You Call 'This' a Normal Day?!

I was just reflecting back on the different applications I've used today... pretty much a normal day, and I'm coming to the realization that there are many tools that are a normal part of my workflow.  Consider the following rough timeline:

Midnight: Access my Del.icio.us bookmarks to find the name of the 'wakeup call' website I'd recently bookmarked.

12:02 a.m.: Set up a 7 a.m. wakeup call at http://www.wakerupper.com/

7:00 a.m.: Awake to the sound of my cell phone ringing... Upon answer, a mechanized voice reads back to me the message I'd posted 7 hours earlier.

7:10 a.m.: Load Camino web browser and with one click, open my 'Daily' bookmarks folder to read the news of the day. 

7:20 a.m.: Quick check on Twitter to see who was up to what last evening...

8:00 a.m.: Early arrival at the workshop site provides me with time to a few recent skating photos from iPhoto to my Keynote presentation

8:10 a.m.: My district e-learning contact is not yet on site, so I decided to select a topic from my Xpad notebook and to record a quick little Podcast using Garageband

8:18 a.m.: Convert podcast to MP3 format in iTunes.

8:20 a.m.: Upload podcast to Libsyn and ping the iTunes server.

9:00 a.m.: Share Keynote presentation with workshop attendees (various 'photos of ice-skating', zamboni, shovel man... as a metaphor for e-learning).

9:15 a.m.: Open multiple tabs in Camino to highlight e-Learning tools in Ontario.  Work with participants on course customization in their browser of choice: MS Explorer (yuck!)

10:30 a.m.: Highlight for participants how Flickr and Audacity can be used to create more memorable communications in the online course environment.

11:00 a.m.: Tweak 'how to' documents in ScreenSteps and send PDF versions to participants via First Class

11:45 a.m.: Check on my work mail for urgent messages via First Class

1:00 p.m.: Assist district ICT consultant in mini-workshop to tame Google Documents, and Wet Paint wikis as places to host online course materials.  My take is that these tools can be leveraged by students for electronic portfolios.

1:30 p.m.: Assist district e-learning contact in enrolling students in courses by using an Excel spreadsheet (csv format)

1:45 p.m.: Phone Desire2Learn to investigate internal email issues in the learning management system.

2:00 p.m.: Partner with district ICT consultant to highlight how Google Analytics tracks web traffic (my RPT site has hits from 162 countries to date!)

2:30 p.m.: Review evening ice skating in Komoka movie created in iMovie and uploaded to blip.tv to complete the metaphor: "If you build it, they will come."

2:45 p.m.: Time to drive home... Catching up on my favourite CBC podcasts on the 2 hour drive

7:00 p.m.: Visit the recording of an Adobe Connect e-learning session on 'course customization' that I missed while driving home

7:20 p.m.: Open Flock to check on my 'network' of education bloggers, twitterers,  and social learning networkers

7:40 p.m.: upload new links to my my Del.icio.us bookmarks

7:45 p.m.: type this blog entry in Flock

8:20 p.m.: upload blog entry to Blogger


There is nothing exceptional about this day... in most ways it is a mirror of my 'normal' working day. My exposure to multiple applications the past ten years or so make this seem all so natural and seemless.  I'm sure that this is far from a 'normal' day for a teacher, but with the way my day flows, I rarely reflect on the apps I'm using.  Then again, maybe I'm just a 'geek'?

Does anyone else think about their daily workflow in terms like these?

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