First of all, thanks to all of you who told me how much rice you donated on your own yesterday. At school, we had students down in the computer lab all day in 15-minute shifts. There were 37 computers going full steam all day. We raised just over 750,000 grains of rice for freerice.com. We had a great time and we thank everyone who participated. There was almost 50,000 donated by people not at our school. All in all, it was a lot of fun.

UPDATE: Second video of another teacher added.For our Sub for Santa drive the students at my school set a goal to raise more than $11,000! I volunteered my legs for waxing if they met that goal. They did! Here is the video. Enjoy, I did. It didn't hurt that bad, but I had to play it up for the students to enjoy it more. There is no audio, but I hope my face tells the story. Pictures here.

One thing that I have been having a hard time with is integrating technology into teaching and having a PLC. I found two blogs that have mentioned integrating the two (I admit, I haven't looked too hard). Doug Johnson at the Blue Skunk Blog posted about it last May, before I started reading the blog. He was kind enough to let me know about it today. The other one is L. Gaffney's personal blog. I think Gaffney is in the same position that I am. My problem is that in my graduate school courses, they talk ad nauseam about Professional Learning Communities, but never about using technology. In all our school meetings, we talk about PLCs, but never about using technology. All the people in my education/tech network (blogs I read, Twitter network, Facebook, etc.) never mention PLCs. It seems that there are two forces pushing through the education world that I am exposed to and they are not together or linked. This really bugs me, because I really like both the ideas. I think that collaboration (a major component of PLCs) is extremely important. When I was in college, I was the academic activities adviser, and my sole purpose was to get academic classes and colleges to collaborate with other people. I think one of the best and most efficient (and sometimes most effective) ways to collaborate is by using technology. Technology here can be defined as email, instant messaging, blogging, wikis, using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or any other number of things that would help us collaborate.So, Jethro, what are you going to do about it?Great question, I am glad you asked. Doug Johnson's blog post made some great suggestions for how to integrate technology into PLCs. The only problem, though, is that I think he went too big for what I think teachers would go for. This is what I want to do. I want my team that I collaborate with to use technology. I want to be able to access the worksheets, handouts, and everything else we use on the web. I think this is important, because if I can access it on the web, my students have an opportunity to as well. I already try to do this on my own here. I want all my students to be able to do the assignments when they are absent, and I want my students' parents to know what is going on and be able to take their part in helping their children succeed. With my team, I want us to be able to meet without "meeting".My Goals for My Team:I want us to be able to update each other on the fly with how a certain concept was received with a certain teaching style or approach.I want us to be able to work collaboratively on documents (worksheets, common assessments, lesson plans, etc.) in close to real-time without having to set up a meeting time after school.I want us to be able to have a place to store data so that we can access whenever we need it.Doing a wiki would make it so we could do more than just our one-hour weekly meeting. Finding other resources on the web would allow us to be more innovative and resourceful. Blogging about our experiences would help us know what others are doing that could help our students learn better. Using Twitter with other English teachers could help us find more ways to teach what we need to teach. Using YouTube would help us record instructions for class assignments so that students could watch us explain what to do. There are many more possibilities. As Doug pointed out (or someone on his blog pointed out), the point is to use technology as a means to accomplish a goal, and not as the goal. We want our students to learn, let's do everything we can to make that happen.So, what am I going to do? I am going to make a wiki for my 7th grade team and then invite my team members to add to it. As of right now, they are both against the web stuff, but I will work on them. Wish me luck.

