Check out this article, which will be aired on ABCNEWS tonight. As most of you know, many students and young people are moving their conversations, relationships, and overall communication to social networks, chatrooms, and instant messenger. I have to admit that I have jumped on the bandwagon and I’m quite pleased with the ease and accessibility it offers. It makes everything easier and faster. Yet…there is one drawback…and I see it in my students. They take their bullying to the internet and their ability to interact in person declines, because they don’t do it enough. Students HAVE to go to school and interact, so the affect isn’t as extreme as those adults who can do everything from home. This article explains that companies are saving enormous amounts of money by ridding themselves of buildings and allowing their employees to get their work done through teleconference calls and the internet. Please don’t misunderstand me…I’m not saying we should destroy the internet and forget about these new tools. I am merely throwing out the thought that we can’t forget about how God made us: to be relational beings and to develop the connections between others. Will this new way of getting work done negatively affect our relationships or will it allow us to be on mini-vacations from mon-thurs at home while having a conference call on Friday morning? I’m excited to see where it goes and how our world accepts these changes…I’m ready!

Lately I’ve been frustrated by having a laptop at school and a desktop at home.  I enjoy having 2 computers at my disposal, but I don’t want to wear on my laptop by the everyday traveling, so I’d like to leave it at school.  I decided that I needed a place to keep all my info (pics, video, music, and files) in a central location that could be remotely accessed.  Did this exist?  So…my search began.  I found a few apps available for download around the web with varying degrees of installation complexity.  Eventually I stumbled upon a new product put out by Western Digital.  They have something called a MyBook World Edition I or II.  It has from 500Mb to 2 Tb of hard space.  Unbelievable!  It is remotely accessible from any computer and you don’t need your own IP address!  Remember those days of carrying around tapes/CDs, videocassettes, books, photoalbums, and paper files?  Now, you can access hours of video, thousands of albums (pics or music), and documents galore from any computer with an internet connection.  We take it for granted, but it’s an amazing feat!  Our children will take these gifts for granted–just like we do with cars, airplanes, telephones, and teflon.   Enjoy them and thank God everyday for the talents He’s given us and make sure you teach the young ones to use this technology wisely and for the benefit of others.

Those of you that read this know that I had 6 goals for the summer…well…I realized that next time I should estimate an amount of time that each one would require!   I feel like it’s been a successful summer and I’m pumped for school to start, but here’s the update:  1-Get my golf score average between 80-83.  I took lessons and they were awesome!  Yet, I didn’t have enough time to get into the low 80s.  I did straighten out the driver, increase length, improve the chipping and keep myself in the low 90s.  2- Use my perfect pitch CDs and teach myself Perfect Pitch.  I got through 4 of the 30 lessons…gotta try that one again!  3-Write new songs I have a lot more “pieces” of songs, but only about 2 more completed ones.  4-Train my puppy to be a good girl (and a few tricks!) This is probably my biggest accomplishment for the  summer.  Addison is now 28 lbs, 4 1/2 months old and a super dog!  She was housetrained in a week and knows tons of commands for being so young.  We’re really proud of her.  5-Run/workout and lose 15 pounds.  I run/walk with Addie everyday, but I think the eating out and beer of the summer kept me about even.  6- Read some good books to make my teaching better than the past year!  I feel even more prepared to teach this year and I’m excited to get started.

Thanks to those people who asked or checked up on me!  I hope you’re all doing well too!