Mrs. P. started today and I am looking forward to all that this change brings. I do feel very lucky that I get to be here when this is happening. There is a lot that needs to be learned and it is good to have her figuring things out with me around so I can glean some insight from her.We talked a lot about finances today (which is good since it is part of my homework, I like killing two birds with one stone).The principal's discretionary fund is money that principals can decide how to use since it doesn't fit in any other budget. It comes from vending machines and pictures mostly, and my finance professor said that money left at the end of the year that has not been spent from budgets can fall into that category as well.Mrs. P. likes to spend money twice. That is, she likes to find creative ways to pay for things and stretch every penny. She likes to give her teachers what they need, but tries to avoid saying things like, "You have to spend this money or you will lose it" because it creates an attitude of we-better-buy-this-even-if-we-don't-need-it-because-we-can! That is not a good attitude for people to have.

Mrs. P. moved her office around today, and mentioned the importance of changing physical things. It is easy for a principal to get things stuck how they have always been, and this is an opportunity for her to show that things will change. It doesn't mean that everything has to change, but as a principal, you really want to make sure that people know that you won't be the same as the person before. Also, it doesn't feel like it is your office until you move things around a bit. I moved my stuff around in my classroom three or four times before I was happy.Besides that, we met with another teacher that tracked the CSIP budget and talked about financial things. Obiviously, I won't give all the gory details here, but I will highlight some things that I learned.It is important to keep things organized and let those who need to know know, and make sure that everyone that needs to be involved is actually involved. The principal pretty much has the final say on everything, but can't do much without letting the Community School Improvement Plan (CSIP) Committee know what is being planned. Goals need to be made for the school each year, and those goals are what determines where you spend your money.The boy who was suspended the first day I was here has not had any home and hospital visits. The school was supposed to send someone to help him do schoolwork for two hours a week, but Mr. P. could not find anyone who could go and help him. When I talked to the District person about that, he was shocked that nothing had been done. The school (and the district) is in charge of making sure that he gets his visits, and is required to give him those visits. So, if he doesn't get the visits when he is not at school, they have to give them to him at some point. I don't know what to do if you don't have any teachers that are willing to do home and hospital for the kid.Have a Good Life.

Two big things happened today. First, I had to coordinate with about ten people for professional development days next week. Second, we got the test scores back.When you work with people, you are on a major slow-down. It takes so long to get anything done. One person called me back yesterday from all the people that I tried to contact. For me, that is very frustrating, because I don't like having things go unfinished. That will be one of my biggest struggles as a principal.With our test scores coming back, it is important that we know what we need to do to improve. The hard part is getting people to see and agree with what it is needed. In reality, it doesn't really matter what we do, and the teachers can do whatever they want, as long as the results happen.

I wrote a letter to the faculty today talking about what we will be doing when everyone comes back to school. I have included part of it below. It made Mrs. P. laugh when she read it, and there are a couple funny things in it. Mrs. P. said that I needed to sign it because if she did, the teachers wouldn't know if she was joking or not. Since I have been there for a while, most of the teachers know that I am a bit of a jokester.Dear Teachers,I hope you are having a great summer vacation, albeit short! We will be having our Professional Development days on the 17th and 18th of July.We will provide breakfast on the 17th from 8:00-8:30 am, and will start our meeting at 8:30. We will go until 4:00 pm, with an hour-long lunch break on your own. In the morning we will talk about the new math curriculum and the afternoon will be spent discussing think time.Friday’s times will be the same, with breakfast at 8:00 and lunch on your own. Mr. S. from the district will start his presentation at 8:30. After an hour break for lunch, we will talk about literacy and the big, bad, scary CRT SCORES of Doom! We will go until 4 pm.It will be a busy and fun two days. Mrs. P. is on assignment from the district for those two days, so it will be a party with me.Regular contract day begins the 21st, and faculty meeting will start at 8:00 am. Contract days are the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. The building will be closed July 24th and 25th. Students begin school on the 28th!Back-to-school night will be on the 22nd of July, and the PTA will provide lunch that day.Enjoy the rest of your break!These welcome back letters are important. It can help set the tone for the year. It is important to make them aware of what will be going on. Just a little bit of openness helps them feel that you are on the same team.Have a Good Life.

