The Tools I Actually Use
A Tech Stack Breakdown
I have loved a subscription since, let’s just be honest, birth. As a person with cystic fibrosis, pharmaceutical refills were basically my first subscription, something I re-ordered regularly just to keep going.
As a teenager, that looked like Teen and Sassy (all praise Jane Pratt) magazine showing up in the mailbox every month. Pulling that fresh issue out of the mailbox, seeing the cover art, flipping through pages that told me who to be and what to care about. I didn’t know it then, but those magazines were training me for a life built on curated content, first through social media feeds, and now through the tools I use to manage my daily life.
If I think back, Netflix was probably one of the first online subscriptions I paid for outside of an internet provider. What was yours?
I thought I’d share what my subscription life looks like today. Here’s my tech stack and podcast favorites, both work and personal, in case something here makes your life a little easier or a little more fun.
Let’s start with work.
The Work Stack
Since I left K-12 education, my tech stack has completely shifted. What used to be built around a student information system, formative and summative assessments, and a gradebook is now built around content creation, management, and distribution.
At Kami, I live in a few core tools. Notion handles productivity, project management, and SOPs. While I didn’t choose most of my work tech stack, Notion is one I’ve actively championed. I pushed Notion adoption at Book Creator before the acquisition, and I’ve done the same at Kami. Watching it spread across teams in the past few months has been one of the quieter, most satisfying parts of the job.
Figma is where I collaborate with the design team, and FigJam specifically is where the good ideation happens. Something about a shared digital whiteboard actually lowers the barrier to getting a cross-functional team to work together.
Our CRM is where sales enablement materials land for distribution and where we track campaigns and collateral. I’ve learned so much about MQLs, SQLs, and other marketing data points that help me know the content I’m creating is actually moving the needle.
For understanding what it's like to work in product, a team I collaborate with closely on messaging, Lenny's Podcast has been my go-to.
On the AI side, our in-house LLM is Gemini. I use it to organize ideas and revise copy with a Gem I’ve trained on our brand voice. I’ve also been building NotebookLMs to give our sales team marketing context in a format they can actually use, without needing to read everything the marketing team has written before their next call.
I didn’t go to business school, but I listen to How I Built This religiously. That’s basically the same thing, right?
Also Marketing School and Marketing Against the Grain are great listens for those moving from K-12 to EdTech Content creation.
It’s a solid stack.
The Personal Stack
Just honest suggestions based on daily use.
I have two LLMs in my personal rotation. ChatGPT has been in my stack for three-plus years, and at this point, it just knows me. I’ve trained GPTs to review work for the courses I teach and refine the feedback I provide. I’ve used it to write letters of resignation, to negotiate subscription rates with SiriusXM (I love making the robots talk to one another), and to coach me through a job interview process. I’d take a walk and talk to a GPT I had trained with the job posting, my resume, the district’s strategic plan, and enough context to create a genuinely helpful mock interview experience across my four-mile walk each day.
Claude is the newer LLM in my rotation. I trained it using the 100 Questions Protocol from the “How to AI” Substack post “Just a Text File.” That process helped me create a “Katie’s Voice” markdown file that Claude now references whenever I use it as a thought partner. I’ve also been using the Co-Work feature, which lets Claude access files on my computer and browse Chrome. It can hold context without me copying and pasting my life into a chat window every time I sit down to work.
Notion shows up here too, for a different reason than at work. I use it for so many things: planning trips, organizing the to-dos for the courses I teach, and even invoicing. I also use it to host my portfolio website. The URL isn’t pretty, but KatieFielding.com redirects to it, and it saves me the huge price jump Wix had in store for me this year.
If you’re an instructional or edtech coach looking to get organized, I have a Notion template built specifically for coaching workflows, all in one workspace. Worth a look before you try to build from scratch.
I’m also developing a Notion K-12 educator group with monthly meetups. The second one is April 7th, and I’d love for you to join. Sign up here. Notion Mail and Notion Calendar round out the suite for me personally. At this point, the whole thing is basically my operating system.
For finance, You Need a Budget (referral link) is in the daily tech stack. I track both my personal and consulting finances in one place, built around a 50/30/20 structure: 50% needs, 30% wants, 20% investing. The framework holds up and has helped me work towards my financial goals, while having fun at the same time.
The How to Money podcast is where I landed on the 50/30/20 framework.
Wispr Flow is the newest thing in my stack, and I used it to draft parts of this post. I click a function key, I talk, it outputs clean text without the filler words and false starts. It’s the closest thing I’ve found to a tool that actually matches how I think: fast, non-linear, and not interested in typing every word from scratch. Referrer link here, if you want to try it.
Have you done any Vibe coding yet? While I could do it in Claude Code, I have also been playing with Loveable. In about 30 minutes, I was able to stand up an app that an instructional coach could use to document coaching cycles. “They” keep saying that anyone can make an app now, and if you want to try, here is my referral link.
TikTok is where I go to learn daily. Educators are doing genuinely interesting things there, and it’s where I catch signals about what teachers actually care about. You can find me at @FieldingNotes. I’m focusing on Notion content in the coming months, ramping up before ISTE, so find me if that’s your thing.
Last but not least, the Dexcom app. Because I am a diabetic baddie, it monitors my blood sugar, and it’s why I’ve taken to wearing a phone leash. I can see my numbers without digging through my bag in the middle of a presentation or walking through a city. Non-negotiable. My pancreas does not care about my schedule.
What’s in your stack?
I’m always looking for the tool I didn’t know I needed. Drop yours in the comments. I want to see what’s actually working for you.
How I Used AI Here:
Drafted by voice with Wispr Flow. Edited and refined with feedback from Claude after writing. Graphic generated with ChatGPT.