all outstanding work at a glance so they could make the the best choices in making assignments. Principals and teachers would be able to see progress on the items which impacted them.

GoogleDocs has proved to be the answer for us. All maintenance requests are housed on one spreadsheet. Every principal has the ability to add requests to the spreadsheet. The maintenance department activates a request by assigning a date and an maintenance employee to it. Requests are marked complete by filling in a completion date.

The beauty of the system is that everyone can see everything. On our employee blog, TeachTalladega, we have a link to the maintenance requests. I think all of our eyes have been opened as to the sheer number of requests and can perhaps be a bit more patient as a limited staff works its way through the list. By the same token, that same limited staff can make better choices about how the day is planned now that all of the cards are on the table.

Smooth sailing or overwhelming frustration? School has begun!

School has begun! The beginning of this school year, like any school year, includes gathering data. How many students do we have? What classes are overloaded? Who is authorized to check Tommy out of school? What's my locker combination?

Technology is our friend in these areas, just to name a few. For those who have figured this out, the beginning of school tends to go smoothly. For those who don't, the works "overwhelmed," "disorganized," and "frantic" typify those first days and weeks as random pieces of paper fly between the classroom and school office, generally ending in a big pile on the desk of some poor sole in the school office. Life does not have to be hard!

Why do the leaders in some schools "get it," and use technology to simplify the process while others continue to operate as if LBJ still occupied the White House? I will go out on a limb and propose that the answer lies in a mindset. Some people look at a problem, and immediate the wheels in their heads begin to turn as they think of how their school administrative software or an Excel spreadsheet can make a molehill out of their mountain. Others retreat to that which is more time consuming, yet more familiar.

I have little sympathy for principals or office personnel who ignore better ways of doing things and wind up making their own jobs harder. They get what they deserve. For me, the travesty is the unnecessary paperwork that is invariably passed to their teachers. Perhaps the day will come when teachers will no longer double as stenographers or accountants and can concentrate their full attention on the craft of teaching. We are not there yet, but I am delighted to be associated with some wonderful leaders in my school system who are getting pretty close.

Ironically, the school leaders who really seem to "get it" the best are also the ones who are hungry for the next trick, the next morsel that will make lives just a little easier for their teachers. The ones who need it the most, however, rock along 20 years in the past.

Earlier this year, my article on Saving Time and Paper With Basic Technology appeared in Principal magazine. It deals with using the tools schools already have at their disposal to save time, save paper, and save our sanity.

For my friends who are in the school business, I wish you a great year and hope you find a few words of wisdom in these posts that will impact you and the students you teach.

Don't open that greeting card...

This week, I have been receiving daily e-mail messages that someone has sent me an electronic greeting card and prompting me to click on a link to retrieve it. A quick Google search for "Greeting card scam" returns numerous hits for the latest assault on our Inboxes.

This link from the Internet Crime Complaint Center gives a particular good and concise explanation. For a little more lengthy and technical article, see this one from TechNewsWorld.

Even if you are sending someone else a legitimate e-mail greeting card, watch out for the fine print. That little user agreement that you check off without reading could contain permission for the company to download software to your computer which will send stuff to everyone in your address book. This explanation from snopes.com explains.

RSS (Real Simple Syndication)

I talked earlier this week about Web 2.0. With so many people producing so much, one can easily become overwhelmed by good stuff. What if all of the good stuff could be organized in one place? What if every time there was an update to a blog you like that update was delivered to you instead of you having to go and check multiple blogs or news sites?

That is what "RSS" (Real Simple Syndication) is all about. I use a program called "intraVnews." It's free and works with Outlook (not Outlook Express). Once I have identified a site that I am interested in keeping up with, I add it to the list. That list includes blogs from principals across town and principals from across the country, educationally-related discussion groups, and alerts from the National Weather Service anytime there is an advisory for this county. I don't have to do anything. It all goes straight to my e-mail. There's enough in life that's complicated. RSS really is simple.

"Stirring Up the Dust"

When you conduct a workshop, you can never be sure who will take what you have to give and use it and to what extent it will be used. I was delighted to find "Stirring Up the Dust," a brand-new blog created by library media specialist Kitty Forbus. Her first post, "The Journey Begins," is a treasure that I would encourage anyone to read.

Kitty attended a workshop on blogging at the Alabama Educational Technology Conference a year ago. She is a shining example of one not only implemented everything presented, but she has taken it to an even greater level.

Notes from Mega Conference

Here are some of the major ideas I gained from the Mega Conference held in Mobile this past week. The major thrust of the Mega Conference each year centers around Federal Programs and Special Education, although the sessions do extend into all areas of school life.

Response to Intervention
This term "Response to Intervention" is one which is probably unfamiliar to the majority of teachers, yet it's impact on general education is significant now and will continue to grow. "Federal law now prohibits labeling students as 'LD' unless the districts can prove that research-based instruction has been provided, for a lengthy period of time, in regular education classes, by highly-qualified teachers, using instructional programs 'with fidelity.' The process of gathering the required data is called 'Response to Intervention,' or 'RTI.'" This quote comes straight from Melinda Baird, a nationally-known attorney whose specialty is representing school systems in special education issues.