One of the most important jobs in a school is the secretary. Those who know, know that she holds more power than anyone. Our finance class went to a high school yesterday and looked at the budgets they have. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars passing through that school every year, and the principal there stressed how important it is to have a good secretary. By the way, they pay $2000 a month to lease their copy machine, and that sounds like it is way too much.Our secretary at ES is so great! She makes every effort to do things correctly and really does a smash job. Whenever she does something that might be remotely questionable, she announces it. So, she says, "I am going to go put this on Mrs. P.'s desk, so she has it." I really don't think it is a big deal that she goes into Mrs. P.'s office before Mrs. P. gets here, or while she is gone. She has legitimate needs and goes in there when it is appropriate, and stays out if she doesn't need to be in there. What I am trying to say is that Mrs. S. is very transparent. She doesn't do anything that you don't know about. When it comes to making sure that your office is run correctly, you can count on her to be honest and transparent. She doesn't hide anything, so it makes it easy to trust her. You need to trust her. The principal at the high school could not stress that enough. It is too big a job to not have trust. And even though he trusts his secretary, he still knows where every single penny in his school goes. I really think that he is the most "aware" principal I have met.Have a Good Life.

We met the teachers that Mr. P. hired for our school today. There are five of them. They seem to be pretty sharp, and it was my most exciting day. It was fun to get to know them. Mrs. P. and I were both in a good mood, and it was fun to not stress about things that needed to be done.The office staff did a great job of being positive about the school and what goes on here, anyway. Our janitor, on the other hand, was full of negative comments. It is very frustrating. Having taught at a "hard" school, and realizing that the difficulty of the school is 90% due to how you think about it. The problem is that people will complain about things regardless of how good they really are. They will find any problem.People complain because it is easier to be upset about something than to find the good in a given situation.It is much easier to be negative than it is to be positive. But, if you aren't positive, your job/school/life will never be satisfying.I believe that it will be my job as principal to set a positive tone in my school. I tried really hard to communicate some positive things to the teachers, and I hope they can see that, and will be able to find the positive in the school. If you are positive, good things can happen.

At the end of each year, principals need to check-out of their schools. They turn in compliance documents, budgets, other documents, and talk about general and specific school business.I thought the meeting was kind of neat because we got to sit down with the Area Director and talk about the school in general. She was checking out of her old school, and basically checking in to her new school. The area director showed us results of a survey about the two schools. It was interesting to see where our school did worse than her old school. You could see that many of the problems we have been having here can be attributed to a few select problems.One of the problems that need to be fixed is the cleanliness of the school. The custodian is having a major power struggle with Mrs. P. We were able to talk to the janitor's district supervisor today, and learned that some of the problems stem from the person before our current custodian, who left halfway through the year. Previous custodian did not do much, but Mr. P. didn't care, and so the district guys couldn't put the pressure on him. Now, Mrs. P. does care, so they will be able to start talking to him more and getting things done better.I have realized that even though this school district has a bad name, the people that can actually do things (area director, custodial staff, computer/tech support, air handlers, and many others) are actually really great people, who care about success and helping others out. It has been good to see that.Have a Good Life.

Being in a year-round school brings with it a realization that the school is never closed. Right now, there are no teachers or students here, but there is still a lot to do.The school needs to be ready for teachers to come back, just two weeks after they left. There are some other people who have done internships and they have complained that there is nothing to do in their elementary schools. I think I got lucky to have two principals here that have kept me busy...more busy than I was as a teacher even. There is not much downtime, and even when there is, there is still plenty to do.Today, for example, I was thinking that it would be pretty slow with Mrs. P. gone to a district conference all week. Turns out, I was wrong. There is plenty for me to do. She left me a short list, but there was still a lot of preparation for the professional development days this week, as well as stuff that just comes up as the day goes on.It is pretty exciting though, because you are never bored. Working with people may be the hardest and best part about this job, though. It is frustrating when you have to deal with people who don't want (or even know how) to do their jobs, and then it is completely worth it when someone really does improve and become a better person. I hope that I can see more of the latter as I continue than of the former.Have a Good Life.

I must be getting excited for school to start in three weeks, because I had a dream about the first day. The best part was that I got a sub for that day because I have been too busy to do anything for my school this summer.Have a Good Life.

