Ensuring Outlook and GroupWise Work Together

During workshops on Outlook, I am sometimes asked about organizations which use GroupWise and whether or not they can take advantage of Outlook. I have not personally worked with GroupWise, so my knowledge is somewhat limited there.

I did come across a set of instructions on how to get Outlook and GroupWise to work together. Those instructions can be found here.

How Did You Make Today Count?

Anyone who knows me well knows how much I value a comprehensive set of repeating tasks. Instead of hoping I think of things at the right time, I structure a system that insures I will think of them at the right time.

I have a daily task which shows up on my BlackBerry every day that reads, "How did you make today count?" That one question stares me in the face every evening. That one question forces me to think back over the events of the day and be honest about the way I used a very special gift. That one question helps me focus and compare how my day was spent in contrast to the vision I have for the future.

I have for some time adopted the practice of noting on my calendar the answer to that question. For me, it is sort of a mini-diary. It also serves as a compass.

How did you make today count? It is a sobering question indeed, at least for me. Perhaps the knowledge that I am going to have to answer that question when the day ends works on my subconscious from the time the day begins.

As you read this post, I invite you to join me in answering this question for yourself:

How did you make today count?

And I Thought MY Job Was Tough,,,

Don't Forget the Old Ones...For Dog Lovers Everywhere

A very good friend sent me this thought. In a blog devoted to using our time to maximize the results we get, I think this message is particularly appropriate.

The years go so very fast and before you know it that romping pup is old and gray muzzled and they have sat by our sides while we read, watch TV, and work on our computers. Every so often they come and lay their heads in our laps, toss our elbow with their muzzle or gaze into our eyes and wait for us to notice them.

Take a moment now to remember what they mean to you..

I am your dog, and I have a little something I'd like to whisper in your ear. I know that you humans lead busy lives. Some have to work, some have children to raise. It always seems like you are running here and running there, often much too fast, often never noticing the truly grand things in life.

Look down at me now, while you sit there at your computer. See the way my dark brown eyes look at yours? They are slightly cloudy now. That comes with age. The gray hairs are beginning to ring my soft muzzle.

You smile at me; I see love in your eyes. What do you see in mine?

Do you see a spirit? A soul inside, who loves you as no other could in the world? A spirit that would forgive all trespasses of prior wrong doing for just a simple moment of your time? That is all I ask. To slow down, if even for a few minutes, to be with me.

So many times you have been saddened by the words you read on that screen, of others of my kind, passing. Sometimes we die young and oh so quickly, sometimes so suddenly it wrenches your heart out of your throat. Sometimes, we age so slowly before your eyes that you may not even seem to know until the very end, when we look at you with grizzled muzzles and cataract clouded eyes.

Still the love is always there, even when we must take that long sleep, to run free in a distant land. I may not be here tomorrow; I may not be here next week. Someday you will shed the water from your eyes, that humans have when deep grief fills their souls, and you will be angry at yourself that you did not have just "one more day" with me. Because I love you so, your sorrow touches my spirit and grieves me.

We have NOW, together. So come, sit down here next to me on the floor, and look deep into my eyes. What do you see? If you look hard and deep enough we will talk, you and I, heart to heart.

Come to me not as "alpha" or as "trainer" or even "Mom or Dad," come to me as a living soul and stroke my fur and let us look deep into one another's eyes and talk. I may tell you something about the fun of chasing a tennis ball, or I may tell you something profound about myself, or even life in general.

You decided to have me in your life because you wanted a soul to share such things. Here I am. I am a dog, but I am alive. I feel emotion, I feel physical senses, and I can revel in the differences of our spirits and souls.

I do not think of you as a "Dog on two feet" -- I know what you are and who you are.

You are human, in all your quirkiness, and I love you still.

Now, come sit with me, on the floor. Enter my world, and let time slow down if only for 15 minutes. Look deep into my eyes, and whisper into my ears.

Speak with your heart, with your joy, and I will know your true self.

We may not have tomorrow, but we do have today, and life is oh so very short.

So please--come sit with me now and let us share these precious moments we have together.

- Love, on behalf of canines everywhere.

Your Dog




















In memory of Lassie Marie March 21, 1990-January 19, 2003

In celebration of Bonnie Lass (8 years old) and Skipper (12 years old)

When a New Student Enrolls Who Needs to Know?

When a new student enrolls in your school, know needs to know? This question is a particularly good one to ask in an elementary school setting. Answers from the audience generally include the librarian and lunchroom manager. Without fail, someone will add the music teacher, art teacher, counselor, PE teacher. The nurse is generally mentioned.

