Curating and Apps

I've been thinking about the apps I use and the kind of person I am.

I'm a curator.

I love to collect and sort through and categorise things.

It has a lot to do with why I love libraries, reading and the mundane tasks like doing the dishes or peeling the potatoes.

I also have an addictive tendency to new apps or things in my life - and sometimes - they stick. Other times, they fall away never to be used or played again.

Pinterest, Memrise, Blogger, Facebook, Class Dojo and Twitter of course are my easy favourites at the moment.

I've had a Pinterest account for a while but I didn't quite get it a few years ago - why you'd use it or even how. The accessibility of the app makes it a tonne more easier than using it via the browser. I like that I can hold a picture down to move in three different difections for options and that it's incredibly simple to create new boards.

I like that I can categorise everything - however - it still looks messy - if there were a way of combining some and deleting old boards - that would be brilliant.

Blogger of course - because I can share my ideas and tag them for later use. What worries me though is when I don't categorise them clearly enough so that I will definitely find them later for future use.

I've had a few online journals - LiveJournal, a Kiwi one and Blogger too. These are in sync with my real life dealing with big issues journals - which I haven't written in for a year now. I don't feel the need to write it down by hand anymore - because I've made the transition properly to typing. Partly why sometimes on my blog there are issue type posts....

Am loving the Facebook app at the moment. In fact I like it a whole lot better than the browser functionality. It's so easy to share different links to different pages, groups or timelines via the app and now that I've made a transition to sharing my edulinks onto the 'Evolution and Imagination' page - it's way more clear and focussed.

On my timeline I post statuses, weird and wonderful links as well as issues that I feel strongly about. On my class pages - it depends what our focus is. On E&I I post edulinks, what I've been doing recently as well as ideas for the future in my classroom.

Class Dojo has quickly become one of my favourite apps because of it's usability. I can check points and develop new behaviours all in the app. I can message parents and check reports of students.

What I'd like it do more of is be able to write something beside the report bubble for next steps and feedforward to parents and students who have the app. Would make writing their reports easier too! Am looking forward to using it as a showcase for parent teacher conferences too.

Our students would like to add a messaging capability to it as well so that they can contact me when needed - especially if they don't have an email..

Memrise too is a nice quick and easy favourite. I love it's latest update - with the quickfire review session. I have learnt so many new French words over the past month or so and I'm just so incredibly grateful I found it.

The transmission and staying power of the words through gamification is something that works so so well for me.

Favourite words so far: dire, de la biere, du vin, malheureusement, important, aucun, pas possible, porc, Russes and vache.

I've begun thinking them more often and have started accidentally writing them in place of English words.

What I'd like next is for Memrise to have te reo Māori too. That way I can keep building on these two languages.

Lastly, if not maybe more important than the rest, is Twitter. Yes I love Twitter. I love that on Tweetdeck I can have categorised columns of different chats and searches. I love that on the app it's easy to switch between accounts simply for different tweets and checking notifications and mesaages.

As an extension to Twitter I use Unfollow - which tells me my latest unfollowers - but more importantly who aren't following me back. To break through that magic 2,000 followers, I need to have all of my original 2,000 people I followed - follow me back. And when I first started out I followed people and companies that wouldn't follow me back.

Am slowly cutting out different accounts that actually don't benefit me or my learning - or that I actuallt don't ever see tweet. I try to keep the newbie Twits on there because eventually they will come back to use Twitter when they see other people using it or join into a chat.

I love helping people see the benefit of using Twitter and think that it is incredibly useful to not only develop these collaborative skills but to ensure that people are getting their own relevant PLD.

And that - for this morning - is enough app unboxing :)