Let's get right down to it. I would like to request some comments for my Political Aspects of Education class that I am taking right now. First question is:What are the major challenges facing American public education right now?The second questions is for Utahns and other informed parties that know what happened here last year with school choice and school vouchers.After the voucher vote this last year, do you intend to vote for different legislature members this year?Please respond to these two questions in the comments. You can post anonymously, if you feel so inclined.Now on to the good stuff. I have been using Twitter since the middle of December. To be honest, I don't know how I got started on it. I think that it might have been from my friend, Chris, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it was about the same time that I started using Facebook. Facebook mostly helped me get better at Scrabble (and connect with some old friends, I guess). The best thing about Twitter is that I have been using it a lot to help me get ideas for teaching. I mostly just read what other people mention, and I have met some really neat people and learned so much I don't even know where to begin.I am collaborating with another middle school teacher in Kansas on a wiki for the presidential primaries. I also got connected with some other edutech bloggers here in Utah, in my district even, and that is really neat also. I have felt so alone recently because I don't feel like anyone in my district, even the tech guy at my school, is very social web literate or even interested in it. I just recently learned that one other person at my school does have a blog, but it is private and I have not received an invitation. I also have found other middle school teachers on twitter and that helps also because I can bounce ideas off of them as well as get brand new ideas from them.I am so impressed with how kind the community has been in helping me out and using it as a tool to help others. I enjoy knowing that many of my questions are answered without too much waiting.

We won!!! We had a great time doing the activities for the Freerice.com marathon and making our Wiki. Here are some pictures of the activities:The SWAT team wiki has turned out to be an amazing experience. Students are much more excited about doing work at home. Also, we now have 16 pages on the wiki with over 300 revisions of the pages. It is very interesting to see how much they use it. I plan on using it more in the next quarter. There will be a learning center assignment due where about 60 kids will be using the wiki to track results of the Super Tuesday. I am pretty excited about it and I hope it will go well. I will post more after we get the video call with the NASA scientists. Wish us luck.

Twitter VersionPlanbook is an amazing program that helps teachers plan their lessons, inform parents, and keep organized. This is a must-buy for all teachers who use computers.OverviewThe tagline for Planbook is "Making one part of your day a little bit easier..." Planbook by Jeff Hellman is a digital planbook, and a little more. I found this software through a comment on TUAW a while back. I don't usually read comments, but that time I did, and I am glad because this is one of the best products I have used. It is wonderful. Right now, it only is available on the Mac, but a PC beta is in the works.Useful FeaturesOne of the best uses of this program is a digital file folder. I do so much on the computer because it the only part of my life that is organized. It is the only system that successfully keeps me organized. Below is a screenshot of the main interface. You can click it to see a bigger picture.It is very easy to add lesson plans. You just click on the day, and a drawer opens that allows you to enter in plans, homework, public/student information, and upload files or attach web addresses. You can divide it up by class and since I only teach one subject, it is pretty easy. I don't typically make official lesson plans, but I can and do with this program.When I first saw this, I thought I would download it and take advantage of the system. You can make up to 20 lesson plans on the demo, but then you can't make any more. I did that for a little, deleting the first lesson to make another, etc., but then, after a while, I realized that it would be better to just pay the $30 to buy it. It is very intuitve, easy to use, and responsive. It doesn't bog the computer down, either.Some other features include the ability to run weekly and lesson reports that you can give to your administrators, students, students' parents, or just to post on the wall. You can also as many files and links as you want so you don't have to worry about all your filing cabinets overflowing.The best feature though, is that you can use publish your files to FTP, .Mac (which I don't have), or to a local folder. The really great thing about this is that I can publish all the lesson plans to my website and then I just direct kids there when they are absent or lost a paper. It is a great tool for teachers because the calls from parents, complaints from kids, or anything that slows down the teaching process gets really annoying. I know there are a lot of other systems out there, but this system works the best of the four I have tried. When kids leave on vacation, and I don't have the lesson plans ready, I can just tell them to check the website while on vacation (like their going to do any work anyway!) and then it is their and their parents' responsibility. Below is a picture of what it looks like on the web in case you didn't click the link to my website.I love that all the handouts are on there. You can also change the themes so that it looks different. You can even make your own theme, if you know CSS. I would like to do that, but time is too expensive right now.OpinionIt is pretty apparent what my opinion of this software is. I love it. I do have a few suggestions, though, that would make it better.Jeff Hellman is a teacher. He does this in his spare time. Earlier this year, when I first bought it, I had a hard time publishing the lesson plans to the web. It was really frustrating, and I emailed Jeff, and he helped me out almost right away. It was the fastest customer service I have ever received. On his website, he mentions that people lost data when they upgraded to Leopard. He saysAs a teacher/developer, my goal is to save my users time. If your planbook file loses its data, I'm not saving you time and I'm probably making you miserable. Data integrity is my number one priority and this is why the data loss bug that several users reported on Leopard was so disconcerting to me. Jeff really cares about making a quality product, and that is a great thing. Here are my meager suggestions:1. An RSS feed for the new updates so parents (or administrators, if they are like that) can see what needs to be done each day. Or, it would be neat if the program could email some information on each day's lesson plans to the parents so they wouldn't have to check the site every day. The email would also help teachers who don't have a domain name or a .mac account.2. The dialog box for uploading files should go to the last folder used. When you attach a file, the dialog box opens up to your home folder (which would be like opening up to C:\ on a PC) every time. This can get kind of annoying since I have a folder that contains all my handouts. If I add more than one file to a lesson plan, it is inconvenient to go through all my folder hierarchy to get to that one file I need.These two additions are really the only things that I have been bothered by since using this program.

