Teaching in Higher Ed

gtd

Sticking with Getting Things Done (GTD)

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Depositphotos_38239361_l-2015 2

One of the members of the Teaching in Higher Ed Slack channel shared of her struggles with sticking with the Getting Things Done (GTD) system, after she had read the book. It certainly can be challenging. I thought I would share a few strategies I've used for staying consistent with GTD practices and hope to hear what has worked for you, as well.

First, if you aren’t familiar with Getting Things Done, the following resources are highly recommended:

Here are a few thoughts about how to better integrate the Getting Things Done methodology into your life and stay with it:

Separate capturing and clarifying from doing

It is easy to fall into this temptation when presented with something that needs doing. We can get distracted from whatever we were in the middle of working on and start trying to do the new thing that now has our attention.

We need a system that every action item (task) goes into, so that we can better identify the most important work we should be doing at any given time.

Take time out to reflect

The busier our schedules get, the more we need time to reflect and review. I have a weekly review and a monthly review that I’m faithful to about 90% of the time.

Those practices help me identify areas where I need a better system, so that the next time I encounter a similar season in life, I am better prepared with tools to help me navigate.

Avoid taking an all-or-nothing approach

David Allen has indicated that it takes a few years to really get in the groove with GTD. That figure seems daunting, until you recognize that we’re hardly ever “perfectly” GTD.

I like has David Allen has grouped the entire GTD system into five distinct areas (http://gettingthingsdone.com/fivesteps/). Consider which area could use the most attention in your own productivity system and determine how to close any gaps that exist to having it work the way you want to see it work.

Ensure you have the necessary tools

Finally, be sure you have the tools you need to properly implement your GTD system. Here are what I consider to be essential tools, along with what I use in each area:

  • Calendar – I use Fantastical 2 on my Mac and the built-in calendar app on my iPhone.
  • Task list – The one I use is over-kill for most people, but in case you’re interested, it is OmniFocus. If you aren’t accustomed to using a task list, a good place to start is Todoist, or Wunderlist.
  • Projects list – My projects list is stored inside my task management system. I review it, regularly, to determine if I have properly identified the various projects that I’m responsible for…
  • Archive – We used to call these filing cabinets. I keep most of my record electronically these days. PDFs and other reference information that I am unlikely to want / need to share with others goes into Evernote. I also have a file/folder system set up in Dropbox that keeps my general course resources separate from students’ work from a specific semester.

What advice do you have for others who are trying to stick with GTD? Are there any essential tools you use that I missed in my list?

Leverage the Due App in your teaching and productivity

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LEVERAGE THE DUE APP

I mentioned in a recent episode how much I'm getting out of using the Due App.

When I had Natalie Houston on the show, she inspired me to make more use of timers in my teaching and productivity. Here are some of the places she has written about her use of timers:

As I started to find multiple uses for timers in my life, I ran into a challenge. As soon as the timer went off and I turned off the alarm, the item quickly went out of my head.

Enter the Due App.

I don't have that problem with the Due App. I set a “timer” and it keeps bugging me however often I tell it to… If I get distracted in the moments following a reminder to take care of something, I quickly get my attention pulled back by the next alert.

Here are a few ways I'm using the Due App reminders in my teaching and productivity:

Meeting with students. What I enjoy the most about teaching are the one-on-one conversations I get to have with students. That means that I frequently lose track of time and run the risk of missing something urgent. Now I set up an alert in the Due App for five minutes before our conversation is supposed to end and set it up to buzz me every five minutes after that. You have complete control over how often it will bug you.

Committee meetings. I'm charing a few committees this semester and often have to squeeze the meetings in between my teaching schedule. I set a Due alarm for ten minutes before the meeting is supposed to end and then for each five minutes after that.

Reminders to take / pick up students' exams that are being proctored by the disabilities office. I like to do blind grading for exams. That doesn't work very well if I don't have the students' exams with me who have had their exams administered by another person. I set a Due reminder to nudge me to pick up their exams from the office prior to me leaving the office and heading home. Then, I can be sure to grade their exams along with everyone else's.

As I was researching stuff for this post, I discovered that there are also reusable timers as a feature of the app. They give the example of a Pomodoro timer that you might launch when doing a burst of productivity. Maybe you have a set period of time for each time you brew tea, or start a load of laundry in the washer? You can reuse the timers anytime you want to perform that activity that could use a set duration of time.

