When technology fails or How to “Keep Calm and Carry on”

It would be remiss of me not to mention what happened at the beginning of this week.

I love my little laptop, I joke that it runs my empire!  Everything is on there: photos, my bookmarked cache of web pages, blogs and memberships.  Documents, power points and downloaded prezis I use for my work. Student attendance lists and mark sheets. Email trails for my current projects, our favourite recipes and of course my PhD reading and writing so far.  On Sunday evening I turned on my laptop, well really I tried to turn on my laptop. It was struggling to get to the login page. We (WH and I) tried a number of things to try and get it past the grey screen but nothing worked. WH and LT were worried…I was not.  That’s right, I was not worried…”but you’ve just lost access to your empire” I hear you think 🙂

In truth, I hadn’t lost anything. Even if this laptop (which after 3 days of patient customer support is now working as though the ‘blip’ never happened) never worked again I knew that my triple backup system, including the cloud, had me covered and that everything, bar one document I hadn’t backup for 2 weeks, was retrievable.   You see I use a memory stick, my server drive at work and the cloud to back up to. Evernote is my first back up, as documents are done I send them to my evernote account. Once a week (when I am in at work) I transfer my memory stick contents to my desktop/server.  I will be utilising time machine now too, just to make sure. I also have 6 months of emails are stored on my host’s server, so my email trail for recent projects is still there.

What this ‘blip’ has taught me is that I have the right systems in place for me to ‘Keep calm and carry on’, and I am more determined than ever to ensure I don’t lose access to my recent writings so will make sure I continue to use new (cloud) and old (memory stick and server) technology to support my work.

What sort of things do you do to keep yourself organised, for work, study and family? I would be interested to hear your experiences and thoughts.

Until next week, happy trails

Fiona

An exciting week…

What an exciting and busy week. As my teaching year winds down (and the last couple of months turn into marking) I also made sure that my application for my PhD went in on Friday. Unfortunately the process at the admissions office changed 4 months ago from online applications back to paper applications, so this first (and important) step of my PhD was not paperless. I did however have a soft copy to type on,  used Evernote to store it so I could work on it where ever I was, and only printed 2 copies of it…one to proof read properly and run past my BB and then the final copy which was submitted. I suppose I should generate a paper count, at this stage I am up to 40 pages.  So in 6-8 weeks I will be a student…I can’t wait 🙂
Now to the ethics application, which is partially online…wish me luck 🙂
Until next week
Fiona T

Evernote Review (Part 4)

Yes, Yes, I know. Even my students now roll their eyes when I say ‘Evernote’….but this week I have helped 2 more people streamline parts of their lives by using Evernote. As far as I can see Evernote keeps getting better and I am learning more about how to use it more effectively too.

A couple of weeks ago Evernote upgraded the usability of their free package, this now includes the ability to store office documents (excel, word, powerpoint), previously only available to premium users.  This is a fantastic step towards supporting teachers, students and schools to utilise this functional and free cloud based storage to work and share.

I have also had opportunity in the last few weeks to compare Evernote more closely with drop box (for a good blog on how this can help students see  Claire O’Neill’s blog). There are similarities between the basics of the two but the biggest differences I can see (please let me know if I am mistaken) are:

• Files in dropbox need to be physically updated to make sure they are the newest version (by dragging new files to it). Evernote allows you to work on notes, or documents and save back to Evernote, meaning that you will always have the most up to date version synced. This can then be accessed via internet, computer, tablet, or smart phone.
• Evernote also has options to record voice notes, take pictures and then add text etc onto Evernote directly. This means there is no need to work in another package and transfer to Evernote. My LT is having heaps of fun writing notes, taking pictures and reading stories onto Evernote, he was even able to show them to his class at school using the interactive white board. I have also used the audio recording feature recently to record practice interviews and then later listen back to them and transcribe them onto the same note in Evernote. I believe to do this on drop box I would have to record the audio file in another application and then transcribe to a word or other text based file, and put both files physically into drop box.
• Individual notes or whole notebooks can be shared via email with non-Evernote users. I have the impression with drop box that you share the whole folder/box with others (again, correct me if I am mistaken).