Somehow, I ended up at this post by a guy named Jared Madden. He talks about Presence Applications (PA) and how they are the new media and around to stay.PA’s ‘bridge the gap’ between platforms and allow you to ’subscribe’ to a information source (be it a person or company).So, PAs like Twitter and Jaiku allow you to use a cell phone, the web, a mini-app on your computer, or something else to subscribe to what (people) are presently doing. So, you can follow not just people, but also, oh, I don't know, what about fire departments?This is amazing. I already follow a company, Woot.com, on Twitter so I can stay up to date with the great deals they offer. I follow a guy who is a tech job headhunter here in Utah, just in case ;). And I have my regular network of edutechers: educators that use technology and push for more technology integration in schools.Imagine in the emergency services world, you call 911, and they can autosubscribe you to a specific twitter feed regarding your call. You could get live updates of where the ambulance or fire engine or police officer is.Imagine a news outlet creating specific feeds for a particular developing story. I am sure this already exists to a certain extent, but I just don't know about it. Imagine notifying people of the election results in nearly real-time via Twitter.There is a group that does a Twitter Story, called twittories where people contribute to stories in 140 character increments.Basically, the world is open for new ways of communicating. Although it can be scary to imagine that, it is also very exciting.Quick quote from @arthus on Twitter as I am writing this:Actually, student implies there is a teacher and teacher implies that there is a student. Learner can be self-directed.

So, I was the teacher of the month at my school for December. I wasn't actually planning on blogging about it, but I thought it would be a good time to draw attention to what my students are doing, since they are the ones doing all the heavy lifting. I realize that much of this probably is not that exciting to someone who is not in my shoes, but I am very excited about it. In December, I found out about a girl's blog in NY. I talked about her desire to make a difference in others' lives. She challenged a classroom to do the same. I talked with my students and they came up with some great ideas, and then we implemented two of the three best ones. The first idea was to have a day set aside where the students could go to freerice.com and see how much we could donate. We donated over 750,000 grains of rice. We used almost all the computers in the library almost all day long and had 12 other teachers participate with their students. The second idea was to create a wiki page for our team. This has been the most exciting because it got me started in with another teacher in Kansas doing a collaborative wiki for the Primary elections. Some, not all, of my students really took this idea and ran. I am very impressed. One girl has been editing a page called "Fun Stuff" pretty much every single day since we started. That is a big deal for a 7th grader. Of course, I finally post about her dedication the day she misses changing it. ;)Anyway, my principal said that although I had only been at the school for a short time, I was already making an impact. I hope I really am. I hope these small accomplishments really do help my kids learn and make an impact. Otherwise, who really cares?Have a good life.