There are so many possibilities that I know things are  just getting started.

I just bought the Due App for the Mac and look forward to syncing all my reminders between my Apple Watch, iPhone and Mac.

[reminder]Are there apps you're using in place of a “traditional” timer to keep tasks top of mind for yourself? [/reminder]

My 2015 someday/maybe technology list

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someday/maybe technology list

I've talked on the podcast many times before about my approach to exploring new technology that I hear about during the semester. When I discover an educational technology or productivity tool that seems like it might be a good fit for me, I attempt to resist the temptation to dive in right then.

Instead, I place the item on the technology section of my someday/maybe list.

David Allen prescribes the use of someday/maybe lists in his GTD (Getting Things Done) system, as follows:

Activating and maintaining your Someday/Maybe category unleashes the flow of your creative thinking – you have permission to imagine cool things to do without having to commit to doing anything about them yet. – David Allen in Getting Things Done

Someday/maybe technology list

Here's what's on my someday / maybe list under the technology section, to check out during our 2015 holiday break:

Doceri

  • Evaluate Doceri as a possible pencasting replacement, due to LiveScribe's reliance on a proprietary PDF format or app for playing pencasts

Backdraft

  • Check out Backdraft for pre-populating Tweets for a live presentation

Markdown Field Guide

Ulysses

  • Consider switching to Ulysses for podcast interview notes

Mac “Vacuuming” Mail Optimizer

Stanford's Online and Blended Courses

FileMaker Pro

Evaluate using FileMaker Pro for tracking Teaching in Higher Ed guest recommendations

IFTTT

Learn OmniFocus webinars and videos

Linky 5.0

  • Learn about Linky 5.0 and evaluate it's use for social media sharing (not quite sure what it does over BufferApp)

[reminder]What's on your someday/maybe technology list that you'll be checking out as the year ends? [/reminder]

How to be more productive by factoring in context

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context

I have always been a big fan of personal productivity books and tools. When David Allen's first edition of Getting Things Done came out, I liked his methods, with one big exception:

I completely didn't get how considering context was going to be useful to me at all

For those of you who may not be familiar with the idea of using context in your planning, he advises that with each action item on our to do list, we not only consider when this action needs to be taken, but also what (or who) would need to be present in order to do it.

The examples I remember him giving in the first edition were primarily location based. If I were going on an errand to our local CVS, it would also be good to know to stop at the grocery store, which is next door. Also helpful would be to drop by and pick up our dry cleaning.

The problem with his examples was that I can't stand going on errands and it is mostly Dave (my husband) who does the grocery shopping and dry cleaning drop offs in our household. If I'm going to grocery shop, it is likely going to be via the Amazon Fresh delivery service.

While this post links to how to articles on OmniFocus, the set up of contexts is available in many different kind of task managers. Even if your specific tool doesn't have a field for context, you can still type in an @ symbol at the end of each task name and include the context you want to use, such as:

@agenda:FDC or @energy:high or @grocerystore

Why I Changed to Better Appreciate Context

Three factors caused me to make a dramatic shift in my appreciation of context in personal productivity:

  1. I become an OmniFocus user. OmniFocus is one of the task management applications that has features set up for leveraging contexts.
  2. David Allen revised his Getting Things Done book and somehow it stuck better with me on this edition.
  3. I expanded my thinking of how contexts might be set up beyond location-based ones, thanks to experts like Tim Stringer.

There are still ways that other people make use of contexts that don't resonate with me too heavily.

Some people use energy-level contexts and work on the @focus tasks when they are at a time of the day that allows them to target their attention at a given task.

Others set up sophisticated location-based contexts that are better served for people who run lots of errands at once.

If you have set up a system like OmniFocus, but don't think it is working well for you, check out these potential pitfalls and associated solutions.

Contexts that Work Well for Me

By far, these are the contexts that work best for me:

Here are the application-related contexts that I have set up on OmniFocus:

mac-contexts

By far, the biggest time saver on the list is the @Moodle context.

Another one that works well for me is the @Studio context. We have a studio set up at home with professional audio equipment. Whenever I have tasks that can only be accomplished when accessing the audio equipment, I apply that context.

Then, each time I sit down at that computer, I have all the tasks I should take care of in that sitting.