The good news for us is that the teacher who is using research-based reading and math materials, is implementing them "with fidelity" (That's not a term we dreamed up locally; that's the way the law reads.), and is progress monitoring students as prescribed in the program is going to be in good shape. As you read about RTI, you will see the terms "Tier 1," "Tier 2," and "Tier 3" As you review the reading programs up for adoption this year, you are going to see the same language. Easy translation:

• Tier 1="Benchmark" or that vast majority of students (hopefully 80% or more) who are experiencing success. "Tier One" materials are those one would use with the entire class.
• Tier 2="Strategic" or that group of students (probably around 15%) who need a "double dose." "Tier Two" materials or instruction would be used to help accelerate these students.
• Tier 3="Intensive" or that very small percantage (5% or so) who are having severe difficulty and require intensive intervention. You will hear the terms "Tier Three" and "intervention program" used interchangeably.

To be honest, RTI is an area where there are more questions than answers. My suggestion is to keep "RTI" on your radar. When you see the term mentioned in a professional journal, read it. If you have an opportunity to attend a short workshop on it, go. In this last reauthorization of IDEA, Congress came very close to removing the discrepancy model (the way we currently determine eligibility for LD which measures the discrepancy between IQ and performance) and replacing it with RTI. Congress did not do that. They are allowing either method for now. With the the next reauthorization of IDEA, we may well see RTI become the sole way to determine LD.

Reading Adoption
The reading adoption is a huge topic and one that is sure to be the source of interest and controversy statewide. Earlier this summer, 11 textbook companies submitted their core reading programs to a large panel of reviewers. We will be receiving their report this fall. Each core reading program is rated in a variety of areas, much like one would see in the magazine Consumer Reports. In fact the instrument used to rate the programs is entitled A Consumer’s Guide to Evaluating a Core Reading Program Grades K-3.

We will begin receiving samples from the publishers in November. Dr. Morton's recommendation is going to be that school systems narrow their focus to three or four core programs using the results of the report and then make their own selection from there. The rationale is that school systems will not have time to adequately evaluate all 11 programs submitted for review.

Web 2.0
This buzzword got it's start in 2003 and has been gaining steam ever since, but most people still haven't the foggiest notion of what it means. In a nutshell, Web 1.0 was about you and I being consumers. Information on the web was put there by people in far-away places who knew lots about programs such as Deamwaver or FrontPage and had access to servers where they could host their stuff.

Web 2.0 is about creation and participation. What you are reading right now is an example of Web 2.0. It's about the average person being able to share knowledge with the whole word. It's blogs and wikis. It's MySpace and YouTube. It's the ability for you and me to have space on the internet absolutely free where we can post our pictures, our thoughts, and our very best ideas. It's the idea that we are givers as well as takers in a global exchange of ideas. It's the absurd notion that an encyclopedia could be constructed by simply letting anybody who wanted to write whatever they liked, a notion so absurd it's actually working.

To this point, our challenge has been to find what others have written. Our generation learned about the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. This generation knows about Google. The challenge of Web 2.0 is not just in finding what others have created, but in making it easy for others to find what we have created. That, however, is another post for another time.

Free Technology Resources
Every one of the links on this list is worth your time to explore.

APTPlus and United Streaming
Many of our teachers are finding the value of the United Streaming videos. You can download short clips to play in class. You can store what you have downloaded in a folder on your computer so that you can find it the next time you teach that particular lesson. If you have not used this resource before, this blog post tells you what you need to know.

One of the points brought out was that rather than go directly to United Streaming, we should be encouraging you to go to APT Plus. At that site, you can search for resources available from United Streaming, but you will also be able to search other sources at the same time.

ACCESS
The final topic is the distance learning opportunities provided through ACCESS. This program is part of a dream to access to education a function of your aspirations rather than a function of where you happen to live. Extensive information is available at their website.

Weather alerts delivered to your e-mail

Your e-mail can be a handy source for the latest weather advisories. The National Weather Service provides RSS feeds for watches and warnings. To subscribe:

1. Go to this page.
2. Go to the column labeled "By County/Zone" and click on the orange "XML".
3. Click on the county you desire.
4. Copy the URL you see and paste it in your aggregator.

"Shower" a new teacher with gifts

We all know what life can be like for the new teacher. He or she walks into a classroom that may be totally bare of even the basics. All-too-often, other teachers have divided up anything of value left by the last teacher. This "Dear Abby" letter from today's Birmingham News offers a wonderful way to endure that a new teacher begins a career with the essentials:

Dear Abby: I teach aspiring elementary school teachers in a credential program in California. The family of one of my students came up with a great way to celebrate her graduation from the program and help her prepare for her new career as a teacher. They threw her a "teacher shower."

To help her start her classroom library, each guest brought a hardback copy of his/her favourite children's book. She was also given baskets of teacher supplies such as Sharpie pens, Post-Its, stickers and coloured paper for the school copier.

I know the shower meant a lot to my student, and in states like California, where teachers often spend hundreds of their own dollars for classroom supplies, throwing a teacher shower can be a terrific way for families and friends to show their support for the new teacher.

