Calendar Awesomeness

I like blogs that get right down to business, so I'm going to go straight to the important stuff here and then if you feel like reading about why I wrote this blog you can keep going. 

If you do, I promise you a good laugh at me and my ridiculousness by the end (rolls eyes).  

Here goes: 

How to Get in The Google Calendar Game:

There is plenty written about this, so I'll just provide some links.

1. Get a Google Account if you don't have one. This will give you access to Gmail (though you don't have to use it), Google Docs (another amazing collaboration tool), Blogger (which is how I'm writing this blog right now), and tons more.

2. Go make some Calendars. This link is for a 9 minute video for those of you who like to walk through set-up with a video tutor. But Google Cal is pretty intuitive, and you'll get pretty far by just playing with it. If you need to know how to get to it...just go to a Google search page and look at that top black bar.

3. Share. Just like with our kiddos. Share your tools :)

4. Sync your Calendars with your laptop and other devices...if you want. This link is to a blog post that gives good details about how to do this. But know that this step is only a convenience. Even if you don't sync, your Google Cal is available everywhere just by going to it on the web. :)

Note: Yes, it will sync with Android as well, but I didn't put a link for that here. If you want a hand with that, leave me a comment and I'll find a good resource for that too!

Now here's the rest of the blog about why you should do Steps 1-4 above!

At school last week we started a Calendar conversation. 

I made promises of Awesomeness. 

I stand by those promises, because...i.LOVE. my Google Calendars. 

I have 17 of them (yes one of them isn't showing up in this picture if you're the type who just counted.  I'm positively fond of you, if you're the one who just counted. hee.)

But change is never easy and many of us have other calendars we already use and don't want (need?) one more system.

Absolutely!
We should never add technology layers if they won't make things simpler, easier, more efficient, more collaborative, etc.

My litmus test for my teachers this year is this:
Will this technology save them time and effort while helping them do what they do (engage kids in meaningful learning) even more awesomely?   

If the answer is, "no but it's a neato technology...," then I won't bring it to them. That's my commitment to the Rockstars I work with.  In the case of Google Calendars though, there is so much potential for simplicity, time-saving and collaboration over any other tool available to them that it's well worth bringing to the table. (And it's free...what?!)

What are the benefits:

• Google Calendars can be shared. This means that I can set up a Calendar for my team, share it with them and now we all can make changes to it, see each others schedule, etc. At school, our Principal can put important info (assemblies and recess duty) on a master calendar and the teachers can all see it in real time right up against their own personal calendars. That brings me to the next awesome feature...

• Google Calendar can send you a Text or Email reminder. So in the case of my teachers, they can go into the Principal's Master Calendar on their recess duty entry and ask it to send a reminder to their phone the night before they are due on the playground. The beauty of this is they didn't have to remember to add their duty schedule to their personal calendar. It's already there on the shared one! They just ask for a reminder.

• Everything is in one place and available wherever I have internet access. I can log on to any computer or internet device anywhere and have access to my calendar. I don't have to be on MY laptop. I can also have access to my boys schedule and my husband's work schedule

• Everything can be Simplified. But I don't have to look at everyone's calendars most of the time. I can turn them on when I need to check and right back off. 

Now the part where you laugh at me.

Yeah. That's us the day I remembered to take him to 7th grade.

I believe in humor as much as I believe in leveraging technology. This is why I often do stupid things. Remember this blog post about my parental awesomeness?

I'm happy to report that we do have improvement since the first day of 6th grade, because we did in fact make it for the first day of 7th grade this year. 

We celebrated with cake.

However...

Today I forgot him at Cross Country practice. Didn't even think about him until my phone buzzed at 17 minutes past. 

Ask me why I forgot him. 

I was writing a blog post about how awesome Google Calendar is because you can have it send you text reminders so you won't be late picking up your kids.

Yeah.

He laughs at me, this boy. I do too, thank goodness. (I've always said, "if your kids know you're really, really crazy about them you can make a lot of mistakes and they'll be ok." I've now added, "but start a therapy fund just in case...")

I just set a reminder that will buzz my phone 17 minutes before I'm late next time.
Did I mention that I love my Google Calendars?

Setting Your Computer / Projector Display Options

Are you having trouble getting your Computer / Projector to project the way you want?

Everyone's Projector / Computer / Doc Camera combination is different so there isn't one easy solution, but here's what I've discovered works the best the most often...

