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?