Julie, a Teacher's Teacher

Dear Julie: Dedicated teachers are among the unsung heroes in our society. They guide and shape the members of future generations, and rarely receive the credit or the income they deserve for their efforts. I love the concept of a teacher shower to help young, idealistic educators get off to the start they need, and I hope the idea will be popularized not only for new teachers, but also more experienced educators who would find it helpful. I'm sure there are many.

When you teach, you learn

It never fails that when I teach a workshop, I wind up learning something new. Such is the case with the latest session I conducted Wednesday for the Jacksonville State University Inservice Center.

Thanks to Haylee Black for putting me on to a neat trick for opening multiple pages at once when you open your browser. After the workshop, she was sharing what she had learned with her husband when they stumbled upon this ability. She shared it with me in an e-mail, so I got busy researching it.

You probably know how to change your homepage. You probably also know how to open a new tab so that you can go back and forth between multiple websites. Suppose, however, that there are several sites you use every day and you would like all of them to come up at once (on separate tabs) when you open your browser. There is a way for this to happen:

1. Open your browser.
2. Create a new tab for each site that you want to open automatically.
3. Go to Tools>Internet Options (or on Firefox, Tools>Options).
4. Click the "General" tab in Explorer (or "Main" tab in Firefox).
5. Click "Use Current" in Explorer (or "Use Current Pages" in Firefox)
6. Click "Apply" and "OK" in Explorer (or simply "OK" in Firefox)
7. To test it, close your browser and reopen it (or simply click the "Home" icon).

How would a teacher use this? Think about the sites you pull up every day on your computer:

1. Your school webpage
2. Your search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc.)
3. Renaissance Learning (If you use the web version)
4. STI Classroom

With this trick, you could have all 4 of those sites come up, in different tabs, each time you open your browser. Of course, you could have different computers configured to open different tabs. The computer you use for yourself might open STI Classroom but not Renaissance Learning while one for student use would have no need for STI Classroom but a huge need for Renaissance Learning.

When I teach, I always wind up learning. Isn't this a neat profession?

Installing a counter on your blog

If you are creating a blog, you might be interested in having a counter. The most basic advantage is that you can see how many people visit your blog. You can go further and generate reports which show how many hits you have on any given day and how many are new visitors as opposed to returning visitors. You can also see what percentage of people viewed your blog for only a few seconds versus those who stayed for 20 minutes.

The counter I use is StatCounter. It is a free service. Clicking on the link will take you to that site. You will be asked to choose a login. The site will walk you through step-by-step as you select the style of counter you would like as well as numerous options.

In the final analysis, the StatCounter site will return a block of html code. You will highlight and copy it. StatCounter gives you step-by-step instructions on how to insert that code into your blog template. (Don't worry. It's not nearly as complicated as it sounds.)

If you have a blog, installing a counter is one of those little things that will make a big difference.

Great time at JSU!

If you are visiting for the first time as a result of the workshop at JSU, welcome! In the archives, you will find a great deal of information that I hope you will enjoy.

Thanks for coming to the workshop. I thoroughly enjoyed the day.

Increasing productivity with dual monitors

Microsoft has released an article regarding the benefits of multiple monitors. The story is located here.

My set-up at work includes two monitors. I have been using this configuration for a year and love it! Here is a post I wrote when I changed jobs/offices/computers and went to this arrangement.

Bob Rankin wrote a great article that provides the technical aspects for those those would like to pursue the idea further.

Teacher blogs to communicate with students

During the session on blogging from AETC, several people asked about examples of teachers who are using blogs with their students. A quick Google search and a little "surfing" turned up several that I think are worth a look.

• Brandi Caldwell, a teacher at Mountain Brook High School, composed Mrs. C's Senior English Blogs. From her last post there, it seems the school system began blocking Blogger, so you will see a link there to another venue she now uses. Here, you see Mrs. Caldwell composing the posts and her students responding with their comments.
• On Mrs. Myrmel's Classroom Blog, we see a blog used as a tool for a 3rd grade teacher to communicate with parents.
• At the Room 303 Blog, Mrs. Huff's students compose the posts. The most recent posts at present relate to student insights into The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Other students post comments where they respond to what their classmates have composed. This one is definitely worth a look.

Do you know of other examples that would benefit teachers who are interested in using a blog in their classes? If you do, please leave a comment.

Thanks for a great response!

The last couple of days have been a great experience for me. Thanks to those who came to the Outlook session, the blogging session, or the "It's About Time" session. It's good to hear from you that the message of using technology to make your life easier is one that is needed, and the things we are talking about are practical and doable.

I also want to thank The Daily Home, and in particular staff writer Samantha Corona, for the coverage they gave to my receiving the Chiquita Marbury Technology Innovation Award. The morning following the awards ceremony, this article appeared on the front page. This morning, The Daily Home included this editorial. I have been saying for a number of years that newspapers are eager to print the good that is happening in schools; however, we must take the initiative to keep them informed. Samantha and the entire staff serve as examples of writers who help us put our best foot forward.

Keeping little eyes away from inappropriate material

People can take just about any good thing and find a bad way to use it—the telephone, the automobile, prescription medicines. The list could go on and on, and the Internet is a candidate for that list. This post addresses the potential for someone reaching inappropriate material through a blog.

