Super Tech Talk: edtech challenge

Showing posts with label edtech challenge. Show all posts

Monday, August 22, 2016

Summer EdTech Challenge #12: Student show offs

I am a firm believer in giving students choices when it comes to presenting what they know. For many years it seemed that teachers had students create PowerPoints as a way of sharing information. But there are so many options available today that provide a much better experience in creating and presenting. Many of these tools are free, work cross platform, and sync across websites and mobile devices.

I've blogged about many tools and have many favorites. Some tools are linear in nature, just like PowerPoint, while others allow the user to choose the order they consume the information. When we provide students with a variety of tools, they can pick the tool they like best for the task at hand. Some might prefer the visuals of Haiku Deck, while others want to make a quick video in PowToon or iMovie.

The table below provide links to my 9 favorite apps for student presentations. Some links will take you to my reviews, where available. The review may be just for the iPad app, but most also have a website that can be used on desktops, laptops, and Chromebooks. Other links will take you to other websites with more information. This list is by no means definitive - I'm still learning about great tools myself! You may want to check out Student Presentations: Moving Beyond PowerPoint for some other ideas and resources.

Linear
Haiku Deck	Google Slides	Prezi
Visual
ThingLink	Spark Page	Smore
Video
Spark Video	iMovie	PowToon

Your EdTech Challenge this week is to pick a presentation app, learn about it, and pick one of your learning activities where students will use that app. You are not limited to these 9 apps - let me know if you find another great one! Don't forget to come back to this post and let me know what app you picked and how your students will use it.

Summer EdTech Challenge #11: YouTube Generation

YouTube was created by a few PayPal employees back in 2005 as a way to upload and share videos. During the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fasted growing sites on the web with 100 million video views per day in July. With YouTube only being 11 years old, that means students in elementary school and entering middle and high school don't know what the internet (and their life) was like without it! They are often referred to as the YouTube Generation or Gen C - the group that cares about creation, curation, connection, and community.

Enter the teacher. In order to engage students and bring relevance and meaning to their learning activities, videos can often be embedded within the lesson or used as a hook to get students interested. There are many ways YouTube can be used in the classroom - and not just as filler. Check out my post 7 ways to use YouTube in the classroom for some cool ideas.

Having trouble finding that perfect video? Check out my post Search YouTube like a boss! for tips on filtering out the cruft and easily finding the right video with the right content and right length. After searching through YouTube you'll find that you want to curate your own video collections using playlists. Also following quality YouTube channels will help you keep on top of your favorite YouTube authors.

Your EdTech Challenge this week is to read through those blog posts about integrating YouTube. Then explore YouTube, finding videos, creating playlists, and subscribing to channels to supplement your classroom. Share in the comments what you've discovered. I'm always looking for interesting videos and YouTube channels to help with my teaching!

Summer EdTech Challenge #10: Screenshot this!

iPad

Taking a screenshot on an iPad is as easy as pressing the home button and power button at the same time. The image is saved directly to the Camera Roll where it can be cropped and other basic edits performed.

Windows

Windows 10 users can press the PrtScn button on the keyboard. This takes a picture of the entire screen and saves it to the clipboard, which can then be pasted into any application. If you want a picture of just the active window then press Alt + PrtScn. If you'd rather save the screenshot as a file, then press the Windows logo key + PrtScn. The picture file will be saved to a folder called Screenshots inside your Pictures folders.

If you want more flexibility in the area to capture, use the Snipping tool. Snipping tool can take screenshots of an open window, rectangular area, a free-form area, or the entire screen. You can annotate your snips with different colored pens or a highlighter, save it as an image.

Mac

Macs have built-in screenshot capabilities that are simple to use - you just need to remember a few keystrokes. To take a screen shot of the entire screen, press Cmd + Shift + 3. The screen shot will be saved to the desktop and named Screenshot with the date and time added to the file name. To take a screen shot of just a specific area press Cmd + Shift+ 4. The cursor will turn into a cross-hair that you can drag across the screen to select a window or other area. Letting go of the mouse will take the picture and save it to your desktop.

If you want to save the screen shot to your clipboard to paste into an application, add the Control key to either keystroke above. Control + Cmd + Shift + 3 for the entire screen or Control + Cmd + Shift + 4 for the crosshairs.

Jing

Jing by TechSmith is a free screenshot and screencast software that is compatible with Macs and Windows. Simply select any window or region that you want to capture, mark up your screenshot with a text box, arrow, highlight or picture caption, and decide how you want to share it.

