What: New York Times article on how to manage e-mail overload
Posts it is related to: Freeing Yourself From Email , Emergent Collaboration: Why Email Should Not Be Used for Collaboration
Bottom line: In this Personal Tech article, the author gives some good ideas for getting our overwhelming amounts of email under control. His suggestion–an in-box that is always empty or very close to it. Tips for achieving such a tidy and less burdensome in-box include immediately archiving all those emails that won’t be or don’t need to be responded to (such as your Twitter or Facebook notifications), forwarding emails that are better answered by someone else, and responding right away to those emails that can be taken care of in just a few minutes. Another key feature of the system is to not spend time filing and organizing your email into some folder classification scheme. Instead, rely on your email program’s search capability to find that email that you really need that is no longer in your in-box. These are some good, no-nonsense tips for helping get email overload under control and contributing to a sense of calm and efficiency when we next check our in-boxes.

What: New technology trend? Article about the potential use of cell-phones in the classroom
Posts it is related to: None
Bottom line: It may sound like an educator’s worst nightmare–encouraging cell phone use in the classroom–but that is exactly what cell phone companies are trying to persuade schools to do. Research, paid for by a cell phone chip manufacturer, is suggesting that the use of cell phones can “make students smarter.” Rightfully so, there is a lot of debate about the nature of the research and the appropriateness of cell phones in class rooms. One bit that struck me from the article, though, was the description of how some students were using the smart phones they were given. Students used the phones to record themselves solving math problems and then posted the videos to private video sites for other students to see. This reminded me again of the address I heard at the conference a couple of weeks ago (see the February 21 post)–as educators, trainers, coaches or mentors we have to accept that learning is moving away from a traditional “deliver and absorb” model and becoming more about collaboration and shared knowledge. I’m not convinced that cell phones are the best tool for students, but I do think there is something to empowering students to learn from each other using a medium with which they feel comfortable. I’ll be keeping an eye on this potential new trend.

What: Article on the disappearing business meeting
Posts it is related to: None
Bottom line: The worsening economy has affected yet another business mainstay–professional meetings and conferences. Meetings for 2009 are being canceled and those that are still on the schedule are expecting lower than normal participation. Attendance is going down because employees have either lost their jobs or companies have cut traveling budgets for employees to attend such meetings. Even companies that do send a representative to a conference or meeting are sending only one person when in the past they might have sent two or three people. One online jewelry sales company executive attributed her decision to go alone to an upcoming conference to the lack of need for an extra person to do the important networking that takes place at such meetings. With attendance down, she feels confident that she can network with those she needs to alone. I suspect that this trend will lead to an increase in use of social networking sites and applications that allow for remote meetings. Although the technology is still not advanced enough to allow 400 potential conference attendees to meet together in a virtual world, we may see an increase in use of virtual worlds or other technologies for smaller meetings, as well as increased use of tools like Twitter for networking without traveling.