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January is National "Get Organized Month" so I decided to share some resources on getting organized. There are some great sites out there too, including the National Association of Professional Organizers.

I am a type A personality in many ways and I've always been organized at work (not so much at home). As an engineer, it was vital to be organized. As a teacher, it was too, but harder to do. I learned some great things from United Technologies when I worked at Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky Aircraft. They use a system called ACE, Achieving Competitive Excellence, and parts of it are related to having an organized work space so that you can be more efficient.


Technology is also a great resource for getting organized. I'm about 99% paperless - everything is either done electronically or scanned. I use Evernote extensively for staying organized.

Below are links, with descriptions, to help you get organized.


Evernote Resources
Evernote is the i-ching for organization. Save everything here, organized by notebooks, notes, stacks, and tags and searchable. Text notes, files, documents, web clippings, etc. As a CIO, it is my main tool.

Google Apps Resources
Google apps, like email and calendar, can help you get and stay organized with the features they have.

Getting Organized Tips and Resources
I wrote this last January and it has some great tips and ideas for getting organized, along with resources. I even discuss paper planning here.

Taking Organizing and Planning Tips from Ben Franklin
Ben Franklin was great at being organized and had some great ideas that are used today.

Great Uses for Binder Clips
Binder clips can help you get organized, and not just by clipping papers together.

Tips, Resources, and Ideas for Going Paperless
Going paperless can help you get more organized - less clutter, less space needed for paper, and the digital versions are easily searchable.

All Articles Tagged as "Get Organized"
This will pull up a list of any blog post that I tagged as "get organized"

Getting Organized with Google Calendar
Tips on using calendar to get organized.

Getting your Lesson Plans and Room Organized for a Substitute Teacher
Life is much better for the sub, your students, and you when you return, when your lessons and classroom are organized.

Using Technology to Organize your Lessons and Resources
I was a much happier, more efficient teacher when I got myself and my lessons organized.

Getting Students and Teachers Organized
Some tips for students and teachers.

I use Evernote a lot. I have about 100 Notebooks and close to 6,000 notes, so it can get a little overwhelming at times. I use tags and Evernote's search is great and the related notes feature helps find other info, but I just learned about a new service, made for Evernote, that turns your Evernote notes and notebooks into a mind map. It's called MohioMap.

MohioMap takes all of your Evernote notes and data and creates a visual map. It makes it easy to navigate and see connections. The center is your account and then it branches out by notebooks and notes. You can view the notes in Mohiomap or open in a new window or in Evernote itself. You can pin nodes on the map and view by relevance to points you click on and you can even drag and drop tags from one node to another, making it easy to connect notes by tags.

It adds another layer of functionality to Evernote.

Here is a view of mine for just my data for my CIO section:



Go to the site, create a free account, confirm your account and provide MohioMap with access to your Evernote account and you are all set.






Related:

Evernote for Education Resources

My Workflow as CIO - includes heavy use of Evernote

I'm a power Evernote user and have documented a lot of ways to use Evernote in education over the years.

I recently found two blogs from educators that show how they use Evernote as teachers and offer some great ideas and tips for other educators.



Jordan Collier has a great blog with a whole section on Evernote. He is on #8 of 50 planned posts with different ways school administrators and educators can use Evernote to be more organized and more effective. There are some great ideas here.



The Not Another History Teacher blog, also has some great posts and tips for using Evernote in the classroom. Justin Stallings, another Evernote power user like me, is guest posting these articles.

Evernote is a great resource for education, and is free. If you haven't tried Evernote out yet, create a free account and read some of the posts on my blog and the two above for ideas on how to use it.


Related:
Evernote for Education Resources

I recently wrote about how I use Evernote as my main tool as a School CIO. It is my primary tool for work, and home. I just did some more with it that I found useful and liberating - emptied my inboxes!

Yes, you heard correctly, my email inboxes are empty. I used to keep emails in my inbox as reminders to do something about that email, follow up, a task, etc. But that meant my inbox was messy and I didn't always know/remember what I had to do with that email and there were no notes for it.



I have been using the clip to Evernote add-on for Outlook to save and store important emails in Evernote, but now I send them all there.

For my personal email, all emails I want saved go to Evernote and my personal notes. My personal email is pretty empty.

For my work email, I save all important emails, with the attachments, to notebooks based on what project they go with. Any email I save also gets moved to a folder in Outlook for backup reference.

For emails that require me to do something, I clip them to Evernote, and put a link to the note on my task list. This way, they are always on my task list so I don't forget them, and I can add other notes and information to the note for reference. They are better organized, easily searchable, and I can link them in other notes.

I have a clean inbox, all emails are organized (and with additional info) and set so I won't forget about them.

See also:

My Workflow as CIO - includes heavy use of Evernote

Evernote for Education Resources and Uses

I know, another article about Evernote from Dave. Sorry, but I found these in my "to blog about" folder and wanted to share it before I forgot. Some interesting info and stats on here.

There are three infographics:

• 100 new features in Evernote for Windows Desktop
• All About Evernote
• history
• abilities
• platforms
• users
• 101 Ways to use Evernote

Enjoy!

Lots more about Evernote: http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/p/evernote-for-education.html