LifeJournal™ Newsletter

July 2005
LifeJournal Newsletter

It’s the thick of the summer and I hope that you are able to slow down, relax, and take some time for yourself.  One of my favorite childhood memories of summer is being allowed to stay up a little later than usual on warm evenings and going with my family to the local ice cream stand.  We all had our favorites--my mother maple walnut ice cream, my father chocolate, and my sister peppermint. I’m a fan of mocha. To me, ice cream represents the best of summertime fun, light-hearted family gatherings, and pure pleasure.

So, in honor of those wonderful ice cream memories, I’m pleased to introduce the first of many “flavors” of LifeJournal.  We have had “vanilla” LifeJournal—journal software for everyone—available for more than five years. We’re now creating journal software for different groups of people, to suit their specific needs. The first “flavor” is LifeJournal for Educators (http://educators.lifejournal.com): especially suited for teachers, principals, and other education administrators. Learn more about the program in this newsletter. And keep your eyes open in the upcoming months for more LifeJournal “flavors.” 

Enjoy your summer and remember to relax with friends or family with an evening ice cream cone!

Sincerely,
Ruth Folit
Chronicles Software Company
www.lifejournal.com
rfolit@lifejournal.com

P.S. LifeJournal 2 is now available. If you have LifeJournal 1, remember to upgrade to LifeJournal 2. For complete information about upgrading read our June 2005 newsletter.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LifeJournal for Educators
Managing Journal Types
TIP: Backing Up Your Journal Files
Upgrading to LJ2
End Quotes

LifeJournal for Educators

LifeJournal for Educators (http://educators.lifejournal.com) is journal software created especially for teachers, principals, and other administrators.  Today’s teachers are challenged to not only teach students, but to document behavior, to evaluate and work with students’ issues, and to report these findings to administrators, fellow teachers, and parents. Educators who are committed to improving their skills will benefit by reflecting about their day-to-day professional lives and then easily documenting and organizing their observations and perceptions securely and privately.  

To create LifeJournal for Educators, Chronicles Software Company worked with Kathy Larson, whose breadth and depth of experience shines throughout the program. She taught middle school for 18 years and for the last 10 years she has worked exclusively in the field of professional development. Currently Ms. Larson is a consultant for the Cooperative Education Service Agency in Wisconsin and teaches as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She has given presentations on mentoring at national and state conferences, and she works with Wisconsin State Agencies on educator licensing. For many years, Ms. Larson has not only kept her own journal, but has advocated that educators keep journals to improve their personal and professional lives. We at Chronicles Software Company are delighted to be working with Kathy Larson.

Kathy has created a set of Prompts and Quotes, a default Topics List, and Daily Pulse scales specifically to inspire and engage both experienced and novice educators. The LJ for Educators includes these educator-focused components as well as with the Prompts and Quotes from the original version.  If you have never download LifeJournal 2, go to http://educators.lifejournal.com to download the LJ for Educators demo*. Tell your friends and family who are teachers and adminstrators about LifeJournal for Educators.  The cost for the key for the downloaded program is $44.95. The CD is available for an additional $6.00 (shipping and handling charges for US Mail delivery).

*If you have “vanilla” LifeJournal 2 (registered or the demo), then don’t download LifeJournal for Educators as the demo will appear as the regular “vanilla” LifeJournal 2.  If you have the vanilla LifeJournal 2 and want to purchase the educators version, send me an email at rfolit@lifejournal.com. The cost for the flavor change is $15.00. 

Managing Journal Types

By default, LifeJournal categorizes journal entries into one of three journal types: daily, dream, or life history. These three types suit many people, but some people may want to create other journal types.  Suggestions of journal types that you can create are

• Poetry
• Health
• Food
• Spiritual
• Prayer
• Gratitude
• Exercise
• Professional

The benefit of creating a journal type is that all entries of one type are about one subject. If you have one or two areas that are the major focus of your life, then creating journal types which reflect those focal points makes sense. If, for example, you read through all your entries in your exercise journal you know that what you’ll be reading is about exercising.  The down side of having an exercise journal entry is that all the writing you will want to include in an exercise entry will be about exercise.  I think your decision about whether to add journal types depends on how your brain works:  If you are a linear person who thinks about one topic at a time and you can stick to that one topic when writing, then creating additional journal types might work well for you.  If, however, you bounce from topic to topic when you write, then it may be better to keep the default three journal types and assign topics extensively to specific passages within a Daily journal entry.

To create journal types, go to File menu>Manage Journal Types. A “Manage Journal Types” dialog box  will appear from where you can remove existing Journal Types, add new ones, and edit existing ones. On the left is the list of journal types that already exist. 

To remove a journal type, select it and click the “remove” button. You can remove the Dream journal type, but  the LifeJournal program will not let you delete the Daily and Life History journal types.

To add a journal type, click the “New” button.  Enter the title of the new journal type and set the default styles: the font, the background color, the highlight color and the icon that will appear on the toolbar button.  Click the “Enter” button.

To edit a journal type, select it and change any of the styles.  Click the “Enter” button.
 
All Journal Entry buttons appear on the left side of the toolbar.  If you want to change the order of how the buttons appear on the toolbar, go to the “Manage Journal Types” dialog, select a journal type, and click the up/down buttons. The first journal type on the list will appear as the leftmost toolbar button. Each subsequent type will appear on the toolbar to the right.

Backing up your Journal Files onto a CD:

In most cases, when you back up your journal files you go to the File menu>Back up Journal Data; then you browse to the location where you want to save your back up files.  But, because of a quirk in Windows operating system, you can’t select a CD drive as the location to save your backup files; however, you can back up your journal files to a CD manually.  Here’s how:

Using Windows Explorer, navigate to your automatically backed journal data files. They are usually found in My Documents>LifeJournal>[YourName]>Backup.  Select that folder and right click and select  “Send to>CD-RW drive.”  Insert a CD and burn the files to the CD.

End Quotes:

"No one ever got to be a better teacher who wasn't working on being a better person."—Noah benShea

"Invest in yourself, in your education. There's nothing better."—Sylvia Porter

"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change."—Carl Rogers

How to Purchase LifeJournal and/or Upgrade to Version 2.0

-Ordering online. 
-Ordering by telephone: toll free 1-877-456-8762 from 9 am to 5 pm Eastern time, Monday to Friday.
-Ordering by postal mail and pay with a check or money order payable to:

Chronicles Software Company
PO Box 220
Sarasota, FL 34230

To learn more about upgrading to LifeJournal, go to our June 2005 newsletter.

If you have friends or colleagues who would enjoy this newsletter, invite them to subscribe. We request that you keep the broadcast intact, including our contact and copyright information.

OTHER QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS: Send mail to info@lifejournal.com  or visit us at http://www.lifejournal.com.

©Chronicles Software Company, 2005. All rights reserved.