A couple months ago, I commented on how great it is when learning is frustrating. Well, it is still great, but sometimes it is not that great. As you may have noticed, I took off all the posts from my internship this summer. My principal made a good point, she said that I was privy to a lot of information and that I didn't realize how much trust I was given.I know that I make mistakes and that I am not perfect, but I sure don't like being told about it.The feelings that I experienced when she told me were very conflicted. I was sad, hurt, offended, suddenly aware of the weight of that job, and extremely grateful that she told me how she felt. It is not fun to be called out, but it is sometimes needed.Thank you Mrs. P. for a wonderful internship, and helping me learn something that was hard to swallow, but needed to be said.Have a Good Life.

Last week, I found out that Senator Howard Stephenson would be coming to my classroom today. Each day, it seemed that the number of other visitors changed. I wasn't sure at all what would actually happen, and neither were the district people that were closer to the situation. Everything was shrouded in mystery.Yesterday, a rep from the audio enhancement company our school uses showed up to make sure that my microphone would feedback whenever I talked. I had turned down the high end because it was feedback city, and that took care of the problem. He came in (as a professional) and turned up the highs and seemed satisfied when it made the awful high-pitched scream. Silly man. I turned them back down in preparation for today's meeting.Senator Stephenson came into my room and observed with 5 or 6 other people. I was hoping that we could get my teacher evaluation out of they way today, but that was not meant to be. They sat there and watched me teach about online safety, and then left. They didn't ask me any questions, or interrupt my lesson, or anything. I wasn't expecting a highway being named after me, but I was expecting something. There was nothing. I almost took a nap during my prep period immediately following the visit.The sad thing is that they missed the best part. The kids made a KWL chart about being safe online in Google Docs on the wiki, and now we have a big list of everything that they know and want to know about being safe online. That part really was neat. It was hard to get my kids on task, because they were psyched out to be using the laptops.For a different view, you can read Darren's take on the whole thing (with a picture, even).

I have been on overload the last couple months, and everything seems to be adding up. When you get overwhelmed, you sometimes need to take drastic steps. Well, that is what I did. I whittled my 274 Google Reader subscriptions down to just 15. I wish that I would have taken a picture when it was so many subscriptions, but you get the general idea from the screenshot above.Since I still write for the The Apple Blog, I had to keep a lot of feeds that I use for that, and I put those on NetNewsWire, so it is a different place and a different mindset for me.In other news, I downloaded this cool program called slife from slifelabs.com. This program tracks what you do on your computer throughout the day. It keeps detailed records, allows you to set "productivity goals," and even can track what you do and where you go on the internet. This sounds a little Big Brother-ish, but I don't mind being my own Big Brother. I think that is important. Slife Labs says that they don't report anything back to them, and that it all stays on your own computer. I am going to use this program for a couple weeks and see what things look like. My wife is also using it, and it will be much more telling for her, since this is the only computer she uses.Have a Good Life.