Sure, I realize that anyone sitting unsupervised at a computer and looking for inappropriate material will find it quickly without ever visiting my blog. I do, however, want to remove the possibility that by visiting my blog and clicking on link, a youngster could be seeing something he or she has no business seeing.

By far my biggest concern is the link at the top of Blogger blogs that says “Next Blog.” At first glance, it looks like a good feature. You can visit blog after blog you never knew existed, and you can find some real treasures. You can also find some real trash. You could be one click away from a blog featuring pornography, profanity, or hate speech.

You will notice this "Next Blog" option does not exist on this blog, or any of the other blogs I have composed (TalladegaCitySchools.blogspot.com, TeachTalladega.blogspot.com, or AlabamaArts.blogspot.com) One simple measure prevents someone reading your blog and being a couple of mouse clicks away from trouble.

I wrote about this same topic in November of 2005. Since that time, Blogger has gone through an upgrade. The instructions that worked before no longer work now. What follows is a set of directions which will work. Thanks to Rakesh for providing directions which will work with the new Blogger.

Removing the Navigation Bar

1. You will probably want to print this page of my blog to reference during the process.
2. To remove the Navigation Bar, you are actually going to edit the html code just a bit.
3. Go to www.blogger.com and log into your blog.
4. On the dashboard, click "Settings."
5. Click the "Template" tab
6. Click the "Edit html" tab
7. Find the line of code that consists of the word "head" surrounded by the < > . It will be near the top.
8. Click the mouse to insert the cursor at the end of the line. Hit "Enter" to give yourself a blank line.
9. Highlight and copy the following text. Paste this text starting in that blank line:


!-- code to add --
style type="text/css"
#navbar-iframe
{
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}
/style

You are going to enclose 3 of the lines you just added with "< >" signs (leaving off the quotation marks). You will add these "< >" signs to enclose the first, second, and last lines of code you pasted. These three lines are the ones that said "!-- code to add --," "style type="text/css"" and "/style"

Once you have done this, click "Save Template." You can now click on "View Blog." If you have done it correctly, the navigation bar will be gone.

That’s it! I doubt the folks at Blogger would be happy about my doing this and even less happy about telling you about it. I am more concerned about being an accomplice to youngsters seeing stuff they shouldn’t than I am keeping folks happy.

Thanks for coming to the session!

If you are visiting here for the first time as a result of coming to one of my sessions at AETC, welcome! The reason I started this blog three years ago was for the sole purpose of continuing a line of communication with those who attend workshops.

You will find a great deal of material as you click the links for past months. I hope you enjoy what you read and will come back often.

Welcome to "Your Own Blog in 10 Minutes or Less"

Clicking on the links will allow you to view each of the blogs we examine:

Talladega City Schools
Teach Talladega
Hal Henderson Elementary School
Alabama Black Belt Arts Education Initative
It's About Time

Analyzing data with spreadsheets

Over the years, spreadsheets have been one of the biggest times avers I have found. A few minutes spent thinking through what I want a spreadsheet to do and setting it up to do so saves hours of repetitive calculations.

If you are in the school business and want to learn how to use Excel to analyze your data, I have a recommendation for a great place to start. School Data Tutorials provides detailed instructions on setting up spreadsheets and writing formulas. The site uses Camtasia Studio to produce the tutorials, meaning you hear the instructor talking to you, view the instructor's screen, and see every move of the instructor's mouse. It's as if the instructor were sitting beside you. Best of all, the examples are germane to analyzing data in an educational setting.

P.S. Thanks to Jan Borelli for putting me onto this site. Jan is principal of Westwood Elementary (the Hippest School in America), located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. You can read some of her thoughts at Dr. Jan's Blog.

Organizing credit card receipts

For many people, handling credit card receipts is an exercise in frustration. As in so many other areas, a good system is the answer to turning something frustrating into something extremely easy. Outlined here are the nuts-and-blots of the system we use at our home.

1. Label a file folder for each credit card you have. Include store credit cards as well as major credit cards. These folders become part of your reference filing system.
2. Label a file folder “Credit Card Receipts.” This folder will be placed in a tickler file folder. I like to use a colored folder so that it is easy to locate.
3. Label a folder “Tax Deductible Receipts.” This file folder may go in your tickler file for the time of year you will be compiling your tax returns.
4. In the evenings, empty you pockets, briefcase, etc. of any credit card receipts you have collected during the day.
5. Take the loose receipts and put all of them in the back of the Credit Card Receipts folder. Filing to the back of the folder keeps the folder in chronological order and makes the job of matching items on the statement with their corresponding receipts much easier. Do not worry that receipts from different credit cards are being mixed together.
6. When the credit card statement comes, throw it in the tickler file for the day you want to handle bills. Saturday is usually a good candidate. When Saturday comes, you will no doubt have several bills to pay, and you will handle them all at one time.
7. Pull the Credit Card Receipts folder and begin with the first statement. For each line on the statement, pull the corresponding credit card receipt. You should have a receipt for each item on the statement. Any missing receipt is a red flag that you should take seriously. It is a sign of either holes in your system or fraudulent charges. If it is the first, shore up those holes. You will then have a reliable way of determining when you are being charged for something you did not purchase. Are there others in your family who also use credit cards? If so, they must be diligent about getting their receipts into the Credit Card Receipts folder.
8. As you are matching items in the statement to the receipts, set aside any which will be tax deductible.
9. Once you have matched all items to the receipts and the statement has been verified as being correct, write the check and tear off the portion to be returned.
10. Take any of your tax deductible receipts and drop them into the Tax Deductible folder. If you need to write any explanation on any of them, now is the time to do that.
11. Take the remaining receipts and staple them to the statement.
12. File the statement in its folder in your reference files.

