Thing # 15 Productivity Tools

I love anything that decreases the amount of time and effort it takes for me to accomplish things.  I can't tell you how many times I have been on the phone to our technology  dept. at school complaining that a file I was trying to read from the KISD Literacy Coaches Network toolbox was in a format my computer didn't recognize and wasn't there something I could do about that?  I remember various times when I used Works at home and we used Word at school and how I couldn't be very productive at home because the formats didn't match. Oh, how I wish I'd have known about Zamzar then!  I think this will be a wonderful tool for my classroom.  I especially like the prospect of converting regular files to pdf and then converting the pdf files to MP3 files so I can use text to speech for my struggling readers.  The first part of the assignment asked us to convert a word file to a pdf file, so I made a few line document which I submitted to Zamzar for conversion to pdf.  I'm supposed to capture a screenshot and post it here:

I had a really bad experience with Zamzar--I had to submit the file three times and the first time I waited a whole day to get notified that the conversion had failed.  The second attempt brought nothing--not even a notice of failure, so I thought they must be really busy and waited another couple of hours.  Nothing.  So, finally, on the third attempt, I got the conversion in about three minutes.  Finally!  On the whole, I would have to want to convert something pretty badly to spend much time with this tool--it was the exact opposite of a productivity tool.  It threw a wrench in the works--big time! 

The second part of the assignment was to upload a word processor document and using Media Convert, list at least five available output formats.  So, here goes with that:

I'll try uploading the same document that I used on Zamzar:

1. .txt
2. .pdf
3. .ps
4. .odt
5. .html
6. .rtf

This seems a lot easier---but I haven't exactly completed the conversion, so maybe it won't be any better than Zamzar was.  See opening paragraph for how I would foresee me using this in my work.

The third part of the assignment was to create and share a Google Calendar with my classroom.  I created one for my daily schedule and plan to post it to my face of the classroom blog and also to put it out there for my colleagues.  I can see that it would make life simpler when trying to schedule a meeting with my administrators or colleagues in another building.  I can also see it helping me to remember where I have to be.  Parents would also know when important dates in our LLI schedule will keep me from meeting with their children and will facilitate them knowing when I am free to take their calls. I could also post assignments to it, although as a literacy coach, I don't do a lot of that.  I like that it's accessible anywhere I can get online.  Here's a screenshot of what it looks like.  I could only get part of it, but you can at least see what it looks like: