This one’s short. Week was long, online reading time was short. Some folks said there were long lines on election night right before the polls closed. Did they forget there’s a cool and convenient thing called early voting? I was in and out within five minutes.

Brain food…

No brain food this time. My brain was fried this week with so much going on with flu in the house and work. But I took the time to check out some funnies because we need to laugh more.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• All-Time 100 Gadgets: According to Time…
• University Website: Too true especially since I’m starting to visit more college sites with a kid who is a high school junior.
• The 100 Best Signs at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear: Long, but worth it.
• Book Cover Fail: Good reminder of the importance of the book design’s message matching the title. I couldn’t find this book anywhere outside of Fail Blog, so maybe it was an early draft that won’t exist in the final draft.

What are you doing this weekend?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

OK, the summer season doesn’t end until September 21, but this refers to summer off from school. I remember discussion about year-round school when I was a student and dreaded the idea. Of course, I changed my mind about that when I became a parent. It’s not about trying to keep the kids out of the house. They’d still get summer break, just not for such a long time that they forget what they’ve learned.

Year-round school also gives them a couple of more breaks during the school year to recuperate. Every single year — without fail — the kids start acting up by April. They’re burned out and tired by then. Back before Texas legislature intervened to create a single start date for the entire state (for the sake of tourism), we used to start earlier and get one week off in the fall. This worked well because it provided older kids with the opportunity to visit college campuses at a time when colleges were in session.

Can I just say I don’t like moving a blog from one software app to another?

Brain food…

• Wordnik Online Thesaurus: Backstory [Link: Therese Walsh].
• GovDeals: Sells surplus and confiscated items that can lead to great deals.
• How to Ensure 75% of Agents Will Request Your Material: Marcus Sakey elaborates on a talk he gave the resulted in many folks getting angry saying that this wasn’t possible.
• 7 Free Health Care Options: Not everyone has a spouse to rely on for health care…
• What’s the Single Best Thing You’ve Ever Done for Your Freelancing Biz? Inspiring and you might get some great ideas.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 12 Coolest Sticky Notes: Fun ways not to forget.
• 15 Great Geeky Comic Strips: Love “The Brads” poke at Comic Sans.
• Ken Ken: Sudoku addicts, ready for something different? Took me a couple of minutes to learn the game and play it. If you don’t know how to play it, this site has a great tutorial.
• Literary Classics as Decorative Word Posters: Wow. Also, Work of Art had an episode where the artists had to create book cover artwork for a classic. [Link: Jessica Strawser]
• LOL: The Recurring Prop Newspaper: See? Newspapers still have value… again and again. OK, maybe the reuse of this one is why they’re losing money… they’re not getting new editions

What’s one memorable thing you did this summer? (Or during the time between June and August 2010 as it’s not summer everywhere!)

Meryl's Dad with his parents

My dad wasn’t an outdoorsy beyond playing sports. Yet, he once took me fishing at a nearby lake. I don’t recall the lake or the actual time spent fishing. The picture that comes to mind is us leaving our home and getting in the car. We also had a great conversation because he taught me a new vocabulary word. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the word — just the experience of being with him and learning something.

I asked my mom about it. She said he took me to Lake Weatherford to swim and maybe Benbrook Lake to fish. (Both in Fort Worth, TX, area.) I learned something new about my dad. He liked fishing and used to go deep-sea fishing with his Uncle Abe and David in Atlantic City (Dad was from Brooklyn).

