Joel Zehring

This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. Karen also writes for OnlineColleges.net, an online college resource.

After preparing lessons, teaching students, and grading papers, many teachers find that there is very little time for anything else. That’s where the web can help. The Internet is flush with websites specifically designed to help people be more productive. Here are 25 sites that would be useful to teachers.

Dumb Little Man – This well-organized website offers all sorts of tips to help people live happier, more productive lives. New tips are added each week.

Lifehack – One of the most popular blogs on the web, Stepcase Lifehack is entirely devoted to providing tips and tricks to help people get more done on a daily basis.

Lifehacker – Lifehacker also offers tips and downloads for getting things done. New tips are posted everyday.

Productivity501 – Productivity501 is a productivity blog with frequently updated entries on time management, organization, productivity, and technology.

Unclutterer – This blog is all about getting organized and staying organized–in your home and in your career.

Netvibes – This free web service allows you to create your own personal home page with all of your favorite blogs, news feeds, social networks, email services, widgets, and websites. Putting all of these things in one place is guaranteed to save you a few minutes each day.

Google Reader – Google Reader boosts your productivity by bringing all of your websites to one place and notifying you know when new content is posted.

Clusty – Clusty was designed to help people conduct faster and more effective searches on the Internet. It sorts results into topic-based clusters to eliminate the time it takes to sort through unwanted results.

Hooeey – Hooeey helps you become more productive on the Internet by analyzing your browsing history and offering suggestions on how to better use your browser.

Ref Desk – If you need to check a fact quickly or get kid-friendly info for the classroom, Ref Desk is the place to go. This award-winning website offers tons of search engines as well as an enormous online collection of reference materials.

Lesson Plans Page – HotChalk’s Lesson Plans Page makes it easier for teachers to plan lessons by providing nearly 4,000 free lesson plans and other classroom resources.

TeAchnology – Teachers can get free access to thousands of resources on TeAchnology. The site offers nearly 8,000 printables and more than 30,000 lesson plans to help teachers save time.

Online Worksheet Generator – This online worksheet generator can be used to quickly create math worksheets, word puzzles, word searches, word scrambles, and more.

BookFinder – BookFinder makes it easy for teachers to find the books they are looking for. This meta search engine searches multiple sites to find the cheapest price.

Engrade – This online classroom community offers an entire suite of free web tools for teachers. Features that will help with productivity include an online assignment calendar, gradebook, attendance book, and secure messaging.

Edmodo – Edmodo is a communication tool for students and teachers. It can be used to share notes, files, and more.

Class Marker – Class Marker not only allows teachers to make professional-looking online quizzes, it also saves teachers time by grading the quizzes automatically.

Phonevite – Used frequently by school systems, Phonevite is a free phone service that sends recorded telephone messages, reminders, and alerts to other people.

Remember The Milk – Remember The Milk is the ultimate productivity app. You can manage and update your tasks from anywhere, get IM reminders, and share your tasks with other people.

Task Coach – Task Coach is an open source task manager that can be used to create and manage to-do lists and personal tasks.

TracksLife – This free web app tracks everything with customizable databases. And if you ever forget something, TracksLife will send you a reminder via email or RSS.

GradeFix – Although this homework management system was designed for students, it has features that would also be useful for teachers who want to stay on top of projects.

30 Boxes – This online calendar has all sorts of handy features and couldn’t be any easier to use.

TweetLater – This free Twitter app can help teachers who use Twitter better manage their account. The app allows you to type all of your Tweets up whenever you want and then set them to drip on the day you decide.

TweetDeck – TweetDeck is an all-in-one browser that can be used to better manage and update Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Can you tell that I’m almost on spring break? I’m a little swamped right now, so the whole weekly review topic has been on my mind a lot. Updated previous post to “GTD: weekly review links“.

Updated: I completely forgot about a previous GTD/Weekly review post.  Spring break is approaching fast.

The power of the Getting Things Done lies in the trusted system philosophy: if I completely trust my system, I’ll use it all the time and my stress level will go way down. In order to keep your system seaworthy and free of leaks (and therefore, trustworthy), it’s important to review all your lists and projects on a weekly basis. Now, I’m secure enough to let you know that I don’t review my system enough. So rather than tell you how to do this, I’m going to defer to some other people who are perhaps more qualified than me to describe the ever-elusive weekly review.

