Tag Archives: organization

General, School Media Specialist

AASL Recommended Apps: Organization & Management: Post-it Plus

post_itIn June 2016, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their 25 Best Apps for Teaching and Learning. The apps encourage qualities such as innovation and active participation, and are user-friendly.

This app allows users to take their paper Post-it Notes into the digital world. Users can scan sticky notes and then arrange, organize, and even share their notes across platforms. Notes can be saved in Dropbox, Evernote, or One Drive. They can also be can be shared on social media and exported into PDF format. For classroom use, Post-it Plus can be helpful to use while brainstorming.

Read this blog post about how a high school math teacher used the app in her classroom. Also check out this article from That EdTech Guy’s Blog where he walks you through the steps of using the app

Cost: Free
Level: Elementary, Middle and High School
Platforms: iOS

Watch the video to learn more:

Academic, Check this out:, CMLE, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Special

Strategies to Simplify: A refresher!

work simply coverBy now, you’ve probably noticed that each week we’ve been sharing a tip from Carson Tate’s book Work Simply on how to streamline your life. Here at CMLE, we found Tate’s book incredibly valuable and thought it would resonate with many of you, too. We hope this has been the case, and that you have found these tips useful in your daily activities!

This post is simply to remind you of the source of that content: Carson Tate’s Work Simply. Before beginning the series, we reached out to her to request her permission to incorporate her content into our posts. We were so pleased when she was willing to do so! It was a great reminder that sometimes taking a chance does pay off.

Have any of the Strategies to Simplify tips we have shared worked particularly well for you? We’d love to hear about it! Leave us a comment or send us an email. We will continue to share tips beginning again next week.

If you missed any of the series so far, catch up now:

 

Academic, Check this out:, CMLE, General, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Special

Strategies to Simplify: Tip 8: Stop drowning in papers

“Work simply. Live fully.”  This week CMLE focuses on the following work productivity tip from Work Simply, Carson Tate’s popular book.  At CMLE, we’ve boiled down Tate’s wealth of knowledge from Work Simply to a few key points; please see the book for more detail and resources. At the bottom, see links to earlier tips in the series! Let’s all be our best selves….

This week’s activity: Handle your paperwork efficiently

Do you struggle with paper clutter and have trouble locating necessary information when it is needed? These common situations prove Carson Tate’s statement that “Paper management is still important in today’s electronic world – in fact, it is vital.” In her book Work Simply, Tate shares the four steps to take when encountering new paper documents (you may recognize them – they are also the steps of the Email Agility system, tweaked slightly to be relevant to paper files)

Read

Decide: Does this document require some kind of action? If yes – skip to the next step. If no, ask yourself: Am I required to keep this paper for tax, legal, or compliance reasons? When would I need to access this information again? Where else can I find this information?

Act: Choose to complete the action required right now, delegate the action, or create a task to be worked on.

Contain: Clean up the paper chaos – use file folders, cases, baskets, etc. to keep your essential documents together. Tate suggests creating two main categories: Reference and Action, with subcategories in each group.

Continue reading Strategies to Simplify: Tip 8: Stop drowning in papers →

General, School Media Specialist

AASL Recommended App: Organization & Management: OneNote

one_noteIn June 2016, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their 25 Best Apps for Teaching and Learning. The apps encourage qualities such as innovation and active participation, and are user-friendly.

OneNote is an organizational app designed for note-taking. It has pages and tabs just like a physical notebook, but also allows users to record audio, make comments on existing text, and capture images. The app can easily transfer between platforms like desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. Educators can create notebooks to share assignments and feedback with students.

This article from MakeUseOf gives ten tips (including several helpful videos) on how to effectively use the OneNote app, both for teachers and students. Author Saikat Basu has also written an another article detailing how helpful OneNote can be in everyday life, outside of the classroom. Looking for more examples of OneNote success stories? Check out the OneNote education blog.

Cost: Free
Level: Elementary, Middle, and High School
Platforms: iOS and Android