Brain food…

• What It Takes to Be an Agent: Love books, but don’t want to be an author? Learn about agentdom (or agenthood?).
• 4 Detective Tricks to Find Your Customers in Social Media: One of the key things businesses need to do before diving in social media is know where their target market hangs out online. Of course, you can jump into something and be an early adopter, but you still need to know this information before you plan.
• Pros and Cons of an MFA: Cute cartoon. I’d love to get an MFA or MLA in the future. I hope by the time I’m ready that there’s a local program or an online program (without video lectures) that fits. Why do I want to do it? Practice, feedback, challenge and education. [Link: Elizabeth Craig]
• How to Stand out on LinkedIn: Authored by LinkedIn VP, Steve Patrizi. Meryl’s LinkedIn here.
• A Writer’s Serenity Prayer: Rough day? Read this inspirational post.
• 5 Lies Unpublished Writers Tell Themselves (and the Truths That Can Get Them Published): #3 is my favorite.
• 12 Ways to Market Your Book by Giving Away Free Stuff. It can work… when done right and the article gives great examples. I don’t fall for those $300 worth of freebies, which includes a bunch of ebooks, articles and other stuff I never get around to reading.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Rubikcubism: Space invaders, Pac-man, Mona Lisa… who knew the befuddling Rubik’s Cube could do so many things. Beware that some of the pictures may not be safe for work. [Link: Bit Rebels]
• 65+ Incredible Soccer Action Shots and Portraits and World Cup Stop Motion Made with Lego – USA vs England: In honor of the World Cup action. [First link: bkmacdaddy]
• Super Mario Sticky Note Stop Motion: Wow, that’s patience.
• Hello Kitty Now in Star Wars and Star Trek: Amazing what adding a little ribbon does for Darthy’s personality. Too cute. My husband — father of our three children — loves Star Wars and Star Trek. So here’s 18 Astonishing Star Wars Sand Sculptures from BitRebels (obviously, I love this site) in his honor.
• A Geeky Stop Motion Animation Created With Fire: Cool. Just cool.

Share a memory of your father or a male role model.

My little guy with his teacher

I admired the incredible and teachers who inspired everyone in attendance last night’s Teacher of the Year event. Attendees donned red to signal they’ve been inspired by a teacher in their lives.

Each year, all the schools select one experienced teacher of the year and one beginning teacher of the year. Selected experienced teachers went beyond the expected teaching requirements. Beginning teachers show they have maturity, leadership and instructional ability to become an outstanding teacher in the future.

I don’t know how today’s teachers do it when I see the kinds of things my kids learn at a younger age. Plus, they communicate on a regular basis thanks to emails and phones in the classroom (not in my day).

One Teacher Who Inspired Me

My 10th grade English teacher was an inspiring teacher. I knew her before she was my teacher as her daughter and I played soccer together. I was relieved to finally leave the English teacher I had in my freshman year and somehow again in 10th grade. Awful teacher. Opposite of inspiring.

Shakespeare became interesting thanks to her. That year we did Julius Caesar and I had to memorize the “Friends, Romans and countrymen” speech. I dreaded memorizing poems, but the speech gave me a greater appreciation for the play. That year, we also read The Masque of the Red Death and The Telltale Heart and discussed the meanings behind the stories. I loved the discussions. Maybe that sparked my love for English and literature? Who knows. But I haven’t had many classes that led to interesting discussions like Mrs. Graves’ did.

Brain food…

• Stop! Look! Listen! Transitions for Writers: Excellent tips for dealing with big and small transitions. [Link: Debbi Ohi]
• Are You Really Going to Post That? Fabulous advice on thinking before blogging, tweeting and whatnot for writers. “It pretty much boils down to this: online stupidity can last forever and haunt your career.” I love the photo that accompanies the article.
• Writerly Tip: Know the Signs: Save time and read these signs of what to look for in an ad so you don’t bother answering the ad. Also, read Don’t Pay if you’re considering paying to join the Elances and Gurus.
• The most basic business lesson taught by World of Warcraft: “If you’re not open for business, no one can buy from you.” [Link: DJ Waldow]
• Should You Create a Facebook Fan Page? Jane’s right. “There’s no right way to do this.” I created a business Facebook page by trying to focus on the content — the platform — you get from this blog rather than my business. It needs work.
• How to Position Your Business in Three Sentences: Fill in the blanks. [Link: Valeria Maltoni]
• Nine Tips to Get the Most from a Writing Mentor: Love this post since it focuses on writing rather than basic business mentors.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• Molly and McGee: Owls in a barn on video 24/7. Molly is the female, McGee is her mate and they have four owlets. People are fascinated with these owls. You can also check out Molly’s blog and Twitter page.
• 8 Websites You Need to Stop Building: From The Oatmeal… you can always expect hilarity from ‘em.
• 12 Coolest Coffee Tables: Organized freak in me loves the Hexa Coffee Table. Most people have a bedroom set that includes a headboard and a small lamp table on both sides of the bed with one or two drawers. Mine has two mini-lights built in, shelves and three drawers plus space just above your head where I store my magazines.
• Top 10 Greatest Minor Characters in Geek Fiction: Characters come from Real Genius, Harry Potter, Star Wars and Princess Bride. Can you guess?
• French Ball Point Pen Art – Simple and Stylish: Wow. I love a good ballpoint pen especially blue and red ink with soft medium points.
• Inspiration: 33 Creative and Smart Print Ads You’ll Love: May be a couple not safe for work. Very creative work. [Link: Jon Ferrara]

Tell us about a teacher who inspired you.