What becomes very obvious is that when a new student enrolls in a school, that information is important to far more people than the one teacher. The librarian needs to add the students to the library automation system. The lunchroom manager needs to establish an account. The teachers of music, art, PE, etc. need to be aware that a new student will be present in their classes within a day or so. The counselor may wish to meet with the student within the first week at the new school. To each person, the presence of a new student triggers some type of "to-do," even though the nature of that "to-do" varies from person to person.

The question is this--How is that message communicated in your school? When a new student arrives, what system is in place to notify all of those people?

The easiest solution I have found is a simple e-mail message. The first step is for the principal to identify all of the people in the school (other than the classroom teacher) who need to know about the presence of a new student. Next, create an e-mail "group" or "distribution list" in the administrative assistant's e-mail program and add those people. Call this group or distribution list "New Student."

From now on, when a new student enrolls, part of the procedure is for the administrative assistant to create an e-mail message that say's something like this:

Mark Johnson, 4th grade, has just enrolled in Mrs. Brown's class.

The administrative assistant sends that e-mail message to the "New Student" group.

When a student withdraws, we have the same scenario. This same group of people needs to know so that any obligations may be cleared up. Again, sending an e-mail message to the "New Student" group keeps the key players in the loop.

This technique is easy, and generally speaking, the easy things are the ones which actually wind up working!

reQall Videos

Here are a couple of additional videos on reQall:

Jott Express

I have received a couple of comments since my post on Jott. In particular, a reader encouraged me to look at Jott Express, which is a free feature. Jott Express functions as a "to-do" list on your desktop. From your cell phone (or any phone), you can speak messages to yourself which will be transcribed into text on Jott Express.

You can go here to see a short video about Jott Express and download it to your desktop.

I did download it and found it to be extremely easy to use. I do not foresee using it personally simply because it gives me one additional place to look for my tasks. With my current system, all papers requiring my attention are in my tickler file. All things digital which require my attention are in Outlook. All of my RSS feeds dump into Outlook. I want to voice reminders to wind up in my Outlook e-mail as well.

That being said, for the person who does not have a fully-developed system, Jott Express may just be the thing.

We all know people who have Post-It notes scattered all over creation and are already having to look in far too many places to find what they have written. Jott Express allows the person to speak into the cell phone, which most people have with them all the time, and have it all wind up in one place. Jott Express could well be "just what the doctor ordered" for the person who is overwhelmed and needs some type of system.

Oh No...Jott's Not Free! (But reQall is)

Just a week ago, I was writing about Jott. I have been using it since December to leave quick voice messages for myself and close friends which would be automatically transcribed to e-mails. I wrote about my experiences here.

Well, here is the bad news...as of September 8, Jott is no longer a free service. While one plan is still listed as free, it removes the service's best feature--being able to send messages straight to someone's e-mail.

A quick internet search of "alternatives to Jott" put me onto this Lifehacker post. In a few minutes, I was up and running with reQall.

The direction are pretty straightforward. You will be asked to set up a free account by supplying your name, choosing a user name and password, providing the phone number (or numbers) from which you are going to be calling, and supplying an e-mail address.

In the "Notifications" section, I put check marks beside "e-mail." Finally, I added the reQall phone number (1-888-973-7255) to my BlackBerry contacts and set it as a speed dial key.

I composed several sample messages. Within 10-15 minutes, the messages I left were showing up in my e-mail.

The major way I had used Jott was to send reminders to myself, so reQall is a good substitute. What about sending messages to someone else? Add them as a contact at the reQall site and you can "share" a message.

What you have read here are my perceptions after just a few minutes with reQall. Does anyone else had more experience with this or similar services?

Becoming a People Person

Recently, a friend told me about a conversation she had with a principal who had just read Get Organized! The principal had this to say:

When I accepted the job as principal, I envisioned myself as being a "people person." But, it just hasn't worked out that way. The paperwork and other demands of the job have kept me so busy there has been no time for people. This book is going to allow me to be the "people person" I had hoped to be.

At first, I thought the comment was strange. Get Organized! says very little about people skills. It's a book about organizing paper, digital information, and time. It is about the stress relief that happens when all of your responsibilities are housed in a comprehensive system. But a book about becoming a people person...?

Actually, the comment is right on target. For the last 10 years, I have opened most every workshop with this poem:

Good-bye, Sir, excuse me, I haven't time.
I'll come back, I can't wait, I haven't time.
I must end this letter--I haven't time.
I'd love to help you, but I haven't time.
I can't accept, having no time.
I can't think, I can't read, I'm swamped, I haven't time.
I'd like to pray, but I haven't time.
--Michel Quoist

The poem illustrates the time pressure we all face. Furthermore, the poem makes clear that those things which are pushed aside for lack of time are often the real treasures of life. Get Organized! was written to help the school leader flourish in a profession and in a world where the time demands so greatly exceed the available time. The strategies in the book conservatively add an hour to every day, and probably much more than that.