Here are the links. I saw President Hinckley speak a few times. I ran the teleprompter for him once at BYU-Idaho. Other than that, I haven't had any personal contact with him. I do know this, though: Gordon B. Hinckley was a prophet of God, just like Moses, Adam, Noah, Peter, Nephi, Lehi, Mormon, and all the other holy prophets in the scriptures.Have a good life.

So, my classes have been working on the Campaign Trail Collaboration wiki with a bunch of other schools around the country and world. It has been an interesting learning experience as wikis are still very new to a lot of people. It is interesting to see who excels at it and who does not. Most don't. It is surprisingly difficult for some people, even parents. That is completely understandable, though. It took me a little bit to understand the nuances of a wiki as well. This video from the "CommonCraft Show" helps explain it much better than I can.Learning is supposed to be frustrating. If it is not frustrating, you probably aren't learning. I like to think of it as a piece of wood being carved into something beautiful. If the wood were still alive, surely it would hurt and be painful. But, the benefit is that it is becoming something great and beautiful. That is how learning should be (notice I didn't say education!). I am sure that some people are going to get upset and say that learning should be fun/enjoyable/safe/whatever other positive thing you want to contend it should be. Joseph Smith said:I am like a huge, rough stone rolling down from a high mountain; and the only polishing I get is when some corner gets rubbed off by coming in contact with something else...all hell knocking off a corner here and a corner there (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 304).You can still enjoy learning even if it is frustrating.I had a parent who actually emailed me with some valuable reflection about her experiences working on it with her son (and husband). I include it here with her permission:Hi Mr Jones,Just wanted to give you some feedback on the Super Tuesday activity M participated in. It absolutely got him involved in tracking the candidates and was valuable for the opportunity to work with others as he added to the state info as it developed. We did not see any info entered from other students on his state. Could it be because we were not looking in the right place? It has the potential to be a great collaborative activity working with others to track the election process. That is the whole point for this, to be a collaborative effort. It helps people work together and learn together.We were a little disappointed this morning to find the updated info that he had entered at 9:30 pm last night was gone this morning. We did not print out a page from that time, but he did print one out this am to turn in to prove he was filling in the info on [his state's] primaries. Here they learned on their own how to adapt to a new medium; they didn't know what the protocol was, but were able to figure it out on their own.This was the first time he ( and his father and I ) had ever used the wiki page. Not surprising, but now they have used a wiki, and the next time their child has to do something with technology, this experience will help define their approach to a new one later in M's career. We spent a lot of time figuring out what to do and how to get to the appropriate areas, so maybe in the future a bit more detailed instructions would be helpful. I am assuming she means better instructions than "Here is the wiki page. Do it." ;) I didn't give very good instructions, that is for sure. It was a great experience for M in using technology and working with the computer. He was copying and pasting results repeatedly to update the info, which really made him get comfortable with going between windows, etc. This is a great skill for him to learn. He will be able to use this later, I am sure. We'll be interested to see if M did this assignment as expected. It was a good learning experience, and a little frustrating too. Thanks for your help. Since this is my first time teaching, I don't even know how good of a job I did teaching it. How can I give someone a bad grade for making a concerted and valiant effort when the directions were so poor to begin with?RI did spend some time with the students teaching them what a wiki is and how it works, but I didn't teach them well enough. We were able to get on the computers and edit some wiki pages, but they still didn't get it. Showing the video posted above really helped them out. That was a very positive thing to do. I should have done it earlier.So, what have I learned?1. I need to give clear concise directions that are easily understandable.2. It is okay if learning is frustrating.3. If you are fair and equitable and try new things, most parents will support you.