Jing also does screencasting, which is a method of recording the action that happens on your screen. Select any window or region that you would like to record, and Jing will capture everything that happens in that area. From simple mouse movements to a fully narrated tutorial, Jing records everything you see and do. Jing videos are limited to five minutes for instant, focused communication.

This week's EdTech Challenge is to practice using some of these screenshot skills. Can you take screenshots of just a window or specific part of the screen? Can you save it as a file and import into a document? How about saving it to the clipboard and pasting it right into that document? After you've practiced a little bit, come back and tell me how you did. What ways do you think you and your students can use screenshots in your classroom?

Summer EdTech Challenge #9: Tech it up with SAMR

Once you understand the changes necessary to move from level to level, you can start examining your own technology practices. As you do so, remember that the goal is not to always strive for Redefinition. Its okay to have learning activities at the Substitution level. Instead, teachers to need to examine the activity and determine if the outcomes would be improved by moving up the SAMR levels. In other words, examine the level of student engagement-who is asking the important questions. As one you move up the levels, computer technology becomes more important in the classroom but at the same time becomes more invisibly woven into the demands of good teaching and learning.

Check out 8 Examples of Transforming Lessons Through the SAMR Cycle for some specific examples of using the SAMR model to improve some typical classroom learning activities.

The EdTech Challenge this week is to take an existing lesson or project and redesign it so it moves up from the S or A level to the M or (even better) R level. Remember the definition of what makes it Modification or Redefinition.

After you've redesigned the task, come back to this post and describe the original task and how you changed it.

Summer EdTech Challenge: #8: It's a small world!

they are part of something bigger
the world needs to be taken care of
the world is (figuratively) flat

Here are a variety of ways you can bring the world into your classroom.

Mystery Skype - this is a fun country- or globe-trotting game where students connect with a class in another location with each trying to guess the location of the other using yes or no geographic type questions. I've played this game with classes in second grade up to high school. We've connected with classes in nearby states as well as New Zealand, Canada, and Venezuela. Younger grades can do a Mystery Number type activity, while older grades could do a Mystery Book or Mystery Element for science classes.

Skype - while Mystery Skype is one of my all time favorite activities, Skype can be used for much more than that. Microsoft's Skype in the Classroom site has many activities classes can do via Skype. Bring in an author to discuss their books or the writing process, connect with a zoo to learn more about animals, follow an expedition to the north pole, or bring a content expert into your classroom.

Global Read Aloud - read a book out load to your students during a set 6 week period. During that time make connections with other classrooms around the globe that are reading the same book. The depth of the project and the tools used (Skype, Edmodo, Twitter, etc) are up to the teachers. There are books to choose for all grade levels, including kindergarten.

Adventure 2016 - participate in the world's largest cultural exchange on November 17. Classrooms around the world will connect online that day to share what its like to be child in their part of the world.

The Global Classroom Project - is a rich resource for finding new ways to connect, share, learn and collaborate globally. You can find all kinds of projects to collaborate on with classrooms in over 35 countries. You come up with the project and use this site to advertise and connect with others.

Kid World Citizen - this website is a treasure trove of resources to help your students become global citizens. There are games, recipes, music, art projects, and even service projects that can be done locally or globally. You can search by country or topic such art, food, language, or celebration.

Digital Explorer - this site is about more than just making global connections. This site provides rich, curriculum-based resources to help connect students with explorers and scientists to learn about and solve global problems. This site provides real world ways for your students to get involved with global problems and solutions.

Since I am returning to the classroom this year as a 4th grade teacher I am committed to doing Mystery Skypes with my class. My goal is to Skype with a class from all 50 states. I've also signed up to do participate in Adventure 16. I'm going to explore some of the resources on the Digital Explorer site to find one my students can get involved with.

The challenge for this week is to explore the global education resources above and sign up for one for the upcoming school year. These are just a sample of projects and sights available. Feel free to do a web search for other resources and find one that appeals to you. The challenge is to become a global educator and help your students become global citizens. Let me know in the comments what you discover and commit to!