Should you need to go back and find a receipt, it can be in only one of two places. It can be stapled to the statement in the folder for that credit card. It can be in the Tax Deductible folder. It can be in no other place. Should you need to return an item and need the receipt, simply think in terms of the approximate time the purchase was made and with what card. It will take only a few seconds to scan the statement for that time period and locate the month when the purchase was made. Once you have the correct month, thumbing through the receipts to find the correct one takes only seconds.

Having a good system is almost as easy as having no system at all in terms of the time you will spend to maintain it. A good system is a huge time-saver for all the times you need to find a receipt and the money-saver when you need to dispute fraudulent charges.

Workshp on June 20--Jacksonville, Alabama

I will be conducting a session of "It's About Time" at the Jacksonville State University Inservice Center on June 20. The workshop will be held at the Fort McClellan Center. The workshop is free and is open to all Alabama teachers. To register online, simply click here.

The workshop includes:

• How to use “tickler files” to keep your desktop clean and your paperwork under control.
• How to use a daily planner as an effective tool to keep your organized and on top of your day.
• How to document quickly and easily.
• How to handle tasks which recur, whether each month or each year.
• How to handle multiple projects easily.
• How to organize the files on your computer in a logical manner.
• How to back up your computer easily.
• How to gain “chunks” of time by controlling interruptions.
• How to “batch” similar activities.
• How to establish priorities, delegate, and learn to just say “no.”
• How to organize files and folders so you can find what you want.
• How to back-up your data easily so that a hard drive crash won’t be a catastrophe.
• How to handle tasks which recur monthly, quarterly, or annually.
• How to handle documents you must “revisit” and update regularly.
• How to use e-mail effectively.
• How to organize correspondence so that you can find that memo in seconds.
• How to use Google to put most any information at your fingertips quickly.
  

The book of your life—Calendars from past years

One look at your calendar for the coming days provides all of the date and time-specific information on your life. This post focuses not on the days ahead, but on days gone by. What does your calendar from yesteryear tell you about the progress of your life?

If you look at your calendar from a year ago, what does it tell you? Of what value is to you? Do you even still have it at all? For many of us, last year’s calendar went into the trash can before the sun set on New Year’s Day. For those who do save their calendars, the pages are full of appointments which now hold little or no value. The events which are significant get lost amid all of the events which are now trivial.

I recommend one simple habit which for me has transformed my past calendars from trivial to significant. At the end of the day, I aim to spend a few moments thinking through the course of the day. My purpose is to identify those events which might be worthy of review months or years into the future. Did I come up with an idea which will make life easier for me or someone else? Did a conversation I had today have a potential impact on future opportunities for me? Did an event of lasting significance happen in national news?

If the answer is “yes,” I create a new all-day event on my BlackBerry and record the significant event. At the same time, I delete appointments and all-day events which pose no long-term significance.

Some many be reluctant to delete past appointments in the event they are asked to reconstruct a time line. In my case, I will have the notes from any meeting, complete with date and time recorded. This documentation is all I need.

Each month, I print a hard copy of the previous month from Outlook. On one sheet of paper, I see what is significant about the month without the noise of the insignificant. This calendar page is filed permanently.

I began this exercise about 4 years ago. It has been extremely rewarding in helping me see the high points in my life and the important events of the times in which I live. The process takes seconds a day. It is of value forever.

Hoaxes revisited

I have written about hoaxes we all receive in e-mails and how to separate fact from fiction in them using a quick Google search. PCWorld has published a list of the Top 25 hoaxes, which I think makes for enjoyable reading. You can read it here.

How many of these have made their way to your in-box?

Handling reading material

Staying on top of things in our field means we must stay on top of professional reading. In addition, to professional journals, we all have the things we simply like to read for pleasure. How can we manage it all?

My last post talked about listening to books on tape as a substitute for some of print material. That still leaves me with a great deal of reading material.

I have a section of my briefcase devoted to reading material. As I am going through the mail at work or at home, magazines go straight into the briefcase. That one simple act keeps all of my awaiting reading material in one place. There is no doubt between what has been read and what has not. Anything in the briefcase is either unread or partially read.

When I have down time, I simply pull out something from the briefcase. That means if I am waiting to see the doctor or dentist or if I am waiting to get my hair cut, I pull out some of my reading material. On the way home, I am frequently stopped by a train—so, out comes reading material. I tend to get to appointments early, and while I am waiting, I have reading material.

In short, I match reading material with time that would otherwise be wasted. It keeps the reading material from building up and keeping me from getting bored.