[reminder]How do you use the concept of context in your personal productivity approaches? [/reminder]

How to support our students’ productivity

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how to help our students be more productive

I still have at least one of my planners from college. It's a comic-themed one. Each double-pages spread contains a Far Side comic on the left side and a week-at-a glance on the right.

Life was simpler then. My weeks looked mostly the same, with the occasional exam or paper thrown into the mix. My to do list was kept in the same place as scheduled events, on the corresponding day in my Far Side comic planner.

Things are so different for our students now.

College students are studying less than prior generations, to the tune of approximately ten hours less per week. More than half of them work while in college.

Then there's the 8-10 hours they're spending on their phones daily, according to one study.

Here's how the BLS's American Time Use Survey shows that college students spend their time.

chart6

 

To my knowledge, no one at my university has surveyed the sleeping habits of our students. It is hard to imagine that our average is higher than 7 hours a night, however. I hope to be proven wrong on that someday.

It is more complicated for today's students to manage their time and their tasks than it was for me in college.

How can we support our students' productivity?

Some students are able to manage their lives in their heads. It depends on the types of classes they are taking and what's going on in the rest of their lives.

However, all students benefit when we structure our teaching to grow students' abilities to manage their time and tasks more effectively. Here are some ways we can support our students' productivity habits.

Leverage an LMS's capability to publish calendars

Most of the LMSs that I've used have some kind of master calendar for students to view all the assignments in their classes and their corresponding due dates/times. Some give the ability to copy/paste a calendar subscription, so that students can add it to whatever calendar they use (Google calendar, a Mac calendar, Outlook, etc.).

Our university uses Moodle, which has this option.

If students subscribe to a calendar with all their assignments in it, likely they'll be able to see it on their smart phone, as well as when they're on their computers.

Break assignments up into multiple parts

When Ken Bain was on the episode 36, he spoke about the importance of giving students feedback along the way toward the completion of a major assignment. Students have told me that my method of separating the research and writing processes causes them to be less tempted to take shortcuts. They also said it helped them learn the skill of researching and writing better by having them separated like that.

By having assignments broken up into pieces, we model for our students to think about larger projects in terms of the action steps that it will take to move it forward to completion.

Choose due dates/times to reduce likelihood of sleep deprivation

On the upcoming episode 45 with Aaron Daniel Annas (link will work after 5:00 am PST on 4/23/15), he asked me how to set better boundaries with students who are in crunch mode with their assignments. I advise having assignments due at 5:00 pm, since that tends to reduce the likelihood that students stay up all night to get them finished.

The bigger picture

Our university has a freshmen class called Cornerstone that introduces them to the university, helps build study skills, and creates a community of learners to improve retention.

One of the assignments most Cornerstone classes require is to submit their planners (or screenshots of their electronic system), with their schedules each week and each classes' assignments in it.

Once the class is over, many students go back to the method of relying on their professors to remind them of assignments.

I wonder if there isn't a better way for me to reinforce the continued discipline around having a planner or other means for tracking tasks and calendar items.

[reminder]What ideas do you have for supporting our students' productivity?[/reminder]

How to support our students' productivity

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how to help our students be more productive

I still have at least one of my planners from college. It's a comic-themed one. Each double-pages spread contains a Far Side comic on the left side and a week-at-a glance on the right.

Life was simpler then. My weeks looked mostly the same, with the occasional exam or paper thrown into the mix. My to do list was kept in the same place as scheduled events, on the corresponding day in my Far Side comic planner.

Things are so different for our students now.

College students are studying less than prior generations, to the tune of approximately ten hours less per week. More than half of them work while in college.

Then there's the 8-10 hours they're spending on their phones daily, according to one study.

Here's how the BLS's American Time Use Survey shows that college students spend their time.

chart6

 

To my knowledge, no one at my university has surveyed the sleeping habits of our students. It is hard to imagine that our average is higher than 7 hours a night, however. I hope to be proven wrong on that someday.

It is more complicated for today's students to manage their time and their tasks than it was for me in college.

How can we support our students' productivity?

Some students are able to manage their lives in their heads. It depends on the types of classes they are taking and what's going on in the rest of their lives.

However, all students benefit when we structure our teaching to grow students' abilities to manage their time and tasks more effectively. Here are some ways we can support our students' productivity habits.

