Ryan Collins

🕹️ Do Something Great! 😄

Author: ryan

  • Your inbox is not an organizational tool

    Email
    is the technology that everyone loves to hate. They use it daily, and most hate
    every minute of it. I believe part of the problem
    is the difficulty in coming up with a workflow that allows you to
    efficiently use email. And by efficiently use email, I mean that whether
    you are on your computer, a tablet, or smartphone, you can organize your
    email and do work with the device you have with you.

    Over the past couple of years I’ve been refining how I use email. The
    problem is how to organize your email in such a way that allows you to
    not miss important emails or tasks that need to be completed, but to
    also provide quick responses to emails you are sent. The workflow I’ve
    come up with I call DART: Delete, Archive, Reply or To do. It’s a
    very GMail centric workflow, but can easily be adapted to whatever email
    system you use. The beauty of it is that your inbox is always empty, and
    any emails that need further action are in the folder To Do. DART
    refers to actions taken with new emails.

    Delete

    Pretty self explanatory, the trick is to know what to delete and what to
    not delete. I basically only delete SPAM messages that have gotten past
    the SPAM filter or sales messages of which pertains to things outside of
    my area. Deleting messages is in actuality a task that does not take
    very often because Archiving makes more sense.

    Archive

    When you archive a message in GMail, it takes the message out of your
    inbox and places it in All Mail. You can mimic this action with other
    email services, just create an All Mail folder and move messages into
    it. To locate messages a person will use search instead or organizing
    emails into folders or labels. Sometimes it makes sense to put things
    into folders instead of just All Mail, but in a majority of situations
    it takes more time to organize your email into folders instead of just
    putting them into All Mail and using search to locate your messages.
    GMail provides search tools such as from: and to: to help locate
    messages from or sent to particular people. Most of the email messages I
    receive are archived because they do not warrant a reply and are not
    something that is actionable by me.

    Reply

    If I receive a message that requires a short reply that will take me
    less than a minute to write, I will compose the message and send it as
    soon as possible.

    To do

    For messages that require a longer reply or ones that require me to
    complete a task, they are moved to my To Do folder. This folder then
    becomes my To Do list. I have one location where I can go and take
    care of all my tasks, without rummaging through my inbox.

    Conclusion

    By using DART, inbox 0 is achievable. Messages you need or want saved
    are in All Mail and messages that are actionable are in To Do.

    Addendum

    When using GMail from an iOS device, the default action is to archive
    any email that is deleted, so, in effect, it combines the Delete and
    Archive feature into just Archive. You can adjust this in your
    settings, but I’d recommend using the GMail app for most of your email
    needs (although you will still need your account added to your email
    accounts in settings for sending emails from apps). A nice feature of
    the GMail app is the Unread view.

    BTW, my assistant really wanted it called FART (Follow Up, Archive,
    Reply, Trash).

  • Use a GMail filter to organize emails from students

    GMail has a somewhat powerful filtering mechanism that you can
    apply to incoming email. Unfortunately, I say somewhat since there
    really isn’t an easy way to select student email and take it out of your
    inbox. It won’t match on part of an address, so you can’t just search
    for an email address that starts with a number.

    What I’ve done is configure Google Apps for Education to append a footer
    for all email from students with the tag:
    #studentofkcs. That also means that if you are now a Google Apps for
    Education user or cannot automatically add this tag to the footer of
    your student email messages you will have to have the students do it
    themselves. Most email packages allow the user to add a signature to
    their email messages, they just need to be sure to add a piece of text
    that will be unique.

    To filter email from students, go to GMail and in the search field at
    the top of the screen enter #studentofkcs and hit the triangle to the
    left of the blue button with the magnifying class.

    Then click Create filter with this search. It will have a list of
    things that can happen to the message when it matches the search. You
    will want to check Skip the inbox (Archive it), and Apply the
    label:    .

    Since you probably don’t already have a label (or folder, if you want to
    call it that) set up, you can click on the Choose label… and
    create a new label.

    I like to put an exclamation point in front of the label so when the
    list of labels are sorted alphabetically, the ones I’ve created are at
    the top.

