The Joy of #IFTTT or, How I stopped worrying and learned to love productivity. I sadly can’t remember the one thing I needed to do which made me discover the brilliant IFTTT.com (IfThisThenThat) website, but whatever it is, I am very grateful. This is an incredibly simple yet cleverly-designed website which allows you to make all the standalone webistes you use for daily life (in my case, Twitter, Dropbox, Facebook, Youtube, Pocket, Email, bitly, Posterous, SMS Texts) and helps you to join them together. It does this by making what they call recipes. These are simply instructions which follow their branded name, that IF something occurs (which you specify), THEN do something about it. In a productivity sense, this is fantastic.
Here is an example. To do this with IFTTT, simply find a recipe which already does this, or make one up which serves your purpose. My proudest recipe so far is one assisted by @chilledteaching, where I wanted to build up a text document of Twitter links I had favourited. Have a play, and create/share your recipes. Like this: Like Loading...
NoodleTools : MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian Bibliography Composer, Online Notecards. Pearltrees - Web 2.0. URL Shortening: Spread the Word. *Disclaimer: This is not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination, just my take on it. If you current use URL shorteners in the classroom, I encourage you to share this post with your colleagues. Now on to the post. We live in a Hyperlinked world and so do our students, yet nine times out of ten assignments are given out to students in paper form. This process is a means to an end in a traditional classroom, but why do we see this practice carried over in to digital assignments too? Hyperlinks do not work on paper so we end up asking students to type in a URL to get to the digital content on the web.
My suggestion would be to skip the paper altogether and post the assignment on your blog, class website, or wiki. We do not live in a perfect world and sometimes your students will need to type in a web address. In the two examples below I have provided links to the same page. Examples: 1. 1 minute video tutorial for you visual learners 1. The original. IFTTT Meme. I've not wrtten ia post about a tool in a long time. Mostly because I usually don't think about it that much and other people do a better job writing about it than I do anyway. But I've been using If This, Then That for a few months and quite like how it's helped my work flow. Will asked a few of us how we're using it and rather than try and cram it in a few tweets figured I could blog about it.
Blogging is quite lovely thing for stuff like this. Let me share the tasks I've set up and why I use them.. I had a number of plugins that were supposed to autotweet new blog posts to twitter but they often failed. I've used the little cheesy phrase, "I've got something to share(ski)…. " and it's easy to add that text in this task. One I hardly if ever use. There's some controversy around this task. FYI, I tweet about learning but I also tweet silly stuff. So far I like it and have received feedback that many like it. Just a way to capture favorite tweets. Will Richardson Danika Barker Doug Peterson. Zootool – Visual Bookmarking.
Dropbox + Pinterest + SMART Exchange for Teachers + Common Core = ClassConnect. Flip your Classroom, Just Store your Favorites, Find Common Core Content, and Share your Lessons “ClassConnect saves me time building lessons so I can focus on engaging & inspiring my students.” Eric and I just finished our first round of presenting this amazing tool to teachers for the first time since his product launched last week. The positive response was overwhelming. The credit goes to Eric. I'm happy to announce that both conferences had a packed house when we rolled out ClassConnect. Why Should I use ClassConnect? It's free. it's easy. saves time lesson planning. find free resources. organize all of your stuff. flip your class. Not only can you find free, great resources... but you can store them, too! Why ClassConnect rocks: - unlike Dropbox you can save everything (web, html, docx, etc...) - unlike Pinterest you can save files, too!
Once you find great resources, tag them with the Common Core and share them publicly! Then, start searching for content you can use by the Common Core! Digitize and Assess Student Work with ThreeRing. Born out of Startup Weekend EDU in Washington DC last fall, ThreeRing has been hard at work over the past few months transforming its initial idea and prototype into a working application and a brand new startup. Earlier this month, ThreeRing launched its open beta with two apps -- one for Android (link) and one for iPhone (link) -- available in their respective mobile app stores. ThreeRing tackles two problems in the classroom: 1) the need to bridge the analog and the digital with students' work (specifically, with teachers' tracking of it) and 2) the need for better assessment tools -- or rather, the need for assessment tools that don't involve multiple choice, standardized tests.
And it does this with a remarkably simple tool: the mobile phone. ThreeRing allows teachers to easily create digital portfolios of student work by using their smartphones to snap a picture. Then teachers can tag the work by student, subject, class, as well as other metadata and comments. Dropbox Redesign Brings New Photo Viewer and Better File Management. Dropbox has launched a major redesign, simplifying many file management tasks and bringing a new video and photo viewer. The first thing you'll notice in the new Dropbox UI is the action bar which lets you sort files by name, date, size and type. Click on a file, and the action bar will get new options - for example, you can download, delete, rename, move or copy a file from there.
You can also perform these actions by right-clicking on a file, which makes Dropbox more similar to Microsoft's Windows Explorer than ever. Dropbox now also has a new video and photo viewer, which lets you view these types of content on your entire screen. Photos and videos (this includes Photoshop and Illustrator files) now also have thumbnails, which makes them easier to preview. Finally, new Dropbox supports drag-and-drop, simple multiple file selections, and keyboard shortcuts (hit "?
" How do you like the new Dropbox? Create Study Materials from Evernote Notes. School Administrator Uses of Evernote & Must-Have Evernote Extensions. Evernote is a must-have application for the school administrator. This week, I conducted a concurrent session on it and other web tools at the North Carolina Technology in Education Society’s annual conference. From that conference, here’s 7 Ways Administrators Can Use Evernote: Evernote Desktop App Screenshot Note Taking: This is the most obvious use of Evernote since that is the application’s purpose.
Evernote Clearly Screenshot Evernote Clearly: This is a Chrome Extension that allows users to easily capture a web page without all the ads and other distractions and either print it or upload it to Evernote for later reading.Evernote Web Clipper: Allows users to clip web pages and resources and send them to specific notebooks in their Evernote account.
Dropbox Can Now Automatically Sync Your Android Photos (And It Has More Up Its Sleeve) Last year, Dropbox raised a whopping $250 million funding round at a valuation in the ballpark of $4 billion. The raise had been rumored for months so it didn’t come as a huge surprise, but it still raised plenty of eyebrows. Because while Dropbox is totally awesome (I use it every day), at this point people see it as a convenient way to sync their files between computers — which it already does pretty well. So what’s all the money for? Today, we’re getting our first taste of what’s next, and what cofounder and CEO Drew Houston calls Dropbox’s mission to solve all of the “hidden problems” that people have with technology, many of which we’ve simply become accustomed to dealing with. Their first solution to one of these hidden problems? I know what you’re thinking, because it’s the first thing I said to CEO Drew Houston and Product Manager Aseem Sood: “err, don’t iCloud and Google+ already let you do this?”
I’m pretty sure they saw it coming. 7 Ways to Automate Your Life With ifttt.