Leverage an LMS's capability to publish calendars

Most of the LMSs that I've used have some kind of master calendar for students to view all the assignments in their classes and their corresponding due dates/times. Some give the ability to copy/paste a calendar subscription, so that students can add it to whatever calendar they use (Google calendar, a Mac calendar, Outlook, etc.).

Our university uses Moodle, which has this option.

If students subscribe to a calendar with all their assignments in it, likely they'll be able to see it on their smart phone, as well as when they're on their computers.

Break assignments up into multiple parts

When Ken Bain was on the episode 36, he spoke about the importance of giving students feedback along the way toward the completion of a major assignment. Students have told me that my method of separating the research and writing processes causes them to be less tempted to take shortcuts. They also said it helped them learn the skill of researching and writing better by having them separated like that.

By having assignments broken up into pieces, we model for our students to think about larger projects in terms of the action steps that it will take to move it forward to completion.

Choose due dates/times to reduce likelihood of sleep deprivation

On the upcoming episode 45 with Aaron Daniel Annas (link will work after 5:00 am PST on 4/23/15), he asked me how to set better boundaries with students who are in crunch mode with their assignments. I advise having assignments due at 5:00 pm, since that tends to reduce the likelihood that students stay up all night to get them finished.

The bigger picture

Our university has a freshmen class called Cornerstone that introduces them to the university, helps build study skills, and creates a community of learners to improve retention.

One of the assignments most Cornerstone classes require is to submit their planners (or screenshots of their electronic system), with their schedules each week and each classes' assignments in it.

Once the class is over, many students go back to the method of relying on their professors to remind them of assignments.

I wonder if there isn't a better way for me to reinforce the continued discipline around having a planner or other means for tracking tasks and calendar items.

[reminder]What ideas do you have for supporting our students' productivity?[/reminder]

Getting things done gets redone

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I met with a student yesterday who was completely overwhelmed. She used to be a faithful user of a paper planner, but had not used it this semester and was feeling the consequences.

gtd

The student had come to the conclusion that while she might often be able to carry everything that needed doing around in her head, that any “change in plans” threatened to bring her whole system down. An illness earlier in the semester had thrown her off in most of her classes and she was having trouble getting away from constant chaos.

Of course, it isn't just our students who can get overwhelmed. One of the truest stereotypes that so many of us academics have earned is that of the absent minded professor. The practices recommended by experts in learning design can seem impossible to pursue, since just keeping status quo is hard enough.

I've just started reading David Allen's revised Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity. He shares in the first chapter about what has changed since he first wrote the book and what is still the same.

If you're not familiar with the Getting Things Done system, this is a good overview. Additionally, Dave (my husband) recently interviewed David Allen for his Coaching for Leaders podcast.

As I think about the key lessons I gained from the first time I read it all those years ago (not to mention the times I re-read portions of it), the following principles stand out:

  1. Get it out of your head. Our brains are not at their best when we try to carry our to do lists in our minds.By having some proactive and reactive means of capturing all that is coming at us, or otherwise occupying our thoughts, we can more easily tap into our creative capabilities and experience less stress.
  2. Separate the processing from the doing. When we are going through our various inboxes to sort through our tasks, we need to avoid the temptation to try to actually start tackling them.If a task requires less than two minutes to accomplish, it is ok to go ahead and get it done. However, those actions that require more time will be better served if we consider them in the context of everything that needs doing.
  3. Get better at saying no by allowing time for reflection. If we are simply “doing” machines, we lose the opportunity to cultivate those activities that provide the greatest meaning for us in our lives. If our system for managing our time and tasks includes reflective thinking about our dreams, goals, and priorities, we gain the courage and confidence to say no to things that aren't aligned with our sense of purpose.
  4. Only use due dates for actions that truly have due dates. I used to carry a Franklin Planner with me everywhere. I relied on it heavily to keep me organized. One faulty part of my approach, though, had to do with deadlines.Theoretically, if I didn't get enough done in one day, I should have copied the tasks to the next day's page. That quickly became tedious and I would have to do lists that I was consulting from three weeks ago, since I hadn't taken the time to copy them over to the current page.

    It can be that same way with electronic task list item due dates. We tell ourselves that it is due by this Friday, because there's a sense of urgency around it. however, if we don't get to it by Friday, we either reset the due date, or have a growing snowball of overdue tasks.Our productivity approaches should be ones that we trust. If we regularly look at outstanding tasks, we can prioritize as we go which ones are most important to us. That helps us avoid putting due dates on things that we no longer trust, since we know that so many of them aren't actually due on the day we say that they are.