What do we do with the time we save? The book is silent there. That answer must come from the reader. During this summer's workshops, I began having participants respond anonymously in writing to this question:

If I had one more hour every day, I would...

At the end of the workshop, I read those responses aloud. As a people, we really do have ideas for what we would do if we had more time, and those responses are as varied as the personalities and interests of the people in the room.

For some, another hour a day would mean time to exercise, time to spend with children, time to resurrect that old hobby, time to learn a hobby, or for this one reader...time to spend with the people in the building.

Whatever it is you wish to do, whatever noble service you will perform for your school, your community, your church, and whatever good you will bring to your family or yourself...all of it will be accomplished through the dimension we call time.

If I had one more hour every day, I would...

How will you answer that question?

How Accurate is Jott?

At yesterday's workshop for the University of Alabama Superintendent's Academy, one of the technology time-savers we discussed was Jott. You can click here for a post I had written about this wonderful tool earlier.

I demonstrated how the process works by sending a Jott to a friend. One of the questions about Jott was how accurate the text translation is. My response was that it was about as accurate as my English. If I pronounce words distinctly, the translation is accurate. If I let my lay Southern drawl slip in, it shows up in the spelling of the text translation.

Printed below is the how the message was translated:

I am having a wonderful workshop here with some of our educational leaders, future superintendents, a whole room full of them, so as you are reading your email now, you will be reading the words that I am speaking right now. I'll talk to you later.
Bye.

You can't get more accurate that that!

Get Organized! Reviewed for Principal Magazine

The current issue of Principal magazine contains a review of Get Organized! Click here to read the review.

Two New Principal Blogs

When it comes to getting a great deal of benefit for a very small amount of work, blogs are towards the top of my list. I know of no easier way to communicate complete information in a variety of forms (written word, pictures, videos, clickable links) and have it instantly retrievable by any reader months or years later.

I am enjoying reading two new blogs, both established by Kerry Palmer, Principal of Trinity Presbyterian Middle School (Montgomery, Alabama).

http://www.tpsmiddle.blogspot.com is a blog he has established to communicate with parents. The positive tone and informative ideas are sure to keep parents coming back.

http://www.tpsmiddlestaff.blogspot.com/ is a blog Mr. Palmer has established for his faculty. The style here seems to be one of taking everything his faculty needs to know for the coming week and grouping it in one post. Announcements, calendar events,...it's all right there in one spot.

One of the neat things about a blog is that you never know who is reading yours. Sure, you know the benefit your intended audience is going to get. But, what about those whom you have never met who somehow found your blog and use your ideas in their setting.

Kerry Palmer is a first-year principal after having been a highly-successful band director and assistant principal. I have no doubt that he is going to be outstanding principal. I can certainly see other first-year principals following these blogs and benefiting from the ideas they read. I can also see more experienced principals who want to learn a few new tricks visiting these two blogs.

Good luck to all as we begin another school year. Our tasks will be many, and so will our opportunities. School leadership is a journey, a brave journey, an unending journey.

What a Principal's Office Can Look Like

You would hardly know we are in the hectic first days of school. This is the Principal's Office at Raymond L. Young Elementary School (Talladega, Alabama). My friend and colleague Pattie Thomas is responsible for organizing this beautiful workspace!

A Comical Look at Procrastination

Back to School!

School is starting and students are looking forward to the perfect school year. Notebooks are brand new. Bookbags are neatly organized. All is looking good for the first day of school. For all too many students, the opening-day euphoria is gone after just a few days as bookbags become large black holes and frustration replaces the first-day enthusiasm.

About this time a year ago, I composed a five-set post entitled "Managing School the Easy Way." Now is probably a good time to review that set:

Write it down

Break big projects down into little parts

Empty the bookbag totally every night

Learn to deal with papers

Get everything ready the night before

School need not be an ordeal. Half of school success (and maybe a while lot more) boils down to organization. Welcome back to school!

To Blog or Not to Blog?

A post appeared on Leadertalk from a new administrator asking for advice about blogs. That post is here. I responded with my own comments and invited readers to come here for links to examples.

I invite you to view these:

• GrahamSchool.blogspot.com This is a blog I create during my final year as principal.

• GrahamStaff.blogspot.com This blog served as a tool to communicate with teachers.

• TalladegaCitySchools.blogspot.com This is our central office blog for the community

• TeachTalladega.blogspot.com This is our central office blog for communicating with employees. On both of these last two blogs, selected people from each school have the capability to contribute to the blogs.