Commute time

Like many of you, I have a bit of a commute to work. Mine is 23 minutes, small in comparison to many people, but gargantuan compared to the 3 minute drive to work from my early days in teaching. For the last year, I have turned what had been wasted time into an enjoyable and productive daily experience.

For the past year, I have never been without a book on tape or CD from the public library. The number of books I have experienced during that time numbers several dozen, and that is a conservative estimate. The latest has been The World is Flat. Listening to all 15 or 16 CDs kept me busy for quite a while, and proved to be fastinating listening. Of course, I have always been aware of the availability of audiobooks. Up until the last year, I had simply never made regular trips to the library for them a priority.

In today's world, lifelong learning is essential. Books are the shortcut to that learning. Their authors have carefully honed and summarized a body of knowledge into a coherent message. At the same type, the pace of today's world makes time for reading hard to find. Making commute time do double-duty has been a simple answer, and easy enough I will actually do it.

Office update: the problem and the fix

I ran the Office Update earlier this week, a good thing. Afterwards, I realized I could not open my saved searches. Each time, I would get an error message. I also could not re-create them. They would not save.

A Google search put me onto this explanation and the solution.

The workaround presented in the article is as follows:

Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall the operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.

To work around this problem, re-enable the Office Saved Searches feature. To do this, follow these steps:

Exit Outlook.

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

Locate and then click one of the following registry subkeys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\General

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Options\General

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook\Options\General

Note If the General subkey does not exist, follow these steps to create the subkey:

Click the Options subkey, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.

Type General, and then press ENTER

On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

Type EnableOfficeSavedSearch, and then press ENTER.

Right-click EnableOfficeSavedSearch, and then click Modify.

In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
Note To disable this feature, type 0 in the Value data box. Or, delete the registry key that is mentioned in step 3.

On the File menu, click Exit.

I followed the directions, and my searches were working again!

I was wondering if this problem was just a bug or if Microsoft did this on purpose. I posed the question to an Outlook discussion group and was directed to this explanation. When you reach that site, Expand Vulnerability Details>Microsoft Outlook Advanced Find Vulnerability. I hope a future patch fixed the security problem while still allowing saved searches. Explaining to someone fairly new to Outlook how to set up a saved search is challenge enough. Having to explain how to change the registry is too much!

Creating Outlook Saved Searches

I have three “saved searches” which I have created in Outlook

Task has not been completed and information I am looking for is in the subject line

• Create a new “Advanced Find.” (Ctrl+Shift+F).
• Change the “Look for” drop-down box to read “Tasks.”
• On the “In” drop-down box, choose “subject field only.”
• Click the “Advanced” tab.
• On the “Field” drop-down box, choose “Frequently-used fields” and then “Complete.”
• The “Condition” drop-down box should read “equals” and “Value” should be “No.”
• Click “Add to List.”
• From the “File” menu, select “Save Search.”
• Assign a name to the search.
• Select a place to save it. Since I use these searches often, I save them to the desktop. Since I use this particular one the most of all, I drug mine to the taskbar at the bottom of the screen so that it is always visible.
  
  Task has not been completed and information I am looking for is in the note section
  Create a new “Advanced Find.” (Ctrl+Shift+F).
• Change the “Look for” drop-down box to read “Tasks.”
• On the “In” drop-down box, choose “subject and notes field.”
• Click the “Advanced” tab.
• On the “Field” drop-down box, choose “Frequently-used fields” and then “Complete.”
• The “Condition” drop-down box should read “equals” and “Value” should be “No.”
• Click “Add to List.”
• From the “File” menu, select “Save Search.”
• Assign a name to the search.
• Save to the desktop.
  
  
  Task has been completed
• Create a new “Advanced Find.” (Ctrl+Shift+F).
• Change the “Look for” drop-down box to read “Tasks.”
• On the “In” drop-down box, choose “subject and notes field.”
• Click the “Advanced” tab.
• On the “Field” drop-down box, choose “Frequently-used fields” and then “Complete.”
• The “Condition” drop-down box should read “equals” and “Value” should be “Yes.”
• Click “Add to List.”
• From the “File” menu, select “Save Search.”
• Assign a name to the search.
• Save to the desktop.
  
  The search I use by far the most often is the first one. If someone walks in my office or calls my on the phone, I can click the icon on the taskbar for that saved search, type the person’s name in the “Search for the words(s)” line, and click “Find Now.” Everything I need to talk to that person about, regardless of when it is due, is not displayed.
  
  With these three saved searches and using the appropriate one for the information I am trying to find, I get my results much more quickly. When we compare the advantage/disadvantages of organizing digitally versus paper/pencil, one area where the digital system wins out is the ability to search data. We need to maximize that capability, and the “saved search” is one of those ways.

Outlook Saved Searches

Sometimes, we do not fully appreciate something until we face the prospects of not having it anymore. Such is the case of the “saved searches” I created on Outlook. For about 20 minutes yesterday, I could not access them and could not re-create them. I was able to determine the problem and the fix. In my two posts, I will share how to create saved searches, tehe prolem I encountered, and the solution.

The prospect of not having them and realizing how valuable they are to me prompts me to write this post. If you organize with Outlook, they such might be as valuable to you.