Summer EdTech Challenge #7: Interactive videos

We’re excited to announce @Zaption is joining Workday. https://t.co/64dB4fdwuT
— Zaption (@zaption) July 1, 2016

As far as I can tell this leaves only two options: EDpuzzle and PlayPosit (formerly known as EduCanon). I tried looking at a third option, Vizia, which is a super simple version of the same idea. But I just couldn't get it to work. The videos took forever to load and when I went to preview it after embedding questions the video never loaded. I'm hoping the developers continue to work on it because it was super simple to use and I love having options.

So now we are down to two options, unless someone leaves me a comment with other ideas. Both of these platforms allow you to import video from a variety of sources (YouTube, Vimeo, Khan Academy, LearnZillion, TedTalks, etc), clip the section you want, and embed multiple choice and free response questions. These interactive videos are then assigned to students. Both offer Google Classroom integration, making it easy to create classes and student accounts. Students then view the video and are stopped at teacher determined points to answer questions. Students cannot advance through the video until the questions are answered. Pretty slick way to hold students accountable!

Your challenge this week is to create an interactive video for your class to use next year. If you need some ideas of how you can use video, check out my blog post 7 Ways to Use YouTube in the Classroom. Then read my reviews on these two platforms (linked in the images below). Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as a different interface. You'll need to try them out to see which one you prefer.

After deciding on a platform, create an interactive video to use in your class. Let me know in the comments how you plan to use the video. Was it difficult to embed the questions? What do you see is the value of a tool like this?

Here is an example of an interactive video I created for a 5th grade class using EDpuzzle.

Summer EdTech Challenge #6: Formative Assessment tools

Luckily for teachers, there are many digital formative assessment tools out there. Digital tools offer many advantages over traditional paper and pencil type assessments. The biggest advantage is the ability to collect and analyze data instantaneously. As soon as students have answered a question or completed an assessment, it's graded and teachers have the data necessary to gauge the next direction in learning. No longer do teachers need to wait until after school to grade them and analyze the data. The data is permanent and can be reviewed at any time. In most cases it can be downloaded as a spreadsheet where teachers can further manipulate and analyze the data.

In addition to the quick access to data and results, digital tools offer these benefits:

make student thinking visible
provide efficient and immediate feedback
increase human interaction and debate
increase classroom participation and attentiveness
encouraging risk-taking with anonymous student responses

There are a variety of digital tools out there that can assess in a variety of ways, depending on the type of data the teacher is trying to collect. I believe that teachers should be familiar with a variety of digital tools, so they can be used in a variety of situations. Here is a list of some tools that are great for collecting real-time polling/survey data and student feedback regarding the concepts/ideas required to reach learning objectives.

Poll Everywhere is great for BYOD classrooms. Students can use their own cell phone, regardless of whether it is a smartphone or not. One feature I love about Poll Everywhere is the ability to collect words or phrases and display them as a word cloud.

Socrative is a good old standby for formative assessment tools. Teachers can ask multiple choice and true/false type questions that can include images. It has an iPad app for both teachers and students, but can also be accessed via the web. Many teachers have created Socrative quizzes and share them freely on the web.

Kahoot and Quizizz are game-based response systems. Students compete individually or in teams and earn points based on how quickly they can answer the questions. The game-based aspect of these systems is highly motivating and engaging for students. They are web-based so students can use any web enabled device such as a tablet, phone, or computer.

GoFormative lets you to upload an assignment in the form of some text, images, videos or a document. Choose how you want to assess it, typed response, multiple choice or show your work. Assign it to you learners and watch live as they go through it. Students can type, show their work with drawings or submit images and you can see how all the learners are doing live.

Student responders such as CPS and Activotes are common in many classrooms and schools. Teachers can easily use them for polls and quizzes during lessons. They are easily set up, reliable, and don't require any additional tools beyond the software installed on the teacher's workstation.

Plickers are a good solution for classes that don't have access to classroom responders. Teachers print out QR Code style forms and use their cell phone to "poll" the classroom. This is a nice solution because students don't need a device in order to participate.

Your challenge this week is to become familiar with one of these digital formative assessment tools or select one of your own that you've heard of. Take one of the quizzes that you would normally use in class and recreate it using the tool you selected. Have it all ready to use in class this upcoming school year.

In the comments below let me know which tool you selected and why. Don't forget to tell me about the quiz you made - what you are trying to assess and how it fits into your curriculum.

Summer EdTech Challenge #5: Keyboard shortcuts

General Shortcuts

Here is a list of shortcuts commonly used for moving around your computer and dealing with files or programs.

