Sunday, November 30, 2014

Thing 21: Productivity Tools

Hip hip hooray!!  I'm VERY excited to be starting my third year of Cool Tools For Schools with Polly :-)  I'm not exaggerating when I say how valuable these lessons are to me both personally and professionally.  This is such a wonderful way to stay informed about what is available, and there is always something I can put to use immediately.

Speaking of which - this week I explored Evernote, Clearly, and LastPass - three super cool tools.  First, it was really easy to sign up for Evernote.  I liked the embedded tutorials that made it a cinch to start using right away.  My first note contained my lesson plan schedule for this week at school.  It was very easy to create.  Tomorrow I will try to access Evernote from school to see if I can retrieve my note.  Who knows if it will be blocked by our filtering system, though?  I'll just hope it's not.

Next I tried Clearly because it was related to Evernote and sounded interesting.  I installed it and tried it out on my electronic Book Club Blog called Book Buzz.  I then used WebClipper to send the cleaned up page to Evernote.  So easy!!

Finally I installed LastPass on my computer, but I panicked at the last minute when it detected all of my "insecure" passwords stored on the computer and said if I clicked "import" it would save them securely on LastPass and would delete them from my computer.  I probably should have gone for it right then and there, but having SO many passwords for everything from Shutterfly to EdModo to PayPal, I just didn't feel comfortable making that decision without more thought.

So I definitely feel "productive" as I begin this third track of Cool Tools!  If I have time, I'll try to add to this post after tomorrow to let you know if Evernote works at school.