Thing 10: Productivity Tools

The students and I have used diigo for a couple of years now and we also tested out Box since we are always looking for ways to share and access documents.  We like diigo for its ease of use and ability to share marked up documents with each other.  However, now that our friend NoodleTools has iCyte built in we have now shifted away from diigo a bit more.  iCyte not only starts a citation within NoodleTools, it also allows students to add highlights and notes.  The ability to have the integration with one login really simplifies things for us at TAE, especially since we are not on block scheduling and those 40 minute periods fly by (especially if the internet is slow).  Diigo is nice if we are just doing a cursory review of a topic and simply want to share ideas and information in a less formal research setting.

The ability of Box to allow the online collaboration was a major consideration for me in choosing a resource to explore.  Students all have access to a teacher drop box, but not to shared drop boxes.  It seems that when they are working collaboratively the student who is absent is always the one who has the group project in their student drive and then no one can access it!!  Box integrates with Google Docs which is also a plus!  Also, it lets us share some bigger files from either home or school so that was a plus!  We have only tried this a couple of times with my smaller classes but it seems to be working quite well. 

I'll be looking through the list for other resources to use as we come to the end of the school year so that we can better integrate some of my new finds from the Cool Tools program next year!