Success?

I am in the last semester of my M.Ed., have to do a major project in addition to the research class and produce a publishable piece based on original research, took on a position with a new teacher organization to promote technology use in the district, and have three preps.   I realize that organization is key to my success this semester.

With that in mind, here are some of the tools I am using to make sure I don’t let stuff slide.  Total cost for tools 1 – 4  tools combined is ZERO.  5 comes with the Word package.

1.  Gmail and Google Calendar:  Gmail has a new “Tasks” built in under Contacts.  Go to the Google Labs (the little green flask next to your email address at the top” and enable the Tasks feature.  I also use the Calendar to keep track of everything, and I do mean everything.  Assignments, meetings for class at UNR, meetings for IEP’s, deadlines, …  I used to use a couple of calendars, and I ditched everything for one that I can access easily.  Here is a screen shot of what the tasks looks like along with the feature enabled in gmail.

2.  My cellphone.  Did you know that you can text something to your google calendar and have it added automatically?  Yup.  Now, from anywhere, all I do is send a text message to 48368′ (GVENT) and google recognizes my cell phone number (some set up required) and adds the event to my calendar. You can also check your appointments and have gcalendar text you ahead of time about appointments (up to 5 times if need be!)  Want more info, check out this site.

3.  I still use the PocketMod calendar as well. Sometimes you just need a small little paper calendar to jot a quick note or a followup bit of info.  I do not rely on it, and the details must be entered into google calendar the same day just to make sure I don’t lose anything.

4.  Zotero.  If you use Firefox, and you do academic research, you simply must have Zotero.  It indexes PDF’s from journals, stores the citations directly from ERIC or other databases, allows for tags, related info, and most importantly EXPORTS BIBLIOGRAPHY DATA DIRECTLY TO WORD in whatever format you need.  All the stress of “am I in MLA or APA format goes away.  Create a bibliography through Zotero and all you need to do is double check for fine details, not construct from scratch.   You will find it here.

5.  OneNote.  I was using Google Notebook, but they have stopped development on it so I searched around for alternatives so I would not lose any of the many notebooks I have on different topics.  After playing and experimenting, I settled on OneNote because it simply rocks. I purchased the Ultimate Suite from Microsoft on their Ultimate Steal website and don’t regret a single dollar of it.  $60 for every single software in the suite, 91% off.  All you need is an email address that ends with .edu.  If you don’t want to purchase, check out these lifehacker page on free alternatives to Notebook:   Ubernote Review,  Evernote, Zoho and Evernote again.  OneNote is much more robust than the others, but it costs.

Now I just have to make sure I back up my laptop weekly so I will not lose anything if it crashes!