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5 ways to boost your e-mail productivity

Last December, productivity blog Lifehacker polled its readers to determine their preferred tool for online collaboration. In an age of wikis, social networks, and Google Wave, it may surprise you that the early adopter-types who read Lifehacker chose e-mail as their favorite collaboration tool. The possible reason for this is that we’re all pretty familiar with how to use e-mail, whereas newer tools have learning curves we haven’t all tackled (yet). E-mail, though, can become an impediment to productivity if you let it. Here are five good ways to get your inbox in order and reclaim some of that time you use sending and receiving e-mail:

1. Achieve Inbox Zero

How many messages are in your inbox right now? Unless your answer is “none, Aaron!” then you have too many. Inbox Zero is a method created by productivity guru Merlin Mann to cut through e-mail clutter via the four D’s–delete, do, defer, delegate. For a few details, check out Amber’s post about Inbox Zero from last summer. Once you’ve cleaned house, make sure to pick up your nerd merit badge!

2. Use subject line rules

Sadly, searching for e-mail subject writing rules will return primarily tips on ~~spamming~~ marketing to consumers via e-mail. There are some good tips out there, though, such as these four ways good subject lines will make you more productive (basically, make them specific, accessible, and relevant); some more tips on good subject lines (concise, summarizing, “don’t tease”); and even some e-mail subject line protocols to really get productive.

3. Ditch the attachments

I hate e-mail attachments. The disk quota on my work e-mail account is quite low compared to what I’d get if I used Gmail or some other free mail service. A large PowerPoint file or video clip can lock down my e-mail account. Be considerate when sending attachments, especially large ones. Online services like Dropbox make it easy to safely share files via web links instead of attaching them to your messages.

4. Shut it off!

Whenever your computer pings or pops up a notification that new mail has arrived, what do you do? You probably drop what you’re doing, go over to your e-mail program, and see what’s new. If you don’t, you’re probably thinking about it. That’s distracting. My solution to this, especially when I’m working on something that needs my concentration, is close my e-mail program completely. I fire it up every few hours to check on incoming messages, process them as necessary, and then shut it back down.

I know that might sound drastic, especially if you’re addicted to e-mail. But give it a try. At the very least, shut off the bleeps and bloops and pop-up window notifications drawing your attention from your task at hand to your inbox.

5. Express yourself (clearly)

Last month, WebWorkerDaily published five ways to express yourself more clearly online. Clearer expression makes you a better communicator makes you more productive, because you’re not having to re-explain yourself.

What are your tips for getting the most out of e-mail? Share them in a comment below. See you next week!

Photo: S Migol on Flickr

By Aaron | March 12th, 2010 | Comments

How we manage a social media presence on a shoestring, part 4: Facebook

This is the third part of series on being active in social media without spending a lot of time or money. To catch up on previous installments, please browse our archives.

To wrap up the series I want to touch on Facebook Pages. Pages are kind of like standard Facebook profiles, except instead of centering around people they center around companies, brands, and organizations. A page can have a message wall, photos, discussions, events, and other types of information depending on what Facebook apps you’ve installed (if you’ve ever played an online Facebook game like Farmville or participated in a survey or quiz on Facebook, you’ve used an app).

People can follow activity on your page by becoming a “fan.” When you post status messages to your page, they show up in your fans’ news feeds. This makes pages great for sending out information to people who may want to keep up-to-speed on what you’re doing. As mentioned in our posts about Twitter, we use TwitterFeed to automatically post links to new content in our blog.

Facebook also provides Groups. The Kansas Coaching Project and SIM Professional Developers have groups on Facebook. Unlike pages, status messages posted to groups are only viewable within the group, kind of like a Facebook-within-Facebook.

Groups and pages have overlapping features, which may be confusing. Tech blog Mashable has posted a good comparison of the two features’ capabilities to help you determine which may be best for you. They have also published the Facebook Guidebook online to help you get the most out of the largest social networking service out there. For us, KU (strongly) suggests using Pages instead of Groups.

