The Road to Hell is Paved with Discarded Organizational Tools

The Berger/Trexler chapter for this week made me think a lot about how I would try and teach students to be more organized.  And how difficult I think it actually is to teach or enforce organizational skills.

The initial description of the student arriving early at school to so diligently check his Start page was so unrealistic that I thought I would have trouble accepting the ideas in the remainder of the chapter. Really, the ideas and tools presented in the chapter are very useful and should, in theory, be very practical and helpful for students, teachers, or really any person trying to keep track of research, projects or events in her life. In fact, I have personally used many of the described tools (or similar ones) either on my own, for school, or as part of a collaborative team at my former office. Though I am in general a huge proponent of organizational methods, and rather like Toad in my love of (and need for) making lists, I have unfortunately found that most people cannot use the tools effectively, especially as part of a group situation.

As an example, I was the production or project manager at a small publishing services company for six years before I entered this program. At my company, we sometimes had hundreds of books to keep track of, and each book had about twenty steps to be completed before we were done with it. It was my job to create a production plan, and ensure that every person in the office knew what he or she was to be working on at any given moment to get everything done on time. We tried many different project management systems, but never hit on one that worked better than a simple to-do list sent every morning by me. The problem always seemed to be that maintaining the organizational tool became another job that took time away from the tasks that needed to be completed, so no matter the good intentions at the start, the organizational tool always fell by the wayside. 

I think what it boils down to is that being organized is a highly personalized skill. Everyone has their own system. Some people are lucky enough that one of these online tools may fit in nicely with their own system, but many may find that creating and attempting to maintain the organizational scheme or tool is as much or more work as the project being organized. 

That all being said, I do believe that as a teacher librarian trying to create information literate students, it will be part of my job to teach organizational skills, because they are extremely important for research in school and for life beyond school. Therefore, I value the suggestions made in the chapter and plan to evaluate (or reevaluate) many of the tools personally so that I can share them with students to help them find the tools that work best for them. This is actually one reason why I like the idea of a wiki or a blog for a classroom collaborative/organizational tool—the class could create it together and tailor it to fit the needs of the group, but then continue adjusting it as needed so that it continues to be useful and does not become just another chore.