Online Tools of the Future

For the online assessment, I was glad that I was given a tool that I had not used before while at the same time having some idea of how exactly it worked. While I consider myself someone who is up to date with the latest fads in technology, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised both at how well the application worked and the fact that I had never thought to use it before. After reviewing and using the application Evernote for our class discussion, I am happy to say that it is now something that I use often within all of my classes and have downloaded both the desktop and iPhone app.

I am a big google drive user across my phone, tablet, and computer but often times I have problems with the synchronization across devices. Additionally when I use google docs on my phone and iPad I also have problems formatting or opening up certain tables. When I tried writing a few different tables on Evernote however, I didn't have the same problem. Evernote is also great for web clipping content directly from different sites and the applications features are pretty much the same across all platforms. The ability to also import previous note or word docs to share on Evernote specifically with the format that it was already in is also amazing in that I can use old documents that are still relevant to me and my studies.  Evernote has worked so well I have been thinking about upgrading to the Premium option (something I never do) to try out all of the additional functions available.

The one thing I also really enjoy about certain applications is accessibility. How easy is it to use, not necessarily for myself but for others. I am use to having to figure out pretty difficult software and applications but its great when I don't have to have a list of complicated instructions when I want to share something with family and colleagues. Evernote serves this problem in that it is extremely easy to use or to learn to use. Furthermore, Evernote seems to constantly be updating its platform while google drive will normally only do this once a year or not as often.

Finally, I loved being able to hear about the other two applications as well. I learned some pretty neat tools that I didn't know about Google drive and Blendspace, which I think is just awesome. I can totally see myself using it in the future to create lesson plans and to have the students more engaged. I was really worried since I had never done lesson plans before and really thought that was where I was going to have problems, however now that I have access to this tool I feel a lot more confident in my ability to set up curriculum that hopefully my students will be able to benefit from.