Monday, March 24, 2014

"If This Then That"- Google Drive Edition

As teachers, we can at times feel isolated from others. You might be "locked in a box" with 25 students all day, or you might teach 6 different periods during the day. As a Special Education teacher, I tend to feel even more isolated because there is no one else in my district like me- no other Middle School teacher who teaches all four subjects. As isolated as we may feel during the day, however, we can reach out to others through social media.

My PLN (professional learning network) that I've formed through social media such as Twitter and Google+ has opened me up to new ideas and has kept my classroom interactive and exciting for the past two years. However, with so much information at your fingertips, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. 

I am a serial "favorite"-er. I favorite or +1 tens of things in one sitting, but then when I want to go back to that resource, I can't find it! Thankfully, If This Then That (ifttt.com) has the solution!

If This Then That allows you to make connections between certain events that you always want treated the same way. For example, "If I upload a picture to Facebook, then post it on Instagram". There are thousands of "recipes" out there that you can use. But some of my favorite recipes have to do with archiving my social media finds. 

If This Then That has a whole Google Drive Channel that allows you to link things you do every day to your Drive. My favorites so far have been: 


The first recipe takes anything you favorite on Twitter and saves the author, tweet address, and any address contained in the tweet in a spreadsheet. All the favorites are then time stamped. This makes it easy to access the links from tweets on your own time.



The second recipe also takes anything you favorite on Twitter, but saves the entire tweet in a Document by tweet author. This allows you to search for content by the author of the tweet. These two recipes have helped me organize my workflow and I am no longer worried about losing that great site I found on Twitter!



What are your favorite ifttt recipes?

Until next time....