Saturday, June 25, 2011

Staying Organized Online

"12 Joys of Teaching in the Digital Age"
--Hum to final verse of "The 12 Days of Christmas"

On the 12th day of school, my teaching brought to me:
12(000) professional websites
11 colleagues' blogs
10 online gradebooks
9 months of tech plans
8 state tests to research
7 periods to teach
6(00) Facebook friends
5 days per week
4 contact numbers
3 MAP computer tests
2 different e-mails
and a web page I built, but never update.

This is meant to be funny, but the slightly ironic/sad part is that each of these numbers is actually true (several underestimated)! How can I possibly complete what I HAVE to do, and still try to keep up, even a little, with the best tech tools and websites out there? Though this will always be a problem, one online organizing tool that was just presented to me is already becoming be a favorite: www.delicious.com.

Most of my work is (or can be) done online these days. Google Calendar, Google Docs, and our online gradebook are some of my favorite tools, because I can access them from any computer, server, or handheld device (not that I'm cool enough to actually own one of those). However, said gradebook has a URL that's a mile long. How am I going to remember it? Where can I store it? Do I really have to hand-enter it every time I'm on a different computer? I took one step by e-mailing it to myself, but my inbox is messy enough. I have to log into my e-mail, and scroll back 2 pages just to begin finding the e-mail to get to the site. Clearly, I need help.

Delicious solves that problem for me. It's online storage for bookmarks, and they can be tagged, sorted, categorized, etc., in a thousand different ways. I LOVE it already! E-mail accounts, professinal organizations, state testing, ACT, our gradebook, and the website for this blog are just a few of the URLs I already have saved and tagged. Try it -- make at least one part of your life a little simpler.

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