Productivity versus being a fanboy or girl

One of the things I always liked about my Franklin Planner was that it was everywhere I was.  All my information that was important to me, was with me, or within reach at all times.  When I became interested in using technology in productive ways, there were problems between using the different elements of my technology portfolio.  As an example, I have a mac, iPad, ipod, and iPhone on the apple side, and a HP laptop on the PC side.  Getting these to all work together is just a pain, as one application will not work across the Apple Microsoft divide, however, there are solutions.

After may third move in the past three years, I have become a Google apps fanboy, only because regardless of which piece of technology I use, I have access to it.  There online solution is the least cumbersome to work with, and allows the user flexibility in using the software in a productive manner. This is probably the closest match to my paper planner that I have used.  While I use Outlook on my live account,  and like what I am capable of doing with it using my Windows 8 laptop, the major bummer is my information cannot be shared with my apple devices, which defeats of purpose of a productive mobile tool, like my paper planner.  Apple's calendar  gives you a day view, a list view, and a month view.  Their  reminder software is basic at the minimum level, and offer little in workflow productivity, offering exclamation points to prioritize tasks. The only way I have found to share the information between the two platforms is to link them to my Google account. I made this work till Windows 8 came out, where I can share my calendar via email to my apple account, however the link crashes on the Apple side of the equation.  Icloud is also Apple restrictive, so a pdf document cannot be loaded to the cloud.  Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox allow you to upload anything you wish, so this makes my rantings even more confusing.  This confusion can be solved by many things, such as stick to Apple or Microsoft for my technology needs, however, I do not have resources to do that.  What to do to make it work better?  Use note taking programs.

I have found Evernote and Onenote capable of solving my cross application needs.  I am sure Google Keep will be similar in context to these programs.   I created my Franklin Covey week template in Onenote and Evernote.  It looks just like my old paper planner.

What I do like about Onenote is the fact that they have created an application that allows me to edit my to do checkboxes, and allow my to prioritize the 1,2,3, so my A items in my planner are 1, the b items are 2, and the C items are 3.  I am able to open my planner pages on my Apple products as well as my PC products, offering seamless integration.   Evernote allows a similar capability using a template, however does not have the prioritized checkboxes that I found in Onenote.  So I list my priorities as A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3 after the checkbox in each table block, which gives me the same productive capacity, working on any type of technological device.

I set up a notebook in each program called "CD's Planner." In each of these notebooks, I have pages for my mission statement, my goals, my weekly overview, along with a set of daily pages.  I can copy and paste information between my table blocks in my week view in  order to map out my daily view.   I also have a templates set that I use at the beginning of each week.  These have certainly helped me to use my cross platform technologies as a tool again, and hopefully, it will help others who suffer from the same frustration of the Apple/Microsoft battles for people to use their technology as a productivity tool.

Upon posting this, I found that you can set up an exchange account in your Apple settings that will share the MS information on my Apple products.  I will follow up with an update as to how well this continues to work.

In the book the "Diffusion of Innovations," the author describes a diffusion rate on a scale from early adoption to laggard adoption, or being the last to adopt the technology.  The idea that school systems will not allow students to use portable devices as an educational tool demonstrates the "fear" that decision makers have, and where their system is along the diffusion scale.  Instead of addressing the issue by making each person accountable for how the technology will be used in an educational setting, we unplug the tools this generation of kids have grown up with.  By having an agreement in writing with the student, parents, and administrators describing how the technology will be used in the educational setting, this fear is taken care of.  When the student violates the policy, the privilege to use the technology is gone with that decision.

Online education is becoming mainstream in the collegiate arena of ideas.  K-12 education is still partly entrenched in the fear that Web 1.0 is the only way to go, or you can use the internet as a research tool. You will not be able to collaborate online, or work with people who are halfway around the world.  One of my students plagiarized an entire report.  She does not stand a chance when if she goes to college and must turn her paper in through "Turnitin.com."   We hear educators complain at every level that students are unprepared for their classes.  Online education allows users to think, respond appropriately, and write their ideas with clarity.  As a parting gift, the Essa school in Britian on the Macs in Education site is a superb movie on how interactive technological tools enhance education.  The link is:

http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/essa/#video-essa

Cheers!