Of all our social media presences, we probably reach the fewest via Facebook, even though many of whom I consider our core audience (SIM professional developers and the teachers with whom they work) use the service. We’ll promote our Facebook presence more heavily in the coming months, but generally speaking this is a good example of why it’s a good idea to push your message across multiple platforms, and let people choose the best way(s) to access your content.

This concludes, for now, our series on social media on a shoestring. As may be evident from this post, our approach is by no means complete. As the social media landscape adapts, we’ll have to do that same. Will newer technologies like Google Buzz take off? What–if anything?–will trump Facebook as the king of them all? If you’re waiting around for the dust to settle you’re in for a long wait.

I hope this series has inspired you to take another look at social media and how it can help you promote your ideas and causes without taking over your life. Even though I’m wrapping up the series for now, keep an eye on our blog for social media-related news and tips. Thanks for reading!

By Aaron | March 9th, 2010 | Comments

From last week: New wallpaper, image editing, Depot via RSS, webinars defined, and smart pens

On Monday Amber posted the Stratepedia wallpaper for March.

On Tuesday, David shared a number of photo editing tools to help improve your snapshots and images.

Did you know you can subscribe to RSS feeds of Depot groups? Amber showed you how on Wedesday.

If you’ve ever wondered what we mean by webinar, Amber explained it on Thursday.

Finally, on Friday, I shared some things I really like about the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe, my new favorite gadget.

Have a great week!

By Aaron | March 8th, 2010 | Comments

5 neat things about the Pulse smartpen

A few weeks ago I bought a Livescribe Pulse Smartpen to put to the test. The device is an electronic pen that writes with regular ink, but when you use it on special paper it automatically digitizes your writings so you can save them on your computer and share them with others. It also includes a built-in microphone so you can record your meeting or class and play the recording back within your notes–in other words, you can tap your paper notes and listen to what was being said at that time. Finally, the pen has a number of other applications you can install on it, from games to reference materials.

I have to admit I was skeptical about the Pulse pen, based mostly on exposure to competitors’ devices. I tried using a similar device a few years ago, but it was clunky, didn’t include the recording feature, and was definitely marketed toward kids–not something I’d want to be seen writing with myself. However, we’re interested in the possible use of this device with certain learning strategies, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I purchased the 2 GB model ($150) and a few notebooks to get started. I’ve been using it to take notes in meetings and in lieu of a regular paper notebook and am impressed with the results. Here are five things I really like so far:

1. It just works!

A video demonstration of the pen is available on their website; it was also available at the store display where I bought mine. My takeaway from the video was that it’s easy to make things look good in a promotional video. The thing is, though, that it actually works just like they show in the video.

The pen is a bit larger than a regular pen, since it’s got a microphone, speaker, camera, and tiny display built into it. However, it’s about half the size, diameter-wise, of the smartpen I’d previously tried. The only button on the device is to turn it on and off–you control recording, playback, and other functions through an interface on the paper itself.

2. Nice desktop app

Livescribe Desktop is the companion software that works on your Windows or Mac computer. It works a lot like iTunes. When you plug your Pulse pen into its USB cradle/charger, the desktop app opens and syncs your notes to your computer. Each of your notebooks appears like a playlist, and you can quickly scan thumbnails of each page. You can also play back recordings inside your notes and export your notes and recordings to share with others (though they do not export in a synced fashion–notes and audio are exported as separate files).

The desktop app also provides an interface to the Livescribe Store, where you can buy more notebooks or applications for your pen. This is one area I haven’t dug into yet, but there is actually a decent library of add-on functionality you can install on your pen. If you’ve ever installed an app on your phone, you’ll recognize the basic procedure.

3. Good recording quality

Last week I used my Pulse pen in a meeting at a busy restaurant. The built-in mic and recording software are good about picking up nearby voices and reducing ambient noise. The pen also comes with earbuds with built-in microphones for better results, but I haven’t tried them.

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d find this feature useful. I’ve tried recording events in the past, or listening to an audio file of a lecture, but I tend to ignore them after a few minutes. The ability to control the audio playback based on your notes is extremely handy, though, and I’m apt to begin recording more meetings (with permission from other attendees, of course) so I can better remember what everyone said.

