A Look at Harry Truman

A fine line separates the topics of time management and leadership. Leadership requires a mastery of one's time. In the blog All Things Leadership, Kerry Palmer discusses the leadership style of President Harry S. Truman. I think you will find the series of four posts enjoyable reading.



Be an Early Riser
Dress for Success
Read Voraciously
When at Work, Work Hard

Constitution Day and the Repeating Task System

"Constitution Day" was established by Congress in 2004. The legislation establishing it also set forth the requirement that all educational institutions which receive federal funds are required to hold educational programs pertaining to the Constitution on September 17 each year. 

When this legislation was passed, communication flowed as it normally does through the chain of command. Memos went from Washington to each state department of education, who in turn sent memos to school systems, who in turn sent memos to principals.

RSS...It's Just That Simple

Today, I have a guest post on the Eye on Education blog.
Click here to read about RSS.

Time is Money: The Best Times to Do Everything

Want to know the best time to do just about everything? Check out this site for some great tips.

Converting HTML to PDF

This converter is free, and the directions for use could not be simpler.

Click here to start converting web pages to PDF.

Converting PDF to Word

Need to convert a PDF file to Word? It doesn't get any easier than this. Simply go to this site. You are three easy steps away from seeing the converted document in your e-mail inbox!

Converting PDF Files to PowerPoint

The Free Technology for Teachers blog featured this site for converting pdf files to PowerPoint. You may read the description here.

Anyone want to give their feedback after testing it out?

Google Instant

Judging from what is rolling off my RSS feed, Google Instant seems to be the news story of the week. This short video compares searching with Google as normal versus Google Instant:



Those who go to the classic Google page for their searches would experience Google Instant and figure out what is happening with no explanation. People like me who have an iGoogle homepage and search from there do not experience this new development.

So, if you haven't been to the Google classic page in the last few days, take a test drive and see what you think.

Change and "Crystal Clear Task Lists"

I recently read Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, written by Chip and Dan Heath. They are also the authors of the bestseller Made to Stick.

In the book, the Heath brothers say we must do three things for change to occur:

1. Direct the rider
2. Motivate the elephant
3. Shape the path

Directing the rider and motivating the elephant are metaphors for appealing to the intellect and appealing to emotions, respectively.

What strikes me is the wording used to describe what one must do in terms of directing the rider. The authors state on page 17, "What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-clear direction."  We read on page 72, "Clarity dissolves resistance."

In the September 2010 issue of Fast Company, the Heath brothers further explore this concept in their article "Tase the Haze." One of their examples sounds exactly like a line out of the Get Organized! workshop:

Imagine that you have two items on your to-do list. One is "pick up AAA batteries". The other is "deal with tax issues." Guess which one is still unchecked four weeks later?

Replace "AAA batteries" and "deal with taxes" with the examples "buy shoestrings" and 'improve the math curriculum" and you could be sitting right there listening to me!

In both Get Organized! and Organization Made Easy!, we talk about the elements which go into making an "organized task list," a list that stands a chance of having the items on it accomplished. The first rule of an organized task list? Make the next step crystal clear.

Eye on Education featured this idea on their blog in November of 2009. You can read that post here.

The fact that the same idea shows up again worded in virtually the same way is simply evidence of its truth. Before we can make progress, we have to define what progress looks like. We must know exactly what is being asked of us. When worded in a crystal-clear manner, tasks become easier to do. Mountains become easier to move. Wasted motion goes away. Stress goes down. Productivity goes up. Take a look at your own to-do list with the filter of clarity in mind. How could you re-write so that items which have been sitting there suddenly start to get done?

 

Have you ever had an item that sat in your to-do list for what seems like forever? What did you finally do to get it moving?

Morning on the Sheep Farm

Last week, we were in Loudon County (Tennessee) for a full-day workshop with school administrators. While we were there, we visited the Quae Tae Me Farm near Philadelphia, TN. The farm’s name means “Come to me” in Gaelic, a common command for the dogs who are such an integral part of life on a sheep farm. The farm’s owner charged no admission, but rather suggested that if we liked what we saw, that we make a donation to Border Collie Rescue. Well, we did, and we did.

