"Waiting for Superman" review

Last night my darling wife and I got free tickets to see the new documentary “Waiting for Superman”.  It was a very interesting movie covering the way our public education system in America has been broken.  There are school systems that consistently churn out under-performing students and drop-outs.  There are school systems in America that if your child goes there, they have less than a 30% chance of actually graduating and being prepared for a four year college.  These are numbers that are terrifying and they are made all the worse by the fact that parents know these bleak numbers and are at a loss for solutions.  Their only hope is to get their kid into a charter school that has a much higher success rate, some charter schools graduate as many as 96% of their students.

Watching this movie the thing that struck me most was the absolute despair these parents felt when their children was only 6 or 7 years old and they knew that if they couldn’t get them into a charter school they were almost guaranteed to not graduate from high school.  Because entry to these charter schools is held by public lottery, your kid’s future was totally in the hands of fate.  It was hard to believe this reality existed in America, the greatest country on Earth and one with a totally free public education system available to all.  What caused this problem and what are the solutions?  Let’s take a look.

Problem #1 – Teacher’s Unions

The main problem the movie focused on was the teachers themselves.  What made for a higher success rate in graduation wasn’t the income of the student’s family, or the niceness of the school’s facilities, or even parental involvement.  The number one factor in student success (according to the movie) was the quality of the teacher and how much that teacher was invested in making sure their students succeeded.  The main stumbling block to this was the fact that the Teacher’s Unions were so powerful that they had negotiated tenure for all teachers that had more than 2 years experience.  So after a teacher has gotten tenure they can do anything and no one can fire them.  Some teachers just read the paper, some ignored the children, but most of them just went through their day by rote with none of the passion necessary to engage students and get them excited about learning.

Communism always leads to trouble

These problems have arisen because the unions have found a way to divorce results from reward.  In other words, in a capitalistic society if you do excellent work it should lead to excellent pay, if you do average work it should lead to average pay, and if you do poor work it should lead to poor pay or you getting fired.  A lazy hand should lead to poverty and a diligent hand should lead to wealth. (Prov 10:4)  As soon as this God ordained incentive to excel is removed the natural human tendency towards sloth takes over and it turns all but the best teachers into mindless drones doing just enough to get through their day.  You would think the obvious solution here is to remove these tenure rules and let the districts reward their best performers and fire the worst but the unions are too powerful and will not let that happen.

Problem #2 – It’s not the state’s job

The second problem is one that’s not even addressed by the film and that’s the mindset that we Americans have that it is the government’s job to educate our children.  According to the Bible, the responsibility for education falls solely on the shoulders of Mom and Dad. (Prov 1:8)  While it’s certainly not sinful to send your child to public school and to hold those schools responsible for their performance, it’s not the teacher or the principal that God will hold accountable for how your child was educated; it’s you, the parent.  We cannot abdicate our responsibility to our children by relying solely on their school, we must roll up our sleeves and make sure our kids are getting what they need.  It can be as simple as making sure they read a book for an hour a day and have memorized their multiplication tables but we must make sure that our kids are progressing at the rate they should.  That’s not the school’s job, that’s ours and unless we start taking this responsibility seriously, this nation is headed for trouble.

Read more at www.ArlingtonBelievers.org

Why do we need Revelation?

Rev 1:1  The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How much longer? Anyone that’s ever had a child under 5 on a car trip has heard these questions and knows the difficulty answering them.  You can’t say “almost there” because you just have to say it again in 30 seconds when they ask again.  You can’t say “45 minutes” because they have no idea what that means.  You even try “as long as one episode of Sesame Street” but that doesn’t work unless they are actually watching the episode in question. (Portable DVD players, how I love you!)  What would sometimes work for us is to list all the things we were going to pass on the way.  We would say, “We will pass this sign , then this store, then this McDonalds, etc., then we will be there.”  It tended to help because it gave the kids signposts to look for on the trip.

Revelation gives us God’s “signposts”

Similarly, God gave us the book of Revelation so we would know what is going to happen at the end.  He gives us sign posts to look forward to the same way I did with the kids only His went something like, “First the Rapture, then the seals are broken, then the AntiChrist comes to power, etc.”  It is important to God that His children know where He’s taking history and that He has a plan for the earth that will result in it’s redemption.

Revelation lets us have hope in turmoil

Can you imagine going through all the things listed in the book of Revelation without the roadmap of Revelation?  To have put your faith in a God that claims to be able to sustain creation but to see that creation falling apart around you?  Earthquakes shatter the landscape, famine starves children, plagues destroy whole communities, and on and on it goes.  If you weren’t told beforehand that this was God’s plan and everything must happen like this in order for the final redemption of Creation back to it’s pre-fall state, you would look and despair.  It might even cause you to throw away your faith and trust in your own power to save you.