4. Handwriting recognition

This one surprised me–I figured handwriting recognition would be the domain of more expensive devices, but the LiveScribe Desktop app includes a search field that indeed searches your notes. It even picked up words in the chicken scratching I call my handwriting–not all of them, but enough for me to think that someone who prints more legibly than I would be able to make good use of this feature. I think it might be a good exercise to review notes sometimes and make clear labels where necessary, in order to facilitate this search (the video I linked to about the desktop app actually shows this practice).

5. Print your own paper

This one surprised me, too. As I mentioned, the digitization works via special paper with thousands (millions?) of tiny dots. Of course, this paper comes at a premium in the store–a pack of four 100-page notebooks will set you back about 20 bucks. Aha, that’s how they get you, right? In part, I think–but then I learned that you can print your own notebooks. I haven’t tried this yet, and don’t know if self-printed books have the same accuracy as store-bought ones, but it’s encouraging that they’ve made this an option. It would be really nice to see this expanded to allow teachers to create custom worksheets. Another device, the IOGear Mobile Digital Scribe, digitizes writing on anything, but I haven’t seen one of these in action. If you have, please leave a comment on your experience.

Want to know more?

I’ll post more on our blog as I keep experimenting with the pen, but in the meantime there’s lots of information, reviews, and ideas online (search for “pulse smartpen” or “livescribe” in your preferred search engine). I’m admittedly not a K-12 guy, but someone at Livescribe has put a lot of thought into ways the Pulse pen can be put to use in education.

I still think that, long term, a good tablet computer like the iPad coupled with a pen-like input device will be the way to go. I’m particularly keen on not having to keep using paper–I would much prefer going direct to digital. For now, though, I think smartpens like the Pulse are worth looking at for anyone interested in digitizing their notes. I also think it will be interesting to see how these tools apply to learning strategies. What do you think?

Image courtesy of Livescribe, Inc.

By Aaron | March 5th, 2010 | Comments

From last week: Twitter, Depot webcast recordings, blog survey results, bandwidth, and online collaboration tools

It’s Monday again–hope you had a good weekend. Here’s what you may have missed on our blog last week:

On Tuesday I continued my series on budget and time-conscious social networking with a piece on how we use Twitter at Stratepedia.

Also on Tuesday, Amber shared links to the recorded versions of our Depot webcasts from a few weeks ago. Amber’s session is the shorter one, if you’re in a hurry.

On Wednesday, Amber provided some results from her blog content survey from the week before. Amber and I have discussed the results and have some ideas about how to give you more of the content you’re interested in reading–watch for some teacher success stories and interviews in the coming weeks. I have some followup questions I may ask down the road, so I hope you’re not tired of answering survey questions yet.

On Thursday, Amber posted some methods you can use to test your Internet connections speed, otherwise known as bandwidth.

Later on Thursday I posted an important update to our terms of service for the Learning Labs–specifically, we won’t be creating new groups on the Learning Labs effective immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience.

But don’t worry–on Friday I offered five tools to use to collaborate online. This list is by no means exhaustive, and we’ll share more as we learn about them.

Lots of good web links were shared over the course of the week, too.

By Aaron | March 1st, 2010 |

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5 tools to help collaborate online

Since we’re no longer creating new groups on the Learning Labs, I wanted to give you some other options for collaborating online in this week’s Friday Five. All of these products are free to use. Their feature sets overlap but each product is unique–depending on your particular situation, one might be the most practical option for you.

Disclaimer: I do not recommend using any of these tools to share or discuss sensitive information like student data. Contact your school’s information technology experts for assistance if you need to collaborate with confidential information.

Hosted

The first two products are hosted by service providers, or companies that offer a product on their own servers. Please note that some hosted options might be blocked by school or district firewalls.

1. Google Groups

Google Groups isn’t flashy, but if you need to collaborate with a team over e-mail, it’s a good way to go. A Group can be set up in under 10 minutes. Archives of each discussion can be reviewed and searched online. You can also upload files to share with others. You’ll probably want to make your Group “invite only,” to limit access to discussions and information to only your team members.

