Hurray! The deadline has passed. After two busy weeks I can finally get back to focusing on teaching. The state of New Jersey sent all local districts a mandate to submit a database of our students. It had to be done by today and it had to include the city and state where they were born, a little piece of information we did not already have in our digital student information system. So what did we do? We set up an online form and sent home a letter asking our parents to log in and fill it out. When many of them didn’t, the technology department (me and Tom) had to pull the student folders and find the birthplace. Paper folders! That’s like going back to the Stone Age. That was just one tedious part of putting this whole database together. Anyway – enough grumbling – we got the job done and submitted it last week, and now I can get back to helping the teachers, updating the website, and thinking of better ways to teach children to use computers.