Three generations

I’m a lucky daughter because I have a caring, sweet, intelligent and energetic woman for a mother. Growing up, I hated that she had all these evening meetings. Part of that was her job of seven years working for a community center that required nighttime meetings because they included volunteers with day jobs. Besides that, she was also on the board for non-profit organizations, and those meetings were at night.

Despite these meetings getting in the way, I’ve always wanted to be a regular volunteer like her. I volunteer almost every week, but not for as many hours as I would like — must balance my time between kids and business. She was even president of a local non-profit organization while pregnant with me and raising a 10-year-old and 12-year-old. (Yes, I was like an only child. No, I was not a “surprise.”)

She also did whatever she could to provide me with the support I needed to learn how to communicate due to my profound deafness. She drove three-year-old me to Dallas (an hour from Fort Worth) three times a week so I could go to Callier Center for speech therapy. I can’t tell you how many sad stories I’ve heard about people who were deaf and had parents that didn’t bother to learn sign language so they could communicate with their child. Just makes me more grateful for my mom.

P.S. Still need a gift for Mom? How about a computer game? Big Fish Games is offering 30% off on all games except Collector’s Editions and special deals. Or maybe you’ll like one of these far out ideas from Oddee. Gotta love the tee that says, “You can’t scare me… I have kids.”

Brain food…

• Show, Don’t Tell: Showing tells more and in a more interesting way than telling. I read these articles whenever I come across them because I need constant reminders and tips. [Link: Brad Shorr]
• What’s in a Publishing Contract?
• 5 Ways to Find Local Clients: You can apply a couple of these to find non-local clients. [Link: Karen Swim]
• Do You Need an MFA? When my kids are older, I’d love to pursue an online MFA. I’ve yet to find any — found some in other types of writing or media, but not MFA. Lots of short residencies, but not exactly what I’d like.
• SMU Cox School of Business Has Free Research Page: SMU Faculty Research Page covers accounting, marketing, finance and investing. May be a good resource for business writers. SMU rocks. I even attended the business school for one semester. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get a master’s from there — just not business.
• Tools to Help You Write with Resonance: Links to lots of readability tools and resources.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Paper Airplane: Building a World Out Of Paper: Whoa… How do artists do tiny little things like the food trays? With lots of patience…
• Unusual Wedding Cakes — Have Your Cake and Eat It Too! I admire cake designs and catch the cake contests on Food Network in the summer.
• 12 Coolest Covered Cars: Well, the glass car shouldn’t have any problems with theft.
• 25 Awesome Illustrator Cartoon Tutorials: Saving it here… love to try ‘em someday… which will probably never come. I can’t draw and always wanted to learn how to do it the computer way.
• 10 Most Unique Stadiums: Betcha you’ll say, “Wow” at some point.
• A Sampling of Chinglish: “Hot Marxism…” nuff said.

Share a favorite Mom or family memory. Or share why your mom or a special family member means a lot to you.

Gary Rosenthal Menorah

Congrats, Kathlin Sickel for winning a copy of Andy Hayes’ ebook. No matter how you spell it, Hanukkah is a minor Jewish holiday that grew because of Christmas. However, at least it’s fun — you can’t say that about many Jewish holidays.

Please vote for your top 25 books on writing.

Brain food…

• 7 Traits of a Good Twitter Friend: Could not have said it better and agree with it wholeheartedly.
• 7 Reasons Editors (Might) Toss a Submission (Plus Prompt): Does your book pass submission muster?
• Quit While You’re Behind: Why You Shouldn’t Be A Writer: Not listening… gonna keep on making a living writing… yes, siree. [Link: Guy L. Gonzalez]
• 11 Sources of Free or Low-Cost Training: If you’re unemployed, try to find networking groups in your area. They might know of programs that subsidize training.
• Questions for Small Business Owners to Consider Before Writing a Book: You may have a great idea for a book, but is it enough to forge ahead?

