Friday, January 11, 2019

5 Alternatives to Google Keep for Task Management

Last weekend I received an email from a reader named Shayne who had experienced a problem with Google Keep notes randomly disappearing. Shayne's research indicated that other people had the same problem. So if you're someone who has run into glitches with Google Keep, here are some other task management tools that you might consider trying.

Wunderlist is a task management service that will synch across all of the devices that you use. Creating task lists in Wunderlist is an intuitive process. Just click the "create list" link or button and start typing out your list of things to do. You can create as many lists as you like within your account. You could create a list of things to do at home and things to do at school. Or you could create lists for the week, the month, and the year. You can set a due date for each task in all of your lists. All lists can be made collaborative by sharing them with other Wunderlist users.

As reviewed earlier this week, Taskade is a task management tool for individuals and teams who need tools for communicating with each other about their tasks. When you create a list in Taskade you can set a deadline for each item within the list. Files can be attached to each item in the list. And you can write comments on each item in the list. If you invite others to view a list, they can comment on list items too. Taskade users who are working in teams might enjoy the options to be notified whenever a team member updates a list. There is also an integrated text, voice, and video chat that you can use to communicate with team members about list items.

Randomly Remind Me is another task management tool that I reviewed earlier this week. Randomly Remind Me is only available on Android devices. It does not have any collaboration features. It's simply a good app for setting reminders for yourself to complete a list of tasks. My full review of Randomly Remind Me is available here.

Flask is a simple tool for making to-do lists and sharing them with others. To create a to-do list on Flask just go to the site and start writing your list. You don't have to create an account to use Flask. Unique URLs are assigned to each list that you create. To share your lists click the share button to send the link to your list to others. Watch my new video for an overview of how to use Flask to manage task lists.


OneNote has a task list function that you can use. While I enjoy using OneNote for bookmarks and sharing of notes, I don't find the task list function to be as user-friendly as some of the other tools on this list. That said, it could be the option for you if you're already a OneNote user and you don't want to add another app and corresponding account to your phone.

Bonus Option:
Use a paper notebook and pen. That's what I do every morning. The really important tasks then get copied into Google Keep on my phone.

How to Show a Portion of a Video in Google Slides

It's easy to insert a YouTube video into your Google Slides presentations. If YouTube is blocked in your school you can insert a video from Google Drive into your Google Slides instead. Both of those things can be done from the "insert" drop-down menu in Google Slides. But what is often overlooked is the option to specify which portion of a video you want to display in your slides. That can be done from the "format" menu that appears after you have inserted a video into a slide. Watch my new video to learn how to add a video to Google Slides and how to specify which portion of it should be displayed.

How to Display the Same Event on Multiple Google Calendars

On Thursday morning Amira asked me, "do you happen to know if you can copy an event on multiple calendars on Google Calendar?" My answer to her question was, "yes, you can." In the following video I demonstrate how to display the same event on multiple Google Calendars.


There are lots of reasons why you might need to copy the same event to multiple Google Calendars. In the example in the video I had one calendar for members of a school basketball team and one calendar for school-wide sporting events. Some, but not all, of the events for the team members calendar were also relevant for the school-wide sports events calendar. You might find yourself teaching multiple sections of a course and rather than re-writing events on each calendar, you could just copy to all of the calendars and modify as needed.

Learn more about Google Calendar in my on-demand webinar Get Organized With Google Classroom, Calendar, and Keep

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