Well on Friday afternoon I got the call to teach a class at one of the local middle schools. I’ll be teaching 8th grade Math. This is a great opportunity. The students need a quality Math teachers and I can give them that. I have some great ideas planned for my students over the course of the year. This is going to be awesome and best of all, I have the feeling in my heart that this is the best thing possible.

I am going to be having a lot of fun and you’ll read about it for sure. Don’t worry, I will still be posting here about business, technology and opinion.

I like writing about ways to give back to the community and also ways to help schools. Today I get to talk about both of them. Charter is currently running a contest that will give 50 laptops away to two nominated schools. You can get involved to help and get a chance to win a laptop for yourself.

The specs are pretty good on these laptops: Lenovo G555′s with a 15.6″ screen, 160GB drive and 3GB ram . That’s plenty of power for video encoding and just about anything a student or teacher needs to do. These are definitely well worth it for the winning school.

Basically, the contest will run like this. First you go and nominate your school on the laptop-a-day giveaway site. After nominating your local school, you can participate in the open voting to decide which two schools will win 50 laptops. The open voting runs through September 20th.

You can win a laptop for yourself by either signing up for Charter Cable or by going to the laptop-a-day giveaway site and registering to win a laptop. If you do sign up for Charter service then you’ll not only get a chance to win a laptop but also be eligible for up to $300 cash back. That’s how easy it is. Basically, you can help yourself and help your local school.

This is just one of many contests that Charter Cable runs throughout the year, from HDTV giveaways to free XBox 360′s. I like keeping track of these contests and offers by checking out Charter on Facebook. If you click “Like” on the page, you’ll get all the latest offers and news right on your Facebook Wall. That’s how easy it is to keep up to date.

In the second semester of the last school year, I had a chance to teach a computer class to all of the high school students at our small private school. I designed and developed the entire curriculum from the ground up and it was truly an educational experience for both me and my students. I thought going in that the students would be the only ones learning but boy was I wrong when I started realizing how much they already knew and how hungry they were for interesting projects.

I started them out by introducing them to Social Media and making sure they were grounded in at least one social networking site. Next I moved on to Squidoo Lenses. Every student had to make a Squidoo Lens on something that interested them. I wanted to get them writing and sharing about something they were passionate about.

After Squidoo lenses, I introduced them to the world of blogging by sharing some of the more famous blogging sites. I showed them how you could share your views and opinions and also how you could use a blog to make money. John Chow’s blog really struck a cord with some of the boys. For the blogging unit, they had to create a blog, adjust the blog’s theme and then publish several posts on the blog.

Our next project unit was about video. Basically, I divided the class into several groups and they had to produce a 2 minute video of their own creation. I was surprised out how great the quality turned out. I saw a lot of potential in my students from this project.

I added in a unit about Powerpoint just because a couple of the students expressed interest in it, but generally most of the students were a bit bored with it. I allowed them to use to Powerpoint to create a project showing what they had learned over the school year as a final project.

All in all, I’d say it was a great class and while the curriculum wasn’t perfect, it gives a general idea of what to offer in a high school elective computer class.

As some of you already know, I am a teacher. I enjoy teaching my students, I enjoy expanding my horizons, and I enjoy making a difference in people’s lives. Education is one of the greatest gifts we can pass onto others.

As a longtime teacher, I know that having advanced training helps me improve the quality of education that I am providing. This is why I take every training and in-service opportunity that comes along. If there is a seminar being held then you’ll probably find me there.

One advancement that I have wanted for awhile has been a Masters degree. I do feel somewhat constricted with just a BS degree and I know that a Masters would open up many new doors. Unfortunately, the nearest MA program is too far away. Some people have suggested that I study online, but I always thought that studying online meant that I would be sacrificing educational quality.

Well, that’s what I did think. My opinions are changing after reading about the USC Rossier School of Education’s MAT@USC program. Yes, that’s USC as in the University of Southern California. They’ve got an MA program that is ranked #22 among all universities in the US and #9 among private universities according to US News and World Reports. Check out the program information for yourself.

The classes are taught USC faculty members who are at the forefront of modern education innovation and they utilize a state of the art interactive learning environment combined with field experiences in your own hometown. For me, this would mean being able to utilize what I am learning in my own classes right away. I see a huge benefit with this. Best of all, the USC Rossier School of Education has a 100 year history of educating teachers to be agents of change in their own community and schools.

I am very interested in finding out more about this program and I know I’ll be talking about this program with other teachers. Maybe it’s time I get my MA.

I would love to see some reviews of different online courses and training programs. I know a lot of people are benefiting from them lately, but I’d love to hear about specific programs.

Also I’d like to know what kind of technology was used to deliver the courses and if it was useful or not.

If I can get enough feedback here, I will write a post about what has been discussed.

Basically energy auditing is about looking at a small businesses utility bills and identifying ways that they can reduce their utility bills. I can take a look at their entire business, including the physical part of the property but also their business processes in an effort to identify ways that they can reduce their utility bills by a significant amount.

Not only do companies save money on their utility bills, it’s also a way to help the environment. I’m working on coming up with a way to certify companies as energy efficient and environmentally friendly. That gives companies these energy audits an even bigger incentive to have an energy audit.

I didn’t know if Dragon NaturallySpeaking would be effective or not and I asked for opinions in the comments. I decided to spend the money and actually get the cheapest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking that I could find.

I spent about 20 minutes training it and then I attempted to write my first article with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I was impressed with how quickly and easily it worked and how it helped improve my productivity. In fact I am writing this post using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Can you guess how many times I’ve had to make a correction? Exactly four times. Not too bad right?

Online degree programs were still in their infancy at the time. There weren’t as many options then, but there was one. It was Excelsior College. They had just changed their name from Regent’s College and were positioning themselves for the boom in online education and distance education.

My situation was rather simple. I knew I needed to have a 4 year degree to progress. I had 84 credits from prior university study so I needed a way to get a 4 year degree. I chose Excelsior because of its reputation. It’s part of the University of the State of New York system and it’s fully accredited by the regional accrediting body ( https://www.excelsior.edu/Excelsior_College/About/Accreditation ). It was actually founded by the NY Board of Regents.

I was in Mexico when I made the decision to go for it and get my distance education 4 year degree. I scheduled 10 tests in just 1 week at the University of Oregon testing office. Each test was like $60 or $70 dollars. I got study guides off the net and did my best to study for all the exams. The Jefferson Library in Mexico City was a great resource in finding material to study.

When I was ready, I flew into Oregon and the next day, I took the CLEP Spanish test(got 12 credits for it) and a Business Math Test. Over the next several days, I finished all of the exams.

After submitting all of the enrollment papers, it took about 8 weeks to get back the news that I had completed all of the requirements for a BS in Liberal Studies. It was real sense of accomplishment to finally have a degree after so long.

Just an FYI out there to people who need to complete a 4 year degree, Excelsior College offers the fastest way for a person to earn a fully accredited 4 year degree. It’s possible to take 2 or 3 exams per day. If you are starting from 0 credits, it’s possible to complete a degree in just a few weeks.

How so? You can take the CLEP Freshman Comp test for 6 credits, take the CLEP General Humanities and General College Mathematics tests for 6 credit each. That’s 18 in total. If you can speak French, German or Spanish, then you can take one of them and if you score high enough, you’ll get 12 credits.