So Evernote is working really well for me (and no, I am not getting a ‘kick back’ from Evernote…I just really like it)

Do you use Evernote? Do you use Onenote? Do you use Drop Box? Do you use Google Docs? Is there another ‘free’ cloud tool That you like to use?

Until Next Week

Happy Studyng,

Fiona T

Reveiw of “Mama, PhD” Book

I want to thank one of my new PhD colleagues for loaning me this book. I also want to state, for the record, that my BB was right…I needed to be cautious in my reading of this book. Now I know why. This book didn’t really grab me at first. The first writers were really presenting their daily struggles of juggling life and work…not unfamiliar stories, but there seemed to be no reflection upon the ‘how’ and the endpoint…were they happy? I suppose that when I started to question and define my expectations of this book. I found that perhaps it wasn’t wholly what I was looking for.  Here is a book of the embattled lives of mothers (and fathers), not the triumphant stories of hope that really inspire others. I mean, life is full of choices and sacrifices, and only a few of these stories at near the end of the book really address this and affirm women in their choices to either continue in Academia or abandon this pursuit altogether.

Much of the first part of the book read like this: Loving research, needing to meet demands of tenure/tenure track positions, relying on a work or scholarship to fund health insurance and working in male dominated colleges…blah blah blah. It makes me very glad to live in Australia, and be working in the field of education. This book highlights concerns of the American college and academic tradition and how feminism (I read that as equality, choices for both genders) seems to have not been considered in many American Tertiary institutions.

It was the stories near to the end of the book that were what I think I was searching for, the stories of how others have handled this journey, how they have planned and actually lived it, not just to get through to the end but have a quality life throughout.

This has forced me to consider why I didn’t really like the book, and then refocus on what I did like. Here is a list of the ‘positive’ gems I have taken from this book.

* stories about not having time to consider having writers block, and using every available free second to think or write. (Angelica Duran and Tedra Osell both touch on this)
* stories about having many ‘bags carried” (Caroline Grant) (I have a similar story of my own about how I orgainised the various roles I held in addition to part time study and full time work by using a bag and pile system.)
* Stories of competitive mothers juggling everything. I have to say my focus is on a fulfilling journey, not dragging myself through this, if I don’t enjoy the experience then it is time to reconsider the “why” and “how”.
* The idea of learning to say “no” to things that will distract me from my goals. One writer (Jean-Anne Sutherland) developed a mantra that helped her to prioritise her daughter, her own health and her dissertation. Anything that didn’t directly fit required the “no” response. I liked this and have used a similar idea recently when considering which part time work roles I wanted to pursue and trying to balance this with LT’s school.
So, in conclusion, while I found some interesting ideas and projects some of the contributing writers have been involved in, there was still no real guideline of ‘how to’ juggle PhD and family as I had hoped. I think that perhaps my search should move away from traditional books and head back to the internet and PhD blogs to try and find ideas of how it can work. Or perhaps it’s time to have faith in myself, that this is something I really want to work on and that I will find a way to make it work for my family. Perhaps the organising focus of my blog is a focus that is needed out in the real world, not just regaling readers with the frustration but trying to forge a solution.

I have listed below some of the sites and blogs that I am pursuing from the book, more out of a sense of service to ‘the sisterhood’, as there may be something of value to someone out there in the ethers…

* Jennifer Eyre White: http://www.havingthreekids.com
* Jean Kazez: http://www.kazez.blogspot.com
* Megan Pincus Kajitani: www.having-enough.com
* Amy Huddock, Caroline Grant, Elisabeth Rose Gruner, Elrena Evans (and others): http://literarymama.com
* I have to mention Susan Bassow and Dana Campbell, who wrote stories about promoting science through the everyday activities they do with children, I felt a connection with these women.

Do you have a favourite Study/PhD blog? Please share it….I would love to find out more current stories.

Until next time

Fiona