Tech Tools and Professional Development
I’ve clarified a goal for myself recently in the area of professional development. The goal: develop a new technology skill on an average of once each week.
While that may sound ambitious, the truth is that it will probably be easy. There are lots of little possibilities that qualify. Last week’s tech skill was sending text messages to a cell phone using a computer. I discovered that there are a number of websites that will send text messages from your computer to a cell phone for free:
There are dozens of others…Be forewarned that the process of converting an email into a text message takes place at the cell phone holder’s service provider – and it can take about an hour. That’s how long it took for my wife’s cell phone to get my message.
Next up? Tomorrow I’m going to learn to use the new voter registrar software that has replaced the paper poll books in Virginia. I’m a precinct chief in Virginia and I have to be at the polling place with a couple of laptops (instead of the old paper list of voters) and some voting machines at 5am.
Future plans include learning to use some screen capture software (which is essential for presentations on some topics) and attending a workshop on the new virtual desktop (WebTop) that the West Virginia Department of Education is providing for teachers. I’m sure I’ll come up with other ideas…
