Thing #15

Productivity Tools

Word to .pdf
I use this function all the time. When I post documents and PowerPoint presentations on our class Moodle site, I post them in .pdf format. This has eliminated problems I had previously with students not being able to open the files because they were in a format their computer couldn't use.

Media Convert
I tried to open www.media-convert.com, but it wouldn't open. So, then I searched and found Media Converter. But it turns out that it just converts media files (my word processing document that I tried to upload was not a supported file type). So, I went to Zamzar instead. I uploaded a Word (docx) document, and the output formats I could choose from were the following: doc, mp3, odt, pcx, pdf, png, ps, txt. I don't even know what odt, pcx, and ps are as far as their file types. The Zamzar site was easy to use, and I can see myself using it in the future as I have students turn in more and more electronic documents that I can't always open. And I can convert (or have students convert) their files into particular formats to use different place. I also converted a Word document to an mp3 file. I'm not a huge fan of "screen readers," but they might be very helpful for some students. And who knows, maybe I might get used to it if I used them enough.

Google Calendar
I also like this function. All of our students have g-mail accounts (the educational ones through school), and so it would be very easy for me to have them create and set up a calendar. Then I could share a calendar with class due dates with them. I also noticed that you could embed the calendar. That would be a very nice function that I could use to embed the calendar either into our class Moodle site (I think Moodle has a calendar as well, but this would be nice since I could keep a variety of different calendars and then just have one of them "sent" to the Moodle site) or onto my "Face of the Classroom" site (a Weebly one or something).