Revelation makes our faith secure

But our God doesn’t want that to happen.  He loves His children so He made sure that we would know what’s coming, so we can see the signposts and not despair but to increase in hope.  Now every earthquake, every plague, every persecution brings us hope because we know it brings us closer to home.  These things “must take place” and they will be difficult but not impossible.  They are not for our destruction but to bring us safely home to a new Earth, free from sin and death and decay and under the care of our God.

Read more at www.ArlingtonBelievers.com

Best of Today's SEO - 9/28/2010

Social Media Metrics – Can you measure what your Social Media is worth?  Probably not but here are a few guidelines.

The danger of overdoing SEO – Ever run into one of these blogs?  Where it’s obvious it was constructed for Google and not an actual reader?  Are you making these mistakes?

Should your content be short? – Or does length really matter?

More lurkers on your pages? – The number of Social Media accounts have gone up but the amount of content hasn’t.  Translated – More people that look at your pages but never actually interact with you.

Need a free SEO Site Analysis?  Visit us at www.SEOAssistant.org for one today!

3 Ways Small Blogs Make Life Difficult For Their Readers

You’ve got a blog that you are proud of that has great content.  You update faithfully, you are interesting, you are doing everything right but you still can’t seem to get any traction.  Why?  You may be working against yourself.  You want a blog that promotes itself, one where your readers take it upon themselves to repost your posts, they comment, they promote etc., but you may be making it difficult for them to do that.  Here’s 3 ways you may be making life difficult for your readers.

1.  You make it difficult for people to follow.

  You want your blog to be in front of as many eyes as possible and the easiest way to do that is to provide options for them to subscribe.  If I find an interesting blog, the first thing I do is throw it in my Google Reader feed so it’s always there.  If you don’t have an easy way to do that like a FeedBurner button, I typically won’t bother.  Some people may prefer to get your blog in email form sent to them everyday, do you have an option for that?  If I had to actually visit all the blogs I read, I probably wouldn’t read 90% of the blogs I’m interested in, there just isn’t time to hit all those sites.  I rely on RSS to keep me informed so make it easy for me to subscribe.  You should have clearly marked “Subscribe Here” buttons anyone can see with not too much trouble and it’s in your best interest to make sure your readers can find them.

2.  You make it difficult for people to comment.

  I realize that spam is a problem and steps need to be taken so your com-box doesn’t become some kind of internet landfill but there should be limits!  You can’t be so afraid of spammers that you discourage community.  If I want to leave a comment you should ask for name, email, website and possibly a Captcha and nothing else.  Don’t make me go through a multi-step registration and log-in process to say that I appreciated your post.  Sure some spam may get through but that’s the price you pay, better that some spam gets through but your readers find it easy to comment than you stop all spam and half your real comments.

3.  You make it difficult for people to promote you. 

I read your post and loved it!  I want my friends to read it because I know they will love it!  I want the world to read it and bask in the glory that is your wisdom!  But if doing that requires more than a click or two I probably won’t bother.  There are tons of plug-ins available that make it easy to retweet your post, send it to my FaceBook page, Digg it, Reddit it, or any one of the dozens of social sites out there, get one and put it on your page.  Let your readers do the hard work of promoting your site in places you can’t.

You’ve already done the hard part!  The reader is on your page and likes what they see.  If you will put these items into action and make the social aspects of blogging simple you will see an uptick in traffic and you will begin to see the rewards you want for your blog.

Want a Free SEO Site Assessment?  Come to www.SEOAssistant.org for an expert analysis.

Are Jesus and God two different people?

Rev 1:1  The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending His angel to His servant John,

 

In 451 AD, the Council of Chalcedon was called together to answer a key question that Christians were facing, what nature does Jesus have?  Was He a great man, filled with the Spirit of God?  Merely empowered by God as His finest creation?  Was He God alone?  His apparent humanity just an act to help Him relate to us better?  The answer goes to the core of who the church says Christ is and who we worship.

The Council’s Answer

Fortunately the Council got the answer correct.  Jesus Christ is God, existing for all eternity, omniscient, omnipotent, having all the power of God and at His Incarnation He added to His Divinity, humanity.  He is still God but now He is also man having both the nature of God and the nature of man and these two natures are perfectly united but not co-mingled.  In other words, Christ’s two natures do not fight against themselves but they do remain separate.  This why sometimes in the Scriptures, Jesus acts like any man and sometimes He acts like only God can.  For example, as a man He prayed to the Father (Jn 17), as God He allowed people to pray to Him (Acts 7:59).  As a man He was tempted (Mt 4) as God He is sinless (Heb 4:15).  As a man He grew in wisdom (Lk 2:52) as God He knows all things (Jn 21:17) and so forth.