Windows	Mac	Action
Ctrl+X	⌘ Command+X	Cut: Remove the selected item and copy it to the Clipboard.
Ctrl+C	⌘ Command+C	Copy the selected item to the Clipboard.
Ctrl+V	⌘ Command+V	Paste the contents of the Clipboard into the current document or app.
Ctrl+Z	⌘ Command+Z	Undo the previous command.
Ctrl+Y	Shift+⌘ Command+Z	Redo the previous command.
Ctrl+A	⌘ Command+A	Select All items.
Ctrl+N	⌘ Command+N	New: Open an new document or window.
Ctrl+Shift+N	Shift+⌘ Command+N	New folder.
Ctrl+O	⌘ Command+O	Open the selected item, or open a dialog to select a file to open.
Ctrl+W	⌘ Command+W	Close the front window or current tab.
Alt+Tab	⌘ Command+Tab	Switch between open apps.
Ctrl+T	⌘ Command+T	Open a new tab and jump to it
Ctrl+L	⌘ Command+L	Jump to the Address Bar in a web browser.

Document Shortcuts

The shortcuts listed here are used within most applications, whether it's Microsoft Word, Google Docs, iMovie, or any other type of program.

Windows	Mac	Action
Ctrl+B	⌘ Command-B	Boldface the selected text, or turn boldfacing on or off.
Ctrl+I	⌘ Command-I	Italicize the selected text, or turn italics on or off.
Ctrl+U	⌘ Command-U	Underline the selected text, or turn underlining on or off.
Ctrl+P	⌘ Command+P	Print the current document.
Ctrl+S	⌘ Command+S	Save the current document.
Ctrl+F	⌘ Command+F	Find.

There are many other keyboard shortcuts beyond these. There are shortcuts for logging out users on a computer, shutting down or restarting the computer, moving the cursor to different points in a document, cycling through open tabs in a web browser, and many, many more. You can check out more of them at these sites:

Wikipedia (includes a very comprehensive list, grouped logically)
Mac keyboard shortcuts
Shortcutworld (includes shortcuts for Google Docs)

iPad Shortcuts

Why should computers get all the shortcut love? iPads (and iPhones) also have shortcuts that help you accomplish tasks faster. In the touch tablet world these are called gestures. Here is a short list of commonly used iPad gestures.

# of fingers	Gesture	Action
one	slide up or down	Scroll through page content.
one	flick up or down	Quickly scroll through page content. Tap to stop.
one	tap	Select
two	pinch together	Zoom out.
two	spread apart (unpinch)	Zoom in.
four or five	pinch together	Close app and go to the home screen.
four or five	swipe left or right	Switch between open apps.
five	swipe up	Show multitasking view to switch between apps.

For this week's challenge, find some shortcuts you haven't used before. As you use your computer this week, try them out. It might take a few tries to remember the key strokes, but the more you use them, the more ingrained in your memory they will be. I was not aware of the Command+L shortcut to quickly get to the address bar. I'll be practicing that one a lot this week, since I'll be doing a lot of work on the web!

After trying them for awhile, come back and share in the comments what your experience was like. What shortcuts did you find most valuable? Were you able to find others that weren't on this list?

Summer EdTech Challenge #4: iPad apps

Presentation Apps

Toontastic/Puppet Pals - these two apps are great story telling apps using puppets. I prefer Toontastic because it has more backgrounds and puppets. It also walks students through a story arc to help them develop their story. Both are great ways for students to publish their original stories.

Book Creator - this is an awesome app for publishing ebooks. Students can write their stories and add images, videos, audio, and a few animated widgets. Books can then be published as ebooks and read on any platform. Books in any subject can be written.

Haiku Deck - this is one of my all time favorite apps for student presentations. Its simple and visual. Students can't get caught up in all the dancing letters, animations, and bullet points that make up so many PowerPoint presentations.

ThingLink - this one is another of my all time favorite apps for student presentations. With ThingLink students select a "base image" and create hot spots on it that can display text, images, and videos. Its great for presentations that are non-linear in nature.

Spark Video/Spark Page -Adobe recently rebranded a few apps and brought them under one umbrella called Adobe Spark. Spark Video creates quick, high quality animated videos and Spark Page creates magazine-style web stories.

Canva - I was introduced to Canva at recent iPad conference I attended. This is a great graphic design app that I really want to explore more.

Educreations/Explain Everything -these are screencasting apps teachers and students can use to create videos teaching concepts or showing learning. Both have their pros and cons, so you'll have to decide which features are more important to you.

