Personal productivity site Lifehacker has been asking people to empty their messenger bags and share a picture of their contents with the world. Their results are here, here, and here. Well, my students wanted to contribute, so here’s what’s in their backpacks. After we were done, I found myself quoting a co-worker likes to say, “Who knew?”

I found it really interesting to dissect the contents of these kids’ bags and because personal organization skills are emphasized at my school, it was an awesome way to give out some pointers.

My bag

Bag is a freebie from a conference. It’s light and has plenty of pockets to keep my goodies organized.

  • Classroom 2.0 button, courtesy of Steve Hargadon.
  • Checkbook
  • Fork and spoon, disposable. For those times when I forget to put a set in my lunchbox.
  • Nalgene bottle, 32 oz.
  • 2.5” portable hard drive with a USB cable.
  • Sony VAIO laptop with Lego block decal + power supply.
  • Business cards with superhero picture.
  • Starbucks card.
  • Stamps.
  • iPod Shuffle and headphones. iPod dock (a 1/8” to USB plug below and to the right of the Shuffle).
  • Large eraser.
  • Zebra 402 pen and pencil set.
  • Sharpie marker in black.
  • Red ink pen for grading papers on the go.
  • USB flash drive (2 GB).

Personal tech worn on my person: mobile phone, Palm TX handheld, wallet, and keys.
Not pictured: Papers to be graded and lesson planning material.

Taylor’s Bag

  • Top My Note Book
  • Middle –left- math book – middle-econ book –right- chem. Book
  • Bottom form left to right— flash drive , Zune w/head phones, calculator, Gateway CX 2724

Edward’s Bag

  • Red dot – One 128 Mb Flash Card.
  • Blue dot – One 2 Gb Flash Card, Key to Master lock.
  • Purple dot – Headphone splitter and pink magic eraser.
  • Green dot – Cell phone
  • Yellow pocket – Clip on sunglasses
  • Orange dot – Pack of cards, Palm IIIc, Master lock, WWII Cricket remake. Yes it works and is loud.
  • Cyan dot – All my pens.
  • Red/Blue dots – Laptop, laptop power cord, TI-84 Graphing Calculator, Graph pad, spare paper, CDs, Axe deodorant, Mechanical pencil eraser and led replacements and Warriors of the Heart binder. It was from a convention.

Ryan’s Bag

  • 1 OGIO Backpack w/ Laptop Pouch
  • Some crap 3 ring binder
  • My “Topics in Contemporary Mathematics” book
  • Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus Calculator
  • My wallet loaded with oodles and oodles of cash
  • 30GB White ipod Video
  • HTC 8525 “Hermes” Smartphone WM5
  • Some little speaker for my ipod
  • Multicolored pack of G2 Pens

A little background: These pictures come from a class of mine, called Systems Administration, whose purpose is to prepare students for the Windows XP Professional certification exam. More than just the exam though, I want to expose the students to the larger world of the IT worker. Blogs are a huge part of that because we can bring the IT world into our classroom. So we spend time every day reading news through our Google Readers — and Lifehacker is a perennial favorite. After showing off Lifehacker readers’ bags, we decided to analyze what we carry.

What’s in your go bag?

Technorati Tags: , , , ,