 Your new post is loading...
Managing you time effectively becomes a real challenge in a world full of all kinds of distractions.The uptake of digital media and the pervasiveness of the smart hand-held devices made some people forget about their real life and only live on the cloud. Think about how many times an email bip, a Facebook notification, or a Twitter tweet interrupted you in the middle of ,say, reading a book or working on an assignment.
Via Med Kharbach, juandoming, Jenny Pesina
Description by EdSurge "SYMPHONICAL helps you get 'er done with digital post-it note templates that help you organize, brainstorm, and analyze tasks, ideas, and discussions. The pre-made templates make it clear that Symphonical is targeting the business-minded but there are plenty of applications for the classroom and beyond. Planning a new unit with the teaching team? Try out the handy SWOT analysis template. Dare to let students create their own learning path? Create a fluid weekly lesson plan and make students collaborators. Better yet, give their parents read-only privileges! There's even a blank canvas that allows you to build templates for any rubri... uh row/column format that you can conceive. The icing on the cake however is the seamless integration with Google Hangouts-- every great collaboration should be full of smiling (or smirking) faces."
Via Jim Lerman
Time saving tips on passwords, file management and online collaboration.
Posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2012 Written by Alyssa Aldersley What does it take to be productive? It’s a question I often ask myself and to be honest I don’t have a great answer for it yet. One key discovery I’ve made over the past year or so is that I need to have great habits in place. That’s why I’m working on a solid running routine and on a set wake-up time and sleep time. These things have been incredibly helpful for me and I know both Joel and Leo have discovered the same. One other realization I had is that, as I now spend so much of my day working online, there are a heap of new apps being created all the time to help us all become more productive. That’s why I thought of compiling a full list of 100 tools, tips and tricks for you to reflect a bit on your own productivity. Of course, a sure fire way to fail might be to try and use all 100, which Joel pointed out to me when we discussed this post! So hopefully this can be a useful resource for you to dip in and out of, whenever you feel your productivity is in a slump. Buffer is a blog about productivity, life hacks, writing, user experience, customer happiness and business.
Via Dr. Gordon Dahlby
An exercise of figuring out how I spend my time in a typical day...
Review how you spend your time in order to help you prioritize your goals and objectives.
Curated by Beth Kanter http://www.bethkanter.org
If you are content curator, it is fun and pleasurable to browse information on the web to find the good stuff. But it could also be a way to procrastinate. Here's a great tip on avoiding it - find a power hour - and devote one hour to an important task.
Questions:
Where in your life are you letting unnecessary “work” slow down your progress? What actions take up the majority of your working day? Are these the things that will make you money or contribute to your goals? How would turning one extra “working hour” per day into one “income-producing hour” change your income over the next month? Repeated consistently over the next year, what would that be worth to you?
Via Beth Kanter
Procrastinators, learn how to stay on top of your online classes.
Online courses give students the flexibility to take their class anytime, anywhere. The trick, students say, is staying on top of them.
Doing so requires discipline, commitment, and organization—traits any successful student should possess, no matter what path they're taking to complete their degree.
I noted last year that workers waste a lot of time doing useless activities, like managing unwanted communications, and suggested that the cause of the problem, digital overload, was also the potential solution: social media. The ROI for social media in business is quite obvious: reducing wasted time. That’s how we can also find the time for networked learning.
Try this and don't laugh: Get all mandatory work done before lunch. Believe or not, this has long been a secret of successful executives.
Via Marylene Delbourg-Delphis
Evernote is a very powerful way to keep your notes in the cloud. Here are 10 Ways to Save Time using Evernote.
Via Susan Bainbridge
Many of these techniques make for a more engaging experience for the students and less stress for the instructor.
These days, your office is your laptop, whether you're in a cubicle, a coffee shop, or on a plane. We asked professionals for their best advice on getting things done no matter where you work.
Via F. Thunus
|
One of the most productive things you can do for your business is set up your workflow processes.
Conversations, files, images, tasks, plans and contacts ALL stem from email, so it makes sense to make email your starting point for staying organized, and creating a workflow that makes sense to you.
"The proper role for your pre-frontal cortex is to decide what behavior you want to change, design the ritual you'll undertake, and then get out of the way. "It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing," the philosopher A.N. Whitehead explained back in 1911. "The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them. Indeed many great performers aren't even consciously aware that's what they've done. They've built their rituals intuitively."
Via Howard Rheingold
Expert classroom time management advice. This tip, called Go With The Flow, allows teachers to adjust their plans and keep stress to a minimum. Get the most out of your classroom time with this management tip.
Via ManufacturingStories
Kay Lehmann and Lisa Chamberlin the outstanding online instructors who teach the University of Wisconsin Stout's Creating Collaborative Communities in E-learning, created a one-stop page for advice and tips on: Time Management Strategies for Online Instructors.
In a quick, informative video, ASAP Science explains the complex balance of expectations and rewards that makes slacking off so addictive. The sooner we expect a reward, the more we value it -- making an immediate payoff (surfing Facebook!) more exciting than a future payoff (acing a test!). Luckily, the video has some practical tips for avoiding this trap.
Via Maggie Rouman
Hate group projects? Read this article for tips and tricks that make group homework assignments efficient and enjoyable.
Most e-learners have mixed feelings about group work and the activities they've had to do with their classmates.
Perhaps you've had the same experience: you loved going to the discussion board and sharing ideas and discussing the course readings. But, when you had to work with the same individuals on an online group project, it was another issue altogether.
Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school.
How much does the first hour of every day matter? As it turns out, a lot. It can be the hour you see everything clearly, get one real thing done, and focus on the human side of work rather than your task list.
Good insights and real world, practical advice on time management. Better news...you don't have to read any books, purchase an expensive "System" or attend any $2500 seminars to do it. Shorter version: prioritize and only worry about achieving "perfection" on the things that really count. On all the rest, go for 95% perfection. (This is advice I need to take myself.) TalentZoo.com: "Do you spend an hour on a five-minute job? In addition to helping you get tasks done, deadlines also keep you from spending too much time on projects that should only take a few minutes. Replying to a meeting request, straightening your desk, or sorting through your home mail should take just a short time. It’s easy to get sidetracked and suddenly an hour has gone by with no tangible results."
Via Sirenetta Leoni
Once in awhile I get asked, "Mike, what do I do about managing the thousands of emails I have in my in-box? My response is simple. I say, "Try this some time." (5 Email Time Management Tips - They Really Work!
Via syednazirrazik
E-Learning Heroes: Step-by-step tutorials for building better courses, fast answers to your e-learning questions, free downloads for your e-learning projects.
In my several years of teaching online I have developed a variety of time-management tools that have helped me to stay on top of my classes while making my efforts smoother and easier; hundreds of colleagues I’ve discussed this with over the years also have their favorite ways of managing time. As you can imagine, this collective wisdom includes a multitude of approaches (in fact, nearly 300 so far!), but what I present to you here is what I think are the best of the best. Use one, some, or all of these, and I assure you that you’ll have a much better time teaching online!
|