Today our school did a talent show, and some parents were able to come and watch their students perform. The students all performed very well and the classes watching were very respectful and polite. They impressed me.I thought it was cool that the parents could come in and watch, but I am sure some could not make it. One thing we could do to help them see it is broadcast it on Ustream.tv. I am planning on doing this for my students' book projects at the end of this month (just waiting for district approval ;). One added benefit of the streaming the talent show is that it would be a way to build community support, an essential part of a successful school.A school with healthy level of community support will be a better school than one which doesn't. If two schools are essentially the same, but one school has enormous community support, it will be a better, more inviting, more successful school, with better student achievement.I am sure this is not an easy thing to do, but I imagine that if everyone in the community is interested in the success of the school, it can happen. It starts with a principal being willing to allow others into the school. I guess not just willing, but actually inviting. The principal of the school would hold many community events in the school to help people feel like they can come to the school. The principal would also get rid of those stupid "Every person entering this building must check in at the principal's office" signs. I think this principal would also have to live in the school's boundaries (there might even be a house next door to the school where the principal lives).In classrooms there would be a lot of parent involvement. Parents would be there volunteering to help Monday through Thursday, with some coming in on Fridays. I have 165 students. If one parent of each student came in once, that would take care of the whole year. In these classrooms with parent involvement, there would be a lot of hands-on activities, learning centers (stations), places of individual or group work, as well as a "lecture" place if that is needed as well.To help parents (and teachers) there would be a day-care type class that teachers could bring their children to. It would be run by a couple teachers and a bunch of students. It would be free to those who left their kids there while they helped in classrooms. This incentive could help young, energetic parents come in to assist students and teachers.At the end of the day, a part of the school would be blocked off. Tutoring would be available after school almost every day. Computer labs would be opened, and extra-curricular activities would be available for students who need a place to be after school. It will keep them safer than being home alone or on the street causing problems.Several nights each month, businesses and community and religious groups will use the building for meetings, training, learning, growing, sports, and anything else they need.Here are the reasons why we should do these things:People will enjoy sending their kids to a school that is open and inviting.Parents and business leaders will be willing to donate money, time, energy, effort, and resources to the school if they are actively involved in it.An open inviting school will be safe, not because we make people check in at the office, but because everyone at the school will care about keeping it safe. Friendliness is more effective than mandates to "check anyone without an ID badge" and that will make the difference.Fewer problems with discipline because students aren't going to goof off as much if 1) they know the teacher talks to their mom or dad weekly or 2) their mom, dad, or friend's mom or dad is there in the class with them.Are there negative aspects of this plan? I am sure there are, but class is about to start so I will leave on a utopian note ;). Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.Have a good life.

My students are chatting via video call tomorrow with Ginger's students, and Ginger wisely suggested that we prepare for the meeting. I framed it like this:Students, you will be in three groups researching one of these topics: (1. The city where these kids live, 2. What is a charter school and 3. TPLC, the school the kids attend.) You will be talking to them tomorrow on a video call and doing this research will help you be prepared, so write down things you know about your topic, write down some things you want to know, then you can get on a computer and start finding and writing down things that you learned. (It is basically a K-W-L chart that one student understood and drew as such on her paper.) The point is to be able to ask thoughtful questions that will help you learn more about them and their life.I told them they needed to be able to ask the students their questions, but they should be meaningful questions. As I was roaming around the room looking at what they were doing, I was confused at what they were researching. A few of them found the school's website. Four or five of them had a page open about the state but were looking at the flag and finding out what the state emblem, state tree, state bird, state motto --I can see the state motto meaning something, because they could ask whether the students know it and if they apply it to their lives (but I don't think they are going to ask that)--, and other trivia questions about the state. Is it just me, or is that just frivolous stuff that doesn't really mean anything?I pictured myself as an elementary school teacher making them do that for each state in the nation--much of what I remember from elementary school was just time-sucking research that didn't mean anything beyond the worksheet. Am I wrong, are our ES teachers better than that? Or am I the one at fault for not explaining it better? (Wouldn't be the first time that happened!)Have a good life.