  5. Invest time each week considering what's most important in the coming week. I perform a weekly review at least 75% of the time. The weeks when I'm disciplined enough to go through this activity, there's a noticeable difference in my stress levels and my productivity. I've decided, in advance, what is most important to focus on during the week and made any contingency plans for areas where there may be trouble ahead.

One of the chapters that David Allen added to the revised version of Getting Thing Done is a section on personal mastery. We don't ever “finish” GTD, but rather are continually developing and adapting.

Peter Senge writes of personal mastery:

People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them–in effect, they approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art. The do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.

We don't someday wake up and completely follow a system like GTD every day of our lives from then on out. Instead, we continually strive to incorporate habits into our lives that will maximize our effectiveness and cushion the blows when times get tough.

The quest is a worthwhile one to me and one I am continually seeking to cultivate even further than I have already…

[reminder]Do any of you have an interest in doing an informal book club on the revised edition of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity? If so, put a comment on this post. If there are at least five of us (including me) who want to commit to reading it within the month of April and having some informal, virtual dialog on it, I'll put something together to connect us.[/reminder]

Five apps that will help you be more organized in the new school year

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August is upon us.

Many of us are getting ready to launch into a new semester later this month, or in September. As I look to enjoy these last few weeks of summer, I'm also starting to get organized for the Fall.

5apps

Here are five tools that I consider essential in helping me be organized in my teaching:

[Read more…] about Five apps that will help you be more organized in the new school year

Capture tools

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One of the big principles asserted in David Allen's Getting Things Done is the importance of having a regular “dump” of what's in our brains into some type of capture system. Some of his process of capturing what's on our minds happens in a somewhat prescribed manner, where we look at what projects are on our plates and what next actions relate to each of them. He also has some great trigger lists, where we can read through a list that is designed to trigger our minds to think about stuff that needs doing. The second method of capture recommended by Allen comes more in the moment, as we remember something that needs to be addressed.

I have a few apps that I use when capturing what's on my mind and getting it recorded somewhere. Each of these apps is located on my home screen, so I have easy access to it.

[Read more…] about Capture tools

Checklist for class planning efficiency

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checklist-sm

I have written previously about using checklists to maximize my efficiency in class planning. The Chronicle of Higher Ed has had posts regarding this topic, as well, with this one being a terrific introduction to the topic. My semester checklist continues to evolve, so have hesitated sharing it here. However, I passed it on to a few of my colleagues and they said it was quite beneficial, even though they modified it considerably for their own use.

Here is my work-in-progress class planning checklist on Evernote.

In order to boost my productivity even further, I take a condensed version of the checklist and import all the items via a single email to my task manager tool of choice (Remember the Milk). The comments about each item in the checklist don't need to be repeated in my to do list, but I have left them there mostly for the colleagues who I have sent the list to in the past who might benefit from the additional detail.  RTM allows you to import a whole series of tasks in a single email, For tasks that repeat, based on the number of classes that I teach, I enter a separate task for each course (for example, revising and posting a syllabus needs to happen for each class). For items that only occur once per semester, such as updating my CV and re-posting, I only include a single task.

Here is my also-work-in-progress Remember the Milk task list import email.

If you want an entirely different example of what an academic in a scientific field keeps in mind as he develops his to do list, see this post from drosophiliac.com.

Feel free to comment below on any of the many items I'm sure I have missed on my ever-changing checklist. This is my second year using it and I've already made a bunch of changes from last year. I'm looking forward to hearing from you on how to improve it even more.

Best wishes to you as you plan your upcoming classes,

Bonni

Five ways to save time as a professor

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5timesavers

Everyone enters the “contest” of who is the busiest at some point in their lives. As someone who is a Mom of a 14 month-old, a full time professor, a person who subscribes to 121 RSS feeds (RIP in June, Google reader), and who can't wait to learn what's happening in the world of Mad Men, I know the value I place on time savers.

Here are five of the biggest tools/approaches that I have found to save the most time, in my role as a professor: [Read more…] about Five ways to save time as a professor

Professors: Start the year out organized using your iPhone

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Iphoneorg

We all start out with the best of intentions, but somehow the year is underway before we know it, and we're again buried in papers to grade and classes to plan. I have spent an inordinate amount of time organizing my iPhone apps and tweaking my systems in the hopes of having my most organized and productive year yet. Here's to hoping that some of my recommendations will help you start the school year organized using your iPhone.