Twitter version: Guided reading is the best thing I can do to help my students. How can I do it better?This summer, not only was my internship amazing at helping me prepare for my future job as a school administrator, but it also taught me how to be a much better teacher. My classroom management skills have increased so much, I didn't know I could be this good. My desire to be a great teacher has increased, and my ability to do the same has also increased. I am more dedicated and more professional. I work harder and smarter, and I am able to do some amazing things. Thank you Mrs. P.The PhilosophyOne of the things that I saw at the elementary school was guided reading. Guided reading is where a teacher takes a group of students who are at about the same reading level, and reads with them to help them become better readers. The teacher helps with fluency and comprehension. Seeing guided reading in action changed me. I knew as soon as I saw it that it could be the single most important thing I could do as a Language Arts teacher. I had heard of it, but I thought it wasn't that big a deal. As soon as I watched a great teacher actually do it, it was amazing, and I knew that I had to do it, too.The best benefit is that I would be able to know how well my students are reading. I would be able to focus some time on each kid, if only just a little time, and help them read better. I sold it to the kids like this:"You guys must read well. If you don't, your whole life will be miserable. If you can't read well, you will have a harder time finding a good job, and you might never get married! [dramatic pause] If you can't read well, you will not be able to understand the love notes that your boyfriend or girlfriend writes to you, and they will stop liking you!"Maybe that is not entirely true, but to a bunch of 7th graders that are just learning that the other gender is attractive, this statement set off a round of giggles and sideward glances that made my heart happy.Guided reading works really well in elementary school where you only see 35 kids a day. It gets harder in middle school where you see 35 kids six periods a day. Taking time to read with all your 200 students in one day is impossible.How it WorksWe did our first round this week. I spent the entire period Monday describing how the rotations would work and stressing the important things that they needed to remember as we rotated on Tuesdays and Wednesdays:The guided reading part with me is the most importantWe will rotate through the stations quickly and effecientlyEveryone's best behavior is required, no excusesEach student will bring a bookAfter stressing each of these things for a full 46 minute period, the students understood how serious I was about it. As I explained, we rotated every couple minutes so the students could understand how it worked. Spending that time on Monday was vital to the success on Tuesday and Wednesday. The kids knew what was expected, and for the most part, everyone behaved appropriately.To help it run smoothly, I invited the parents of all my students to come and help. I got quite a few responses, and some really great parents showed up and were invaluable helpers.The hardest part of this is the work that goes into it. It always bugs me when teachers go home with a ton of stuff to correct and spend their entire lives working. My workload this year is way more than it ever has been, and I am trying really hard to get everything done at school. It doesn't always happen. To help me find balance, I go home and make sure that I play and read with my kids each night, and after I put them in bed, I stay up pretty late getting everything ready and organized. This first week was probably the easiest one to prepare. Having parent volunteers every week is the only way I will be able to do this all year. Those kids need someone else there to help guide them along and keep them on task. We had seven stations. The first station was reading with me. That was pretty much it this time, because I wanted everyone to get an idea of how it works. After reading with me, they work on a worksheet relating to the book that they are reading. Then the third station is our technology station. This week, they just played some language arts games online, and jumped on freerice.com for a little bit.The next station was an introduction to the iPod Touch. I got a grant from our PTSA that bought me three of them, and so I wanted the kids to know the basics, so we watched the guided tour (more on this later, because it is going to be awesome). After the iPods, they work on a writing assignment that we are doing at the time. The sixth station is another writing station, where we will focus on elements of writing (smiley-face tricks, 6 traits, figurative language, etc.). The final station is where the students read to get ready to meet with me. The ChallengesEach rotation is only 10 minutes, so the kids have to really get on task right away. My challenge is creating something worthwhile for them to do for ten minutes that will teach them what they need to learn, and also allow them to create and learn something worthwhile. The time challenge is fitting all that preparation time into my one 47-minute prep period. It is not easy, especially considering my other responsibilities (tech committee, steering committee, redesigning the school website, engaged classroom, and more). I certainly am not complaining because I love everything that I am working on right now.The skill challenge is that I don't know how to do this guided reading stuff. I don't have a reading endorsement (though I will start on one as soon as time permits). I am majorly lacking in this area, and I didn't even know what this was until the 2nd to last week of my internship! I do have a great language arts consultant or specialist or whatever she is at the district level. She came out and gave some great suggestions about some things I could do, including having the kids read a driver license exam and talk about strategies for reading that difficult text. I will rely heavily on her. The QuestionWhat can I do with guided reading to make it more effective for my students, easier for me, and more beneficial for everyone? I am open to all suggestions.Have a Good Life.

Dang! I can't discredit this excuse anymore. 10 months old and she is full after just 1/4 of a paper.

After two long years of slipping undergrad courses in with my graduate classes*, I have finally obtained my Utah Educator's Level I License. As Staci says, I don't need a piece of paper to show that I am a good teacher. (While that may be true, I do need a piece of paper to keep my job, not necessarily good teaching skills. Is that backwards? Yes.)Anyway, I am glad to have my license, so only three more years of evaluations and I will be able to be a "career" teacher. Yippee for job security, if I make it that long!*For those of you who don't know, I graduated with my Bachelor's degree in English, with an emphasis in professional writing, and a minor in Russian. After graduating, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher, and so I went through Alternative Routes to Licensure. The program lets me take a bunch of classes while still having a real teaching job. Personally, I learned far more on the job than I ever learned in the classrooms, and I think I am a better teacher for it. Someday, I'll give my ideas for what a real teacher preparation program should look like.

