Thing #4: Cloud Initiation

It’s hard to imagine a time in my life when the digital cloud was not present. Unfortunately, I do remember a time, and I remember the moment when I became forever grateful for the cloud. I was a traveling teacher, so organization was key. That being said, I was far from perfect, and often felt scatterbrained. I remember the day when I went to plug in my USB key to my laptop, only to find that it was missing! I practically burst into tears and was unsure what to do, as I had a class scheduled to begin in only a few minutes. Needless to say, I was forced to get very creative that day, but once my USB key was located (phew!), I talked to my tech-savvy friends and learned about the cloud. Ever since that day, I’ve never looked back.

I’ve loved using DropBox for many years, but find that the space restrictions for free accounts is quite limiting. Once my DropBox became full, I began using Google Drive, which comes with significantly more storage space, and I love that it is connected to all of my Google accounts. I honestly don’t know what I did before Google!

Here’s a sampling of my current Google Drive account. I love putting documents into folders (probably a little bit too much), so I create new folders almost weekly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Symbaloo:

Prior to this course, I had not heard of Symbaloo. However, after watching videos and reading about it, I found it to be a very valuable tool. I am a very visual person, so I love that you can customize each website with whatever image you see as appropriate. Below is an example of what my Symbaloo page looks like. It is just getting started, but I’m looking forward to adding more websites as I discover them.

 

Personal Reflection:

I found this Thing to be extremely useful and informative. All of the information I learned will really help me to stay organized and enable the sharing of resources with other educators. While I was already familiar with a number of the tools discussed during this course, I also learned about new tools, which I will share with my students as well as colleagues.

I really like the idea of creating a class Symbaloo so that all students have easy access to resources related to course work. I have also used Google Drive in a number of ways with my students. I find that using Google Drive and Google Docs is a great way to collaborate and quickly provide feedback to students.

CITW Connections:

1. Cooperative Learning: Using Google Drive or DropBox is an excellent way to promote student collaboration. Best of all, the resources are free and very easy to use!
2. Summarizing and Notetaking: I really liked learning about the different things that Diigo can be used for.  This is a great way to teach students a variety of methods for notetaking, as well as summarizing.