Tick

Two years ago I posted about the tech tools I use daily. Many I continue to find essential, others have fallen by the wayside. What follows is a brief update to close 2013. Best wishes for the New Year!

Reading, writing, saving & sharing

WordPress: my blog records some of my professional thinking and life. Often I share posts with friends, colleagues and strangers but my blog is a place where I look for everything from stored links to ideas and reflections. It is my journal and publishing platform.

Twitter: continues to be a source of inspiration and connectivity. I really would hate to lose it.

Diigo: is fundamental to my organisation of resources for university lectures, tutorials, travel and school.

Yammer: I like almost as much as Twitter. Well, not really but I think of it fondly.

Edmodo: absolutely essential tool for my classes at school and university.

Feedly: has replaced Google Reader and I am mostly happy with the functionality of this RSS reader and apps.

SimpleNote & Scrivener: have bedded down as a complete system for everything I write, including blog posts. I love how I can jot down notes in my SimpleNote app and they appear in Scrivener on my Macbook Pro. It is a fantastic tool for everything from itineraries to magazine articles.

Justcloudafter a rocky start is my cloud storage solution.

Facebook: is surprising useful for educators. I particularly like the professional association presence, for example, here’s the ETA members page.

Macbook Pro (Late 2013 Retina): is really a nice upgrade – so speedy!

Chrome: the only browser I really use any more.

iPhone 4S and iPad: so many apps and pretty much the platform for all my reading and listening.

Audibleallows me to ‘read’ avidly.

Kindle app: I rarely use the Kindle much preferring my iPad which easily allows for making notes and sharing (social reading).

Overdrive appthe library is playing an ever-increasing role in my family’s e-reading and listening lives.

Shelfaria great way to share our bookshelf online.

Booko.com.authe only way to search for books online.

Photography

Adobe Lightroom 5 with Nik and Topaz plugins: are just essential to my workflow.

Flickrstill the best photo-sharing site.

Nikon D800 with the holy trinity of lenses: just perfect.

Fujifilm X100s: continues to be the walk around camera I reach for more than any other.

Lee Filters: for my Nikon lenses and X100s are just brilliant and add another layer of creative possibility.

Music

Sonos: has been a great purchase, not merely wifi speakers, they just keep improving functionality.

Spotify: has been the streaming service I have chosen over all the others.

Soundcloud: really is looking good and I seem to be using it more and more. I wish Sonos would incorporate the service.

Hype Machine: you must find as it aggregates music blogger lists and points to great new tunes. Sonos now supports.

What are your essential tools?

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Comments(6)

  1. Blogger, Facebook, Twitter (although I’m losing interest in it because I don’t find it interactive enough-that could be my fault), Google Chrome and Goodreads. I’ve experimented with Evernote but it isn’t really ‘doing it’ for me.

    • Katherine Davidson

    • 10 years ago

    Hi
    I am moving this year from a school with an in house ‘virtual class room’ system where each student was given the same laptop, to a BYOD school in which each teacher does their own thing. I need to learn a system these hols, what do you recommend? edmodo? google docs? I’m used to using the tech daily for communication and collaboration and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by the challenge.
    Thanks in advance.

      • Darcy Moore

      • 10 years ago

      Hi Katherine…both Edmodo and Google Docs would be great tools! You might like Class Dojo too!

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