The post on LeaderTalk was composed by a new administrator, so I think it would be helpful to see the work of someone else who is brand new to the principalship:

• RLYoung.blogspot.com This blog is for the parents at Raymond L. Young Eementary School (Talladega, AL) For someone who stepped into the principalship in January 2008, this blog has been a true treasure in terms of transmit information and warmth to the community.

• 4youngteachers.edublogs.org Although the title is "Just for R. L. Young Teachers," I don't think they would mind interested visitors. Pattie Thomas, principal at Raymond L. Young, put a great deal of thought into how she would communicate with her faculty, and this is the results that is being rolled out for the start of this school year.

Leadership Day 2008

Last year, Dr. Scott McLeod, author of the Dangerously Irrelevant blog issued a call for bloggers to post their thoughts on effective school technology leadership. He termed July 4, American Independence Day, as also being "Leadership Day." Scott repeated his call this year and has just posted his results here. He has included what I had posted on my blog.

Top Ten Web-Based Tools

My friend Barbara Blackburn is working on another book. This one is for principals. Barbara asked me for a list of my “Top Ten Web-Based Tools.” As it turns out, I composed a post on this blog for most them, so here is my list. I have added clickable links to the ones which will take you to posts where I have discussed them.

1. Blogs—These are my windows to the world. I maintain a personal blog to communicate about my passion time management and organization, another to communicate with employees within the school system, and a third to communicate with the community and rest of the world. I use Blogger (www.blogger.com). For those in education, Edublogs (www.edublogs.com) is an outstanding free source.
2. RSS (Really Simple Syndication)—Time does not permit me to check each of the blogs I like to follow. A free program called “intraVnews” (www.intravnews.com) sends the posts straight to my Outlook Inbox.
3. iGoogle (www.google.com/ig) —I think of it as the "dashboard" I see every time I boot my computer at the office, at home, or on my laptop. I like being able to access my most common bookmarks and other tools from any computer in the world.
4. Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) —Being able to save "Favorites" or "Bookmarks" has always been a great feature of a web browser. Being able to see my "Bookmarks" from any computer and share Bookmarkers with those who share my interests takes the concept to a whole new level.
5. GoogleDocs (http://docs.google.com)—This tool gives me a "parking place" on the web for documents I want others to view and for documents I want others to be able to edit.
6. Jott (http://jott.com)—With one touch of a speed-dial key a can speak a 30-second message which will be transformed into an e-mail message for the recipient.
7. TeacherTube (www.teachertube.com)—Now, the presentations we create for our own purposes can be seen be everyone.
8. PhotoBucket (http://photobucket.com) —Instead of posting a large number of individual photos to our blogs, we can now produce a slideshow in a very small space.
9. Animoto (www.animoto.com)—This ridiculously easy tool takes a collection of pictures and turns them into a flashy presentation.
10. Podcasting—This tool basically lets you create your own radio program which can be uploaded to a blog or website. Getting really good with this tool is an upcoming project for me. “Audacity” (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) is a free program which provides a great beginning for anyone interested in podcasting.

Some Thoughts on Web 2.0

How research using technology has evolved...and the implications for research and communication today and tomorrow.

E-Mail Jokes

I recently began to receive jokes, including a highly-suggestive one, from someone with whom I do not have the remotest of a relationship. My biggest concern is that since these e-mails also have a dozen other people in the "To" line, everyone else would be seeing I am on the list and jump to the conclusion that half my day is spent reading and forwarding jokes, hoaxes, and the other time-wasters.

Of course, not only will those dozen people see my name as a recipient, but everyone they forward the message to would see my name. You can imagine how many generations of forwarding happens with these things. Half the school system would likely see me prominently listed amongst others well known for their ability to fritter away the day. Not the best image for an administrator to portray!

What should I do, I wondered? If I ask the person to stop sending this stuff, will feelings be hurt? Should I say something to the person's boss and risk the person getting in trouble (as well as me being labeled a fuddy-duddy)?

I decided the best thing to do would be come clean with the world as to what happens when one of these little off-task diversions comes my way. So, if you forward me jokes, hoaxes, cartoons, animations, etc., etc. be forewarned that:

1. I will not be offended. After all, I am a school administrator and have heard everything before, so I have a pretty tough skin.
2. I may turn 8 shades of red. While I am hard to offend, I am pretty easy to embarrass.
3. I will probably spend two seconds looking at it and simply hit the "delete" key. The delete key and I are best buddies.
4. If it's really funny, I may hit reply and tell you so. Be advised, however, that my standard of "really funny" is pretty high, so don't hold your breath.
5. If I wind up laughing so hard that I fall out of my chair, I might send it to one of two of my closest co-workers.
   
   Please know up front, however, that under no circumstances am I going to send it to "7 people" or "everyone I care about." If you "tag" me and I am "it," well I guess I am just going to have to stay "it" for a while.