As part of the Engaged Classroom project that our district is sponsoring, we got a sweet document camera, the AverVision 300AF+.It is perhaps the best piece of technology that I have added to my classroom. Here is why:It is easy to useEveryone can use it at the same time (by looking at it, not directly touching/using it)It allows me to modelI can record videosI can take pictures of what the camera is seeingThe students know exactly what they need to write down at each stage of an assignmentStudents (in Language Arts class) can receive immediate feedback from all students on their workIt is easier for students to keep up and stay engaged in the lessonIf you go to my school website, you can see some videos that I have made of reading strategies. They are pretty boring to watch, but my kids love it when I am doing it live.I did a small, very unscientific test, to see how well using this worked. In one class, I just gave instructions on an assignment with the document camera, and the students understood, had fewer questions, and paid attention for the entire time. With the other class, I delivered the same instruction, but didn't turn on the document camera. That class was more distracted, had more questions, and did the assignment at a lower quality.The document camera is a simple thing, but it makes a big difference in student understanding.Anybody else use a document camera? How do you use it? How can I use mine better?Have a Good Life.

Due to a grant by our PTSA, I was able to purchase 3 iPod Touches for use in my classroom. I was going to do some unboxing pics, but I was too busy watching Heroes last night to worry about totally geeking out. But, I did get a chance to snap a picture of the three iPods.Last school year, I talked about my dream of having these in the classroom. I still think it is a good idea, and I think that it will be beneficial for my students.I bought a bunch of applications, though most of them were free. I have a few that I have been thinking of writing myself (shh, don't tell my wife, she thinks I have too much on my plate already) but I probably won't ever get to it, because it takes so much time to learn something so new to me.The cool thing is that the kids love it. They would do any assignment I asked of them, just because it is on an iPod. So, where does that leave me?Here is my philosophy: I don't know what it is yet.I am bouncing around a few things.Students should use technology to do things that they would do anyways. For example, my students do a quickwrite every so often. Today, they entered their quickwrites in a form on our wiki and all their stories are in a spreadsheet on Google Docs. Students should use technology to do new things that they haven't done before. In other words, this should change the way I teach and the way they learn. For example, I made a video and put it on the iTouches for them to watch, and they received instruction by watching a video so that they could perform their next task.Students should use technology so that they are engaged and that is the only reason why.I am amazed at how my students have reacted to the technology in our classroom. They love it. They are much more willing to do what I ask when they get to use technology.I enjoy their enthusiasm for the technology, because it is something I share, also.Will you help me clarify my philosophy about technology?Have a Good Life.

In the last post, Lynda asked a bunch of questions about the iPods. I want to answer them here, because it will help me reflect more.1) How many students are sharing these 3 iPods?The students are arranged into guided reading groups of 5 or 6. They rotate to different stations around the room, and they use the iPods and share them during that station. So, two people share an iPod.2) What apps are loaded on the ipods?eReader - an e-book reader app.Stanza - another e-book reader app.Wurdle - A Yatzhee-type of word game.Word Whirl - You get seven letters and you have to make words that are from 3 to 7 letter long.World Wiki - A wiki for every country in the world.American Heritage Desk Dictionary - Apparently a pretty popular dictionary. Who knew?Declaration and Constitution - Some historical documents that most people feel are pretty important.iFlipr Lite - Flashcard app.Flashcards - A good flashcard app that allows you to add pictures and photos to the flashcards. Very much worth the $2.99Kid Book Envi - This is a cool app that allows you to read kids' books. Very cool.There are a lot of great apps and I will probably buy more, because there are so many neat things.3) How long is an ipod "session"?They get 10 minutes at each station, so 10 minutes on the iPods.4) How do you decide who uses the ipod? Is there a schedule? Is it time-based, or project-based?That is, does a slower student get more time than a quicker student?This is a good question, and I think that the students feel the best about the situation when they all get equal time on the iPods. One of the apps on there is a book reading app, and I may use that more in the future with the guided reading.5) Is time on the ipod used as a perk or reward?This is a touchy area of using technology. Technology is a privilege, not a right. I really want to use technology, and it is easier and more enjoyable for me, and so I try to not take it away. Well, these guided reading groups are not really easier, but they are worth it. I have had to take away the reading groups from one class, and I made that the punishment, not taking away the iPods.6) What is the ideal ratio of students per iPod?Ideally, I would want to have 1 student per iPod, but I don't think that is the best way to do it. I think having 2 kids on each iPod is good because they keep each other on task.7) Does the student do work on the iPod? On a computer? On paper?They do work on all three. Most of the work on the iPods have been watching instructional videos, where I am teaching something that I recorded previously and loaded onto the iPod.8) Do you download podcasts from the iTunes store?I have downloaded a movies from iTunesU that relate to the book that we are reading, Freak the Mighty. There are a lot of useful things from the iTunesU K-12 section that I will use, I am sure.9) Are the students creating their own podcasts? If so, are they audio only? Video?They eventually will create some sort of podcast, but that probably won't be done on the iPods unless I can get some microphones that work.I hope these answers are satisfactory for you. If anybody has any ideas, feel free to let me know.Have a Good Life.

