Avoiding the Time Suck
Season 1- Episode #6
This episode of the Disruptive Teaching Podcast focuses on tools and tips for avoiding the ‘time suck’ that can occur in a digital environment.
We will discuss Google Calendar and ways to be more efficient with scheduling tasks. We will also talk about Google Keep and ways to keep your Google Drive organized.
Carolyn shares one of her favorite free extensions called The Great Suspender
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or hit Play Below.
Transcript
Welcome to the Disruptive Teaching podcast, a podcast about upsetting the average teaching and increasing your ability to reach every student in your classroom. We will focus on high and low tech tools for your classroom, along with a variety of assistive technologies that will help you create environments that are inclusive engagement.
Hi, I'm Cassie Frost, a former special education teacher specializing in emotional and behavioral disabilities and current Assistive Technology Specialist.
Hi, I'm Carolyn rhotic, a speech language pathologist who has been working in the public school system for the past 12 years. I have worked in a variety of settings and also have a special education background Okay, so the first thing we're going to talk about today is avoiding the time suck i love that title avoiding the time suck how to streamline your digital work that makes me really happy because I'm like, down every rabbit hole known to man.
Yeah, we can Both get kind of sucked down into all kinds of weird places. But you know, we're going to try and be more efficient. So we're going to talk about a couple different tools.
So the first one we're going to tackle is Google Calendar. I'm guessing most of you know, at least some of the basics of Google Calendar. So obviously, you have the calendar that you can add events for. So there's all kinds of ways you can do that. If you have your calendar open, you can just click add on a date and a time and a window will pop up. So you have to right click, just don't just double click, just double click All right. So then you can add your title, you can add the date and the times. If it's an all day events, then that looks a little bit different in your calendar, my favorite part of calendar are the notifications. Because if I didn't have notifications for a lot of things, I would probably forget some of them.
What's really nice about notifications in my case is I have my Google Calendar, select my phone. And so then the notifications actually come to my Apple Watch. So if I'm out and about in a building, my, you know, risk budget buzzes 10 minutes before I need to be somewhere, and actually have time to get there. Right, which is great, because I'm not, you know, in my role, specifically, I'm not often in front of my computer, right? So I love that things kind of work in tandem.
So and in my world, I'm, I am between three different buildings. And then I work about 45 minutes from my home. So I like setting those notifications even further out. So that if I did literally forget about something that I can set a notification for two hours out, and it'll be like, Oh, yeah, I gotta get going. I get to take care of this. And I can get to whatever I need to do in plenty of time, especially for those appointments that I have like after school or something that I have to do after school during the day. It's not as big of a deal for me. But I like having those things. And again, they do come to my phone. So that is helpful. Well, this is one of those moments where it's really great that those notification times are adjustable. Because where you're saying two hours is great for you two hours for me, I would look at it be like Yep, I've got two hours I would completely ignore. So 10 minutes is great for me. Yeah, I did forget it. Right. It gives me time to scramble, right. And again, it depends on what the task is. So like, if I'm in the middle of my day, and I have an IEP meeting, then you know, 10 or 15 minutes is more than enough. But if it's a doctor's appointment after work, and I'm 45 minutes away, then you know that's that definitely makes a difference. That's true.
So some ways that you can kind of use calendar to streamline things a little bit. If you're already using calendar. You know how to put an events. One of the things that gets overlooked often is when you're creating that event, there is a spot where you can select event color. So you can actually color code things on your calendar. So for example, you could maybe make all of your meetings in red, all of your things you need to do in orange. Like after school appointments and purple, I used to use this a lot for one must meet by dates for IEPs. So I put it all my must meet by dates at the beginning of the year, and they were all orange. So then when I flipped my new month on my calendar, I would see where all those were, they jumped out a little bit. So once you have events in your calendar, some other things that you can do. When you're back on the calendar page, you can actually change the view from day to week to month.
