productivity tools

Taming the Tornado – Tech Tools for Busy People

I attended the Sunday morning session by Todd McCann – English faculty from Bay College in Escanaba, MIT. He shared some wonderful productivity tools as well as a great acronym as follows:

My New Favorite Acronym: CRS (Can’t Remember S$%T)

Todd mentioned that he polls his students each semester to get a feel for where the “live” in a technology sense. Do they live on their laptop, their cell phone or neither? He also questioned the need for a paper syllabus or schedule indicating that students stuff them in a backpack and rarely look at them again (especially when they really need them).

Todd recommended the following Web2.0 applications for broadcast text messaging, to-do lists and scheduling, collecting voice mail, and text editing:

• Broadtexter – Free
• Dial2do – Free (pro account upgrade)
• Dropbox – Free (pro account upgrade)
• Evernote – Free (pro account upgrade)
• Google Calendar – Free
• Google Voice – Free (with invite)
• iGoogle – Free
• Remember the Milk – Free
• ReQall – Free (pro account upgrade)
• Ribbit – Free (during beta)
• Siri – Free
• Text Expander – 29.95 after free trial (mac only)