How does God give Jesus revelation?

This is why in our verse today we see God giving something to Jesus as if He were a separate person.  This is the Father giving revelation to the man Christ Jesus.  While on the earth Jesus “emptied Himself” and “made Himself nothing”, (Phil 2:6-7) one of the things He emptied Himself of was complete foreknowledge of when the end would come.  When He entered triumphantly into Heaven all the fullness of God now dwells in Him including exact foreknowledge of His triumphant return. (Mt 24:36)  This verse shows that this revelation was given to Him by the Father, the reasons for which we will look at next.

Christ had to have two natures to save you

The good news is that Jesus’ two natures is exactly why we have salvation.  The perfect sacrifice had to be man because it needed to represent man and it needed to God because it had to be infinitely good to bear the weight of our infinite evil.  No mere man could meet these requirements, God Himself had to come to Earth in the form of a man to die for us so we could live with Him and (Praise God!) that is exactly what He did!

Come read more at www.ArlingtonBelievers.com

Best of Today's SEO 9/24/2010

Need some SEO tips for video?  SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday is for you.

Heard of Angelgate?  The latest mini-outrage to sweep throught the Tech sector gives us an important lesson.  If you are trying to send a Direct Message through Twitter, make darn sure it’s actually a Direct Message before you hit send.

WiFi on steroids is cleared.  Now someone just needs to actually develop it.

Curious as to why FaceBook went down?   Did it affect your day at all?

<a href="http://graphjam.com/2010/09/23/funny-graphs-facebook-outage/"><img src='http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/0fb461fe-6da1-404c-8460-cdbdfc4a0f81.png' title="funny graphs - US Productivity At An All Time High!" alt="funny graphs - US Productivity At An All Time High!" /></a><br />see more <a href="http://graphjam.com">Funny Graphs</a>

3 More Common SEO Mistakes Small Blogs Make

Here’s a few more of the common SEO mistakes I see small blogs (including at times this one) make.

 

1.  They don’t make it easy to use Social Media to follow the blog and repost the posts. 

With most blogs it’s very easy to add a plugin like SexyBookmarks that will make reposting your blog very easy.  Nothing drives traffic better than having one of your readers repost your blog in their FaceBook or Twitter stream.  Make that an easy process.

2.  The posting schedule is inconsistent at best.

Here’s where I fall really short of the mark.  Make a schedule for your blog and keep to it.  Whether it’s 10 posts a day or 3 posts a week doesn’t make any difference but being consistent is key.  There’s so many blogs out there it is just too easy to get lost in the static.  Google SERP’s reward page counts and blog activity.

3.  It’s boring. 

Not only do your posts need to be short, and snappy but they need to entertain.  One of my favorite blogs is 6 Year Med, it follows the journey of a med student becoming a pediatrician.  I know nothing about medicine or this woman’s life but the blog is absolutely fascinating.  Writing is a skill like anything else and can be developed over time.  Do some free-writing, do some reading, pay attention to things that grab your attention and try to figure out how they did that.  I guarantee you will be rewarded.

In brainstorming the first blog in this series I came up with quite a few common mistakes so you will probably be seeing more in this series.  What mistakes have you seen out there?  What mistakes have you made?  Leave a comment a let me know.

Do you need a free SEO site assessment?  Visit us at www.SEOAssistant.org for an expert analysis. 

3 SEO Mistakes Small Blogs Make

  As any small blogger can tell you, there is a world of difference between running a blog in your spare time and having a blog popular enough to support you working on it full-time.  Most bloggers I know would love to able to have a blog make the kind of money that would justify it becoming their sole source of income but they tend to shoot themselves in the foot with mental errors.  Here’s a few common errors that small bloggers make that keep them from growing at the speed they want.

1.  They don’t use alt tags on their media.

I’ve told the story before of how my wife’s blog still gets traffic every week from people searching for MC Hammer pants on Google Image search.  She did a post years ago and included a pic of some MC Hammer style pants and labeled it as such and she gets people almost every day from that source alone.  Granted it’s not the most targeted traffic but I can guarantee you it has exposed her blog to people outside of her normal traffic circles.  If you use a picture or a video clip, make sure you use descriptive alt-tags so Google knows what the heck it is.  Over time I guarantee that this tip alone will bring you extra traffic.

2.  They use ugly formatting.

All the great SEO in the world won’t help you if when people come to your site, their eyes are met with a wall of text.  No one wants to work to read what you’ve written.  Use your Heading formats and the occasional bold or italics to make something pop out.  Use formatting to draw your reader’s eye to what you want them to see and they will be more inclined to return.