A lot of times people will do that with that little drop down on the upper right where you can click on it and choose a week month. It was actually I think until like six months ago or I found out I don't remember where somebody made my entire day. If you're in your calendar on your keyboard. If you have D, it actually changes to just the daily view, if you hit w goes to the weekly view, and it goes to the monthly view. So this makes me incredibly happy. And I don't know exactly why it makes me incredibly happy. But I'm all about that it doesn't take that extra step of taking your hand off your keyboard going to your mouse clicking on that dropping down. I know it's only a couple of seconds. But when we're talking about those types of things, that's hugely important. Right. So let's see, talking about Google Calendar.
Another great one is Google Keep I've heard amazing things about Google Keep. I know the people that use it, absolutely love it. I try really hard. And there's just something about it, that doesn't work for me. So I think it's really important to recognize that while all these tools are great, find the one that's going to work for you. Right? Um, and what works for you this week might not work for you in a year, right. Um, but Google Keep is supposed to be awesome. I know you use it, so I use it, but I use it differently than maybe some other people to do. So I look at Google Keep as like, digital post it notes. So if you're in Google Keep, you can create labels, which are kind of like pages they turn out to be of things that you want to save. So you can save pretty much anything into Google Keep. So you can save pictures you can save to do lists, you can make bulleted lists, you can color code stuff, you can do just about anything. Now I go in streaks with using it on my computer, where I use it the most honestly, is on my phone. So I have all kinds of different tabs that I use for all kinds of different things like I have shopping lists, to do lists, all that kind of stuff that I get to do on a regular basis. So like my grocery list and my to do list are us Least probably every other day, if not every day. So that's really handy for me. I don't use it as much for work. But there are definitely people out there that do. So, again, it's just a matter of finding the tool that's right for you. The other thing to keep in mind, too is yes,
Google Keep is, you know, a virtual post it notes, but there's other extensions and things that are out there that are basically the same but a little bit different. So if you're really looking for a specific type of tool, go in the Chrome Store and look, because there's all kinds of stuff out there. Yeah, I think one of the things that I do like about Google Keep, which kind of keeps me coming back to it, and I do use it with certain students is that it works as an extension, it works as a website, and it works on Android and it works on iOS. So whatever you pin or set up in one you can get all over the place, which I'm a huge fan of, for our kids who are struggling with that executive functioning piece place. Phenomenal and that's that's where I've used it. A lot to with students is they can write it down in one place. And then no matter where they are, when they log into their account, it's there. They don't need to worry about keeping that little piece of paper stuck into their paper planner, it's going to be when they get home and they log on to their home computer, when they get to school, it's going to be on their Chromebook when they are on their phone, it's going to be there. That's just an easy piece for, like we said those struggling students.
Another thing I guess, just real quick here before we kind of wrap up the whole executive functioning, avoiding the time suck thing is really making sure that you're minimizing the number of tabs that are open, the more things you have open at any one time and I won't admit right now live exactly how many tabs I have. Um, well, they're all ones we're working with right now. So at least I'll give it that but I probably have like 12 but usually they're distractions. So whatever you're working on, try to make that your only tab open.
Listen, back to Episode Four to learn more about an extension we talked about called snooze tab that helps with that. And then also make sure that you're listening to upcoming episodes, subscribe, follow whatever you need to do so that you can see those. It's going to be talking a lot more about executive functioning, kind of wrapping up this season and really heavily into this fall season. Um, talking about executive functioning, what it is definitely something I talked about a lot of conferences to syllabi, some of those coming up. And definitely check out our website and YouTube channel. We'll be talking a lot about executive functioning there as well. And next week, actually, we're going to be showing a free extension or neck next week, two weeks when the next episode comes out. We'll be talking about another free extension that will help you avoid spending time on websites. So like when you're working and Facebook's getting in the way and you're working and YouTube's getting in the way so that's for you know our teachers and colleagues and professionals as much as this for the kids.
