Thursday, April 24, 2014

Thing 10: Productivity Tools

So I decided to look at these Productivity Tools.  One thing that really caught my eye was ifttt – If This Then That.  I think that I will definitely download the app and join.  I LOVE that I will be able to automatically mute my phone when I get to work and unmute after I am gone.  I certainly will look into getting updates on new free books.  As I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, logging the supposed  wi-fi connections and disconnections could come in handy.  I do wish that it worked with IKeepBookmarks.com though.  I know that everyone seems to have abandoned it for diigo and, especially, delicious, but I have found it to be really very simple to use and I don't want to go through all of the work of restoring the links to the new tool.

Along those lines I explored delicious a little.  The thing is that I am not into Facebook and Twitter.  I want to share relevant content with my students and teachers I am collaborating with, but I am NOT interested in the social end.  It looks like LiveBinders might work for me.  I can embed the shelves on my website when I want to share.

I already use Lookout on this phone and the previous one.  It has always worked great!   I also have a Dropbox account, but I don't use it much right now.  I think as with GoogleDrive, I am just going to have to make a decision on which way I want to go.  Right now, Dropbox seems more useable because I tend to use Microsoft Office, but if the district really ends up going with Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, it might send me in the GoogleDrive direction.  We have been passing a Chromebook around to try out.  The tech guy and I had a long talk today about the issues we may have with Chromebooks.  The switch to GoogleDocs is obvious, but I think that we could make it.  He is looking into a Virtual Desktop to expand the usability.  At the elementary level, though, I think that we really need to find a solution for printing.  I know that the push is paperless, but it is hard to tell a 7-year-old that he/she cannot get a copy to take home.

Clearly looks like it will be quite useful.  I have Evernote on my new phone and I really need to explore it more.  I think that it could be an awesome tool for me, though the transition is tough because I have been such a paper-based person organization-wise. I use PrintWhatYouLike alot when I print from Webpages, but knowing that there is an alternative for viewing them is great.

I have explored Zotero previously.  I thought that it would be great for my students, but frankly all of these browser add-ons in whatever format are problematic.  First there is the fact that we can't download them all ourselves at school because of the security.  Then there is how much they slow down the browsers.  Given the fact that we already have such old computers at school, anything that slows them more is a real problem.  Scrible has a similar problem. 

Well that is it for now.  I hope do more with Evernote and to create LiveBinders for our sixth-graders research project in particular.