As you may know, I love discovering a new tool that helps to make me more efficient. I’m loving these five productivity tools right now!
- Text Blaze. How many times do you type the same repetitive email to parents (ie. discipline, student placement, curriculum)? This Chrome extension allows you to create email templates or “snippets” that appear by just typing a short command. It’s a simple and fast way to stop living in the loop of find, copy, and paste.
- Notebook LM. Families are inundated with emails, newsletters, and other information from schools. Notebook LM allows you to upload information you want to share with parents and turn it into a two-person conversational podcast. Share information about an upcoming event, standardized testing, or a new curriculum initiative, and have parents actually listen to the information.
- Goblin Tools – Magic ToDo. We’ve all had those projects that feel too big to start. Magic ToDo is a feature that takes one big task, like Plan Field Trip or Update Gradebook and automatically break it down into tiny, actionable steps. If you struggle with executive functioning at the end of a long day, this is the easy button for your brain.
- Scribe. “Rich, how do I log into the new assessment portal?” Instead of writing a ten-paragraph email or recording a shaky screencast video, I use Scribe. You turn it on, do the task once, and it automatically generates a beautiful, step-by-step guide with screenshots. It’s the ultimate tool for creating once and sharing forever.
- Otter.AI. The best ideas rarely happen while we are sitting at our desks. They happen in the hallway, in the car, or during a quick brainstorm with a colleague. Otter.ai transcribes your conversations and voice memos in real-time. It doesn’t just give you text; it summarizes the action items and key takeaways. Stop trying to remember what you promised in that meeting, let Otter remember for you.
Try these tools to improve your own productivity!
Rich
For more productivity tools and strategies, buy a copy of Autopilot: Practical Productivity for School Leaders.