Okay, and keeping with our theme of avoiding the time suck a humble, we're going to talk a little bit about Google Drive. So if you use a Google Drive account, you know exactly how quickly that can get out of control. Very much so. So a lot of times things are getting shared with you, you are creating files. One of the marvelous things about Google Drive is that autosave feature like as you're typing it saving, unfortunately, that also means that if you open up a document, and you don't need it, and you close it back up, it's still there, right? So you end up with a lot of stuff that maybe was never finished, or you started with it, or you thought you were going to use it, and it's just living there. And it's completely blank sometimes, oh, a lot of times.
So a couple of things that we want to talk about with Google Drive. So if you have it up in front of you, great if now we're going to talk just briefly about it and you can go back and listen later. And hopefully you'll find a couple of things that maybe you didn't know. One of the first things is when you're In my drive, if you right click, you can click New Folder. Or if you go to the New button, you can click New Folder. I highly recommend this to students, I'll have them create folders for each class and you know, science, math, social studies, I've went as far with some students as we'll do like the year Yes. So you know, this is the 2020 folder, and then all of those classes. So over on the left hand side, by my drive, you'll see there's a little carrot over on the left hand side, carrot being that little triangle that lives over there. When you click on it, you can see all of your folders and then they kind of nest under each other. So for example, you can have a folder that says English and when you open it, you can have one that says writings, you can have one that says drafts, so you can make things kind of nested underneath each other so you can open up just the things that you need.
And you can make that as complex or as simple as you want to write. So if you want to divide your English class up into those various Things you can, you can have one just for the school year, especially for some of our students that are just struggling to be organized. Well, what we do is a lot of times we have kind of two methods will kind of ask people to choose either way, either we need to have a good naming system, right for your files that you can search them and find them again. So you to make sure you're naming things right, or using a filing system so that you can find things. Um, because naming system then you can use that search feature exactly, which is great and Google Drive. Um, but if you're not going to name things super well, right now, English assignment, English assignment, then it gets a little bit hard, but dating things and things like that, that makes things especially when you have activities that come up, you know, like on a regular basis, like our students have to do some English assignments every month as a writing tools. So then if you just name it writing, and you don't put a The year or the month, then you got a whole bunch of stuff that's labeled the same thing that you got to dig through. So right now I have a few science teachers that I've worked with. And they really buy all about the filing system, the naming, not the filing system system so much, but the name like the file name, so I'll have all their kids like label it science, dash, class, period, dash, lesson, dash and then the name of it. Right. And so they'll have kind of practice with them and teach students that that's how you name all of your files, because then you can search them well, right?
Um, I personally like folders better. It's just how my brain works. I like opening it up more than searching for it. But either or, but just kind of picking something that's going to work for you. Right? And consistent is the biggest piece right? I'm also in Google Drive.
There's a new thing fairly new photo year now I think called priority. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Priority can It can be good, but it can also in my, in my world kind of get in the way. Um, I personally liked the recent folder more than the priority because it just helps me Look at my timeline easier than what the computer thinks is a priority. I don't mind priority.
What I do like now is because working under a worker a business account, so a personal account, this is not work but on any sort of business account, which counts as a school account. You also can have workspaces now. So I don't use priority as much but I love that that same page shows workspaces use workspace I do not use it right now. So workspaces, I think is something phenomenal. Underneath that priority window. You have an option to click Create, and you can actually group together groups of files. There goes bucket. So for example, Um, I have all of my files that have to do with conferences that are going to, and they all just kind of like live together right here. So when I want to come and work on something, I know that under workspaces, all of my stuff is kind of linked together. And that makes life a lot easier for me. So I'm not a huge… There goes Buckett. If you haven't listened to previous episodes, Bucket is our resident basset hound who's been napping under our feet this whole time. And you know, just now decided we got boring and decided to walk out.