Pic Collage - this is a great little app for creating photo collages and adding text and stickers. Its great for vocabulary building.

ChatterPix -this is a fun little app where students can make any object talk. Imagine a rock with a mouth discussing all of its characteristics!

Video Apps

Students love creating videos. With iPads today it is extremely easy to create high quality videos with lots of special effects. Videos are great for demonstrating concepts in any subject. Here are a few of my favorite video making apps.

iMovie - Apple brought movie making ability to the masses with iMovie. This app is very powerful and extremely easy to use. Its free for any iPad purchase after September 2013.

TouchCast - I saw a demo on this app last year and have been dying to get to know it more. It has many powerful capabilities including a teleprompter, annotate any video, and embed images, documents, websites right in your videos.

Videolicious - another powerful, yet easy-to-use video editing app. I've heard alot about it in classrooms, but I haven't yet had the opportunity to play aorund with it.

Green Screen by Doink - at the last tech conference I attended I finally had the chance for some hands-on action with this easy to use app. With any green screen set up in your classroom you can use this app to transport students to any location either with images or videos. Final projects can then be imported into other apps for further editing and publishing.

Miscellaneous Apps

Popplet/Ideament/Mindomo - all classrooms have brainstorming and mind mapping going on at some point. These apps bring those activities into the digital age. Students can insert drawings and photos as part of the exercise.

Photomath - this is a great app for secondary math teachers. It reads and solves mathematical problems by using the cell phone or iPad camera. Not only does it show students the answer, but it shows students the steps necessary to solve the problem.

The Challenge

The EdTech challenge for this week is to explore an iPad app that you are not familiar with. It doesn't have to be from this list. Find one that you are interested in that meets your subject and/or grade level needs. Explore the app, press the buttons, learn everything you can about it. Figure out how you would use it in your classroom next year. In the comments, tell me about the app, what you thought about it, and how you will use it.

I'll probably check out Spark Page, TouchCast, and Videolicious. These are all apps I've wanted to learn a little more about and this challenge gives me the perfect excuse! I'll create a blog post on each one and publish them this week. Stay tuned for my answers to this challenge!

Summer EdTech Challenge #3: Student Interest Survey

Welcome to the Summer EdTech Challenge! Summertime is a wonderful time to be a teacher! It's the perfect time to recharge your batteries, catch up on trends in education, read for pleasure, and learn new things. How about taking the opportunity to learn new tech skills or try out new tools and strategies?

Each Monday this summer I'll post a simple tech challenge, something you can do between dips in the pool and binge watching your favorite TV show. These challenges are practical, easy to implement ideas to help you develop your tech skills and start next year off on the right technology foot!

Last week the challenge was to set up a Google Classroom for next school year. One great addition to the class stream might be a Student Interest Survey. This is a type of survey where you collect information about your students interests and learning abilities. Asking the right kind of question can give teachers insight into how students learn, what subjects they feel confident about, and a little about their personality. This enables teachers to tailor instruction to student strengths and interests.

Since I'm not the most creative person I searched online for Student Interest Survey question ideas and found a a treasure trove of ideas. I will be teaching 4th grade next year so I selected questions geared towards that grade level. I chose to do my survey in Google Forms and added the link as an announcement in my Google Classroom I created last week. This will be one of the first activities my students do when they learn about Google Classroom for the first time. My Student Interest Survey form is embedded below.

Creating your own Google Form is super easy. Go to forms.google.com and log in to your account. Click the big + button to create your form. In the title area enter the name of your form (Student Interest Survey).

The first question has been created for you automatically. I recommend that the first question ask for the student name, otherwise you'll never know who submitted responses. I like to separate out first and last name so I can easily sort, but you can have students include both on the same line. Change the question type to Short answer and "require" this question, so students can't skip it.

Click the + button to add your next question.

Click the question menu next to the question title and select the type of question you want. Most of mine were Short answer so students could fill in whatever they wanted. I wanted to gauge their feelings on math since that is my main focus next year. For that question I selected Multiple Choice Grid, as you can see in my form above. Make sure you "require" any of the questions that you don't want students to skip.

When all of your questions are done, click the gear icon and change any settings you want. By default the form is set to allow access to only CCSD users. If your district subscribes to GAFE, you'll probably see your district's info there. I also like to check the box to automatically gather usernames. This gives me a column in my response spreadsheet where I can see all my students' Google email addresses.

