Thing 7: Productivity & Collaboration Tools

OoOoO! This was a really fun "Thing"! There were so many tools to explore that it was almost overwhelming. I will definitely be revisiting many of the tools listed to explore more. As it stands, I was able to focus on two tools; one I've used before, and one I've been wanting to investigate.

Google Calendar: I started using Google Calendar earlier this year to organize my library schedule because I was having trouble keeping track of everything going on in two schools. At first I wasn't quite happy with it because I wanted to change the colors of events to indicate different levels of importance, or different schools. Then I figured out that I should create more than one calendar! Ah-ha! It is very easy to manage, although it took a little while to get used to. Recently, though, Google Calendar has added the ability to color code events. I'm not sure, though if I will go from having multiple calendars to one with different colors. Having multiples is handy because you can control who can see what. I have currently have separate calendars for each school, for personal events, for outside the regular school day events, and for flexible scheduling during school. Since I will be going to one school only next year, I will of course be going to one calendar for my fixed, regular schedule, but I wonder if there are benefits to keeping the other calendars. I do display my calendar on my library's wiki page so teachers can see my daily schedule and request time to come to the library. But they don't need to know that I have a soccer game or concert to attend! :) We'll see what happens. Google calendar has great potential, and even though I use it a lot, there is still much to be learned.

Evernote: This is a tool I have heard a ton about lately, but have been unable to sit down and experiment with.  Now that I've downloaded it and played around, I understand why everyone likes it so much. It is very easy to use, and has so many ways to actually collect information. I did need to get permission to download it on my work computer, which was kind of annoying, but I was able to do it. I really like the  ability to clip a webpage - either a full-screen image or a rectangle image. I can think of several times when this would have come in handy. This is a tool I will be using to gather sources for my students, and to keep track of projects I am working on.