Wow...my first blog...

I am short on time but thought I'd go ahead and quickly explain where I'm at in my chess development at this time...the first day of 2007! Having just spent a few hours exploring the blogs of other 'like-minded' folk I felt compelled to try it on my own!

I began playing for fun at the end of November 2006 and ended up hooked a few weeks later and ended up joining a few different internet clubs for Christmas. Most of my game are longer Blitz games (at the very least 5/10) but I do try to avoid lengthy games. Currently:

ELO Rating ICC ("Edukator"): 871
ELO Rating Chessbase("Edukator"): 1045
AVE for ICC/Chessbase: 958
Progress on Dissertation: None

Certainly I'm not the best of players, and have a long way to go, but I do have a growing interest in the game and clear interest in the process of improving! Actually each of my ELO ratings are over 100 points better than what they were merely two weeks ago. So with this in mind, my goals are to be at or near 1400 by July of 2008 and then, God willing, I would like to progress to 2000 by the year 2018.

Roughly, my plans are to work tactical problems, studying books such as "Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking" by McDonald, practicing on Fritz or Chessmaster, and playing online. Once my rating averages around 1100 I would like to join a club and once I'm beyond 1200 I will look into CT-Art software (or something similar). I'm assuming that, with effort, I will improve more quickly at first since my ELO rating is low at this time. All in all, I'm more interested in the process than the actual goals at this point butI do find having a direction helpful...I consider these goals as tentative. Any suggestions?

I do have a few quite general questions I would like to explore as I go about this process:

1. Which skills in chess transfer to real life (I'm using the term "real life" very loosely on purpose)? I would also be intersted as to the extent of this transfer. "The Morals of Chess" by Ben Franklin sometimes comes to mind.
2. To what extent are Football and Chess related (I'm tapping into the 'Chess as Sport' theme)?
   
3. Currently I use chess in my classroom to enhance "visual" learning. I need this skill since, as an Earth Science teacher, I'm constantly preferring students to visualize processes (such as orbits, layers in an atmosphere, atoms, etc.) but I wonder if the time used on chess (about 30 minutes a week) could be better spent elsewhere.
4. I've been thinking of ways to use ELO in the classroom...perhaps having a rating might motivate some students to study more (especially boys).
   
5. I would love to see more girls involved in the chess events at school. How has this been done in the past?
6. I would like to have more tournaments with students from different schools involved. The club at my school has something similar since it places the chess club within the confines of other "strategy game" clubs (such as Warhammer or Magic). I am looking for ideas.

I could go on and on..but this seems to be a great start!