Yesterday, I met with three other high school teachers and our senior high career counselor to discus revamping our Teachers As Advisors program. Part of this change includes looking for some ideas to improve time management. As we know all know, the day often gets away from us and it is even more likely to happen when time is spent on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, or emailing friends. At the Laptop Leaders Conference, I learned about a great site called htpp://slifelabs.com from presenter Kevin Honeycutt.

Slife is a download that is designed to not only help you determine how much time you spend during your day on computer, but also what programs are open and for how long. The image below is the example taken from the Slife website. The graph displays all of the above information and I am sure even more data.

 slife_image

While we were all online searching, I checked out the site and thought we should try it out. There is a 30-day free trial of the $5/ month service available, but a credit card is required to sign up for the free trial (understandable, they are trying to make some money). But, I emailed them to ask about a free trial for 180 high school kids at Deuel High School, and this was their response:  (By the way, I recieved this response before our meeting was over.) Slife_Labs_Email

Now, next year, we will conduct an experiement during one 30-day period to see how much time student are online and where they are at. This may help students to effectively determine how often they are ‘online working on homework’ and actually are procrastinating by looking at other things online. I can say this with a great deal of experienced knowledge, because I often am caught in a news site or online journal reading about international politics, historical reviews or even shopping for new shoes when I should be working on something else.

It is so great to hear that they are willing to let us try this out at our school for free. Not only in the school setting, it also could be a great way to monitor your kids and their internet usage. We are too often boarding up doors and locking kids out of sites, how about we let them go wherever they want? But, let them know that we will review your usage at the end of every week. It could be a great way to teach independent responsibility.

Go check out http://slifelabs.com and try it out!