Oh, organization and I have never exactly been best friends. I wouldn’t call myself super organized, but I have some structure—to keep my digital space from being completely chaotic. I like to keep things simple—partly because I’m a minimalist and partly because I don’t have the patience to spend hours colour-coding files.
Since I prefer a minimalist approach, I avoid unnecessary complexity and follow a hierarchical structure, which means each main folder contains subfolders to help retrieve the documents easily. I might not fit the typical ‘commonplacer’ stereotype, this is my own low-maintenance version. Here is an example of how I maintain my main folders and subfolders.
ENGL 1101 ( Main folder)
Spring 2024 (subfolder)
- Syllabus
- Sample assignments
- Class list
- Email correspondence
- Lecture notes
- Assignments
- Submitted
- Graded (with feedback)
ENGL 1102
Fall 2024 (Same structure)
Teaching Resources (Main folder)
- Lesson Plans
- Activity Ideas
- Discussion Prompts
- Assessment Rubrics
Teaching Portfolio (Main folder)
- Teaching Philosophy
- Sample Assignments
- Student Feedback
My digital world is a bit of a mess, filled with random notes, half-written ideas, screenshots, PDFs, and folders labeled “IMPORTANT” ( even though I often forget about them!). This assignment about creating a digital commonplace book made me revisit my folders and evaluate my current organization system.
While researching digital organization strategies, I realized that my digital life might benefit from a makeover. While I’ve always relied on a folder-based system to keep things organized, I turned to Chat GBT and asked for ways to organize my notes. It gave me a few ways to maintain my folders and suggested apps like Evernote, OneNote, and Notion on how to manage and organize my commonplace book.
Curious, I tried my hands on Notion and found it user-friendly. While I haven’t fully adopted this app yet, my initial experiment with Notion has been promising. I’m excited to see how staying organized with Notion might help me retain information better and work more efficiently. It feels like a step in the right direction for my academic journey! It’s about time my gadgets got a makeover too 🙂