The above video clip is a public service announcement about the Digital TV transition that will take place in February, 2009. Since the clip is from Hulu, I don't think you can view it if you live outside the US. I can't say I know how that woman feels, but I have seen this problem a hundred times. Have a Good Life.

I sold my car the other day so I could buy a new computer. I decided that I could make a better living by working on my own business from home, and so I decided to quit my job, effective immediately. Since I no longer had a car, my friend had to drive me to buy this new computer. It's icy out there...That is the premise for the movie I made a couple weeks ago. I made it to enter it into a contest online. There are not that many other movies, and the best 9 movies will be chosen from the top 20 as the winners. Judging by my competition, I think I have a pretty good shot. Here is the video, watch it, sign up for an account, and vote on my video. There is a good privacy policy, so you don't have to worry about them selling your information. Mozy is the company that is sponsoring this contest. I use the company for my online backup. They provide 2 GB of free backup for anyone on their home computer. It is automated, so you tell it what folders or files you want backed up, and it will upload them to the backup servers every night. I like that because I have all my work and grad school files backed up, and then I don't have to worry about losing them. If my hard drive fails, I won't lose all those documents. Here is a referral link, click on the free 2 GB link on the right side of the page, and you will get 256 MB free on top of your 2 GB.

Many people do New Year's Resolutions this time of year, but I have always thought that the reason those never stick is because people wait until a new year and then pile everything and decide they are going to change something about themselves. When I want to change something, I try to do it right away. If I don't do it, it must be because I don't really want to.My wife does this thing where she creates a word of the year to help guide her thoughts and dreams for each new year. She makes goals that she will think of when she sees or hears that word. I like this idea.Now that I have completed my Masters program in Educational Leadership, I can breathe. Recently, the desire to make the rest of my life more balanced has been weighing heavily on me. When you are in a graduate level program, it is pretty difficult to find time for much of anything that is not related to school. As Mrs. P. said once, homework follows you everywhere. Every time you think of something, homework is associated with it. The dentist has finally pulled that piece of gauze out of my mouth and, while there is that strange feeling of a void, it is refreshing and feels marvelous. The pain and frustration are over (for the time being). I have let other areas of my life slip by the wayside, and although my relationships with my wife and two beautiful daughters (one born 6 weeks before my first class and the other at the half-way point) have not slipped too much, there is much that needs fixing.So, for 2009, I am going to have a word that will help guide my life and bring me to better balance. The word is муха (pronounced moohkha). It means fly in Russian, as in the bug, not the verb.I chose the word that means fly because when I want something, I want it now. I need to teach myself to do things in little parts. The fly in the picture above is supposedly only 1.5 mm long. That is pretty small. It will be a reminder of how I can accomplish big things by focusing on small sections individually. I can't do everything all at once, but I can do a little bit each day. As I do that, I will not only fulfill my goals, but I will become a better person.There are four areas of my life that I need to keep balanced:FaithFamilyWorkLearningWhat I want to do is work on every part in little increments. Anything more than that would be detrimental to my sanity.Faith - Those who know me personally know that this is the most important thing in my life. It doesn't always show, though. The fact that I chose a Russian word is symbolic to me. I know Russian because I served a mission for my church in Russia, in Siberia, no less. It was almost the best two years of my life (I subscribe to my father's positive adage that the last two years of my life have been the best two years of my life, and it is true, by the way). The Russian word will remind me that not only did I have a great experience there, I don't need my spirituality to slacken because I am not completely and totally focused on that. Most of the things that I need to improve in this area really are little things that should not be difficult, but somehow they are.While I was on the mission, I kept a journal every single day. I could not have done anything better than that. This year, I want start transferring all those journal entries to a digital format. The current plan is to do blog posts for each day from my mission. It took me two years to fill those seven books, so I don't expect that it will take any less than two years to complete the task of transferring them. Little steps. Those two years gave me an immense amount of spiritual growth, and I think a way to keep growing is to catalogue those experiences with a little more wisdom and maturity to find the really important things.Family - My daughters need their daddy. My wife needs her husband. Having been gone nearly all the time it seems for the last two and a half years, I have let these amazing people slide to the background. This last semester I realized how important they are to me. In the summer, I was gone almost every day from sun up to sun down. I had my internship and classes, and meetings for work (and that dreaded "H" word). I rarely saw them. For the last four months with very few exceptions, I have come home and played with the girls. I have let Staci do her thing, for the most part. This has made our relationship better, the girls are happy, and I am happy. I am going to make sure that when the girls are awake, I am there for them, as much as I can be. I am going to focus on