OmniFocus for Teachers
 

Hello All,

I have been looking at a ton of ways to organize myself for the start of the new semester (I teach Science) - OO, Scrivener, Text etc... I never thought of OF, but it may work. Does anyone have any advice on this? Do you think it is wise to use OF like OO and put my scope and sequence into OF?? I am pretty good with start dates, filtering and perspectives, so I should be able to keep the uncluttered feel of OF.

There are A LOT of smart people on these boards - what do you think?

I set up my folder structure for a given course as follows:

Teach (folder)
> Course XXX
--> Administration
(contains lecture administration projects, one per lecture)
--> Topics
....... Topic AAA
........> Notes
(contains topic development projects for content and examples)
........> Homework YYY
(contains homework assignment projects for the topic)
........> Capstone ZZZ
(contains capstone assignment projects for the topic)
---> Exams
(contains exam projects, one per exam)

I have a perspective "Teach" that shows just the contents of the Teach folder.

A typical Lecture Administration project is laid out with sequential Action Groups as follows:

Lecture Outlined (parallel, due before the given lecture)
... define Course XXX lecture topics
... prep Course XXX lecture NNN admin page
Lecture Finalized (sequential, due shortly after the given lecture)
... finalize Course XXX lecture NNN admin page
... post Course XXX lecture NNN admin page

For any course, I duplicate this template and do a search+replace to propagate lecture NNN to the next increment.

A typical Topic Notes project is laid out with parallel Action Groups as follows:

Content Topic AAA (Project, parallel)
Examples (sequential)
... outline examples for Topic AAA
... confirm examples for Topic AAA
... post examples for Topic AAA
Notes (sequential
... outline notes for Topic AAA
... confirm notes for Topic AAA
... post notes for Topic AAA

I will likely streamline this organization for the coming semester. My temptation to over-structure and over-expand the list of tasks has occasionally led me to skip past doing tasks. I am hoping that simplifying often exhaustive lists (wake up, get alarm clock from night stand, turn off alarm clock, put alarm clock back on night stand) to their minimum core (get up to start the day) will lead to fewer such issues.

Hope this gives you some good ideas to start your planning.

--
JJW

[QUOTE=DrJJWMac;119289] I am hoping that simplifying often exhaustive lists (wake up, get alarm clock from night stand, turn off alarm clock, put alarm clock back on night stand)[/QUOTE]
Do you prefer opening the left or right eyelid first, or are you one of those wild and crazy "both at once" types? :-)

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;119294]Do you prefer opening the left or right eyelid first, or are you one of those wild and crazy "both at once" types? :-)[/QUOTE]

lol

I worry more about which side of the bed I am getting up on and otherwise keep both eyes firmly closed until my morning coffee has kicked in, generally after 2pm. :-)

--
JJW

As I expected, Great Stuff! I will start to digest this and work it into my system. I still think some of this goes into OO, but maybe not....

[QUOTE=DrJJWMac;119289]I set up my folder structure for a given course as follows:
[/QUOTE]

Hi DrJJWMac,
I'm interested in your course workflow but I'm not sure I understand the hierarchical structure in Omnifocus terms (folder, project, action list, task, sub-task):
Teach [is a Folder]
Course XXX [is it a nested folder or a project?]

etc. Could you develop it? (Omnifocus for dummies..) :-)

I've attached screen snapshots. The left pane image is shown expanded here as a start.

[ATTACH]2909[/ATTACH]

Other snapshots include images for a lecture project, exam project, homework project, and topic project. The topic project template needs to be pruned significantly.

HTH

Thanks a lot, I'll have a look
Nestor