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Hanukkah: There’s gambling in Hanukkah. It’s called the dreidel game.
• How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell: In honor of all my web designer friends.
• A Doggy Christmas Surprise: And mine just sits there looking at me like I’m nuts.
• My Parents Were Awesome: Look at the kids now. Can you imagine them being mature adults? Look at the parents… can you imagine them acting like the kids?

• The Reality of a Times Bestseller: Think you have to go to 40 signings in one week, every conference, etc. etc. to have a best seller? Not in one author’s case.
• A Day in the Life of an Author: Great lesson for authors with new releases.
• 99 Free Online Classes on Business and Entrepreneurship [Link: SternalPR]
• How to get your press releases read, not trashed [Link: Susan Jacobsen]
• Productivity and Time Wasters in Social Media: Covers much of what I believe in when it comes to social media.
• 12 Ways to Reveal Suspicious Shortened URLs: Ching Ya put a LOT of time and effort into researching this for us. I use Firefox’s Longurlplz, but the drawback is when I do a RT in Twitter — copy/paste copies the longer URL and not the shorter version. So I have to right-click copy the URL to get the shortened version.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 10 Strangest Allergies: I think being allergic to water is the worst.
• Tech Support Cheat Sheet: I do all I can to avoid making the call to tech support. Google, knowledgebase, forums…
• Awesome Transformer Costume: Gosh, Halloween isn’t so far off. And it’ll be the last year of first grade pumpkin math for my family
• Google Sightseeing: Funny sights.
• Rubik’s Cube for the Visually Impaired: I think this is a great tool for everyone to sharpen his/her senses by wearing a blindfold. I can’t do it without a blindfold, so it’d be pointless to try with one

I went to a conference in Austin this past weekend for leaders of an education organization. I lucked out that the first speaker made an important point for all of us to remember.

A teacher goes to a conference and picks up great ideas to take back to her classroom. She gets home and puts all her notes into the filing cabinet. When do you think those notes see light of day? When she retires…

It doesn’t take much to pick up lots of new ideas and learn many new things in an effective conference. But c’mon? Who can remember all of this? Practice it? Put it to use? The president and I discuss the various ideas we picked up and realize we’re thinking too big and it feels like we face a giant to do list.

I can hear all the David Allen fans shouting. Instead, we agree that we need to pick three or four doable things and start with those. The notes won’t go away as we’ll use them to help us with those three or four things while reminding us of others. If we get those first items done, then back to the notes for more ideas and get the next round done.

In one of the sessions, the speaker kept walking past the front rows and I couldn’t lip read through her head. It wasn’t her fault as I never had a chance to give her a heads up. So I watched the presentation, which had just the right amount of notes for me and started working on an article.

I’ve submitted the article to the president. So that’s one idea done. Next idea is to submit an article in the local newspaper’s neighborhood Web site. Already, I’ve sent an email to the person I want to feature and it won’t take much to pull it together once I hear back.

I work as a historian for one of the boards I’m on. Ideally, it’d be lovely to pull together a page for the scrapbook covering the conference today. We haven’t decided on what approach or supplies we’re going to use yet as the committee is still forming.

At least, I’ve got a picture from the event. Just need to grab an accordion folder, print the picture, write a short caption on a sticky note and put it in the accordion folder sorted by month. When we decide, then all we need to do is pull out the photos and captions for the event and that’s one page.

The conference included evaluation forms for every session. I repeatedly wrote, “Please post materials on organization Web site.” We can’t all be in every session that interests us. I also requested a wiki or some forum where we could post our notes. Interestingly, the conference was at Austin Convention Center — the home of SXSW.

You can count on the attendees of SXSW Interactive to share their notes. They probably do the best job of it, making it challenging for all of us to figure out what to read and do. I captured all of my session notes on my laptop (easier to type notes than write notes since I don’t have to look down to type) and I want to share them.

Well, I’ve been home for about five hours and already I have an article, a blog entry, an email, and short to do list. A busy week awaits me, but I hope I will sneak in another thing or two to take what I learned further. What do you do after returning from a great conference full of fun and energy?

I believe in education for a lifetime, not just stop after college. I plan to take classes when time allows and eventually go to grad school — online preferably since lectures were rough on me (this is why). Of course, education doesn’t stop with formal classes. Reading books, researching a topic, and visiting related Web sites all contribute to learning. How To Study captures most of the strategies I’ve heard about.