time in smaller segments. I will spend three minutes helping Katya with her physical therapy or speech therapy, or anything else she needs. I am going to give my emotional Cali the time and attention that she needs (I am sure those teenage years with her with seem like an eternity).Staci wants to go on more creative and interesting dates, and I am going to work hard to make sure we do that. Babysitting volunteers can sign up in the comments.Work - I am so busy at work. It is great, but I hate being so busy that I don't ever have time to do everything. I have started using the Tasks feature in my Gmail account since it is always open. That has and will continue to help me to break things down in small chunks and get things done. I have missed a lot of opportunities to apply for administrative jobs, and this year, I want to take small steps to make sure that I don't miss those opportunities this year. That includes things like creating a good resume, searching for openings in different places, and being prepared to make things happen when the time is right. The important thing here is just doing a little bit each week to improve my situation. I think I can do it.As far as teaching goes, it is my current job, and I better excel if I want a shot at moving into a better position. So, I am going to spend more time creating good, effective lessons that will help my students succeed. I'm not devoting a hundred hours to this, but when I plan a lesson, I will take just a little more time and think those ideas through a little bit more before I commit to any plans.Learning - I really debated whether I wanted this to be last or third. I would say that learning is my hobby. I love learning about anything.When I was in college I was a taking a web design class where I was learning how to write HTML and CSS code for designing web pages. My brother George did not understand why I was taking that class. I said that I felt that the Internet would be an important part of all our lives in the future, and I wanted to understand better how it worked. I figured it would only help me. He said that it was like everyone having a car. He said that there will be "internet mechanics" who will work on our Internet for us. Mostly, this is correct. Since I took that class in 2005, the Internet has changed a lot. Anyone can create a Web site that is much better looking than one that I could design. You could make 50 web pages before I could design one. Nonetheless, I feel that I learned valuable knowledge in that class. It helps me virtually every day. It taught me to think in a different way which has become very valuable in work and at home. Honestly, I think it has made me more optimistic: I believe there is a solution to every problem.This year, I want to learn how to write applications. I have never done anything like this, but I am very interested in it. Ever since Apple qnnounced that anyone could develop applications for the iPhone, ideas have been hanging out like an old college friend who could never decide on a major. I doubt that I will ever make any money developing software, but if I can improve my students' educational experience through a program that I write, I will be a happy camper.I hope that this year, I can learn some new things, be a better husband and father, and improve in ways that I feel deep inside are very important.Have a Good Life.Photo Credit: Equilibrium by Robert F. on Flickr.

About a month ago, I set up my computer to record the outside of a window at our school to see if kids were vandalizing another teacher's bird feeders. There were a couple storms that weekend in the valley, and I got some pretty sweet film of it. The clouds moving across the valley are beautiful.Have a Good Life.

A couple months ago, I decided that I should sell some of the books that I had for my Masters program. Many of the books are really quite good, but I doubt that I will read many of them again. Ironically, it seemed that the best books were the ones I happened to find in a library, and they are the books I felt I should actually buy, but never did. I have always hated buying textbooks. I actually don't really like buying any books. I feel like it is mostly a waste of money, when I can just get them at a library for free. I am an English teacher and I do love reading, but there aren't many books that I buy that I read more than once (and sometimes I don't even read them).I have a program called Delicious Library 2. It is basically a fancy-schmancy way to organize your books and other possessions. There are two killer features that make it a totally worthwhile purchase:Barcode ScanningOne-click listing on Amazon.comWhen you put a barcode up to your iSight (or any other webcam) Delicious Library searches Amazon.com for the item. If it finds it, then it downloads all the information for it from Amazon, without any input from you. It includes recommendations, retail price, current price (the lowest used price on Amazon) and other information. If Library cannot find your item on Amazon.com, it searches other amazon sites until it finds it. There have been a couple times that it has not been able to find my item, but it is pretty rare. In the event that it doesn't find it, I can go find it myself, and drag the address into Delicious Library, and it will create an item based on that web site. Very slick.Once I have all the information about my item, I can see if it is worthwhile for me to try and sell it. For example, the book "Getting to Yes" has a new price of about $10, but the lowest used price is just under $6. A book by one of my professors has a list price of about $20, but is currently selling on Amazon for $27. That is one that I certainly want to list. To list an item, all I do is right-click it or  hit Shift+$ and it lists the item on Amazon. I still have to go through all the condition and setting-the-price stuff on Amazon, but it is very easy. Way easier than listing on Half.com, which is what I used to use. There are a lot of other neat things about this program, but I these two features have made it very easy for me to sell 7 of my college textbooks that I probably won't ever read. Have a Good Life.