2. Ning

Ning lets you create your own, feature-rich social networking site. If you’ve participated in the the Big Four network or SIM Action Research, you’ve used Ning to socialize with others. It’s very easy to create and customize a site for your group with tons of communication features to keep people talking and sharing. If you create a Ning group, make sure to set moderation and privacy settings to protect your team members from spam and phishing attempts.

Self-hosted

If you’ve got the ability to install software on a server, you might be interested in one of these remaining two products. Remember to follow instructions carefully, and take all steps necessary to protect your data and your co-collaborators online.

3. Your course management system

The Learning Labs are based on Moodle, a popular, open source online course management system. I am almost certain that your school district (or the school or district you’re supporting with professional development) has a course management system like Moodle, Blackboard, or Angel. These systems may be used for more than just sharing course information with students–contact your school’s system administrator to see if you and your team can use it to collaborate.

4. Open Atrium

Open Atrium is an intriguing open source product that lets you share a calendar, documents, and discussions, like most intranet packages, but with a social media twist–other features include group blogs and a Twitter-like “shout box” to share status messages with your group. Open Atrium is built on the highly popular Drupal content management system, so online support is easy to find.

5. Elgg

Elgg is another build-your-own social networking tool–like Ning, but hosted on your own server. Elgg’s popularity is growing in education, so someone in your school’s IT department may be familiar with setting it up for you. Check out Elgg’s feature list to get a feel for whether it would be a good tool for your team.

Other options

I focused on options that would be free for you to use and/or already be available to you on your school’s servers–it’s by no means exhaustive. Basecamp, for example, is a popular hosted collaboration tool, and Microsoft Sharepoint is a hosted option you might consider (or it might even be on your server already, ask your IT folks). I personally have been impressed with Collaboration Services on Apple’s latest Mac OS X Server. What tools have you found useful for online collaboration? Share them with us in the comments below, and have a great weekend!

Photo: JWas on Flickr

By Aaron | February 26th, 2010 | Comments

Important changes coming to Stratepedia’s Learning Labs

Effective today, February 25, 2010, we are changing our policy regarding the Learning Labs service. We will no longer add new groups to the Learning Labs. We will continue to host and support existing groups using the site.

Why? As you may know, the Learning Labs site is the only part of the Stratepedia toolkit that we don’t develop in-house. Due to this unique status, maintaining the Learning Labs requires additional time and effort. While we are able to maintain the site in terms of stability and security, we are limited in what we can do to improve its functionality. As we move forward with integrating the Stratepedia applications with one another, we’ve learned that keeping the Learning Labs up to speed with Coaching Calendar, Dossier, and Depot is in some cases not practical and in others not even possible.

My group is already on the Learning Labs. Do we need to find a new collaboration tool? No. If you’re already using the Learning Labs, you can keep using it. If you’re interested in moving to another service, please contact us for assistance.

Can you recommend any alternatives to the Learning Labs? Watch our blog in the coming days for suggestions about other online collaboration tools. (If you’ve found a collaboration tool you like and would like to share with others, please mention it in the comments at the end of this post.)

Can I ask you more about this change in service? Sure–just drop us a line online or leave a comment below. You can also call me directly at 785-864-7088 with your questions and comments.

By Aaron | February 25th, 2010 | Comments

How we manage a social media presence on a shoestring, part 3: Twitter

This is the third part of series on being active in social media without spending a lot of time or money. To catch up on previous installments, please browse our archives.

Last week I talked about using TwitterFeed to automatically post links to new items in a blog or podcast. However, Twitter isn’t a one-way street. You’re not the only one pushing content out there–thousands of Twitter users have opinions about things of interest to you, and they’re sharing those opinions in 140 characters or less. If you’re maintaining a brand, it’s important to keep an eye on Twitter chatter around that brand. Most Twitter clients have a built-in search function to help you keep track of what’s being said about specific keywords or hash tags, or you can use Twitter’s web-based search form.

