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Hey, teachers. If you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachel and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers toe want actionable tips, simple strategies and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go. Hey, hey, it's Rachel and you are listening to the class, um, commute podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I know you have lots of options when it comes to listening to podcasts. So I am very honored that you have chosen the classroom commute to fill your earbuds, your car stereo or wherever. You may be listening to this today. So thank you so much. I do not take it lightly, and I super appreciate you at the time that this episode goes live. It is the end of March, and hopefully it's starting to warm up a little bit for where you live and that the snow has gone and that you're starting to see those signs of spring again. And I don't know about you, but when springtime comes around, I always have the urge to de clutter and clean and get rid of all the things that have piled up over the winter. And I just like to have that fresh start with a fresh new season, and I kind of feel that it's the perfect time to talk about our topic today, which is all about de cluttering your computer desktop and organizing your teacher files. You've been in school for several months now, so maybe perhaps your computer desktop is starting to look like the junk drawer of your digital files. And today it's time for a little spring cleaning of your computer files so that you can get back to organizational bliss. But before we do that, I just want to take a quick moment to give a shout out to one of our listeners, Stacy, who left a very sweet review on the podcast. Stacy says Rachel is a fantastic resource and podcast host. While I've been following her blogged the classroom nook for a while. The podcast brings a whole new level of engagement to her ideas, and resource is, the insight she offers is fantastic and always gets me thinking of engaging lessons, activities and more that I can add to my daily classroom environment. Even better is that these tips are so easy to take an implement in the classroom right away. So thank you so much, Stacy, for those super kind words, I do all this for you guys. I'm here to support teachers in the classroom, and I am happy to do that every single day. And when I get great awesome feedback like this, it just motivates me to keep going. Even on those days when I don't feel so motivated. And if you would like to leave a review and possibly get a nice shout out here on the podcast, please do so you can do it right where you are in the podcast app. If you're listening on iTunes by just swiping up a little bit into the review section and writing a review and raiding the podcast, I would appreciate it so, so much. All right, let's jump into the show. Tell me this. How many times do you waste minutes, hours or even days searching for the perfect activity or lesson for students that you already have somewhere in your digital files? You know the story you're about to teach a new lesson you're planning and prepping, and you remember that Superfund lesson that you did last year? That worked perfectly. But there's just one problem. You can't seem to find it anywhere on your computer. You search your desktop and your computer files endlessly. When you finally find it, you say and swear to yourself that this time you're finally going to organize your computer files when you have a free moment. Well, might I suggest that that free moment is right now? Today, I'm gonna share with you three steps for organizing your computer files so that the next time you're on the hunt for a specific activity that you know is somewhere in that junk drawer of a digital file desktop, you'll be able to find it right at your fingertips in an instant. So stay with me here. I'm going to give you some actionable tips, and then I'm going to trust that you are going to go to your computer and get organizing. Today is your day to do the desktop detox, and by that I mean it's time to strip down your desktop or wherever you're storing your computer files to its bare bones and build it back up again, file by file. I know this sounds daunting, but I promise it's going to be worth it. And I'm gonna give you three steps to get you there. All right, you onboard? Let's get started. The first step is to start from scratch. It all begins by creating one master folder that will house all of your teaching files. So you should be able to have one folder on your desktop that you can click on where you'll have all files together and organize perfectly. For example, I taught third grade one year and I taught fourth grade for the rest of my years. So I had one master folder for fourth grade, and I had one master folder for third grade. And inside those files were sub folders that broke down all of my grade. Level related resource is into categories, so let me show you what I mean. Inside my third grade folder, where sub folders for each subject that I would teach. So I had a folder for reading a folder for Science was folder for math and social studies, and so on. If you teach multiple subjects, you need a folder for each subject. You can even have a specific folder for holidays or specific folders to house all your notes, and resource is on conferences or your classroom to core. Resource is, everything has to have a category that they fit into. And then that category becomes a sub folder in your master folder. So in this first step, you're starting broad, and then we're gonna work our way towards being more specific. It's not enough just to have a science folder and then to throw all your science resource is and files into that folder because of what we want to avoid is having our electricity activity next to our solar system activity because it's just gonna make it that much harder to find exactly what we need when we need it. So if we organize by subject, then we can break it down even further into units and topics. So inside my science sub folder, I will also have another folder for electricity on. All of my resource is that I used to teach electricity, go there and then I'll have a folder for solar system, and all the resource is that I use the teach solar system are going