Before iPhones and other technological advances, we had a basic set of organizational tools, all of which are now available in digital form.

Apps

 

In box(es)

 

Until I read David Allen's Getting Things Done, I used to think that I could only have one physical in-box. I would feel guilty that stuff would wind up in my laptop bag, in my purse, and all over my desks at Vanguard and at home. After digesting Allen's recommendations, I discovered that I could have as many in boxes as made sense; I just needed to process what was in them each day and to separate thinking about what needed to be done from the actual doing.

My iPhone has its own set of in-boxes that I go through regularly. My many email accounts show up on the phone and for anything that takes less than two minutes to do, I respond to them and either delete or archive them, aiming for an empty in box on all accounts at the end of my day (this is referred to by time management gurus as zero in box, which you can find a lot about on the internet, but I've found the 43 Folders site to be a good place to start).

Emails that contain actions that will take more than two minutes to complete are emailed to my one central in-box: Remember the Milk.

 

To do lists

 

Remember the Milk is my favorite task manager – and trust me when I say I've explored many of them. I can access my to do list on my iPhone (regardless of whether or not I can get a connection to the internet at that time), over the web, as well as in print (I don't use their print features, but a friend at work likes to have a hard copy to doodle on throughout the day to help her stay focused and she loves the design of the printouts).

As indicated above, I can also forward emails to my to do list, including some added text to indicate which folder/list I want the tasks associated with, when they are due, and how they should be tagged (tags let you categorize things in different ways; so you might have tags around where you need to be when you complete a task – such as @computer or @phone, as well as what activity they relate to – such as prep, grading, or research).

 

Grade books / attendance records

 

My students' grades are all tracked on our university's learning portal. Careful consideration as to where to store student grade info can be important, as there are laws that protect students' privacy and you wouldn't want an ill-intentioned person to locate your iPhone and have the ability to access this sensitive information.

However, I will be using the Attendance iPhone app starting this Fall, in conjunction with the rosters that contain the students' hand-written signatures. I keep a table up front of my classes that contain any handouts / cases we will be using that day, the set of clickers we sometimes use to reinforce the learning, as well as a roster for them to sign to verify their attendance.

Before I leave the classroom after teaching each class, I will update the attendance app on my iPhone and have a growing digital record of their attendance. The application lets you individually email a student with their attendance record to date, export your data to archive somewhere besides your iPhone, and has some automation and customization features that are intuitive and innovative.

 

Calendar / datebook

 

The iPhone has a great built-in calendar that easily syncs to Outlook 2007 (my calendar of choice) and Mac's calendaring system (my husband's calendar of choice). I use the built-in calendar for my personal time management planning, but when I want to see my husband's calendar, I view our shared/synced Google calendars using an iPhone app called Calengoo.

Syncing is simply a way of having the same calendar, no matter what you're using to view / edit it. If I make a change on my iPhone calendar, that change gets reflected in my Outlook calendar. We use a combination of two syncing systems: one that automatically syncs our desktop calendars with our iPhones (so we can avoid having to plug our phones in to do our syncing). We use Apple's Mobile Me service to accomplish the syncing between our iPhones and our desktop calendars. Apple makes this process very easy and the same syncing process works with contacts, too.

We also do another form of syncing: One that syncs our respective desktop calendars to our Google calendars. Our program of choice here has been GooSync. It works well and we have experienced no problems with this solution, though I must admit that I haven't explored the other options that are available.

 

Notebook / journal

 

The old paper-and-pad solution can also be implemented on the iPhone, though I must admit that I still feel rude if I'm tapping on my iPhone taking notes on a meeting. I might be suspected on paying much less attention than I am (or I'll be tempted to pay less attention because the other fun parts of the iPhone call out to me). For most meetings, I still take notes on paper and then record any actionable items into my iPhone. I'm looking forward to trying out my LiveScribe pen this year for capturing notes digitally, so I can balance the desire to demonstrate that I'm focused on the meeting, while still being able to be as close to paperless as is practical.