I really recommend using a client, though. TweetDeck, Seesmic, and HootSuite are popular among many power users, though I personally like Tweetie for Mac and iPhone.

We don’t provide a whole lot of formal tech support on Twitter, primarily because we don’t get many requests that way, but I’ve been able to introduce people to our work and to SIM by watching what Stratepedia’s followers are talking about. It’s important to be responsive–I’ve had good and bad luck trying to contact support through Twitter accounts, but the companies that do get back in touch with me always earn bonus points in my book. I also like to spread interesting ideas others have shared on Twitter, to hopefully spread them a little further.

I know most of the people reading this blog aren’t in charge of a brand, so to speak, but keeping an eye on keywords and trending topics on Twitter can help generate ideas for content on your blog–and more generally, help you stay up-to-date in your professional field. Twitter may not make too much sense at first, but give it a try and watch for ways you can use it to spread your message (and the message of others). In other words, use it for more than telling the world what you’re eating for breakfast.

By Aaron | February 23rd, 2010 | Comments

5 reasons the iPad version of Wired should excite educators

It’s been a few weeks since Apple announced the iPad, and it will be several more weeks before this new device is made available to the public. (My initial take on the iPad in education is available in our archives, in case you missed it.) In the meantime, software developers and publishers have been preparing iPad-specific versions of apps, magazines, and books to arrive in time for the iPad’s release and surrounding hubbub. The current cream of the crop, in my mind, is the iPad-enhanced edition of Wired magazine, demonstrated below.

Although Wired isn’t in the education field, I think they’ve done some interesting things in this demonstration that educators should think about. As usual, I ask you to look beyond the surface and think about how these concepts could be applied to learning and teaching.

1. Interactive components

The Wired demonstration features a few interactive ads. Readers can rotate objects (around the 1:30 mark) or zoom and pan photos (around 2:55). Although these are ads, think about how these concepts apply to visual aids in textbooks. Learners could interact with high resolution maps or inline physics experiments from within the textbook. Although the technology to do this sort of thing on a computer has been around for a good 15 years, it can now be provided through a much richer context.

2. Drill-down navigation

This could and should have implications on how electronic textbooks are designed. If you’re familiar with the SMARTER teacher planning process–essentially, identifying and teaching critical concepts–perhaps you can envision how a reader could drill down from a critical concept into the details, on an as-needed basis. The very structure of books as we know them could change!

3. Visual navigation

Accompanying this drill-down navigation system is a new way to jump from article to article. In addition to a table of contents and index, books styled after the Wired demo could be navigated visually. This will place greater importance on the visuals themselves, as they will also be of use for finding content. In fact, this functionality could augment tables of contents or even reinvent the back-of-the-book index as we know it. Any ideas how that might look?

4. It’s not ePub

The Wired iPad edition isn’t viewed through Apple’s iBooks e-reader software. It’s a standalone application, created using Adobe’s AIR cross-platform technology. While the decision to use AIR versus other programming technologies is subject to much debate, what it does do is open up the possibility to add functionality into a publication that iBooks currently doesn’t provide. I’m thinking, for example, that a textbook publisher could embed text highlighting or embedded note taking into an iPad edition.

5. “We want to build a way for our readers to be able to engage with our content on any screen or any device that they want to.”

This quote, around the 3:20 mark, is important. In essence, Wired wants to make sure their content is available via as many different outlets as possible–online, on a mobile device, even paper. I think in educational technology there’s not enough of this; if you want the content (be it text or multimedia) you have to accept the publisher’s format. This format may or may not be the best for you–it may require you to buy extra software, or even a new computer or device, to make it work. The music industry and movie industry have, by and large, come to accept this–vinyl LPs come with a link to download tracks for use on an iPod, and many movies on DVD now also include a version to play on computers and mobile devices. Some publishers of technical books, including O’Reilly and Associates and Pragmatic Programmers, allow you to download purchased e-books in the format of your choice as well. I hope book publishers en masse follow this example.

By Aaron | February 19th, 2010 | Comments