I use several “saved searches” to search my Outlook Task list. Why would I need to search the task list?

1. To satisfy myself that I had indeed put a particular task on the list, even if the start date was not to occur for months.
2. To find a particular item that I just know I put on the list but somehow don’t see it.
3. To find a piece of information that I know I put in the note section of a Task but may not remember how I had worked the subject of the Task.
4. To find a piece of information either in the subject line or note section of Task that I had completed sometime in the past.

We can at anytime perform a search (Tools>Find>Advanced Find or Ctrl+Shift+F) So, why do I need special “saved searches”? The answers might sound trivial, but when you use this valuable tool as much as I do, saving a few keystrokes and 30 seconds a shot adds up. Before I begin a search, there are generally a few things I know about that search. Having a “saved search” allows me to narrow the search from the beginning, this saving me considerable time. This example should make the explanation clearer.

When I go to search for a piece of information that is somewhere in Tasks, I have a good idea of the following:

1. Whether it is a piece of information in a task completed in the past or whether the information is contained in a Task not yet completed. Since searching all Tasks takes longer than searching Tasks not yet completed, it would be nice to have a “saved search” that searches for Tasks which have been completed and another for Tasks which have not been completed.
2. Whether the information is in the subject line of the Task or in the attached note. Searching just the subject line is much quicker. Searching just the subject line of the Tasks not completed really saves time over searching every Task in Outlook.

In my next post, I will discuss how to construct saved searches. In the post which follows that, I will describe the problem caused by an Office Update and how to fix it.

Gone Phishing!

A couple of posts ago, I talked about how easy it is to tell whether an e-mail you are getting is for real or a hoax. Just highlight and copy a hunk of text from the message and paste it into Google. A couple of days ago, I received the message pasted below. My first thought was that I was going to be spending some time trying to figure out who had charged something to my account.

I saved myself quite a bit of time and frustration by taking a couple of seconds to simply practice what I preach. The text I chose to highlight and copy was the "Transcation ID"--which was "2LC956793J776333Y." Pasted that string into Google gave me a whole page of hits , each one making it obvious that the whole thing was not only a hoax, but a phishing scheme. What the culprit wanted was for me to click on a certain link as quickly as possible to "report" the false charge to PayPals. The result would have been I would have been asked for information that would then have resulted in identity theft.


Dear PayPal Member,
This email confirms that you have sent an eBay payment of $43.78 USD to
andrew2091 <mailto:andrew2091@aol.com&YY=24663&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&amp;head=f> @aol.com <mailto:andrew2091@aol.com&YY=24663&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=f> for an eBay item.
-----------------------------------
Payment Details
-----------------------------------
Amount: $43.78 USD
Transaction ID: 2LC956793J776333Y
Subject: Digimax 130
Note:
If you haven't authorized this charge ,click the link below to dispute transaction
and get full refund
Dispute transaction <http://www.purehavok.com/us/> (Encrypted Link )
*SSL connection:
PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information
in transit from your computer to ours using the Secure
Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length
of 128-bits (the highest level commercially available)
-----------------------------------
Item Information
-----------------------------------
eBay User ID: scratchandgnaw2
----------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Harrell's UNCONFIRMED Address
----------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Harrell
211 David St.
Springtown, TX 76082
United States
Important Note: Edward Harrell has provided an Unconfirmed Address. If
you are planning on shipping items to Edward Harrell, please check the
TransactioYn Details page of this payment to find out whether you will
be covered by the PayPal Seller Protection Policy.
----------------------------------------------------------------
This payment was sent using your bank account.
By using your bank account to send money, you just:
- Paid easily and securely
- Sent money faster than writing and mailing paper checks
- Paid instantly -- your purchase won't show up on bills at the end of
the month.
Thanks for using your bank account!
------------------------Y----------------------------------------
Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team
PayPal Email ID PP127

Bless are they who “bcc”

Today I received yet one more of those one-line e-mail messages that was sent to 130 other people. Of course, you know what happens when you print that message or forward that message to someone else, right? The one-line message is preceded by 130 e-mail addresses.

The solution to this problem is so simple. When sending to a message to a large number of people, instead of putting them in the “To” line, put them in the “Bcc” line. Everyone still gets the message, only they will not get the e-mail addresses of everyone else to whom the e-mail was sent. Just a quick solution to another one of life’s little annoyances.

Run for your life! It's a hoax!

"Want a free computer? Just forward this e-mail to 8 people." Not only did someone send me that e-mail this week, but it's the third time in the last few weeks I have gotten the same one. Shouldn't I forward it to my entire address book just in case it's for real? Well...no. It's a hoax. Two things tell me that:

1. Common sense. (Come on. Why in the world would anybody be giving away free computers for just forwarding an e-mail?)
2. A quick little copy and paste into Google. It takes all of five seconds, and armed with this simple technique, you can figure out which e-mails are on the up-and-up and which are hoaxes.

Here is all you need to do:

1. Highlight a hunk of text from the e-mail and use the Copy command (Control-C).
2. Go to Google.
3. Click in the search line and use the paste command (Control-V).
4. Hit enter.
5. Sit back and watch the fireworks. You are going to get hits that tell you instantly whether or not you have hooked a hoax.