I have really benefitted from using Evernote to take a picture of any white board brainstorming or mindmapping that occurs in meetings. Evernote is a notebook program that, like many other web 2.0 applications, is available on your iPhone, on the web, and on a desktop program solution. After a whiteboard-using meeting, I fire up the Evernote iPhone application and take a photo of the brainstorming we did. Later, I can email the photo to the attendees and also have it on my Evernote notebook for storing and future searching. Evernote is so smart, that it can search text in photographs, even hand-written text.

I'm only skimming the surface of the potential for organization that Evernote offers. For more ideas, see their recent blog entry on 5 Ways Evernote Maximizes Your Organizing Potential.

 

Next steps

 

On an upcoming blog, I'll review the new iPhone 4.0. For now, let us know in the comments what tools you find most useful on your iPhone for keeping us academics organized.

GTD Tools for Faculty

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Students often perceive that they're the only ones in our lives making requests of us. The first couple of weeks in the Fall as I attempt not to perspire directly on my students as I go from class-to-class teaching typically from 9:00 am till 3:00 pm with only a lunch break in which to catch my breath, students will come up and ask, “Did you get my emails?”

I ask, “When did you send them to me?”

The typical reply: “A few minutes ago.”

We're definitely living in the age of instant-communication. It can be tough to juggle all the demands for our time and attention. Those of us with a system at least find some relief in the structure it provides.

In this post, you'll discover what tools are available in your quest to get things done (GTD) as a professor.

GETTING THINGS DONE

If this is the first time you've heard the phrase ‘getting things done,' Nels Highberg clearly articulates what this system is and how to apply it in an academic setting. I use a combination of David Allen's GTD system, along with some of the classic approaches described in the Franklin Covey system, such as considering our various roles and prioritizing tasks around our roles. If you want a great training system to walk you through getting started with GTD, check out their GTD system product. [Read more…] about GTD Tools for Faculty

Five favorite iPhone apps for professors

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Iphoneapps

As busy as we faculty all are, it is wonderful having an iPhone to simplify our vocations somewhat. The following five iPhone applications have paid off in spades in terms of time saved and effectiveness gained.

 

 

Remember the Milk: This easy-to-use to do program can be accessed on the internet, on your iPhone application (it syncs), and it integrates with other services you may use such as Twitter and Jott. Start easy with entering tasks and entering due dates. As your skills grow, you can add tags to each task that associate it with specific classes and activity types (such as grading, meetings, and preparing). You can also set it up to text message your iPhone as far in advance of a task being due as you desire. COST: the application is free, but the $25 annual PRO membership is required. Well worth the expense.

 

 

Attendance: I discovered this application by reading about it in PC World. My hopes got quite high, as I thought about keeping attendance in real-time and not letting my sign-in sheets stack up quite so tall on my desk. This application has a slow learning curve and in no time, you’ll have your classes set up and can take roll with ease. I still use a sign-in sheet for the students, but immediately after the class can mark the entire roster as present and then one-by-one change the status of those students who were absent/late. COST: $3. No brainer in terms of time saved.

 

 

WorldCat: Type in an author, title, or category and find library resources nearby. The application uses your current location and when you type in what resource you’re searching for, it lets you know the closest libraries to you that have the item. COST: Free

 

 

Quick Checklists: This application is similar to Remember the Milk in that it tracks things, but it is better used for steps you go through on a frequent basis. Packing for a trip? Getting ready to speak at a conference? Have all the steps you’ll need to take or the things you’ll need to bring stored in a template and check the items off as you complete them. I create checklists for my first class (things I don’t want to forget to me ntion), as well as for the first day of school (until I’m back in the swing of things and remember the materials I’ll need for teaching). COST: $1

 

 

Evernote:This application can be accessed on your computer, on the web, and on your iPhone. It is a note-taking application that allows you to set up different notebooks and to have tags for each note you enter. Tags are similar to putting things in folders, only you can have the same item in multiple folders (if only we could do this with manila file folders without killing trees and taking up more space). My favorite feature on Evernote is the ability to take a picture of a whiteboard drawing that I’ve done. Evernote recognizes the text in photos and makes that content searchable, in addition to the content you’ve typed in. I prefer skipping meeting minutes for more informal meetings and storing the record of our conversations in Evernote. If I ever need to look back for when we discussed a particular issue, I can just type in the search box and it will search my white board verbiage, in addition to the rest of my notes. I don’t even have that good of penmanship and it does a superb job of recognizing the text. COST: Free

 

Let us know what other applications you have found useful as a college professor in the comments.