Thing 14: Online Productivity Tools

Start page I choose and why: For a start page I choose My Yahoo. It was easy to tailor and I like the look. Adding RSS feeds was easy. I could see using the MY Yahoo page as a start page for myself and plan to try it for a while. I made the mistake of adding too many items to it at first. I will narrow the items down and see how much I come to rely on it. But I love the user-friendliness of it. For our library I see no use for a start page because at FCCJ the library has a web page with lots of helpful resources for students and faculty and secondly, our campus library has a blog too.

Online Calendars could be useful for some but not in my situation: The online calendars reviewed here are not very useful in my work environment. Personally, I do not need an online calendar because I carry a PDA so I have everything with me all of the time. Also, at FCCJ we can share our work calendar online through Outlook with anyone so there is no need for an additional online one. For the library, an online calendar is not needed because we have several was to advertise to our community. Events can be posted to large TV screens in the lobbies of our buildings, on FCCJ's TV channel, in the student newspaper and sent out in email. There are so many events at any given time that the best way to reach our students and faculty is to use the avenues already in place.

Online To Do Lists Were Not Helpful: Not helpful personally or for work. I could see if you worked in a situation where there was not much technology that they might be useful. Therefore I did not try the Stickie Notes.

Other tools in the list I used: I did not use the options that require a download because I cannot download and install any software on work computers at FCCJ . I did try the PDF converter and liked it very much and will be using it. Since I use Firefox as well as Internet Explorer, I have added the PDF converter add-on offered by Firefox.