Posts Tagged ‘English’
The Preschool Screening
My public school drives my absolutely bananas. I wanted to get Madison’s hearing screened just to make sure that there were no problems. We thought maybe some of Madison’s attention issues were due to her not hearing. However, my school being the pain in butt that they are wouldn’t do it unless we scheduled her to be prescreened for preschool through the school (which is a joke but I’ll tell you about that later). Obviously, there is some sort of federal funding they get for this, because I wanted a five minute screening and got stuck with an hour long screening. I sucked it up and took her.
I swear that they expect these kids to have a flash memory drive in their heads. I could hear some of the things they were testing her on, and from what I could tell, she was doing well. When they called me up after the testing was over, I was right. Except for cutting and catching, she scored everything else in the 6 year old range. Madison is only 4. I am seriously wondering if some of the attention issues we are having with her at preschool are due to her being bored. That was the good news.
The bad new was that we failed her hearing screening. I asked what the school would do for that. The answer: nothing. We would have to pay for additional testing elsewhere. The other thing that ticked me off to no end was that she couldn’t even get into the school preschool if I wanted to send her. The only kids who get in are those who are considered “at risk” (which Madison is obviously not) and if we made less than $80,000 a year. Umm, yeah. We make more than that. In Chicago, I am not sure if you can even own a decent house making less than $80,000 a year. Basically, the only kids who get in are those who don’t speak English (because there were several kids like that there) and low income people. I guess my question is what about the middle class? Why do we always get screwed?
Gadget Advisor
I have learned that even though I know about computers and gadgets, there is still a ton I need/want to learn. That is where sites like Gadget Advisor come in really handy. You can learn about the Best extensions for Firefox and the Google Cache Checker Firefox extension. There is even software reviews like this one: Blaze Media Pro review. It is nice that the posts are written in plain English, so you do not have to decipher out the techno speak. They even have tech news that you can follow. If you want a tech site that you can actually understand and enjoy, check out Gadget Advisor.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking and NaNoWrimo
Did you November is National Novel Writing Month (hence, NaNoWrimo). NaNoWrimo is an interesting approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1 and end November 30. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word). This requires you to write a minimum of 1,667 words a day which can be very daunting. This is why using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for NaNoWrimo would take some of the pressure off. I know my sister would love to write a novel one day. It is honestly her lifelong dream. She went to college and majored in English, so she could do it. However, she is super busy (and this is before she even has kids!). When I learned about Dragon Naturally Speaking, I knew this would be a perfect fit for her. This can definitely help her blogging (of course, she is a blogger too!). However, I personally don’t think she thinks she has the time for something of this magnitude.
If you want to see how this would help you, you have to take the Dragon’s typing speed test! I tried it with Will (my 16 month old) hanging on me (so I really do type faster, but this is what my life is like normally. That is why blogging usually takes me all day. LOL Here’s my test results:
Let me tell you, I couldn’t believe how fast the speaker was compared to my typing. Granted, I could have typed faster without Will, but I still couldn’t have kept up with the speaker. There is no way. I think I know what I am buying my sister for Christmas. She has some big changes coming her way and this would allow her to both continue blogging and to write her novel.
I may not be writing a novel, but man, I can see so many uses for myself with this software. Since I have five blogs and two little kids, I could definitely get more work done with this versus me typing out my blog posts (see score up above – lol). This would make it much easier to write posts for my travel blog when we are on the road, and I could write my posts for my cooking blog while I am cooking the recipe I am going to write about. I could take the time I save and spend it with my family instead of working. It would be nice to be able to go to bed before midnight. Do you want to see how easy this is to use?
As you can see, anyone can use this software. It is that easy. Don’t believe me? Read some of these Dragon Reviews. I actually know people who have this and they absolutely love it. I am still working on getting my hands on one of these, so I can save some of my precious time.
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