Connect the Computer to your projector.
Open your Display Settings. You might have it up in your menu bar.

Or you might get there by going to Apple>System Preferences>Displays

First you want to make sure your Mirror Display is turned on. It looks like this:

And then go back to the Display tab and choose the setting that is 1024 x 768. There will be another window open titled Color LCD (or something similar) Set that one to 1024 x 768 (stretched).

It looks like this from the System Preferences window

and it looks like this from the Menu bar

If you set these and then disconnect, it should come back the way you left it the next time you turn it on...unless you click on the "Turn Off Mirroring". That sort of resets everything and you'll have to put them back again.

It's not perfect, but setting things this way has given me the best results so far. Let me know if you have a better system for making your display awesome!  And Good luck!

Update: I'm also having better luck on a few systems with the 1152x720 setting. Try both.

Wishing SMART was Smarter...

It's the start of a new year, and for many of us the start of Mac's new Lion operating system.
Woohoo?

Here at Highland that also means many of us got switched to the new SMART Notebook version 11 which looks and acts different than it did last year. Here are two things we're noticing.

1. There is this little SMARTInk Layer button that seems to show up on everything now. Why?

Here is a short little video that explains what it is and how to use it.

It can be kind of handy, but if you don't like it you can turn it off when you disconnect your SMARTboard.  Just click that little down arrow and choose Erase and Hide. (This option only shows up when the board is disconnected).

2. The other thing we've noticed is this obnoxious display glitch when you try to go full screen!

Yes, this a ridiculous issue. Why don't we have the option of making "Entire Page" the default? Why wasn't that already the default?  Here's me wishing SMART had been a little smarter on this one...

Backing Up Your Data

Just like Bookends... I blog at the beginning of the school year and then again at the end. Oh brother! Such is the life of a busy student, I guess. Ha!

Here we are, at the end of the year, and we need to Back Up all the pictures and videos of those precious little faces.

I get a lot of questions about what external hard drive to buy, how much it will cost, etc. It changes, of course, but I did a little digging around and here's what I know as of today:

How Big of a Hard Drive do I Need?

If you make movies a lot you'll need way more.
If you don't save pictures or movies you'll need way less.
Here is an article that describes  the Megabyte-Gigabyte-Terabyte thing. It's helpful.
But here's the short, un-scientific version:

• 1MB -Is about the size of the information in a medium sized novel.
• 1GB -Is a little over a thousand Megabytes (a thousand novels?)
• 1TB -This is about the same amount of information as all the books in a large library or 1610 CDs worth of data. 

How does this translate to pictures and movies? Depends.
I bought a 320GB a few years ago. I put about 7 years of family photos on it plus a bunch of other stuff and it's only about one-third full today. Does that help?
Really high-res photos and videos take up more space.

What Hard Drive Should I Buy?

You can get a 500GB for around $70 right now. Here are a couple with good reviews, but you might check for sales at Costco or OfficeMax.

Seagate -$70

Western Digital -$65

If you bump up to a Terabyte you're looking at around $100

Here's How to Partition Your Drive

Can I Use the Same External Drive to Backup My PC and my Mac?

You can, but it takes a little fudging with.
Here's a great article about how to make that happen. It even has a video that will walk you through it. (I have to do this to mine.  It was set up for my PC out of the box, so my PC files are saved to it. I can get files off of it and use them on my Mac, but I can't save Mac files to the drive...yet. I think I'll partition it, like the article says)

First Class Email Magic

My job is fun...mostly because people insist on being fun.
Really! Here's an example.
I often get asked questions about First Class email. I'm not the authority on it, but we can usually solve whatever the issue is and then after we've finished, it never fails that the person then asks me this:

"Hey, do you know how people get that cute little icon in front of their name when they send emails?"

I love how many people insist that if there is a way to make email more fun...they want it. So this is for you my fun friends. Have a penguin or a popsicle if you must. Mine's a sailboat, and maybe in January I'll find a palm tree!

But first we'll do the important one. Here's a short video on how to create your email group lists (for classroom parent lists and such) and also how to share them with your team so that they don't have to type those email addresses in too!


How to Create and Share an Email List in First Class

   ...and How to Add that List to your Contacts once you get it.

How to set your Cute little Outgoing Mail icon in First Class

How to make an automatic signature on your outgoing mail in First Class

Printers 2010-'11

How to Add a Printer on your Mac



List of Highland Printers