Aren't Hoaxes Just Simple, Harmless Fun?
If you call wasting your own work time, contributing the problem of junk e-mail in everyone's in-box, and clogging up your employer's server simple, harmless fun, I guess you have a good point.

Other hoaxes are actually more harmful. Take, for example, the Teddy Bear Hoax. Readers were warned about a virus and told how to search for a particular file. If the file was present, the computer was infected. The e-mail would go on to explain how to get rid of the infected file. Finally, the e-mail would ask that people forward the e-mail to everyone else.

It seemed everyone receiving the e-mail was finding that yes indeed, they did have this suspect file on their computer. Well, there was good reason everyone was finding they have that file...everyone is supposed to have that file! It's a part of Windows and serves a very good function! (Now the problem was figuring out how to get the deleted file back again.)

One particular school system found that the Teddy Bear Hoax had been circulated widely before it came to the attention of it's tech support folks. Pretty frantic notices went out for people to stop forwarding the hoax and not to delete the file described in the e-mail.

Being Part of the Solution
Whenever I get one of these suspect e-mails, the drill I follow is:

1. Under no circumstances add to the problem by forwarding the thing
2. Use the "copy-Google-paste" routine I described earlier.
3. Copy the URL of one of the sites that explains the hoax.
4. Go back to the e-mail and hit "Reply."
5. Paste the URL into the message.
   
6. Just above the link, I generally include the message, "Run for your life! It's a hoax!"
7. Hit "Send."

By the way, I have some shares of the Brooklyn Bridge I would be willing to sell if anyone is interested.

High School Heroes

Mary Paramore is a retired English teacher who taught for many years at Enterprise High School. From time to time, her editorials have been published in the Birmingham News. I have always thought the depth of her thought and expertise with the written word to be true credits to the teaching profession. Of all that she has written, probably nothing is as touching as what appeared in this past Sunday's Birmingham News. She begins as follows:

More than 2,000 years ago, Plato recorded for posterity these words spoken by his teacher Socrates: "a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.

Those words give definition for all time to the greatness of soul which lies within the good man and woman. On the first day of March 2007, the teachers, administrators and students of Enterprise High School performed acts which illustrate for all time that they, too, are the possessors of that greatness of soul.

The read the article in its entirety, click here.

Daylight Saving Time Patch and the BlackBerry

The Daylight Saving Time problem is for real! A couple of days ago, I noticed that an appointment I had entered on my BlackBerry for March 11 was showing up an hour too late on Outlook! As I started looking at other appointments, and found that every one of them between March 11 and April 1 was one hour later on Outlook than on the BlackBerry.

If you are syncing your handheld (BlackBerry, Palm, or whaetver) to your computer, you might want to take a look at appointments during that little three-week window. Also, you might want to simply add an appointment for a day in mid-March and see what happens when you sync.

If you find you are a victim of "DST," the first thing to do is look at the appointments from March 11 through April 1 and decide which one is correct. If in doubt, one thing that will help is if you can remember whether you entered a particular appointment on your handheld or on your desktop. Everything I entered on my BlackBerry was correct on the BlackBerry and an hour late on Outlook. Everything I had entered on Outlook was correct on Outlook and an hour too early on the BlackBerry.

Once you know where the errors are, you can download a patch. For BlackBerry users, do this:

1. Close BlackBerry Desktop software
2. Disconnect Blackberry from computer.
3. Go to http://www.blackberry.com/DST2007/patch/index2.shtml
4. Scroll down until you come to a link labeled "DST Patch Loader" and click the link.
5. You will get a message asking you to install an Active X Control. Click on the yellow strip at the top of the page to allow this to happen.
6. Connect your BlackBerry to your computer.
7. A button will appear that says "Install DST Patch." Click on it.
8. The patch will download. Be patient. The process will take several minutes and the little "progress bar" may appear to be frozen, but do not worry. Just give it some time.
9. When the process finishes, you are returned to the the screen that has the button asking you to install the DST Patch. It sure would be nice if you got some sort of message telling you that you were finished, but you don't. I am sure there are going to be many people who hit the button again, but at least YOU won't be doing that.
10. You can now disconnect your BlackBerry from the computer. You will find that a little hour glass is spinning on the screen. It may spin for 15 minutes. Don't worry. When it finally stops spinning, you are done!

At this point, the appointments on your BlackBerry and those on Outlook will at the least be the same. It does not mean they are correct. You will need to look at each one to determine if it is correct or an hour off. Make corrections as needed. The next time you sync, the corrections will transfer.

Where do we go from here?

Where do we go from here?

What functions do you want to use on the Blackberry?

Just E-mail and cell phone?

OR

Keep your calendar, tasks, contacts, and memos?

If the answer is the later, you will want to sync your Blackberry to Outlook.

Steps in Syncing Your Blackberry to Outlook

• Set up an e-mail account in Outlook if you are not already using Outlook.
• If you had been using Outlook Express, import your addresses and e-mails from Outlook Express to Outlook.
• Install the Blackberry software.
• Obtain and follow step-by-step instructions for the Blackberry desktop software.