to go in there, so it may seem like you're doing a lot of clicking around as you go deeper into the folders. That's OK, because at least you know exactly where you need to go. And you're not having toe weed through things that you know are not even related to what you're looking for. The more specific and the more you can break it down the better. For example, in your reading folder, you might have sub folders that our skills novel units, centers, authors that he's guided reading. Those are your sub sub folders, but even your sub sub folders can have folders inside of them. So, for example, your skills folder. Maybe you break that even further down into types of sentences. Context, clues, authors, purpose and so on. So if you're following the flow here, let's back up. You start at third grade. Inside that third grade folder is reading inside that reading folder. Our skills and inside the Skills folder are other folders, such as types of sentences in context, clues all broken down. So it's super easy to find exactly what you need. His is starting to sound like one of those Russian nesting dolls. If so, I think we're on the right track. I'm going to include a graphic in our show notes at classroom nook dot com forward slash podcast forward slash 12 And that graphic will kind of give you a good visual for how this might look if you're having a hard time visualizing it. I know sometimes when we listen to something and a podcast, we need to have something in front of us. A cz well, and I will provide that graphic for you in the show notes. I want to pause here and know that at this point in this de cluttering detox, you do not need to be filling up the folders with the files. Yet right now, you are simply building the framework for organizing your files. We're going to fill the folders of all your files that air probably loosey goosey somewhere on your desktop. We're gonna do that in the next step. So right now you're just building the organizational system. Once you have built the framework for where you're going to be putting all your files now it's time for Step two, which I'm calling, rename or remove after you've got all your folders organized, you're ready to begin looking at the files that will go in them. If you've been teaching for a while, you most likely have a ton of computer files. These files can include word documents, smart board or power point presentations, publisher documents, Excel documents and whatever else you used to create your files. Some of these files may no longer be current or useful, but they're still there on your desktop or somewhere collecting dust. This might include old classless resource is that you know, out of date or anything else you know you will never use again. You need to get rid of it. Just delete it and get it out of your life. If you're not ready to commit to completely removing a specific file, but you don't know where to put it yet, create a full therefore files that you aren't currently using, but you're also not ready to get rid of. Yet. This will keep your current and regularly use folders and files clear of clutter after you've gotten rid of all your unused files. Now it's time to take the remaining documents and put them where they belong. make sure that each file has a clear name that makes it so obvious that you know what the file is without having to open it. If the current name is vague, you're going to want to rename it with a more clear title. So, for example, if you have a multiplication file that you've called homework one rename it with a more clear title such as Homework one Skip counting so that when you are looking for that file, you'll know exactly what it is. Just by looking at the title of the file, this will probably be the most time consuming part of this whole process. So break it up into a couple of days so that you don't feel overwhelmed or get burned out, break it up and do some chunks so that it feels doable. Okay, so at this point in the process we have in step one started from scratch by creating the full their framework for how we're gonna organize all of our files. In Step two, we have renamed any file titles that are vague and we have gotten rid of remove deleted the files that we no longer use that are out of date. In Step three, it's the divide and conquer step. Once you removed all your old and unused files, you've renamed any vaguely titled files. It's time to fill the folders. We'll call this divide meeting. Divide your files into categories and conquer your disorganized computer desktop filing system or lack thereof. Begin by transferring your files from their old chaotic location into your new digital filing system by dragging each file where it is. Maybe it's on your desk top. Drag it into the correct folder, so that's right where it needs to be in its new digital home. If you find that a file doesn't fit anywhere, you might need to ask yourself if it's really something you'll need or use. If the answer is yes, just create a folder for that one alone. Maybe you'll find that you will have more files along the way that will fit in it. But just don't leave it on your desk top all by itself. That'll just get you right back to where you don't want to be in desktop clutter. Value on Lee Wanna have to do this once, and if you do it right the first time you will always know exactly where you need to store your files and then even better yet, you always know exactly where to find them. Are you feeling motivated? Are you excited to go to your desktop and clean it up? I hope so. I know it's not the most fun activity to do, but you will thank yourself later. You'll save yourself time and you will be so much more organized. I promise it's worth it. All right again. I'm gonna have some graphics for you over on the show notes at classroom nook dot com forward slash podcast for its last 12 to kind of give you some idea of what this might look like if you're having a hard time visualizing it, I've got you covered there, and I've also put all of the things that we've talked about in the show notes where you can review them as you need you. I will be up a great rest of your day. I hope that the weather is getting warmer where you are, and you're starting to see those wonderful signs of spring. Have a great rest of your day. I will talk to you again next week. Bye for now,