Typeit4me is a program that I have heard about but never tried, until today. It is cool. With the "Utah Pandemic Flu" that will inevitably kill us all, I have had a lot of sick students. So, just about every day, I get an email from the attendance office that says something like, Teachers,Student has been out ill this week and homework has been requested.Please send his work to the Attendance Office, his brother will take ithome today. ThanksI have a system in place for this very thing, and I like it. I have a website with all the info that my students need to complete an assignment. I do this on purpose because all but 2 of my students (and they are sisters) have internet access and home, and everyone can access the internet here at school. This way, when students come and ask me what we did yesterday, I point them to the website, and say, "EVERYTHING you need is there!"So, when I get an email from attendance, now, I can just respond with a few characters and it will punch in all the info for me. It is wonderful. Here is a video. I don't know if my computer is acting up today or if it this program, but things have been incredibly sluggish since I installed Typeit4me. Earlier, when the prefpane was open, it iStat was showing that the prefpane was using 90% of my memory! Yikies! Now you can see it is just Firefox. Double yikies!Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!Have a good life.

Here is a quick breakdown of my day:Herd students to classcall students and parents to talk about tardies and other referralssupervise lunch (Headache city)Bust some more kids after lunchHerd students out of the buildingAll in all, I like it. I think I am going to enjoy being an administrator. I have learned a lot, and hopefully Monday, I will get to sit in on some teacher evaluations. I don't think we will have time to drive around doing our safe walking routes to school.I busted a lot of kids today, and the result was mostly ISS (in school suspension) and lunch detention. I don't particularly like those punishments, but it is better than writing an essay. I would like to spend time with each kid and figure out how to help them change their behavior, but it is very hard when you've got 20 kids you need to talk to, and you spend much of your time waiting for them to come down. It is very frustrating. I think it would be more effective to figure out why these kids are misbehaving, and then make sure that I am doing something to help them stop their behavior--not just give them a one-size fits all punishment. I think most kids wouldn't really mind getting out of class for an entire day. Out of school suspension would have been great for me when I was growing up because I didn't want to go to school anyway. I wish that there were a way to know what would help a kid realize that they need to change behaviors. That is tough. I would like to do something like circle justice (warning: legal and boring link). Circle justice tries to heal people, and not just punish them. When you punish people, they still are mad and hate others. When you heal them, they are able to forgive. It would be very hard to implement in real life, but if it would make students change, that would be wonderful. However, some kids realize how much it sucks to sit by yourself at lunch and not be with your friends. For instance one kid has been tardy a lot. She needs to get to class on time. They have these behavior packets for different bad behaviors, and they read something, answer the questions, and then turn it back in. I gave this girl lunch detention so she could work on it then, and she finished it during her class right before lunch and was really mad when I made her stay in detention during lunch anyway. That was effective for her, I hope. And one girl who was in ISS was really bored by the end of the day. She might think again before doing something stupid. So, I don't know yet how I feel about all discipline stuff. I will have to mull over it more and get back to you. If you've got an idea on this, let me know. Have a Good Life.

As I sit here typing this blog on my wife's iPod Touch, I am rethinking the idea that I had about iPods in the classroom. It would be pretty hard to convince some people to invest in a whole classroom set of iPods. So what I am thinking is that if I can get five or six (still less than two grand) then I can do something else that I am interested in doing. What I really want to do is have some learning areas where they can have some self-directed learning experiences. I would like to set it up so that they can go to the different stations and do different things. I would like to have a station for reading, one for writing, one for web stuff. There are a lot of possibilities that we could do but it would be really neat to have them work on some things all by themselves. So I am going to focus on getting a few for the classroom and that is it. The district has mini-grants available, and our PTA is doing some grants for teachers, so I think that I might be able to get some money to buy them. Then we could use them two or three times per week, and that would be really near. Plus, we could see how well it actually works before investing in a classroom set. By the way, this takes a bit longer to type on the Touch, but I don't think it's that bad. The software does a great job of correcting my typos. There are a few times where it gets it wrong, but it is very accurate.Have a Good Life.