So check out I think it was Episode Four that we actually have pictures of bucket. Thanks. You can just be like our mascot or Yeah, I really like
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I like priority now a lot more that workspaces are involved. So if you haven't checked them out yet, click on that priority tab and check out those workspaces. Um, I found those incredibly useful off the tread. Yeah, I like it just because everything's grouped together, right. Um, another thing that we talked about briefly earlier is making sure that you're deleting things you're not needing, oh, especially the shared with me folder. Lots of things get shared with me well, especially when you're at school, like the, you know, you get shared everything for your building and you clearly don't need everything that happens in your building. The other part of this that I know you use a lot is the Advanced Search feature. Okay, I use it because I'm, I work for an educational agency that is then contracted to a school district. So depending upon what kind of document I'm looking for, I don't always know how it was named. So if you go to the advanced search, then you can search for deeds you can search by creator, the owner of that document.
There's a lot of different ways you can look for things and generally I'm able to find it if I go to the advanced search, but if I am just trying to figure out what they need something, it I could be in there for quite a while before it actually dawns on me as to what somebody means something. So it's something that's worth checking out. Um, but it's pretty straightforward. Like it works like everything else in Google, so it's not hard. So, if you want to go in and look, you can search by file type, you can search by owner, you can search by location. So it could be anywhere it could be in the trash, it could be a star documents, it could be shared with me, it could be any of those folders that are out there. And then you have time, things that you can search for So in the last week in the last month, at any points, and then if you have a guess for what the name of the Document might be or might contain, that will hopefully help you narrow down that search. I know a lot of times I'll use that type and the owner want a lot because I do get a lot of things share with me. So when I'm searching things, a lot of times I'll say I'm looking specifically for a PDF that is owned by me. And you're really helps narrow that down. Definitely. Because otherwise I'm getting, you know, in our building and things that are shared, if I'm looking for something that I had written about 20 years ago, there's, I'm getting all of our science teachers stuff on bears that they shared out with the study hall features, and I can't get back to my stuff. So really switching that to the owned by me, is one of my favorite things to do on search.
Okay, this episode, we're going to talk about another free tool, just kind of we're ending every episode striving really hard to end every episode with a free tool that you can use right away. This time, we're going to talk about Chrome extension, I'm going to be quiet because I have never actually used this one. You keep telling me that this is a great extension. I've never heard of it, which I'm an extension junkie. So this is pretty impressive. I'm excited. Pretty good. Alright, so the extension is the great suspender. So the great suspender is his name. Yes, pretty my name. Okay, sorry. So all it really does is you can you can adjust what tabs in what windows are currently working on your computer, and you can pretty much sleep everything else. So you're not taking up all kinds of power from your computer to run stuff in the background that you really don't need. So depending upon what you're doing, if you're watching videos and things like that, that can suck a lot of your resources. So if you have you know, like we do 10 tabs open And they're all working in the background. And they're updating constantly and things like that. It just sucks your resources. So if you click on the great suspender, you can choose what you want to suspend and what you want to always keep open and live. So it just helps with your management. So your tabs are still there yet, it's not like you're closing them don't don't go nowhere. They're not updating in the background, right? So does this, um, something that you use, like every day or just when you like, have a lot of stuff going on? I have it up all the time. Okay, and you and you can set the settings to adjust how long you want something to remain open before it goes to sleep. But if you're not using the tangible automatically it can. That's kind of cool. I can look at that one now. I gotta look sounds super cool. Um, I can see that really being beneficial to for some of our students that maybe don't have great internet at home, right? Like we're blessed. Now in the district that I'm at that we've got, we've got pretty good internet, you know, where we don't have things moving so slowly, but I know unlike my previous house, and some of the other districts that I've worked in, that would have been phenomenal, because if you read more than a couple of tabs open your internet was and then you think about how many students using all those devices across an entire district. Like it really can suck the resources pretty quickly, so it's just a handy thing to have, and you can adjust how you want to use it. Awesome. I'm definitely gonna try that one.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the disruptive teaching podcast. We hope you found something useful to support or engage the students you work with. For more information, visit disruptive heiping teaching calm and follow us on social media. On Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, connect with us on Twitter with the hashtag disruptive Transcribed by https://otter.ai