How do I not sound like a crazy person when describing to people how social media has made my life easier as a teacher?

I was doing some work with my boyfriend recently. He is also a new teacher, and he is familiar with technology- he hosts his class website on Google Sites and utilizes Google Docs and the like. However, he doesn’t use a lot of the social media that I’ve become obsessed with and that has simplified my life- Diigo, Twitter, Tumblr, RSS feeds, Dropbox, Evernote (and more recently, Radbox). I’m not necessarily using these tools in my classroom, but they sure do make my classroom life easier and enhance my knowledge of what’s out there. We started talking about what I use outside of Google Sites/Docs (since I use these as well).

I would explain one tool to him and then, inevitably, another would come up (“So you use Dropbox for…?” “No…I use Diigo for that.” “Well, what’s Diigo?”) As this conversation continually expanded, I realized I was beginning to sound more and more crazy.

“How do you stay organized with all this stuff?” he asked me.

“This keeps me organized!” I insisted.

It made me realize something. I am increasingly aware of how these varying technology tools have made my life easier, but I also seek out new technologies. If I were to try to explain how these have simplified my life all at once…I simply sound pretty crazy to someone who does not learn new technologies quickly or isn’t aware of them. However, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t know these tools exist.

So, my question is: How do we introduce these tools to our colleagues without sounding crazy?

4 March 31 Permalink

How I am staying organized this year

Three tools:

• Evernote
• Diigo
• Dropbox
• Google everything

How did I even survive last year without these things? Sometimes I’m really not sure.

The key to all of these tools is that they are accessible anywhere you have access to a computer/internet. Pretty sure most of them have smartphone apps as well, but being smartphoneless, I don’t always check for these things.

Evernote allows me to create notes for myself. I can edit these/access them from different computers. I kind of use is as a portable post it note service. I constantly make to do lists for lesson planning and use it to store bits information related to organizations I’m involved in this year that don’t necessarily need Word Docs. Another thing I find it handy for is for storing random bits of info that you need to keep but may not have a good place for (umm, like the confirmation number for my electronically-submitted school tech request?)

Diigo is a social bookmarking site (like Delicious). It allows me to access my bookmarks anywhere and tag/organize my bookmarks so they are more easily accessed. I also like Diigo because I can highlight and make notes on sites.

Dropbox is like a digital flash drive. No more trying to remember to cart my USB drive around or e-mail myself files. I like using this for school-related files instead of Google Docs because my Google Docs account is cluttered with a bunch of other stuff. One nice thing about Dropbox is that if you have the service downloaded on your computer, when you edit the files you have saved into Dropbox they are automatically updated there. You can also upload files manually online.

What tips/tools help you stay organized?

6 October 17 Permalink