Florida DECA,

I hope you all have enjoyed your summer and are getting ready for the upcoming school year!  With the start of another school year, means the start of another year with DECA! The four points on the DECA diamond are the guiding principles of what members should take away from this association.  The four are: Community Oriented, Academically Prepared, Experienced Leaders, and Professionally Responsible. As community oriented members, it is important that we all take the time to help out whether it concerns a collection drive, donations, or even a local fundraiser.   It is always a good feeling to know that you took the time to assist those that are less fortunate. 

Also, Team 54 has chosen our Helping Hands Charities and the items that will be collected.  Non-perishable food items will be collected during the fall and spring to help Manna Food Pantries of Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.  For the fall conference, peanut butter, jelly, and individual breakfast products will be collected. For the spring conference, canned tuna, canned chicken, canned fruit, and canned dinners will be the items collected.  During the opening and closing sessions of both the spring and Fall conferences, a “miracle minute” inspired collection will occur where all attendees are encouraged to donate $1.00 or more. All the money collected will be donated to Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida. Last year, a total of over 26,000 items were collected during both conferences.  I know that this year we will work hard to break that number!  Be sure to plan events and encourage your chapter to start collecting for the fall and spring collections.

Whatever you do this upcoming year, I challenge you to take the time to make a difference, and make it count in your community!

As an officer, it is our duty to be the leader that allows our organization excel. In DECA, when elected, we are given the trust that we will accomplish everything promised and more. With the responsibility in your hands, I offer you a few tips that should be kept in mind through out your term:

•   Delegate your work

          Being an officer isn’t always about taking on all the tasks by yourself, but being able to delegate your work to your peers. It is much less time consuming and more efficient to allow more people to help complete your tasks rather than take it all on alone. Although you have delegated your work to others, keep in mind that the work was assigned to you and ultimately, the result is reflected back at you.

•   Stay organized

          It is much easier to complete your work, when you can find it! Being organized will help relieve stress when given multiple tasks to do. Staying organized means that you are on top of things and ready to do your work. This quality will result in tasks being completed with a smoothly and in a timely manner.

 

•   Be professional

          It is important to remember that as an officer, your peers trusted you with this higher position. To be a great officer, you must be responsible and willing to take on anything that will help the club. You should enjoy this time and be happy that you have this position, but also be professional at the same time.

 

•   Make it count

          You only have 1 year, 1 term, to be an officer. Remember to plan your goals and promises and follow through with them. When looking back at your time as an officer, you want to be able to be happy and without any regrets. You have received a great honor from your peers, congratulations!

With 5 national and 5 state officers posting blogs every month, it can sometimes be hard to keep up with all the new information being posted.  I want to take this opportunity to discuss a specific blog written by our former international president, Morgan Thompson.  Morgan listed and explained, “10 of the best DECA tools you’ve never heard of.”  The blog lists the following tools:

1. Studyrails- allows you to schedule study time and will alert you when its time to study. (*www.studyrails.com-website is temporarily down)

2. Asana- application to keep track of deadlines. (www.asana.com)

3. Diigo- software that lets you annotate your web research and is really helpful when doing online research. (www.diigo.com)

4. Sliderocket- an alternative to PowerPoint and keynote that has unique and creative slides and presentations. (www.sliderocket.com)

*5. Etherpad- allows multiple people to work and edit a document at the same time and is very useful with team members on a paper or project. (www.etherpad.org)

*6. Moonfruit- a free website builder that is really effective for those that are doing a chapter project. This will help promote and publicize your project! (www.moonfruit.com)

7. Easybib- a website that will put together all your citations and create a bibliography that you can put at the end of your paper. (www.easybib.com)

*8. Dipity- this tool will help you organize your information chronologically and is really good for long-term planning. (www.dipity.com)

9. Quizlet- a website that will enhance your studying techniques through flashcards and quizzes. This is effective for those in testing events that want to win at ICDC. (www.quizlet.com)

10. Evernote- enables you to save text, audio and images and share it across computers and phones. (www.evernote.com)

This blog in particular is great for returning DECA students as well as seniors going off to college.  These 10 tools Morgan discussed will help you stay on task, stay organized, and write papers and create presentations that will amaze your audience.

I put an asterisk (*) next to numbers 5, 6 and 8 as they relate directly to my video blog for the month of May.  Etherpad, Moonfruit and Dipity will be very useful for chapters to plan and complete effective chapter projects.

For an in-depth explanation of the tools that were listed, you can read the full blog written by Morgan Thompson here: http://www.deca.org/blog/195/

With the 2012-2013 school year coming to a close, there are moments in the year we can reflect back on with happiness.  Together, we thrived and broke new records.  Wherever this next year takes you, whether it’s working hard to get to ICDC in Atlanta or going off to college, MAKE IT COUNT.