Okay. This week I am getting a little personal here. I had the dubious opportunity to find out what it is like to live without the use of one of my fingers. My left little finger, or “pinky,” is now my left littler finger. So, as I go through very ordinary tasks, everything is just a little, (pun intended,) harder to accomplish. Life without my favorite tech tools would be just like living without the use of my littler finger; I could do it all, but it just wouldn’t be as fun or as easy!
Take Microsoft Windows, for instance. It is so inherently part of all my computing that I almost forgot to list it! It even is working right now to provide my capital letters b/c it is too painful to hit the shift key with my littler friend. It has so many features, that I continue to learn new ones within the Office suite of tools as I explore.
As for keeping up with folks in my many faceted educational life, I couldn’t do it half so well without a good basic reader; I use Feedly. In my reader I load the url’s of people in my classes, professors, and professionals in the field of ed. tech that I follow. Speaking of following, I have a Twitter account that constantly loads tweets from other ed. techies giving me url’s to great, cutting edge articles in this ever-changing field. I keep up with my young students on a secure LMS, called Edmodo, where we all communicate dialectically in our own online classroom sharing research, videos, flashcards, and Socratic conversation on our learning materials. I also have 3 emails; one for personal and younger education use, one for Liberty, and one on Google for other professionals in education and for all things Google. Since all of this could make me appear to drop off the face of the earth, I keep FaceBook for personal sharing that I would, otherwise, never have the time for.
Speaking of time, I am so glad that this ultra, Samsung laptop of mine came with a calendar. I fill it in my need-to-remembers and the day before each of them I am reminded of things I have going on, whew! I also have set of favorite time-savers for lesson planning. YouTube, Sophia, and Khan Academy are just 3 examples of OER’s, or open education resources, (some of them whole lessons!) free to use for my students or my own personal learning; check them out! I can also create lesson plans online and share my time and talent with others as OER’s through Gooru or Fluency 21. But, the most important part of using time well is my time with the Lord. Currently, since so much of my daily life is online, I am able to get right to this every morning because a set of devotions comes right to my email through Bible Gateway. I am going through the Word chronologically in one daily plan plus once a week a topical message from John Piper is sent to me as well. Both of these come with links to the full text in my favorite translation of the Bible. I know that there is no way to be able to do all I do without my Source, my Love, and my Lord; so Bible Gateway is my most favorite tool of all because it nurtures my whole day.
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dlwhitemich 
Wow, after reading your post, I’ve come to realize how much technology makes my world ‘go round’ everyday. When I wrote my post, I was thinking about the things that I use at work everyday, but when I really sit back and think of everything that I do, it all involves technology of some sort. I don’t do much, but like you, I have a daily devotional that pops up on my phone every morning, although I prefer to read my bible, but when I forget to read my physical bible, that little app I have on my phone is always handy.
So what happened to your finger?! Sounds like some cutting action happened and if that’s that case, boy do I feel your pain. When I was a senior in high school, I took a culinary arts class that taught us how to cook basic things, but the most important piece was learning about all the kitchen equipment, tools, procedures and safety rules. One day I decided to be smart and lazy, at the same time, so I took a chef’s knife and opened a bag of lettuce, while keeping my left hand holding the area of the bag that I planned to cut. I stuck the knife into the bag and with one swift, swoop, I cut the bag open and my left index finger, but the chef’s knife was so sharp, that I didn’t even feel myself get cut. Anyway, I hope your finger gets better and I hope it wasn’t bad enough to need stitches.
Well…you can’t stitch what isn’t there; but thank you for asking! I was reaching over my dog, Theo, in the tub to trim some unruly hair with scissors and trimmed my fingertip off right along with them; YUK!
Debra,
I really enjoyed reading your post! I too had forgotten that Microsoft was a tool that I frequently use. This year I was going to try a project where I (and my students) would try to go without using technology for 72 hours. I told my students about that and they almost hit the floor. 🙂 One thing we do differ on is the use of Edmodo. All the teachers are supposed to use Edmodo in school for students but I do not use it because I cannot stand it. Instead of Edmodo, I created a CourseSites (just like BlackBoard) for students to collaborate just like college students. I am preparing them for the 21st Century so they will be able to discuss and communicate in an online environment. Using the Bible on my smart devices is a must; however, I sometimes get lazy and search for the scripture I need, which means I might be bypassing some important scriptures or stories (making me lazy). I agree that technology is everywhere and there are so many different ways to use it in and out of the classroom. Using Twitter was not on my to do list because I heard bad things about using it, however, now that I am required (EDUC 638) to have a Twitter, I can see that there are so many resources on Twitter. People who get in trouble must be the ones who do not know that this is a public site and ANYONE can see your posts, unlike Facebook where you can make your profile private.
I have more than three e-mail accounts because of the many different things I do. 🙂 But people laugh the most because I have two laptops (one issued from my school and my own personal one), my daughter has a chromebook, we have a Wii, iPad, XBOX Kinect, Kindle, Smart TV and several other smart devices in my house. I think I am addicted to technology.
God Bless,
Charlon
Charlon,
I have never used CourseSites, but I really enjoy Edmodo; can you do a brief comparative of it with Edmodo here? How do you keep track of your email? Is there something like a reader to pull them all into one place?
Thanks for the shout out!
Debra
Great dialog all!
You are all well-equipped with the tech tools and toys
Joanne