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.

A quick googling of “multiple intelligences” results in a laundry list of websites explaining the basic theory, but not a whole lot to introduce the concept to students. Here are some activities that I dreamed up to illustrate each area of intelligence, and activate that intelligence a little.

• First, students will need some paper to write some notes and draw some pictures.
• Visual/Spatial – Create a detailed drawing out of a simple line

• Verbal/Linguistic – write a short story about your drawing
• Logical/Mathematical – Magic squares addition puzzle. 9 points puzzle.
• Musical – Write your three favorite songs. Play “Name that tune” with a partner by humming or drumming the song.
• Natural – List as many cat species as possible in 60 seconds.
• Kinesthetic – Cross Crawl

1. Stand with your feet slightly apart, arms at your sides. Lift your right knee toward your chest as you cross your left hand over the midline of your body, placing the hand, palm open, to the outside of the right knee.
2. Return to the starting position, and repeat with the right hand and left knee to complete 1 set. Do at least 12 sets. You can perform this move quickly and rhythmically to build energy, or very slowly to emphasize balance.

• Interpersonal – Write down three get-to-know you questions. Interview one other student.
• Intrapersonal – Answer the question “What do you do that makes you feel smart?”

I guess I should blog a link to little blurb that I wrote for Edutopia Magazine. I commented on an online article, and they plugged it in to this month’s print version. Kind of cool that blog comments can live beyond the ten minutes I spend typing them.

Feedback: Technology as a Tool | Edutopia

Getting Things Done is really about four things: capture, label, list, and do. Possibly the most complicated step is listing, because there’s just so much stuff, and organization doesn’t happen by itself. All the stuff needs to fit into lists, and it all needs to show up in the right place at the right time. Currently, I use Remember the Milk to list my stuff, or at least represent my stuff in lists. I’ve used other lists, and I’ve learned that one indispensable function is tagging (or labeling). Tags allow you to slice and dice your tasks many different ways with the option of view everything in one big list, if necessary.

Desktop-based solutions

GTD in Outlook – via Bill Kratz
Text File – (via 43folderswiki)

Web-based solutions

Remember the Milk – Getting Things Done with Remember the Milk (via Lifehacker)
Google Notebook – Getting Things Done with Google Notebook (via Lifehacker)

Crazy-big list of tools:

GTD Software Tools for PC and Mac (via Jeff Sandquist’s wiki)

What do you use to keep organized?