Thrifty Thursdays #2

 
·       If you are paying for extra cable channels AND a service like Netflicks, perhaps you are paying twice for the same enjoyment. Consider getting rid of one (or more if you are really indulgent).  If it were up to me, I’d ditch cable altogether and watch things on youtube and hulu.com.  I find enough [...]

Debt Snowball

     Related to my last post “Be Your Own Bank,” is Dave Ramsey’s  concept of “ debt snowballing.”  The idea is to pay off a small debt balance, then roll that money that would be going to that debt to the next largest debt.  In our case, we went after the highest interest debt we [...]

Be Your Own Bank

     Anyone can see that a 700 billion dollar bailout of the banking industry has to have some effect on our schools and pocketbooks.  It will be difficult to pay for these budget deficits with taxes alone—especially if you expect that there will be some loss of jobs due to the economy going south (you [...]

Typing Content: Or Killing Two Birds With One Stone

     At the beginning of the year, several elementary teachers I know take their students to the computer lab to type their spelling list.  This accomplishes two things at the same time (maybe more). First, they learn their spelling words. Next, they learn to type and become familiar with the keyboard.
 
     They begin to learn [...]

Grading Writing Papers or Will They Even Read Our Comments?

We do a lot of writing in my classes. At this level, we are hammering how to organize their essays: topic sentence, detail sentences (or paragraphs) and conclusion sentences (or paragraphs).
 
It’s not enough to TELL them that they must do those things, you must show that their grade is related to whether or not they [...]

Dollar a day Eating Plan

A couple of California teachers ate food costing only $1/day for a month to prove it could be done. You can read about their project here. 
The wife is a vegan, so there was no meat involved in their diet. But, if you think about it, most of the world eats little meat. For years I could [...]

Hustling for Part-time Jobs

I was reading a blog the other day about financial security and the author mentioned using the time of our youth to earn some extra money and skills. Often, we think of our youth as the time to have fun and party.
Since I put myself through college without benefit of financial aid or scholarship (my [...]

Curriki: My New Online Education Community (and Friend!)

The other day I was in a panic because the activity I’d planned months before, a nice webquest of the civilization we are studying, suddenly wasn’t working due to our newly installed firewall at school.  We can, in certain circumstances, request that certain sites be restored, but the process is slow and doesn’t always mean [...]

Saving Energy $$ and Being Green at the Same Time

Using a screensaver is not energy efficient.  Put your computer and monitor on sleep mode when you aren’t using it.  Don’t leave it on during the day or night when you aren’t using it.  $600 million dollars in energy is wasted each year, according to Real World Green, by businesses not following these tips.
 
If you [...]

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