3.  They don’t promote their posts well.

You may have the best post in the world but if no one knows, no one will care.  Use services like Digg or Stumble Upon to tell people about your post.  Use Twitter and include appropriate hashtags and post it on your FaceBook page.  (Don’t have a FaceBook page?  That’s a whole other post.)  There’s a ton of ways to promote your posts, find out what works for you and use it!

What mistakes have you made or seen others make?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Need a Free SEO Site Assessment?  Visit us at www.SEOAssistant.org for an expert analysis.

Revelation 1:1a

  The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His servants the things that must soon take place. Rev 1:1a

 

Ever read through the Book of Revelation and find yourself unsure of what’s going on?  With all the imagery and symbolism it can be a very confusing read but that was not originally supposed to be the case.  The word revelation in the above verse means that this book was intended to be a revelation, an unveiling of God’s plan for His Earth moving forward.  It was never supposed to be confusing, sure there is symbolism  but the symbolism is usually explained in the text itself and exists to reveal truth, not conceal it.  Let’s start our Journey through this important book.

Why does this book exist?

First and foremost we need to realize what the reason for this book’s existence is.  Although it tells what is coming that is actually just a means to an end.  The end purpose of the book is to reveal Jesus Christ, to show Him as the Almighty master of creation that He is.  What we will see as we move forward is that He is no longer a Galilean peasant but the rightful King of all.  He wants us to know what is coming not just our foreknowledge of future events but to elicit praise from His people.

What has He given us in this book?

He has given us a detailed map of what is going to happen at the end of time so will know that He is God, He has a plan, and He has the ability to see that plan through to the end.  This is not a God that has His fingers crossed hoping that it will all work out someday but a sovereign Lord that can make all things happen according to His pre-ordained will.

Why has He given us this book?

This revelation is given to us so we can have peace.  If this God is powerful enough to make all the things we will see as we move through Revelation happen, then why would you worry about whether or not He can make all things happen in your life exactly as He has planned?  If He has a plan for the final years of the whole Earth, surely He has a plan for your life; and if He is able to make His plan happen for the whole Earth, surely He is able to make His plan happen for your life.  This is not a weak God, or a God not intimately involved in every facet of creation, this is a God that is all-powerful, all-wise, all-knowing, and all-good.  You can trust Him.

Looking for a Reformed Church in the Arlington Texas area?  Come join us at www.ArlingtonBelievers.com

Untitled

When I first heard about Seesmic relaunch last week, I was really excited about  the possibilities.  For those of you not familiar with the service, Seesmic promises to be a platform for platforms.  In other words, they want to be the place you go to for all your social media programs like FaceBook, Twitter, Google Reader, Groupon, Zappos, and a ton of others.  This was very exciting to me because I hate a cluttered browser and I have to have about 5 tabs running along the top of my Chrome just for these sites plus what ever other browsing I’m doing.  So in theory, this program is for me and right up my alley.

Too good to be true

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out the way I expected for a couple reasons.

#1  Facebook

 – I have about 2k people “friended”on my FaceBook but only about 20 I want to actually hear from.  (The rest are all Mafia Wars adds.)  These people are on their own list in my Facebook but there doesn’t seem to be a way for Seesmic to only stream the people on that list.  Instead I get hundreds of updates a day from people I don’t really know and I lose the updates I do care about in the static.  So what do I do?  I go to Facebook directly to read those updates defeating the purpose for Seesmic to begin with.

#2 Twitter 

– Same thing here, lots of people but only a few I want to hear from.  This may be my fault as I haven’t taken the time to organize my Twitter feeds but I’m not seeing an option for it regardless.  Also, there’s not an easy way to direct message or retweet someone from their tweets.  I had been using HootSuite before and loved this functionality.

#3 Google Reader 

– This one is probably on me.  I downloaded the plugin for Reader for the API, installed it, and…nothing.  I can’t figure out where to go to see my Reader stream.  I know it’s installed because this morning it told me there was an update for the plugin and I needed to download it and restart the app but it’s still nowhere to be found.  Even if this is my fault, the interface should be a heckuva lot easier to use and more intuitive.

It’s not all bad

There are a few things I really liked.  I loved the fact that new tweets and Facebook updates popup on my screen.  This means I can follow Twitter and FaceBook with a quick glance instead of having to go somewhere else to check it.  Once they add a way to tailor what feeds actually cause the popup to happen and a way to move that popup box anywhere I want on the screen, it will be perfect.  (Right now it pops up right where my curser always seems to be.)

This is an ambitious project and in theory is exactly what I want.  As soon as theory meets reality I will probably be back for another look but until then I guess I’ll stick with HootSuite and all those open tabs.

Do you need a free SEO Site Assessment ?  Come to www.SEOAssistant.org and let us show you what we can do for you!