Past Student E-mail

This is a post regarding an email I just received today.  I often wonder if I push students too much (yes they complain and say nobody else makes them do this much work -Except Mr. Swett).  Student will tell me that they sign up for classes that they don't have to do as much work in.  So therefore my classes have lower number and because I am an elective it puts my job in jeopardy.

I feel this email reinforces I am doing the right thing.  But how to get more students to realize it?  Any advice?

Hello Mrs. Grassel,

I’m not sure if you remember me from several years ago…but I took accounting my Senior year. I just wanted to share with you something really cool. I’m a 2 degree (junior) at the Air Force Academy right now, and I just started my majors classes this semester. I am a business management major, and one of our first required courses is financial management. Out of a class of about 20+ students, I’m the only one who has had any prior accounting classes. The coolest part…even after almost 4 years I still remember almost everything you taught…Our college course looks like it’s going to be exactly what we did in high school, just with a “college text”. Thank you so much for teaching passionately and well! 

Hope everything at school and home is going great,

Ben Fischl 

Makes me proud to be a teacher! :) 

FBLA Seymour Officer Make a Calendar & More Google Apps

It is so wonderful to work with students and see them excited for what they want to do.  Today was the day where Seymour officer plan their year.  I had prior today worked with Taylor (our president and current state officer) on ideas and thoughts for the year.  This was easy to do because we have spent over 2 weeks together this summer as well as the constant emails and text messages about projects.  Using gmail accounts I am hoping will make it easier to communicate, but I have to get the entire officer team use to login in and checking email (it is too slow and cumbersome, I will probably text them to check email).

We started the day talking about ideas and thoughts for the day and goals for the chapter.  We did a lot of talking at Local Officer Training in the Dells but three officers could not make it, so this was to be the time for the entire team to pull it together.  Unfortunately two officers did not show (I know they were out of the country early this summer but they had said they would be back by August 10, which is why we picked this date).  Anyway we had to work, so ides and projects were just assigned to them.  I took the ideas and dates and put them into the shared google calendar that I created.  Again I am hoping this will help them to realize time commitments.

Here is a screen shot of just one of our months that we planned.  We still don't have concession dates in the calendar because . . . . well I am not going to talk about it.  It makes my blood boil.  Anyway here is a screen shot.

Such is the day and life of an adviser of FBLA  I do really enjoy working with the students but you can see how my calendar is pretty busy and that does not include work assignments and of course family.

The day went very well, after I was done finishing the calendar for everyone the work for Freshman Orientation was completed.  We have a presentation to all incoming Freshman on the importance of being involved in extra-curricular in high school.  We don't just focus on FBLA, but all activities and sports and what it can do to help.

Also planned was permission slips for trips to Madison and Milwaukee.  The homecoming float design is done and I will have pictures after the parade (it should be fun).  We are having committees to work on all of this, so we have to get officers ready to have club members help with the projects.

I was at school from 8 to 4.  I did have a lengthy converstation with Andy our Tech Guru about Google apps and what he learned in a Webinar he did today, because I knew it was over my head.  He said he would do the serve side work, BIG SMILE.  He did give me some research on cost and size issues with a depolyment the size of the high school.  So I will be having more blog post on that topic.  I estimated that I would like to have it ready to roll out to the entire building at the start of 2nd Semester, but deploying and testing with students and staff during 2nd quarter.  I hope that is not too far off, but I also want to plan some training in there with my new Technology Coaching hours.

After work at school I came home and finished two photobooks I wanted to have done for FBLA.  I would say I have had 3 hours of work to create these albums for FBLA and tonight I can say they are ordered.  I will then have them for Freshman Orientation on August 22.  Here is a link to the blog post with one of the albums.

11 hours of work today.

Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Classroom Set up-day 2, technology coach?

So before and after my work today on Quickbooks I was also trying to setup my classroom.  Things that I know I still have to do, receive and put away all the ordered material.  Including stamping all the new books for Office 2010 that we are getting.  Separate books for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and of course Publisher.  That fun still awaits me.

I did have the privilege of talking with our district technology guru today (what a nice guy :) ).  I shared with him a problem that I noticed on my machine, and thought might cause some problems for teachers/staff unable to find a solution.  So here it is: when I click on my documents it gives me an error message saying it can't be found.  I can very easily find it by clicking on my computer and then clicking my drive on the server, but any spot in windows that says my documents use to go to my drive on the network now doesn't work.  Andy (the nice computer guru) changed some things (I know technical term) on the network in order to manage it better (YEA!), but this is what cause the problem.  The direct point to my files on the server location is wrong, so I think it will be wrong for everyone at the high school ??  So is it better to know and fix now, I hope so otherwise there will be a lot of tech support tickets going out on it.