Audiobook Review: David Allen’s “GTD > Weekly Review” – Lifehack.org summarizes a new resource from the top guru himself.

David Allen Company | Free Articles | Weekly Review – David Allen’s consulting company has plenty of free resources and articles, including this free download (pdf file). You have to sign in like you’re buying something, but they won’t ask for a credit card.

Mental dialogues, yak-shaving & the triumph of the ‘mini-review … - Merlin Mann slices and dices the weekly review to a bite-sized event that might be more schedule-friendly.

Getting Teaching Done is really about not doing things. A teacher can only successfully complete one action at a time (forget multitasking). This means that as a teacher, you have to be very comfortable with all the things that are not getting done at every moment of the day. To get there, plan out your action times and defer like crazy:

• Plan a day ahead. Find open time slots and write down actions you will complete during those times. This will be your next action list for the day.
• The stuff you don’t like to do gets done first. Whether it’s grading those persuasive essays, emailing your committee members, or writing those science lesson plans, getting the annoying and boring out of the way can be a good way to build momentum. It’s the all-downhill-from-here approach to productivity.
• Alternately, go for some easy wins. Put a couple of quick, painless tasks at the top of the list, and hit those first. Momentum builds as you cross actions off the list. If you feel productive, you’ll be more productive.
• Stick to contexts. We lose a ton of time because we hop around from the computer to the office to the phone to your co-worker’s classroom. Instead, organize your next actions by context. Pick one time answer all the emails. Collect everything that needs to get done in the office and take up in one trip.
• Don’t get guilty. Prioritize your actions, and if some things don’t get done that day, don’t beat yourself up. Make a plan for the next day and recognize that there will be things that don’t get done. But remember, you’re in charge of the “didn’t get done” list.

Check out this great post from lifehack.org for a ton of ideas to kickstart your productivity.

50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily

Merlin Mann presents a compilation of GTD articles and resources from the archives of 43folders.com. The productivity blog got a much deserved mention on NPR in a recent radio segment about Getting Things Done. Here’s an excerpt from one of the articles:

“So you sprint from fire to fire, praying you haven’t forgotten anything, sapped of anything like creativity or even the basic human flexibility to adapt your own schedule to the needs of your friends, your family or yourself. Your ‘stuff’ has taken over your brain like a virus now, dragging down every process it touches and rendering you spent and virtually useless. Sound familiar?”

Seems to ring true with the sentiments of many teachers in the lounge. Congratulations, Merlin and friends.

43 Folders: Best of GTD | 43 Folders

Tags: gtd, productivity, links

A trusted system stays trustworthy for about two minutes in the real world of near-constant input and frequent distractions. A weekly review of your lists can go a long way toward clearing your mind, reassessing your commitments, and ultimately getting teaching done.

• Take a look at your calendar. Whether you use a physical plan book, or an online service, your calendar is sacred ground. If your calendar tells you to go to the library at 1:35 on Wednesday, go there without a second thought. Create a separate calendar or list for optional events during coming up in the next week.
• Scan your active projects. Make sure that each project is moving forward. Are your lists of actions up-to-date? Are there any actions you should move to your calendar? Are you waiting on someone that you need to follow-up with? Can you do anything in two minutes or less?
• Think in contexts. As you find actions that you’d like to take in the upcoming week, place them on lists that are context-specific. Lists like “calls”, “errands”, “copier”, and “computer” can give you a quick reference when you have a some open time to knock out a few actions without jumping from the phone to the computer to the office copier and back to the phone. Some other helpful teacher contexts might be “beginning of day”, “end of day”, or “class meeting”, for those announcements, papers, and instructions you need to give to students.
• Cut away. Don’t be afraid to cut tasks that just don’t seem to be getting done week after week. They’re probably not that important, and that’s why they’re not getting done. If you absolutely can’t bring yourself to trash a to do, then create list called “someday”. This list is available anytime your feeling particularly visionary, or when you reach that golden moment when everything is done (read: never).