If you would also like to support the work of this fine organization in their efforts to find “forever homes” for these intelligent furry friends, their website is here.

Congratulations to Jacksonville State!

Who would have thought it? In one of those David-versus-Goliath matches on the opening week of the college football field, David won, and David's name is Jacksonville State University. I am proud because I graduated from Jacksonville more years ago than I would like to count. And, as ESPN cut away to cover the second overtime, the sound of the JSU Marching Southerners was prominent in the background.

Clips of those final moments are floating about today, but in order to provide a place where that special moment in JSU football history will always be housed, today's post is devoted to providing just such a spot.

Congratulations to the Jacksonville State University Gamecocks on what may well be the biggest win in their history as they defeated Ole Miss in double overtime.

"NextUp" Keeps Your Meeting on Schedule

Don't you hate meetings which drag on and where people take their own little "bird walks"? NextUp is a very simple website designed to keep meetings running on schedule. To use the site:

1. Go to http://nextup.info.
2. Enter the name of the meeting.
3. Enter each agenda topic and the time being allocated.
4. Click "Create Agenda."
5. When it's time to start the meeting, click "Start the Meeting."

The timer starts, and you watch the time tick second-by-second on the first agenda item. When the timer reaches zero, it starts ticking on the next item. There is no buzzer to signal "time up." If one agenda item is finished early, there is no way to jump the timer to the beginning of the next item. The site simply runs on a computer screen somewhere in the room as a subtle reminder of how many agenda items are left and how much time is left on the current item and those to follow.

Oh, and best of all, the site is free. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

What are your biggest problem areas in meetings? How do you overcome them?

Blogs, Wikis, Google Docs: A Comparison Chart

Even though Web 2.0 tool have been around for a while, many still have difficulty with the capabilities of each. After all, there is considerable overlap in these capabilities. A recent post on Free Technology for Teachers pointed readers to an excellent chart which compares and contrasts blogs, wikis, and Google Docs.

That chart can be found here.

My personal feeling is that between the ease and increased flexibility afforded to blog users and the improvements to Google Docs, those two tools used in conjunction provide the benefits that a wiki would offer. I would be welcome to hear other sides of that argument.

With a blog, I don't have to have a "big picture" plan for how the site will eventually look. I just start, and through consistent use of tagging posts with subjects, I can easily see all posts related to a certain subject at any later time.

In addition, I am more concerned with maintaining a collection of my finished work than a collection of all of the various drafts. This point makes my blog the choice over a wiki.

Finally, Google Docs fills the voids I see with a blog. The first of  those being there is no place to post separate documents you have created and want others to access. Simply post them on Google Docs and provide links from your blog. Blogs allow collaboration through narrative comments, but do not allow readers to actually go in and make changes to a work in progress. Google Docs specializes in that sort of thing.

Technology has brought us countless new tools. From the standpoint of someone who likes to keep things simple, pick the few that give the most bang for the buck and really get to know those inside out. For me, that meant getting really good with my blogs. Before retiring from public education, I was actively contributing to three blogs. I did not venture out to learn all of the available hosts for my blogs. I have simply stuck with Blogger from the beginning, watched its capabilities grow, and tried to stay abreast of those capabilities. 

For those still a little hazy on what a blogs, wikis, or Google Docs will do, hopefully the chart presented here will help.

The Importance of the Blog

According to Tom Peters, "No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging..." Listen to what he has to say:



We all have something to say that's worth saying and can't come close to being fit into 140 characters. For those times, there is the blog. Today is the 6th anniversary of my first post on this blog. Of all of the the Web 2.0 tools available, the blog continues to be my favorite.

Would you like to start your own?

Click here for ideas on starting your own blog.

