I'm really sorry for my long break from CPD 23 Things. Christmas and pressures of work have intervened! I'm very committed to CPD23 and I hope that this will now mark my resumption of regular posting.
Week 6 - which is where I'm at - provides an opportunity to look at two tools: Google Calendar and Evernote. Here are my reflections.
As a Hotmail user I was familiar with using a web based calendar service, and the distinct advantages of being able to access and update this from any web-enabled PC. So I approached this task with some interest. Might there be advantage to using Google Calendar? Well yes, clearly Google Calendar more readily integrates with other Google products. So I've created a Google Calendar and added a gadget to my iGoogle page. This was happy coincidence, because I've been recently reminded of iGoogle in work. This therefore forms another incentive to use iGoogle, together with further explorations of Google Calendar.
Thing 8 has also re-introduced to me the concept of sharing web-based Calendars. The concept isn't revolutionary; I view colleagues calendars within work using Microsoft Outlook very frequently. However, the thought hadn't occurred to me that I might be able to share a web-based calendar with others. Of course Hotmail also provides this feature; I had just hadn't spotted it! It's just a shame that I can't transfer my calendar data from Hotmail and synchronise this into my new Google Calendar. I might then be able to just stick with the one calendar. Having just purchased a smart phone (I know, I'm a very late adopter), I guess which calendar I use will depend on which one I can access most easily from the phone.
Having the ability to publish a Google Calendar to a web page gives new possibilities. This is really exciting! I can see benefits for CDG Wales. I've also recently asked CDG Colleagues to consider using Google Docs in addition to the JISCMAIL file archive facility. I'm hoping that Google Docs will enable us to work more collaboratively. Perhaps this will tie in with later CPD 23 Things tasks?
And so, then onto Thing 9 introducing Evernote. Wow, where has this really handy service been hiding? Why didn't I know about this earlier? I can see this becoming a really useful tool. The ability to copy web content, add your own notes, tags and to structure your notes in a file system that suits the user, will be really useful. I just hope that I'm going to be able to use the web version from work. I've already clipped a couple of favourite recipes, which I have found to be difficult to trace in the past. I'm just hoping that if I can start to use my smart phone in conjunction with this tool then it's going to be exceptionally helpful. Definitely a means to deliver more joined-up working. Thank you to the CDP 23Things team for suggesting these tools!
I hope that I will be writing to you all again soon!