Here is a rundown:Announced when it was time to change classesbusted some kids on tardiesbusted some kids for fightingdealt with an upset teacher (three times)gave a kid a hugforgot to release everyone at 2:30So, today was a much better day for administrative duties. It seemed more real than last week and I am glad, because last Thursday was not that fun. One upset teacher did not want to burden me with anything, but I told her to just go for it, I've got to be baptized by fire, I guess. She has been dealing with a student that is very passive aggressive since the first quarter, and she has just now reached the breaking point. I talked to her and realized that he is doing things to make sure that he doesn't look like he is screwing around, but that he is "not one to make trouble" (his words). I realized that there is a lot of passive aggressive behavior going on at schools and kids love it so much (and adults, too) because it is easy to get away with things. I think that we ought to have a training about passive aggressive behavior because almost every problem I dealt with had to do with that. Some were more aggressive than passive, but most are things where the kids can get away with things and still try to seem innocent. For example, one kid was "helping" a kid gather his spilled papers by pushing them to him with his feet. Right, that is a good way to "help" someone that you have had problems with numerous times before. Anyway, it was pretty silly. I think it would be very beneficial if all middle school teachers and administrators had training in identifying and dealing with passive aggressive behavior. It just makes sense to arm them with some knowledge about what it is. Maybe they already know, but I didn't understand it until Leigh VandenAkker explained it to me last summer. On Friday, I explained to some of my students what the passive aggressive behavior was that they were exhibiting, and once they knew, they seemed willing to try to change it (we will see ;).In a more humorous note, I had to be the bell ringer today. That meant that I had to get on the loudspeaker and announce when it was time to move to the next class. When you get on, it makes a doorbell sound and then you can make your announcement. What I should have done is just let it make the doorbell sound and not say anything. At the end of the day, I forgot to ring the bell to let everyone out, so it was two minutes late. Some teachers decided they didn't care that I was late and they let the students out anyway. I got on at 2:32 and said, "Oh, I forgot to ring the last bell! Everyone get out of the building fast!" I thought it was funny, but didn't hear anyone laugh ;(.So, I know that you have to be careful when touching students in any way, but I gave a kid a hug today. He seemed like he needed it, and so I gave him a hug when he apologized to me for being non-compliant. I was already reprimanded by the school psychologist, so now I know. Oh, well, I am just an intern. The school psychologist also mentioned that he got tears in his eyes after I gave him a hug. Was it a good thing to do? I don't know, maybe? Was it bad? I don't know, maybe. In the immortal words of Michael Scott, "Am I a hero? [pause] I really can't say, but yes."Have a Good Life.

Here is my question of the day for my administration program: Why don't we learn anything relating to dealing with students (or parents)? That is a huge issue for administrators. We learn interpersonal skills and that is great, but there really should be a class on dealing with kids and working through attitudes, anger, depression, etc. Every administrator that I have known has dealt more with kids than with teachers. We have all these courses about dealing with teachers and making them better (and maybe they teach this because they want us to deal with teachers more), but the reality is that we are so busy dealing with kids that we don't have time to make it to the classroom and observe and help teachers. Maybe they think that because we are teachers we already know how to deal with students. But it is very different when you are an administrator and not just a teacher. I should think about this more.

Yesterday, one of the teachers that was having a problem and discussed it with me gave some good feedback to other people. She didn't say anything to me about it, but other people sure did. She came in and talked to me and I sat there and listened, said that I would do what I could, and then followed up with her later in the day and this morning. All I really did was listen and make sure that she knew I cared about resolving the situation. That is important. The hard thing will be making sure that I remember that when I am an administrator.Have a Good Life.

