Thing 47: Productivity Tools

I wanted to work with the productivity tools this year since I will be teaching a college prep course for students at school. I wanted to find some simple apps and tools to introduce to them so they could use them in the future! However, as always I found so many things that I didn't even know existed especially with Google. Of course, you always learn something new about Google.
So I may be way behind the eight ball or I've just never paid attention to Google but I did not know that Google had templates on it! I was reading the article EdTechTeacher 10 Creative Ways to use Google Tools to Maximize your time and one of the last pieces of this article was all about the templates and being able to use those! Wow! I'm so excited that I found these and I will definitely be using them in the future with my students! Especially when I teach summer school! Leave it to Google to make your life easier!

Another tool I will definitely be introducing to the students is Grammarly. This is a great tool for students as many of them struggle with grammar and sentence structure. This is a great extension just to add to Chrome and since many schools are equipped with Chromebooks now it will be much easier to show the students how to use this feature. It is also nice to be able to show the students how to add the extension to the Chrome browser so they are able to use it from any computer device. So I am excited to show the students this extension since they will be needing it in the future for college.

I believe these two ideas will help the students tremendously. As always I learned about Google Keep last year and absolutely love it! So I will also be showing the students that option as well.

I have been trying out Nuzzle for myself and I'm still trying to figure it out. One of the librarians in our area uses it and I get her newsletters every day. I enjoy seeing the stories that she has to offer so I decided to try it for myself. I am unsure if I like it or not or if I would just rather subscribe to other's newsletters and see what is going on for them. I have never been a huge fan of Twitter so having to use my Twitter account again really threw me off however it is good to get back to Twitter as it truly is a great place to interact with others and be able to see a lot of the latest and greatest news. I look forward to continuing to use Twitter and Nuzzle to determine how I truly feel about it in the future.

I love my paper planner and have always used that- so I'm always looking for ways to increase the use technology when it comes to my calendar. I keep a lot of my doctor appointments and other personal meetings right on my calendar on my phone. I find this to be most useful for me along with my paper planner. I hope to show both of these aspects to the students so that they can determine which mode will work best for them.

Productivity tools are a great feature to have. I am looking forward to learning new ways to stay productive in the future as the world of technology changes around us.