Although, listening to music while studying perplexes me. I find when I listen to music and try to follow the lyrics, it distracts me from work. But perhaps to those with hearing, listening to songs is second nature where they can multitask.

Mindmapping makes a great learning tool. I’ve noticed that schools today focus more on mindmapping than when I attended school. My daughter’s 7th grade science class used a mindmapping tool. I haven’t relied much on this method and that’s probably due to the lack of learning and practicing the process.

Many resources — Web-based and downloadable software — make it easier to create flash cards. In my day, we used index cards or cut paper as flash cards. I’ve seen handheld-based applications for creating flash cards, so you can take them with you.

What studying tools and methods work for you?

My independent school district is big on technology and added several new services this year. Kids hate it. Parents love it and sometimes hate it.

Meals

We’ve been able to add money to our kids’ lunch accounts for a few years now, but they switched services to one that charges a small fee and allows us to pay for other things. PayPams offers more features including the ability to see what our kids buy for lunch. This is an excellent example of outsourcing. It would cost the district more money to expand its application than to outsource the service to a business that offers more features.

Last year, a kid stole money out of my daughter’s lunch account and we had to call the cafeteria manager to get a list of things bought. There it was. Hard evidence. An order on a day she was absent. Previously, kids only needed three digits to pay for their lunches. That’s changed to six digits. Plus, if a kid “forgot” his code — he could look it up in the list and see other codes.

Grades and Absences

This is the part kids despise and parents love, but sometimes hate. Not long after school started, we saw our daughter got a low grade and asked her about it. She couldn’t believe we knew about it and we told her about the new grade viewing application. Of course, she wasn’t happy that we can ask her about any out of ordinary grades.

But the drawback is that we panic more often than before. A couple of times, she had a low grade — when it came time for report cards, she got a good grade. Knowing how she’s doing helps us help her. She’s fiercely independent and usually doesn’t like to ask for help. She can also see what tests and quizzes are coming up (if the teacher enters it ahead of time).

Report cards don’t come out for over a week after the reporting period ends. We don’t have to anxiously wait for it and there are no surprises. Parents can also set up the system to notify them when a grade for a class falls below a number of their choice. The application also sends emails with grades based on the parents’ preferences.

One time I discovered she had an unexcused absence by signing on to the grade viewer. It was my fault and I corrected it right away. No waiting for the report card with the unexcused absence marked.

PTA

All levels of the PTA have great resources online. Guides for officers, logos for use in newsletters and web sites, rules for contests and much more. I manage the web sites for two school PTAs and one council PTA.

I manage the Reflections contest for one school. The form and rules are posted on the school’s PTA web site — so no killing trees by leaving forms at school where the middle schoolers often take for doodling purposes. I left forms at school in the office plus I made small postcards with the web address and spread them throughout the school.

Sports

I can see how other school volleyball teams are doing. I knew about the web site, but thought there was no information on volleyball because the pages were blank. The coach confirmed that this was the place to go for scores. I didn’t dig deep enough (the site isn’t well designed — even Paul thought the same thing).

The site shows scores for all middle school and high school sports. The scores, however, depend on the coaches entering the information.

School District Information

Our local district sends an email newsletter and schools can create their own distribution lists for sending emails. My child’s middle school emails every Friday with the upcoming week’s events along with any news and announcements.

Volunteers must register every new school year because the district runs criminal checks. Volunteers could commit a crime any time between school years. Our district’s web site allows us to register online every year. We have to do one thing offline — have a form notarized for the school.

The district’s web site also provides a web page for each school so we can get email addresses, contact names and phone numbers, and links to the school’s official web page. We also access grades, absences, and meal accounts from the web site.

Our newsletter editor and volunteer hardly has to set foot outside her home to get the newsletter approved and copied. She emails a PDF version for approval and then emails it to the printer for printing and delivery.

School Cam

My youngest attends preschool and we can view his classroom as well as a couple of central rooms like the gym and playground. Parents can only access the room their children are in and not others. I love checking on him and watch him interact with other kids. Kids tend to behave differently around parents, so it’s great seeing how he is with other kids.

What technology have you seen schools use to help parents and children?