Thing 6--Productivity Tools

The Cool Tools for Schools program is flying by!

This week, I sampled two productivity tools.  The first one, Dropbox, is very useful.  It can be frustrating to be in one place with one technology, and not have access to a file on another.  With Dropbox, you can access your files from anywhere on various devices.  I don't necessarily see using this service with students, but rather for my own work, or for collaborating with teachers.  If I start something at work, and want to continue later while my car is being serviced, I can drop my file in Dropbox and access it later, or have other teachers look at it and provide feedback.  Handy!

Next, I tried Workflowy.  This speaks to me, since I do love a to-do list!  I think this would be very useful for myself, and my high school students as well.  The students could keep a list of their outstanding tasks on Workflowy, and cross off or delete the items as they get done.  I imagine the students listing and organizing their tasks on Workflowy--for example, read, highlight, make citations, check citations, etc.  In addition to tasks,  the students could add due dates.  A useful place for notes to self!

Thing 5

For Thing 5, I checked out Pinterest and Scoop.it, two services I had never tried before.

I was really interested to try Pinterest, since I had heard so much about it.  It sure is fun, and I could see allowing it to suck up much of my time.  I think this would have great value in a school library, creating book boards.  I especially liked  Pinterest for personal interests, too.  What great visuals!

Scoop.it would be a good place to set up resource for research projects.  I set up a topic entitled Escapades in a High School Library.  The students could follow me, and I could set up a topic for each project.

So many resources, so little time!