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?

If I could, I’d take at least one class at all times. By now, I’d have two masters degrees and maybe even a PhD. Well, maybe not that. It’s a shame that online degrees didn’t exist when I was in college or was mostly by correspondence (snail mail). I took my first non-class course in high school in history. I completed all the assignments and mailed them back. Then I took the exams in the counselor’s office.

Online courses are a wonderful experience for me as I don’t miss a thing unless the institution uses online lectures through headsets. I’m glad I went to a traditional college and had the typical four year experience. But I don’t miss sitting through all those lectures where I was bored out of my mind because I couldn’t decipher a professor’s accent, mumbles, or fast-talk.

Every now and then I search the Web for online grad programs to see if anything new pops up that catches my eye. I’d love to apply for Texas Tech’s masters program in technical communications or an online masters program with some focus on writing or journalism. Alas, I don’t have the time to devote to it as I have to make time for other things right now. But it’ll stay on my radar as my life won’t stay the same and opportunities will come.

Anyway, here are free online courses. Just because they’re free doesn’t mean they’re useless as you’ll see some have instructors and discussion forums. Online courses have the advantage of being available 24/7 so those with busy schedules can review the material any time that works. This list is updated from time to time.

About U
http://u.about.com/

About.com’s About U sends courses by email on a daily or weekly basis and helps students learn a specific skill or solve a problem. There are no grades or degrees. Courses include Christmas Carols, motorcycles for beginners, and Dallas metroplex trivia. Courses obviously cover a diversity of areas.

Barnes and Noble University
http://university.barnesandnoble.com/index.asp?z=y

Barnes and Noble University offers courses and reading groups every month taught by an expert in the field, and sometimes the instructor is a bestselling author. Courses fall into one of three categories: Liberal Arts, Life Improvement, and Reading Groups. Get deeper insight into the Picasso’s art and cubism, analyze dreams, and learn golf basics.

CNet How-To Online Courses
http://courses.help.com/

Buying a home theater? Take a home theater basics class. CNet courses cover technology and consumer electronic topics for registered CNET members. CNet’s subject matter experts lead the class discussions. Classes aren’t in real-time, so you can log in whenever you wish to follow discussions in the classroom comment blog.

HP

http://h30187.www3.hp.com/index.jsp…

HP has instructor-lead online courses that are available 24/7. Each course has two to ten lessons with some having quizzes, assignments or both. A course has a start and end date during which lessons are posted. Lessons (depending on the number for the course) are posted twice a week and are available 24/7 until the course ends. Courses also have a message board (forums or bulletin board) so students can interact with each other and the instructor.

LearnOutLoud
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video

LearnOutLoud offers free educational audio and video courses. You can search by category and subcategory. The site also has a search box, but it may include non-free courses in its results.

MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

One of the best universities in the country that costs thousands of dollars provides free access to MIT’s course materials. You won’t get a formal class, but the opportunity to review over 1250 courses in a diversity of fields. Looking at a sample course, you get the syllabus, readings, and projects. Just no formal grading, discussion, or lecture. Some courses are available in other languages and the one I looked at is available in Spanish and Portuguese.

Radio Shack
http://learningcenter.radioshack.com/

Radio Shack’s free courses include two to eight lessons and may have quizzes and assignments. Courses have a start and end date. Courses typically cover home technology. In other words, showing customers how to use the things they buy from the company’s stores.

SBA Free Online Courses
http://www.sba.gov/training/courses.html

U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) links to many high quality online courses sorted by subject areas such as starting a business, government contracting, and business management. I’ve seen Hot Shot Business Simulation for young enterpreneurs and it’s superb.

Test Prep Review
http://www.testprepreview.com/

Practice for PSAT, SAT, GMAT, GRE, and many other standardized tests. The site also offers test prep resources.

World Lecture Hall from University of Texas
http://web.austin.utexas.edu/wlh/

World Lecture Hall has been around for a while and like MIT, offers access to course materials. ” Some courses are delivered entirely over the Internet. Others are designed for students in residence. Many fall somewhere in between. In all cases, they can be visited by anyone interested in courseware on the Internet — faculty, developers, and curious students alike.”

Updated: November 9, 2006