Here is a video in two parts that this college (Abilene Christian University) produced called "Connected." The funniest part is that it is playing the video on the iPhone is not shown in widescreen! Classic. Just goes to show that not only is this a crappy way to get people to come to your school, but it also shows that not everyone is on board with this, which is how it has to work if it is to succeed. The other thing that is hilarious about this is that they totally overlook (at least in this video) any educational possibilities that exist for the iPhone/iTouch. "This new iPhone is so great, it shows me how to get to class late on my first day! Thanks, ACU!"The video is actually pretty funny, and makes me want one for each of my students even less. I guess it shows that maybe my dreams won't really happen because then we would all be dorks. Thanks ACU!Have a Good Life.

I have pink eye. And yes, it sucks.The other thing that sucks is that tonight is parent teacher conferences, or as we say in our school, student-led conferences. The students come in and present information from each of their classes to their parents, and instead of all the the teachers sitting in the gym and getting monstrous headaches, the students come to our rooms and talk about things that are going on in their classes. It is a much better setup. I like these conferences a lot. I really like being there and talking to the parents. Since I have pink eye, and my wife and kids are all sick as well, I decided that I should come home and help them. When everyone is sick, just being there is a lot of help. So, I decided that I would set my school laptop up in my room and be home with my family. I am doing it through Skype. Below is a picture of what it looks like while I am waiting for people to come talk to me.I must admit that it is awesome to be able to do this. So cool.Have a Good Life.

The class with the worst behavior is sitting there working and has been working since I told them to start working. AMAZING! I didn't think that it was possible, but they are all reading their books just like they should. Nobody is goofing off, and they are all doing what they should. This never happens. It probably helps that a bunch of people are absent, but I think it is also because I am letting them read out loud in groups. They are doing just what they should. Awesome. They like reading out loud more than to themselves even though I think it is harder. This group of kids, though, I think they just like interacting with other people. Have a Good Life.

I am surprised that I have already updated on Twitter 500 times! I didn't think that I had used it that much, but I have. I really like it. I have learned so much it is just crazy. There are a lot of people floating good ideas around. I would really like to have documented everything that I have learned, but there is just so much that I have learned, I wouldn't even know where to begin.Have a Good Life.

I found this polling site and thought I would try it out. I think it is pretty cool.

I attended the Literacy Promise Conference today. It is sponsored by the Brigham Young University CITES program. I just realized that my computer shut down while I was coming home from the conference and all the notes I took are gone. Drat!!!This poet named Brod Bagert from New Orleans (3 syllables) spoke to us and he was amazing. He read a lot of his poems and the way that he performed was so inspiring. Here is a link to the recording that I made. This is the cool part of the story. When he started introducing the poem "Booger Love" I thought it would be a great one to record. But, the only recording software I have on my compy is Garageband, and I have not had much success with that. So, I invoked Quicksilver and did a Google search for Audacity, which I had heard about and tried to use before, but never got too far into it.So, in the time that it took him to finish introducing the poem, I was able to download the program, install it, open it, and start recording him. This is why I like Macs. If I had my PC laptop, this never would have been possible. I would have taken way too many steps to get there, and there would be a 95% chance that the program wouldn't work (that is experience talking, by the way, we have had very little success with recording or capturing sound or video on that computer). Also, the battery would have been dead at that point (45 minutes into the conference) and I would have had a hard writing surface to capture the essence of his presentation.The only thing that vexes me is that I wasn't able to record video with the iSight camera. That would have been better because his performance was not just his voice. So, if anyone knows of an easy free way to do that, please let me know.By the way, here are my takeaways from the presentation (actual education stuff, imagine that):Perform poetry to your students and they will start to actually like poetry.If they like poetry, they will start to write it as a natural step.If they write it themselves, then you won't have to assign stupid haiku's.Poetry should be loved and studied just like sports, music, technology, or any other passion that someone possesses. This is key--study and love poetry because you deserve it. Great presentation. I bought four books (on Amazon ;)Have a Good Life.