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.
Justcloud: after 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.
Audible: allows 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 app: the library is playing an ever-increasing role in my family’s e-reading and listening lives.
Shelfari: a great way to share our bookshelf online.
Booko.com.au: the only way to search for books online.
Photography
Adobe Lightroom 5 with Nik and Topaz plugins: are just essential to my workflow.
Flickr: still 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?
David Cairns
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
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
Hi Katherine…both Edmodo and Google Docs would be great tools! You might like Class Dojo too!
Larry Wilson
aTubecatcher atube-catcher.dsnetwb.com/ is a great free tool for capturing online video. You can also use the stream capture feature, the audio capture and the burning ROM to create CDs and DVDs. There is a crop tool that allows you to take your downloads and crop them. The download feature has a conversion tool that allows you to convert your download to any file type you choose and encodes that file for burning.