Tuesday, May 21, 2013

My New Year's Resolution (yes, I KNOW it's May, just give me a break already)

When I grow up I want to be a bit more like Lorri.  She blogs, tweets, and breathes academic technology. As I often point out, I'm only 29, so I have a few years before I can fully expect to benefit from the "age of experience."  I do, however, feel the need to get on the bandwagon and do some more of this stuff now. 

I mean, I went to that same conference she talks about in yet another blog post .  I took some notes and tweeted a bit (even came up with the #caistweetlyrics hash tag to inspire a writing storm of song lyrics to use during our 2014 retreat -- see image to the right), but when I look at Lorri's work, I admit I feel somewhat behind.  If backed into a corner, I'd throw some jabs about how I'm doing a lot of work on databases, budget, and project management, but I know that when I go back to my cave to lick my wounds, I would feel like I should have done more. 

I've done some sporadic things, but I'm hoping to keep it more consistent.  I'm pledging (at least for the rest of this academic year) to update this blog at least once every month with a fraction great things I've been lucky enough to witness in my work.



SCREEN SHOT OF COOL SCHOOL
COUNSELOR VISIT TRACKING
SYSTEM !!!!!

OK, I did spend a few hours today building a database to help our School Counselor track visits.
And then I hosted it online to try out a new Filemaker Hosting service, DataTrium...



So, hopefully that counts for something (even if she shoots it down and never uses it, it looks cool, right?)

And yesterday, Tony and I gave a brief summary of the workshop to a few key administrators.  I even showed how I could display timely, insightful, and lively information on any of our classrooms using the reflector app that Dirk introduced to us in the workshop.






 Tony was worried that they didn't ask enough questions after our brief presentation.  I said not to worry however.  We blew it out of the water by being succinct, direct and by inserting pertinent information at just the right moments, so they got just what they needed and were too blown away to ask questions.  

By the way.  I didn't ask Stephen Colbert if I could use that image, but if any of you know him and could put me in touch with him so I can ask about using it, that would be really great.  I think he and I would connect because we think a lot alike and so we could exchange ideas and stuff...