Is Social Media a Fad?

Another Look at AYP Data

For those who are involved with Alabama schools, I highly recommend this blog post, which points out some of the pitfalls of the way Adequate Yearly Progress is calculated. For example, when results were released this year, we saw that while 75% of the schools in Alabama made AYP, quite a few of our most prestigious schools failed to make it.

The reason? In very simple terms, the "40 makes a subgroup" rule. If your enrollment is large, you will have 40 or more in the special education subgroup or limited English proficient subgroups. The scores for those students counts as a separate group.And the bar for that group is the same as for any other students. If your enrollment is smaller, and you don't have 40 in those subgroups, the scores don't count against you regardless of how low they are.

For quick some time, I have felt we need to be looking at something else to determine how well a school is performing. For years, we have been giving the Stanford Achievement Test, comparing our students to a normed group from across the nation. Since AYP has become the accountability measure, the emphasis being placed on SAT-10 has been diminished. Schools are celebrating making AYP while at the same time their SAT-10 scores are in the 30th-40th percentile range.

The blog post I encourage you to read discusses the AYP issue further. It also points you to what I think are two valuable resources. The first is the Interpretive Guide. If you want to know exactly how AYP is figured in Alabama, this is the Bible, and it's updated yearly. That post includes a link to it, or you can simply use the one I just gave you.

The second valuable resource is a website that provides data for every Alabama school looking at percentages of students who scored at "Level IV" on the Alabama Reading and Math Test. For many schools, the AYP bar is pretty low. Principals are able to count on the fingers of one hand the kids in a grade that are not "proficient" and special plans are in place to target those kids. Just making AYP is not much of a challenge. When we look at the percentage of students who "exceed standards" (Level IV), the data becomes meaningful and can show some true reasons for celebration and some true areas for focus. The link to that website is in the blog post I recommend, or you can access it here.

Checklists Revisited

My recent post entitled "It's a Matter of Life and Death...Literally" elicited a very thoughtful comment which ended with this paragraph:

Checklist don't take the creativity away, they take the chaos away, and let's be honest, performing in chaos is not creative per se, but one of the surest ways towards a nervous breakdown, so why would you willingly get into that?

Beautifully stated...and right on target.

Setting the Tone for Student Success: What Can Principals Do?

Eye on Education has asked several of its authors to weigh in on what principals can do to set the tone for the new school year. My response centered around the initials "VIP."

To read the post on Eye on Education's blog, click here.

What things do readers suggest that principals can do in those first few days to set the tone for the year?

Thanks, Facebook! Now I Can Explain RSS

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication," and I seriously doubt that after reading that sentence you know more than you did before reading it. RSS, however is a really important concept in the world of blogging. Thanks to Facebook, I think I can explain in terms Facebook users will understand.

Suppose you have 200 Facebook friends and you want to read their latest news. You could accomplish this by going to the profile page of each friend one at a time. In many cases, you would find that nothing on the page has been added since the last time you looked. Secondly, the process of going to each page is very time-consuming.

Luckily, Facebook takes all of the new content your friends have posted and puts it in one place for you, on your "newsfeed."

Think of blogs as Facebook profiles and RSS as the newsfeed. When you come across a blog that you like, you don't have to actually go to that blog in order to see when there is new content. Instead, you can "subscribe" to that blog through your RSS reader.

How to Get an RSS Reader
Google Reader is my choice. First, I set up an iGoogle page. iGoogle is my homepage and serves as a "dashboard," putting many useful tools at my fingertips. For instructions on how to set up an iGoogle page, go here.

Once you get the iGoogle page established, click the "Add stuff" link near the upper right portion of the screen. Search for "Google Reader" and add it. This short video gives information from there on how to use Google Reader.

20+ Ways to Use the Flip Video in the Classroom

My last post was devoted to the Flip video. The Free Technology for Teachers blog featured more than 20 ways to use this tool in the classroom. The post is well worth reading. Click here to read it.