    Click Create and then Create Filter. From now on, email from
    students will bypass your inbox and be in the your label created above.

  • Has Apple lost it?

    Apple announced the iPhone 5 today and updates to the iPod line. Most of
    the announcements were lackluster at best, but the event laid the
    groundwork for the rumored iPad mini event in October, which could be
    even more disastrous than the iPhone 5 event today.

    The iPhone 5 is a nice upgrade, thinner and lighter, but at the same
    time, it doesn’t have any feature that makes it a must upgrade for me
    and my iPhone 4. This is probably more of a testimonial on how good a
    phone the 4 is than what the 5 brings to the table. There are features
    in the next version of iOS that I won’t be able to use, such as
    turn-by-turn navigation, and, I’m assuming, Facetime over cellular, but
    since there are apps I can use to replace these missing features I’m not
    that worried about upgrading.

    What’s more disturbing about todays event was the iPod line refresh.
    Apple now sells the iPod shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod touch (the Classic
    is still available, but it hasn’t seen an update in 3 years). The iPod
    shuffle makes sense as an entry level music player, and at \$49, makes
    it pretty affordable. After the shuffle comes the nano, which doesn’t
    make sense at all. At least the 6th generation nano had a cool look and
    could be used as a watch, this 7th generation looks like an iPod touch,
    works like an iPod touch, but isn’t an iPod touch. Why would Apple waste
    engineering sources on the nano? They priced it at \$149, only \$50 less
    than the entry level iPod touch that includes the same amount of
    storage. I just can’t think of a use case where the nano makes a better
    purchase than the iPod touch.

    Then there’s the iPod touch. At the \$199 price point, they’re now
    selling the 4th generation iPod touch with 16Gb instead of just 8GB. No
    other changes in the now two year old device. If you want the new iPod
    touch which has several of the goodies of the iPhone 5, be prepared to
    shell out \$299. You do get 32Gb at this price but is it worth a third
    more than the iPod touch 4th generation.

    It’s the pricing of the iPod touch which is the most worrisome. Making a
    guess about the iPad mini launch next month, I bet that Apple will drop
    the iPad 2 and put the iPad mini in at the \$399 price. This would hand
    the Christmas shopping season to Amazon, Google, and possibly Barnes and
    Noble. The software for iOS is heads and shoulders above what is
    available for Android, but when a parent can pick up two Kindle Fire HDs
    for the price of one iPad mini, what choice do you think they’re going
    to make? I really doubt they’d price the iPad mini at the same price as
    the new iPod touch, but let’s say they do. It would still be a third
    higher than the Kindle Fire HD, although closer in price to the Nexus 7
    32GB.

    Apple has solid devices, well built, but their pricing expectations are
    all over the place. To me, it makes sense to:

    • keep the shuffle at \$49
    • place the old nano form factor (but with bluetooth) with 8GB at \$99
    • iPod touch 4th gen (8GB) (add bluetooth 4.0 and IPS screen) at \$149
    • iPod touch 5th gen (16GB) at \$199
    • iPad mini (16GB) at \$299
    • iPad 2 (16GB) at \$399
    • iPad 3 (16GB) at \$499

    I see more and more kids getting Kindle Fires, which is now at \$159.
    Apple has dominated the tablet space (and the mobile phone space in
    profits), but if they don’t price their products more aggressively, they
    will lose that dominance. Right now, a \$299 iPad mini would be a tough
    sell in my school district when I get get a Nexus 7 (which has better
    integration with Google Drive) for \$199. Forget about a \$399 iPad
    mini.

    p.s. Signs that Steve Jobs is gone: he would never have added that hand
    strap to the iPod touch.

  • Impressions of the Nexus 7 Tablet

    For those that know me, ordering a Google Nexus 7 Tablet when it was
    released isn’t much of a surprise. I did wait a day though. 🙂 The
    Nexus 7 Tablet joins the stable of portable devices at home, which
    include a couple of iPad 1s, and iPad 3, a couple of cheap Android
    tablets imported from China, an iPhone, and an HP Tablet running both
    WebOS and Android Ice Cream Sandwich. My first impressions will be
    mainly what I see are the pros and cons of the Nexus 7. I’m not much of
    a reviewer, you can find tons of other reviews around the web.