Acer is offering a 30-day trial of a desktop and a notebook to K12 schools. They are offering these trials, with the hopes that the schools that try them will purchase labs for their schools. I signed up and within a week, I got a call from their sales department and by the end of the week, I had the notebook I ordered in my hot little hands.The notebook is the Acer Aspire One Netbook. These are the specs:• Intel® Atom™ Processor N270 (512KB L2 cache, 1.60GHz, 533MHz FSB)• Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition• 1GB DDR2 533 SDRAM• 160GB hard drive• Multi-in-one card reader• SD Card reader• 8.9" WSVGA (1024 x 600) TFT display, Acer CrystalBrite Technology• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950• 802.11b/g WLAN, 10/100 LAN, webcamI was actually surprised that they sent this to me, because it looks like their best model. It has the same processor speed of our Dell notebook that we bought a few years ago, but this model has a built-in webcam, and a multi-in-one card reader.SoftwareSo far, this computer is awesome. I really like it. Windows XP does have its drawbacks, but it is pretty responsive and with the addition of PortableApps, it is even better. PortableApps are portable, free, open-source programs that are intended to be used on small flash drives. They keep all your data and history and everything on the stick, so that you can pretty much use them on any Windows computer. They are designed to be lightweight, easy on the resources, and fast. So far, they have delivered. I downloaded the non-portable version of Firefox 3 and it ran much slower than the portable version. There was a noticable difference.The netbook comes with an eRecovery program which will reset the computer to the factory default. As much as I have needed to reformat my other PCs in the past, this is a great feature, one that I am sure other companies have as well, but that I have never used. It works (I tried it, just for fun). Other than that, it comes with the standard schtick for XP computers.I downloaded iTunes on it, and that ran pretty slow. The videos were choppy. We went for a little drive yesterday and set it up for the girls to watch a movie. After downloading VLC and using that to watch it, the video was smooth and the audio was just fine. VLC allows you to turn the volume up to 200%, which is a good thing because the speakers are pretty weak. It is not bad if you are alone, but as I was trying to watch a YouTube video with my two girls screaming to be able to play with the computer, it just wasn't even close. They were too quiet and too tinny.HardwareThere are two things that I really don't like about it. First, the mouse buttons are on either side of the trackpad. Wicked annoying. The redeeming quality for the trackpad is that it has a flavor of my MacBook Pro's multi-touch trackpad. I can two-scroll, tap and drag, and right-click, all on the trackpad, without having to touch the buttons. It is still pretty fickle when it wants to wrk, and that is kind of annoying. I have gotten very used to not having any mouse buttons and I am surprised how much I like my freedom from buttons.The second big hardware/design flaw is that down near the hinge on the screen and the base, there are two sharp points on each side. Not cool. I catch my pants, fingers, and blankets on those all the time.The keyboard rocks! I thought that it would be very hard to get used to, but it is just the right size, the keys hit just right, and it feels very comfortable considering its small size. The webcam is not perfect, but it is good enough for a quick Gmail video chat, but I don't think the computer would handle much more advanced video conferencing. HD YouTube videos don't play well on here, so video conferencing would really take a toll.I did record some video in Windows Movie Maker of my daughters playing around, and it worked fine, so I think the camera would be good for most uses.I wonder if I could upgrade the RAM to 2GB and if that would make a difference.When the 30-day trial period is over, I have the option to buy the netbook for only $199. That is a great deal for a great computer. If you have the opportunity to sign up for the seed program, you really should go for it. In the next couple days, I hope to get a post up about using this as a 1-1 device, a purpose for which I think it is almost perfectly suited.Have a Good Life.