How Can We Disappear from Our Phones Today?

I enjoy Saturdays. Not a big surprise, most people view this as the best day of the week. My best Saturdays are spent at my home, enjoying my surroundings, recharging, and on the occasional day, tearing into cleaning my house (aka the cleaning "nazzi" has shown her ugly face.)

I take tackling the house cleaning duties not as a chore but an opportunity to put right all that has been torn apart during the week (or weeks depending on long it's been). For me, it also mean jammin' to some tunes as well via Apple TV and iTunes, and I'm sure my new neighbors are just loving this!

So on this particular Saturday, as the tunes are radiating throughout the house, Billy Joel's tune Vienna came on. Now I've listened to this playlist more than a dozen times, but as I listened more closely to the words, these rang out:

slow down you crazy child

and take the phone off the hook

and disappear for awhile

I remember what it means to take the phone off the hook (showing my age a bit here). No one can contact you, peace and quiet, you could truly disappear. Why can't we do that today? Well, let's think about it, what happened when you called someone who took their phone off the hook? You heard a busy signal. Assumption: the recipient of your call was on the phone, you figured they were home, but you can't reach them or leave them a message, you just have to keep trying. I can't do that with my cell phone.

Sure I can let it ring and go to voice mail. Assumption today: Your phone is somehow permanently attached to some part of your body 24/7 and the recipient is ignoring you. I can shut my phone off entirely, but then it goes directly to voice mail. Assumption: The recipient forgot to charge their phone so I'll just keep calling and leaving voice messages. So when I turn my phone back on, the disappearing act I tried to do has created a task of returning calls, answering message, and doing what I was trying to avoid by disappearing.

While I can't say I miss having a landline, I do miss the disappearing act that came along with it. I have sympathy for my own children that will never know what that's like. 

We Want To See Who You Are!

My school district is embracing the Google+ world, in particular the communities. My principal has created a community for the teachers & staff in our building and shares announcements, weekly calendars, common core information, staff birthdays, etc. I will say it has cleaned up my email inbox immensely, and I love that the information is always available and organized (there's my Type A coming out again, dang!)

One positive is being able to put a face with a name. Most would not deem our staff extremely large, but our building is, and I can go for weeks, sometimes months, and not see my co-workers, or necessarily know who all the new staff are. So we strongly encourage having actual pictures in our profile, and not clip art or avatars. Because of this I've been paying closer attention on Google+ and Twitter to those that I connect with and what their profile picture says about them. Could I pick them out of a group if I saw them? Does it portray who they are? Or what they teach?

It's easy to do, just click on your profile picture in Google+ (or the blue man if he's still hanging around) and choose Change Profile Photo. Whether you use a school photo, selfie, or random shot of yourself doesn't matter. Just make sure your profile picture is clear and allows others to recognize who your are, because I know you're not a Fighting Irish (aka Segar)!

Clean Up Those Sticky Notes

Anyone who happens by my office will see I love sticky notes. I have them pinned to my bulletin board, they cover my computer desk, I have stacked of different colored ones in my drawers, I LOVE THEM! I actually think it's an addiction I need help with, but that's a problem for another day.

While I love my notes, and the feeling of crumpling them up when I've completed the tasks on them, they don't travel well. In fact, Hansel and Gretel should have used them instead of while pebbles to find their way home through the forest. So alas, my notes are only as good as the office I have placed them in, until now...(insert cheezy infomercial voice over here)

Google has once again rescued me with Google Keep.  It's an app (iOS and Android) and a website! Here I can make endless sticky notes for every task or job I have to accomplish, from my laptop, desktop, or phone. I can color code my lists (great for us A type personalities), include check boxes so I can "check off" what I have done, share them with my students or colleagues, set up reminders, and if my list becomes extremely long and detailed, I can copy it to Google Docs!

I have even shared this tool with my students as an option to keep track of their assignments, tasks, or whatever they need to do. Check this out! I can't believe how much more organized I feel by using this tool!