    (more…)

  • Something about iPads

    [![][]][]

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about iPads, Chromebooks, Android
    Tablets, and Linux laptops. In planning the next 5 years of technology
    in my school district, I know it will be mobile, but what device should
    I be thinking about? And then I noticed something very curious about the
    iPad and how people interact with it.

    In the past, when I’ve done professional development, there would always
    be some participants that would question the complexity. “Why are there
    so many steps?” “I’ll never remember all these!” Now with iPad training,
    I very seldom hear these comments. In fact, with all the hoops one must
    jump through on the iPad to do some tasks, people almost seem to enjoy
    it. These are the same people that would be overwhelmed with the
    complexity of doing the same task under desktop operating systems.

    Is this the epiphany that techies are missing? A device that defies
    our expectations of technology? The iPad with its touch and non-window
    interface turns the last 20 years of technology use on its head. For the
    first time in 15 years, people are realizing that they can use a
    computing platform that doesn’t have Microsoft Office on it.

    I’m reminded of a situation when I first bought the Nintendo Wii. At the
    time, motion control was brand new, and I was playing my brother in a
    first person shooter. He couldn’t quite get the hang of using the
    controller, preferring wild swings instead of using the controller with
    style and finesse. It was the first new gaming interface he had used
    since the analog stick was added to the Nintendo 64 and he was
    struggling. It seems we get too comfortable with what we know, instead
    of pushing through to see what we can do.

    These same discussions are taking place with the new interface of
    Windows 8. People are lamenting the loss of the desktop, even as
    Microsoft assures them that the desktop will still be there when using
    Windows 8 on a desktop or laptop computer. It’s funny in a way, I
    remember these same arguments when the switch from Microsoft DOS to
    Microsoft Windows was taking place. The writing is on the wall for the
    desktop metaphor. People don’t want to manually manage their
    documents anymore. Or the apps. And most importantly, their
    computer. They want to use it to get stuff done, and they’ve found that
    the iPad allows them to do it.

    As districts buy more and more iPads will the new paradigm of touch
    computing with a tablet be the future?

     

  • First impressions of the new iPad (from an iPad 1 user)

    [![][]][]

    I’ve had the new iPad for 24 hours, and it has already ruined me for all
    other displays. I noticed it yesterday, as I was working on my 24″
    1920×1080 monitor at school. It just looks bad after using the new iPad.

    As an upgrade to the iPad 1, the new iPad is a no brainer upgrade. The
    speed is amazing, but it’s the display that is the future. I don’t even
    want to use my 11″ Air anymore.

    You can read more in-depth reviews from around the web, so I’m going to
    try to pull out the little bits that may not be covered but I feel are
    important:

    • The #1 feature is the display, 2058×1536 in a 9.7″ package is just
      amazing. This is the highest resolution screen I’ve ever used, and
      text looks as good as e-ink on it.
    • Speed of the device is a substantial improvement over the iPad 1 or
      iPhone 4. I haven’t used the iPad 2 or the iPhone 4S enough to
      compare the two.
    • iPhone/iPod Touch apps at 2x use retina resolutions for the devices,
      giving the apps a more pleasant display. If you are running an iPad
      that is already jailbroke, there are apps to allow you to do this
      with the older devices.
    • I’m using my ZAGG/mate bluetooth keyboard from my iPad 1 on it. The
      new iPad is very loose in the keyboard case, but it’s useable.

    If you’re still rocking an iPad 1, it’s pretty much a no brainer to
    upgrade. The decision from an iPad 2 is better left for others to help
    you decide.

    By the way, the Apple Store online has refurbished iPad 1s for \$299
    right now.

     

  • Beyond Paperless

    [][]

    Slides: Beyond Paperless – eTech 2012(pdf)

    Audio: Beyond Paperless – eTech 2012

    []: https://ryancollins.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2012-02-13-at-10.19.33.jpg

  • Can Insync dethrone Dropbox as a cloud storage service?

