A New Year

My Resolution this year is not to make a resolution. Instead, I am going to keep my daily to do list up front and professional. I have long been a fan of to do lists for reminding me to make appointments, take care of chores, and meet deadlines for responsibilities. At the end of the day, it feels good to check them off or forward a few to tomorrow.  My favorite app for this is Do It (Tomorrow) that I featured in a previous post.

I also like Ta-Da Lists, a web-based tool (iPhone app, too) that lets you create multiple to-do lists for yourself and/or share with others. A cool feature of this tool is the check box which, when checked, reduces the size of the font and moves the checked items to the bottom. Perhaps, this is the ta-da moment allowing you to look at and keep a record of the completed activities. For now, I am creating monthly lists to record and remind me of projects and topics that I want to use with my classes. In this sense, I can plan to partner certain themes with skills. As the computer teacher, I intend to share these lists with other teachers in my building, inviting them to collaborate with me on topics and content from their curriculum.  Here’s my January List for School Projects:

• Introduce students to Philadelphia’s First Poet Laureate, Sonia Sanchez
• Share the Letters to the Children of Troy Mi from writers, artists, politicians about the importance of libraries, and their memories of reading and of favorite books.
• Compose Haiku to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.