Dino class blog

Blogging, Email tips, and Powerpoint - Mr. Brian Dino

Blogging

Blogging-what is it? (good description here)

Sample Teaching/Education Blogs:

• E-scrapbooking
• English Class Blog
• Eduwonk (an education policy/issues blog)
• North High Magnet Counselor blog
  

How to set up a blog:

• Blogger.com
• Other blogging software reviewed here

To read more blogs with less time, see Sites like Bloglines.com or NewsGator.com, which will pool the content of your favorite blogs (and some content from other sites) onto one screen, can help.



Email Tips

MS Outlook via Internet

• accessible from any internet-enabled machine
  
• use folders to organize emails!
• public folders
• options (signature)
  
• get an alternate email account for big files/sensitive emails (student issues, personnel issues, etc.)
• storage limit of DPS email is small!
  
• always have a clear subject in your subject line!

Best way to use MS Outlook - use it from a "client" machine

• can save large files on your local machine
• easier to send emails
  

Quick tips on processing your email inbox

The basic idea is to firewall processing as a discrete phase you go through no more than every hour or two at the most. For God’s sake, don’t live in your Inbox if there’s any way you can avoid it.

Processing determines as quickly as possible what, if anything, to do with each piece (in ascending order of urgency and importance):

• delete it
• archive it
• defer it for later response
• generate an action from it
• respond to it immediately (if it—literally—will take less than 2 minutes or is so Earth-shattering that it just can’t wait)

Then as often as time allows, I return to the response and action folders and crank through as many replies and complete (or generate) as many todos as I can—usually in 5-email sprints.

The critical point, as ever, is to focus on action and not on the administration and housekeeping. If the action is just a response, respond. If it requires more than a return email, either do it or get it in your “next actions” and keep moving.

As I said in the Google Group post, “you have to remember you’re in the business of making sandwiches—not deciding the prettiest way to stack the customers’ orders.”

source: 43folders.com

Powerpoint Tips

• good site for Powerpoint tips