    A couple of weeks ago I read a Techcrunch article about Insync.
    It is a service that works almost identically to Dropbox. Their
    differentiating feature is the fact that they use your Google Docs
    account for storage. A downside to this is that you only have 1GB of
    storage with normal accounts, but Google lets you add 20GB to that for
    \$5 a year (compared to Dropbox costing \$10 a month for 50GB of space).

    To set up, you download the client, install it, and log into your Google
    account or accounts. It lets you sync multiple Google accounts at the
    same time, so I can use it with my work Google account, my professional
    Google account, and my personal Google account. Insync creates a folder
    in your home directory called Insync, and creates a folder for each one
    of your accounts inside of it. Google Docs files show up as their
    Microsoft Office equivilents.

    It works really well, just as well as Dropbox. There are a few
    annoyances, such as the inability to pause syncing (for example, if
    you?re on slow connection), but for the price it?s hard for Dropbox to
    beat.

    One tip I would recommend is to create a folder inside your Google
    account folder and use that like you would use a Dropbox account. If
    your Google Docs account is anything like mine, you have a ton of files
    and very little organization. Since I?m using this basically as a
    Dropbox replacement, I created a folder called DesktopSync, and I use
    that like I would use my Dropbox.

    If you are in a Google Apps for Education school district, your Google
    accounts work fine with Insync. I haven?t tested it on our client
    computers that students use yet. If it works there, it would be a very
    nice solution to file access outside of the district.

  • Beware of the echo chamber

    As my school district was preparing for a building levy back in November
    (which did pass, yeah!!), I talked to community members what they felt
    the chances for a new building were. Most of them were enthusiastic,
    saying that they were hearing a lot of positive talk on Facebook. But
    when I pointed out that their friends on Facebook were more likely to be
    supportive since they were about the same age and had around the same
    aged kids, the enthusiasm waned. As we connect virtually with more an
    more people, are we enhancing this echo chamber, where like minded
    individuals pat each other on the back and agree with everything is
    said?

    I try to follow people that may not agree with me or my ideas. While it
    is important to have supporters, it is just as important to have someone
    that pushes the boundaries. The trick is to be able to carry on a
    constructive dialog without coming across preachy or to take things
    personally. I’ve had heated discussions with others that instead of
    debating the conflict, they let emotion take over. When a conversation
    becomes a personal attack, it is then time to take a step back and
    revisit the discussion at a later date.

    Compromise seems to be a lost art in the present. The congressional
    Super Committee failure to come to a decision exemplifies this. We
    cannot afford to not discuss rationally, accepting compromises when
    needed, in the education of our students.

    Diversity is the spice of life. Your personal learning network should
    contain individuals that have all different viewpoints. You’ll learn
    just as much from them as from those you agree with.

  • The Wingstand: a stand for your iPhone or iPad and the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard

    One of the first accessories I purchased with the original iPad was the
    Apple Bluetooth Keyboard. I had grand plans of replacing my laptop with
    the iPad. That didn’t happen, Apple introduced the MacBook Air and I was
    hooked, but I still held onto the BT keyboard.

    Lately, I’ve been using it with my iPhone when I’m out and don’t have
    access to wifi. It works ok, but I was getting tired of constantly
    moving the iPhone, trying to get it in a good place to use it with the
    keyboard. I started looking online for solutions, since there were a ton
    of iPad cases with BT keyboards, I was hoping there would be something
    for the iPhone. It was then I stumbled across the Wingstand.
    Consisting of two pieces of plastic, it can be used with or without the
    BT keyboard to prop up your phone or tablet. It’s not Apple specific. At
    \$14.95 shipped it seems a little pricey for a couple pieces of plastic,
    but it is made here in the USA and it does work really well. I’m typing
    this post with my BT keyboard and using the iPhone (unfortunately I have
    to use the iPhone in the portrait orientation since the WordPress app
    doesn’t appear to switch to landscape). My original iPad fits with the
    Apple case on, and so does my HP Touchpad.

    If you are going to use an external keyboard with your iPhone or iPad,
    this might be an inexpensive way to work. Let me know if there are any
    other solutions I’ve missed in the comments!

    20111116-203716.jpg

    20111116-203730.jpg

    20111116-203737.jpg