Tools of the 21st century educational road warrior

Published by in edtech, travel on February 26th, 2007

My backpack seems to have been getting a lot heavier the past few months, and I finally considered why last night. If you click on the image below to view it in Flickr, I added notes to each of these items indicating what they are. This is a lot of STUFF.

A 21st Century Road Warrior's "Saddlebags"

Items not included in the picture include my digital camera (which I used to snap the pic) and laptops. I prefer to just travel with one laptop (my MacBook) but for some events (like my workshop today at METC) I have to travel with and use two. Also not included is my wireless IR slide advance receiver and transmitter, which I love but lost half of (the transmitter) at OTA a couple of weeks ago. :-(

So how can this picture be simplified? Well, there is certainly some redundant functionality when it comes to audio recording and flash storage. It would be nice to combine the iPod, Palm and cell phones into a single device like an iPhone– but in it its current iteration the capacity will be too small for my needs, so I think I’ll still carry a larger iPod even if I get an iPhone. I wish I could shed some of the cables. (This photo doesn’t include the two different chargers for my cell phones either, I guess.)

On this day..

6 Comments »
  • http://2cents.davidwarlick.com David Warlick

    Wes,

    It’s an ongoing challenge — a balancing act between what you think you might need, and the complications that to much gear poses to travel. It was soooo hard for me to s stop carrying my M-Audio midi keyboard… My principal goal is not to check luggage.

    My greatest quest is to find the perfect computer bag. See you at METC.
    i’m currently lugging my rollrboard, with computer bag straped on and two pizza slices.

    – dave –

  • http://www.lisd.net/schools/killian/ David Stone

    Wes,
    Palm? A Palm?
    You have phone(s), a mac….a Palm?
    Even if it was free, a Palm? I don’t know…isn’t that kind of “1.0″ :-)

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    Yes, the Palm is a bit of a black sheep in my toolkit. The situation has been that with my new job, I put all my calendar stuff into Outlook on a computer that does not have bluetooth. I could get a bluetooth adapter and sync it to one of my phones, but I don’t like the date entry at all on a phone. The Palm is not optimal, but a friend gave it to me in Lubbock when I helped him order and setup a new computer system (that included an updated Palm) so it is sort of a stop-gap. I did recently figure out how to use the free Yahoo Calendar sync tool to sync my Outlook events to my web-based Yahoo calendar, so that is good. I’m thinking if I get an iPhone I should be able to access Yahoo calendar stuff on it as well as email. You are right, the Palm doesn’t seem to fit… but at least I’m able to have my calendar at my fingertips when I’m not online. I felt rather foolish before I started using it when someone would ask me to schedule an appointment, and I had no way to pull up my calendar on the spot and check for availability….

  • http://chalkdust101.blogspot.com Patrick

    What a collection. Given that arrangement, your absence of ties is easily understood.

  • http://jaminellis.wordpress.com/ Jamin

    Top tips for lightening the travel clutter:

    * Common power – I use USB chargers for almost everything, so I only need to carry power for my laptop (I have a USB ‘thing’ that plugs into a lighter socket if I need a back up). USB chargers are also much less bulky.
    * Combine storage, as you say. Lots of people seem to duplicate storage. Many MP3 players can be used as a flash drive on the PC – doing two for one.
    * Combine functions – where is makes sense. My phone is my camera (2mega pixel) and my mp3 player. Big win! Over doing this can cause problems though – I used to use my pda for almost everything – not fun when the batery went flat when on the road. Also, some multi-function devices compromise functionality, so be careful!

  • http://www6.district125.k12.il.us/staffdev/ Charlene

    Looks like the contents of my backpack, and when I went to the last conference I had a MacBook AND a PowerBook in the same backpack. Often it all has to be taken out during the airport security check. On my last trip, the TSA employee said, “You’re workin’ way too hard!”

    Great links to the products too!

    Thanks Wes!
    -Charlene

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