Your digital consultant » productivity

Open for business

Simon Robinson — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:51:02 +0000

Webspiration the online incarnation of leading visual thinking and planning package Inspiration is open again!
They have reopened sign-ups for free beta accounts. Got an email a couple of days ago and “Audrey” also left a comment on the earlier post. (Thanks Audrey!)
Good news for those who didn’t get in earlier. I make no secret of the fact that I am a massive Inspiration fan. Webspiration is a great development and I anticipate it will only get better.

RSS The trailer

Simon Robinson — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:17:57 +0000

I espouse the virtues of RSS constantly and I have alluded to how useful I think it can be for students and educators. Sue Waters then put the pressure on so I felt compelled to deliver. I see it as a trilogy, “RSS in three parts” (Quick! Reserve the movie rights!). Basic, intermediate and advanced. In each of the sections I will endeavour to include strategies, experiences or ideas as it applies to teaching and learning. Like backing up your data, therre is truckloads of stuff about RSS and it’s derivative services written by far brighter people than I but my hope is to tailor it somewhat to suit the audience and to save you some legwork. Here’s an outline of what to expect;

Ep1 A quick intro (Basic)

Quick introduction, reading your feeds and bookmarking your feeds

Ep2 Share the feed-love! (Intermediate)

Sharing your feeds – Friend feed, Google Reader
Embed in your site

Ep3 Work that feed baby! (Advanced)

Combine, filter, syndicate and other things you can do to “work your feeds”

That will do for a start anyways. Ep1 coming soon…

It’s the little things…

Simon Robinson — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 02:54:58 +0000

A lot of small things can add up to big gains in productivity.
Copy message URL in Mail.app is huge for me. I just found it. So if I get emails about events that are already in my calendar (I use iCal and sync to GCal) I can easily add them to the event then archive knowing I can bring them up later in the required context if required. Roughly translated it means I can forget about them AND not worry about whether I can find them again when needed. This is better than diazapan for my psyche. As a MailTags addict this is usually a non issue as I create the calendar event or task from the mail message (not the other way around.) But if someone sent me an invitation to a meeting, then sent me further details about that meeting it didn’t fit my system! Now I just create the link and maintain my inner tranquility.

A profound statement

Simon Robinson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:58:28 +0000

Exclusive Lifehacker Interview: Debunking The Myth of Multitasking

Dave Crenshaw: This is a bit like an amateur carpenter, who, after hitting his thumb with his hammer, curses the tool and tosses it aside. Was the pain caused by the tool, or by the lack of skill of the person using the tool?

This tickled my fancy somewhat. Mr Crenshaw was responding to the suggestion of avoiding technology to improve attention and focus but neatly responds to blockers that are commonly encountered in education systems. It can even be applied individually in the classroom if you think about it. In fact I resolve to trot it out next time someone whines to me about having to use a different operating system or an updated application (we have just moved to the latest iteration of Office and the ribbon is causing some anxiety…)

You are subscribed

Simon Robinson — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:46:36 +0000

It was slow going to start with but everyone got there in the end. Subscribed to an RSS feed from a blog. Getting started is the hardest part but in my experience the most important. The whole RSS/social/sharing thing through the web is a difficult thing to wrap your head around especially at the beginning unless your in there doing it. Only through “getting a taste” can you start to figure out how powerful it can be and the different ways you might use it. Dealing with the “firehose of information” is what the students are faced with. They need these skills.
It’s a different way of thinking, a different approach. A challenge.
As “models for young learners” are we up to it, along with everything else?

[Caption]

Nag, nag, nag

Simon Robinson — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:40:18 +0000

All the magazines tell you to do. Your IT support staff tell you to do it. Deep in your heart of hearts you know you should do it but somehow you never get around to it. You’re not sure how so you’d have to ask someone so it’s all a bit too difficult. Well hopefully a personal story will get you over the hump

It happened to me last Thursday. Laptop full of scanned photos. Colour corrected, touched up, cropped the lot. Ready to put together something special for the outlaws wedding anniversary and it happened.

Full HD (hard drive) failure. Machine froze and on reboot all I get is a grey screen with a question mark.

“Boot directory? I can’t find a boot directory?”

It gives you that sick empty feeling in your stomach. Like the insides have dropped out of you and you’re completely lifeless. An I had a recent backup! My problem was I was over 1000km away from my drive image backup and it was a week and a half old. No scanned photos in there baby.

It’s okay. We got by. I borrowed a machine from my brother, rescanned everything, touched it all up and got the project done. But it robbed me of time that could have been spent doing something else. Not to mention building a new machine when I got home

Back your stuff up. Now. Burn media to DVD’s, archive mailboxes, synchronise documents with servers. A wise man once said, “A document hasn’t truly been saved until it exist in two separate places”

Wise man.

If you don’t know what to do it’s worthwhile asking someone that question. Drop me a line. We’ll get that backup done.

What do you really need to know?

Simon Robinson — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:02:22 +0000

Beyond Test Taking: Learning to Handle Information – Lifehack.org: “All of the tricks I have for learning new information when I was still in school just don’t work out in the real world. So many learning techniques focus on a test or classes where you have a clear chance of how to build on specific ideas. We need more practical solutions.”

I thought this site had some useful tips. I totally get the “pass on information” thing. I have made a conscious effort to do this more consistently and it pays off. Outsource the info ala Timothy Ferris. The task thing I need to improve on. Got to get sharper edges, got to get more ruthless. The quest continues!

Tell me what you think, leave a comment.

(Visit Thursday Bram’s site)

iPods in class

Simon Robinson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:10:38 +0000

A colleague of mine asked me at lunch today was I aware of any studies dealing with students listening to mp3 players while working. I am constantly fascinated by the human brain, learning and things that affect it’s development. We had a brief conversation about multitasking and a few other things and I resolved to check my bookmarks. Well that didn’t satisfy me so I did a search and unearthed this from the NY Times…
Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic – New York Times

These experts have some basic advice. Check e-mail messages once an hour, at most. Listening to soothing background music while studying may improve concentration. But other distractions — most songs with lyrics, instant messaging, television shows — hamper performance. Driving while talking on a cellphone, even with a hands-free headset, is a bad idea.

Now this may not be news to some. Franklin-Covey, Merlin Mann, David Allen and other productivity experts have been saying this for some time.
“The human brain can only do one thing at a time with excellence” or something like that.
The key here is “with excellence”. Menial or “automated” tasks are a different kettle of fish.

Teens Can Multitask, But What Are Costs? – washingtonpost.com

Poldrack said imaging showed that different parts of the brain were active depending on whether the subjects did single or multiple tasks. When subjects were focused on sorting, the hippocampus — the part of the brain responsible for storing and recalling information — was engaged. But when they were multitasking, that part of the brain was quiet and the part of the brain used to master repetitive skills — the striatum — was active.

If we’re talking any form of higher order thinking then multitasking is a myth.
The Multitasking Mess – Departments – UCLA Magazine Online

In other words, if you or your kids want to learn something permanently and usefully, do something very old school: Shut up, sit still, and pay attention.

Consider it debunked as of now.
Next!