Today's presentations about the select online organization tools was surprisingly helpful. I say surprisingly because I already go out of my way to maintain a really organized life using online features, so I had somewhat discounted the idea of learning new things. Doing so would inevitably mean just moving all the work I've done into another program, I thought. While that may be true, it turns out the people who designed these things do actually know something about organization.
I have long been familiar with Google Drive and feel very comfortable using it. I create and share a lot of documents on there; and have found it especially helpful for academic purposes over the past few years. We also used it a lot at my job in City Year to share files with the other volunteers in our school. For that, Drive was extremely helpful. However, I don't see much of a practical use for it in the classroom other than making documents available to students to collaborate on, but this requires them to set up Google accounts and have access to collaborate either on school devices or at home.
Evernote is set up very similar to how I arrange my own bookmarks in my web browser. My girlfriend has been pushing it on me for a while, and I can honestly say that trying it was overdue. However, this is a case of where my own organization being SO similar might make integrating it unnecessary. That said, it does offer several features that a bookmark tab system cannot. These features include reminders, pictures, attachments, screenshots, text notes, and lists. It's really handy to organize a variety of things in one setting, and having it all automatically sync to a mobile device is especially nice. If I find myself wanting to tag more pages that I find with teaching resources or articles for students to read, Evernote is an extremely good option to organize those things. I am also toying with the idea of using it in my own studies to create notebooks for different days with the various CTools readings and document attachments all in one place. Unfortunately, use in the classroom may be impractical for this as well because of concerns over device availability.
Lastly, I was especially intrigued by the BlendSpace site. This was also the most confusing one to me because I have never seen anything like it. I will have to play around with it more to see how I could personally benefit from using it to organize my professional life. So far, I think i could see myself using it to merely generate ideas for lessons, even if I don't take advantage of the sharing options like making it available for a class to view and interact with. It seems to have a lot of resources and search mediums that are extremely unique and helpful. I hope to make use of this in the future.
Hey Mr. Johnson!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the points you made here. I had personally underestimated the work it would take to set up google drives for students, having it automatically included at UofM, and that's a very important point in terms of using time effectively. I was also most drawn to the Blendspace site, but not having messed around with the actual lessons, I'm a little skeptical about how useful it can be in a high school classroom. Let us know what you think about it once you've had more time to play around with the site!
Mr. Johnson,
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about how you would use these programs in/for the classroom. You mention with regards to Blendspace that you would use it to generate ideas for lesson plans, but for the other two Evernote and Google Drive you concentrate mostly on concerns about lack of internet. Aside from these worries are there any ways that you think Evernote and Google Drive could help either you (in planning/organizing lessons) or your students? I also found the programs to be very interesting and fairly helpful, but I have a feeling I am not using them to their full potential... let me know what you think!
Mr Johnson, You brought up really interesting points about all three programs and I know you mentioned that use of Evernote in the classroom may not be realistic given availability of devices.This seems like a legitimate concern; it is one I also myself about using technology in the classroom. I am curious though if you see an advantage for students to use it on assignments or projects where students have to do research? Most likely they are going to be gathering information from online resources, does it seem logical for them to gather everything in one spot, such as Evernote? Or do you think Google Drive would be a better program for the task? Google drive has the capability to have multiple editors and viewer which is great for grading or group projects. Is there space for Evernote in our professional lives?
ReplyDeleteI think that each of these different online tools has a distinct niche and like you I question whether they can fit into the classroom with relative ease. I was pleasantly surprised about all of the capabilities of Google Drive, more so than the other tools. I think that while there is a learning curve with students setting up and using an account that this could be incredibly helpful in the classroom. One feature that stood out to me was the capability to make assessments through Google Form. This interface allows you, the teacher, to make online surveys and students have respond. I can see this as being helpful in getting student feedback about teaching, what they want to see in class, their perceptions of math and science, the possibilities are endless. I think this would be a great tool and an added bonus is that in addition to collecting the data it also brings it together in one place for data analysis, and you can download the file right into excel. I think this one tool in particular would be especially useful in the classroom, let alone the other capabilities of Google Drive. What do you feel about this? Could you see yourself implementing this tool? How do you decide when technology downfalls (such as setting up accounts and learning the basics) override the potential use of that tool in the classroom?
ReplyDeleteMr Johnson
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post, thats awesome that these online tools were used in depth with other job positions you held. Evernote is definitely a multi-faceted application that if used correctly could have amazing results for us grad school students using the program. I also enjoy the fact that it can work with other applications, has plugins, and overall is easy to synch across devices. Blendspace was definitely an awesome tool that I had no idea exists and that I can't wait to use really soon. I believe however that these tools student can actually use to help with their level of organization. Lets face it many high school students aren't the best at organizing but are pretty much integrated with a lot of different online platforms. Maybe Evernote can be an application to help them become a better student by being more organized.