Help!!!! Every time I blink there is a new tech tool or app. How do I stay in the loop? How can I organize them? I don't have enough post its to track it all!!! Ugh! As a teacher it can be mind boggling to think about all the tech tools available. Even more overwhelming could be understanding how to integrate it into the curriculum to transform learning and not just using tech because it is cool. While I am no expert, I wanted to share my method. I hope you may find one tool to assist your continued exploration of tech tools and apps. Evernote At the center of my organization is Evernote. The big reason is that it works across all platforms so whether I am on my phone, computer or really any device that has an internet connection, I can access my content. You can tag notes, create notebooks and easily search everything. In addition, there is a web clipper that you can add to your browser to easily clip sections of webpages to your Evernote account. Below is a screen shot of my Evernote account. Feedly Since Google Reader is no more, I use Feedly to manage all the blogs/sites that I follow. To see a list of blogs/sites I follow, check out "My Feeds" note in Evernote. Feedly is a great tool for me to catch up on the latest tech ideas without having to navigate to every website/blog that I like to read. Another great feature about Feedly is the other apps that seamlessly work with it. You can see the options in the image below. The three options that I use most often are Pocket, G+1 and Buffer. Pocket is a tool that allows you to save articles for later reference. I created a Pocket account so that I could use an IFTTT recipe to automatically create a note in my Evernote account. This recipe is triggered anytime that I add an article to Pocket. When I am browsing articles in my Feedly stream and find one that I want to save, I click the Pocket icon. The IFTTT recipe does the rest for me. It takes that article and automatically creates a new note in my Evernote account. Buffer Buffer is a tool that lets you schedule Tweets as well as Google Plus posts. When I am looking through my Feedly stream and find something I want to Tweet or +1, I choose to Buffer it so that they are spaced out instead of blowing up my Twitter/Google Plus feeds. Putting it all Together This may sound like a complex process but the big part would be creating accounts for Feedly, Evernote, Pocket and IFTTT. These are all free services. Once you have your Feedly account, you can add blogs/sites to follow. When you find interesting tech ideas in your Feedly stream, simply click save to Pocket. IFTTT will follow the recipe you created and create a new note in your Evernote account. You can then move your notes around in Evernote and put them into notebooks to keep them categorized for future reference. Check out the short video below. I used my phone to show the steps that I just outlined above. ***One thing to note---If you use the web version of Feedly, you have the option to connect your Evernote account and save directly to Evernote from Feedly. Also, if you have the Evernote Web clipping tool installed on your browser, you can quickly clip blogs/websites directly to your Evernote account.
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Andrew FenstermakerInstructional Technology Coordinator | Innovation Coach | Google Certified Innovator | Presenter | Blogger | Adjunct @UiowaEducation | Owner @kids_f_i_r_s_t |