I also talked with Andy about getting my computer up to Windows 7.  My entire lab is Windows 7 and I thoroughly believe I should be demonstrating within the same environment that that the students are working in. So we had a big discussion on Windows Licensing and and nice new automation to work with Windows using a KMS update (I am hoping that I am remembering it correctly) and how this great automation system is not working and he is working to determine what the issue is.  Good Luck!

After my quickbooks session I was then able to meet with my Principal and Vice Principal to discuss the schedule for next year and what it looks like for the business department.  My district has been great on maintaining high moral for employees through the issue happening in Wisconsin and to teacher unions, so I was nervous to find out what they really wanted from Cindy and I.

Reduced funding means reduce staff.  How is this happening?  Not hiring back all the retirees that left, some positions are going unfilled and others are being filled by half-time staff, but I always hear on how they are looking to best suit the needs of the students.  Cindy is going to be working a some capacity in the Middle School.  She has done this previously and is very willing and excited to do this.  The problem being is they don't know what she is teaching or even what grade.  Let me tell you this dose not sit well with her.  Cindy is a great planner and likes to have the time to think through what she will be doing and what is the best way possible to attain this.  I know she will be do a fantastic job, but I was really hoping that this meeting would alleviate some of her stress, alas not yet.

I had for most of last year meet with the principal for 1 prep period a week talking about technology and where we can go and what Seymour can do.  I know we missed weeks, but I can't say how much this has helped our communication.  Prior to last school year I didn't feel appreciated or valued for my knowledge or contribution to the school, so I am glad to have put the time in to build that relationship.  So what does that mean for my schedule?  I am now going to have time during the day to teach teacher technology!  Yippee!  I have lots of ideas, exciting (just hope I don't lose contact wit my FBLA kids).

I did ask for a statement or sheet from my principal and vice principal on their goals/vision or thoughts on what they would like to have accomplished during my time.  I have ideas, but I need to make sure that we are both on the same page.  So if you have ideas on how I can help get the technology train moving.  Let me know.  I know one of my first steps is Google Apps up and running for students and staff and the school (then training them on how to use it).

So busy day 6 hours on my previous post on quickbooks and 3 hours on this.  Don't forget you can click on the link on the right to see my total hours work today.  Current I am 221.5 hours since school got out.  That is over 5.5 weeks if you say you work 40 hours a week.

Quickbooks for Professional Organization

I have used the software quickbooks in my accounting class, because it is good for students to understand and be familiar with what is used by many businesses and organizations.  I do have 2009 loaded on my classroom lab and I used it exclusively for main tainting the school's concession stand inventory and billing.  It works great!  I did take some time to learn and sometimes I had to not think in terms of the basic debit/credit double entry accounting that I go over with the students.

Today I had the pleasure to work with a colleague to get quickbooks up and running for WBEA (Wisconsin Business Education Association).  Previously all our book work was done in excel (which can work, but just more cumbersome).  The hard part was thinking about what we really needed the software to do for the organization and what members are use to seeing.  The current treasurer Allie Holtzer is doing a fantastic job, but  we worked together along with Cindy Otto on streaming the work in order to be able to create budget figures for the budget committee and a profit and loss statement for our activities.

The fact that our fiscal period runs from July to June is very much in alignment with how school districts do their funding.  It works great, except that our convention is held in September and many people pay registration in May (unearned revenue for the current year) and also pay membership dues for the upcoming school year (again unearned revenue).  So why the big deal.  It does not show a true representation of the revenue and expenses for activities happening withing the fiscal period.  So the research begins, Cindy headed up how to initial record the unearned revenue (or even expenses) for the current fiscal period.  My job was to work on getting the chart of account set-up to make it easy to work with the prior year's budgets and with the unearned revenue and expenses (and also to be able to import a CVS or .xls file instead of typing them all in).

It was determined for unearned revenue to debit cash and credit an account classification of Other Current Liabilities.  Then on the first day of the next fiscal period do adjusting entries to get it out of the permanent liability account and into it correct income account. A similar procedure was set up for unearned expenses but   cash would be credited and a debit to an account classified as Other Current Assets.  This will then keep all current expenses and revenue within the correct fiscal period (cross your fingers).

The next big decisions was how to deal with the enormous amount of accounts.  For example we had 6 different accounts for registration.  So do we make accounts called membership registration, convention registration etc..  We determined the use of the class system would best serve our needs.  When any transactions take place you choose the account registration and then choose the class convention.  It is also much easier to create a profit and loss statement for every event or class we have.  We did have to make sure that we had matching other current asset/liability accounts to make the adjusting entries easier and the beginning of the next fiscal period.