Now click the Send button, click the link icon, and check the box for Shorten URL. This link is what I then copied and pasted into an announcement in Google Classroom.

I gave directions for the form in the announcement and then added this link.

Your challenge for this week is to create your own Student Interest Survey. This is an EdTech challenge, so no cheating and doing a paper version! You don't have to use Google Forms, any digital program you are familiar with will work. However, I found Google Forms super easy to use and adding it to my Classroom made it easy to distribute to students.

Once your Student Interest Survey is done, let me know in the comments below. Including a link is a great way to share with other educators too.

Summer EdTech Challenge #2: Google Classroom

Create a Class

Create a class for next year. If you are a secondary teacher then create a class for each period. You can't sort class names, so I would create them in reverse order, creating your last period first. That way your first period will appear in the list first when you look at all the classes respectively.

The easiest way to add students is to give them the class code, which appears to the right on the screen. You'll want to give this

Create an Announcement

After creating your class you are taken directly to the class stream. This is where all the action happens - where announcements and assignments appear for students. It looks and behave similarly to Facebook.

For your first announcement invite students to introduce themselves or share something interesting they did over the summer. Students can comment to any announcement and it will appear right below it. You know they are going to play with something new, so here's their chance to say "hiiiiiiiii!"

Create an Assignment

With assignments, best practices are to begin each assignment title with 001, 002, 003, etc. This makes it easy to find assignments in the stream and keeps assignments organized in Google Drive. For this assignment create a simple assignment for students to turn in. You could have them type up a couple of paragraphs in a Google Doc about their goals for the year, create a survey using Google Forms to collect beginning of the year information from them, or share a Google Slide document with them and have each student assigned to a slide where they introduce themselves and decorate it any way they want.

That's it! Now your classroom is ready for students. On one of the first days of school, have your students sign in to their Google account and join your class. As soon as they do they have a few things they can do to become familiar with it. Teach your students that everything starts with Google Classroom. That's where they should go to get information and assignments, and turn in work. Getting them in that habit will make things go smoothly for the year, especially on those days when you have a substitute.

To get credit for this challenge, just let me know in the comments below that you've created your class for next year.

Summer EdTech Challenge #1: Inbox Zero

Welcome to the Summer EdTech Challenge! Summertime is a wonderful time to be a teacher! It's the perfect time to recharge your batteries, catch up on trends in education, read for pleasure, and learn new things. How about taking the opportunity to learn new tech skills or try out new tools and strategies?

Each Monday this summer I'll post a simple tech challenge, something you can do between dips in the pool and binge watching your favorite TV show. These challenges are practical, easy to implement ideas to help you develop your tech skills and start next year off on the right technology foot!

A few days ago my wife decided to help my young daughters clean their bedroom. When she was finally done and came out of the room she had two full garbage bags, one filled with garbage and the other filled with old toys, books, and clothes to donate to charity. The room looked fantastic, everything was in its place, and we could finally walk around the room! Bonus: she also found many missing items including clothes that needed washing.

Just like bedrooms need a good cleaning every now and then, so does your email inbox. The school year is over, most tasks completed, and teachers are preparing for a fresh start next school year. Now is the perfect time to go through your email inbox, prioritize and finish any tasks, delete old or unneeded emails, and employ a few strategies to reduce the number of emails you get in the future.

Your Summer EdTech Challenge this week is to get your email inbox down to zero (or as close as you can). Hop on over to my previous post, Mission: Email Inbox Zero and follow the suggestions there. At the time that I wrote that post our district only used InterAct for email. Within the last year many schools have started using Gmail as we transition into Google Apps for Education. Don't forget to apply this challenge to your Gmail account as well!

The previous post linked above has directions only for InterAct. You can't create folders in Gmail, but you can use labels to accomplish the same task. Directions for creating and using labels can be found here.

If you are interested in learning more about inbox zero, check out Merlin Mann's original work on this concept. He's the one that coined the "inbox zero" phrase back in 2007 and has a lot of excellent tips and ideas on managing your email.

Right now I have 420 emails in my InterAct account and 186 in my Gmail account. I'm committed to getting those down to zero if I can. I'll post my own reply here to let you know how I did.

In the comments below, let me know how you did. Were you able to get down to zero? How do you feel now that your inbox is a lot cleaner?

Super Tech Talk

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