We spent 6 hours working on just getting the software setup and being able to enter just a few transactions.  Now my friend Allie is going to back track and enter in all of the 2010-2011 fiscal period transactions into this new format, so we can have budget figures for next year and accurate financial statements for our upcoming convention

Organizing Classroom

So I went to school to get my room ready because of summer cleaning and new items being brought in.

The day started with logging into the computer and then doing updates on all the software that has updates for the summer.  I have been using Google Chrome more and I did download that browser and I worked on getting it setup and personalized to increase my productivity.

I was also able to go through and create gmail accounts  for the Seymour FBLA officer team and a created a shared calendar so that the officers will be organized and prepared for the meeting we will be having this week.I am continually thinking of ways to make the students more in charge of the organization but that means I need to be even further ahead.  I am getting there, especially because I have such great other FBLA advisers that share ideas (Jan I, Michelle M, Cindy O, & Jen W to just name a few of the awesome advisers that I some day hope to be more like).  I did take the html embed code for the shareable calendar and embed that on the Seymour High School's FBLA webpage.  I admit I don't update it often because I don't know how often it is referenced, but I hope this will help.

I of course did send a lot of emails, when don't I.  I was trying to coordinate a meeting with my administration for the upcoming school year.  Which makes me think of organizing the concession stand calendar and dealing with individuals that are not as passionate as myself for the endeavor. I am trying to remain calm!

I have yet to double check to see if my student computers are set up correctly.  I usually just check a few to be sure it is all there.  Nothing like planning a lesson and then discovering the software doesn't work and is not loaded.  Here is the dilemma if I login I have admin rights and it works but students logging with with fewer privileges it sometimes doesn't work.  I will have to come up with a work around for that.

The day was productive, but never productive enough.  It was nice to ride my bike to school (plus Gordon rode his bike to day care for the day and loved it).  I worked 6 hours and could have work a ton more.

I did go pick my my personal PC from the repair shop (botched unpartition of the C drive came up with a bad boot file for Windows) but when I went to set it up I discovered my LCD monitor was not working.  So of course I took it apart.  Here is what it looks like

Google Apps Webinar

I signed up at watched a Google Apps Seminar today.  It was for IT admins (which I am not), but I wanted to have an understanding of what needs to go into rolling out Google Apps for our school.  One thing I now know is that I need to know more.

The topics covered were: Organizational Layout, Mail Flow, User Provisioning, Data Migration, and Authentication

Organizational Layout:
Making sure that you have groups setup in order to set policies for different users.  For example students to use gmail but the teachers still continue to use exchange.  In order to do this it is important to have a seperate domain name for students.  Teachers would have seymour.k12.wi.us  but what should we give to students?  students.seymour.k12.wi.us  that seems logical but is a very long address for the students to remember and they already don't like to use email because it is so slow and cumbersome vs texting.

Mail Flow:
My understanding is that teacher email would be unaffected but I will need to research wether we need to have student emails archieved.  If they do then we may need to set up and use postini? I don't know our school's policy so research will be needed.

User Provisioning:
This is my biggest concern!!!  Who is going to update and maintain all the users. I know I do not want to type in 800+ users.  They did talk about using a CSV file to upload but then at the end of the year you need at add more users and delete graduating students and who is going to take the time to do that (not ME).  They did discuss the use of active directory sync to manage users and I strongly feel that is route to go.  I don't know how that will integrate with PowerSchool so again more research.  Another plus of active directory sync there doesn't need to be anyone with a work ticket to reset passwords when a student forgets it (which is all the time).

Data Migration:
Ok, by this point my mind was wandering.  But who is going to migrate the contacts/calenders?  Does it go to to the users to do?  Or does the IT department do  it.  There are pluses and minus to each.  If IT does it all data is migrated even if it is old and isnt' used, and you are only limited by your bandwith size. Users migrating means that they have to understand what to do, which is training.  I think we need to do more technology training, but not this type of training.

Authentication:
You can either authenticate using Google Authorization or SAML 2.0 SSO (I don't know what the second option is).  I like the thought of using Google Authorization because you can log in anywhere using any Google login site.  That means on your mobile device or any Google page that has a login.  I did get that the second options was for organizations that wanted to security and passwords on their servers.  It seems like more work to me.

The end of the presentation suppose to be about Wisconsin Google Apps for Education but there was a problem with the presentation.