IFTTT, Community Ed Schoology Page, Schoology Notification Settings (May 13, 2014)

Tip #1: If This Then That

If This Then That is a service that allows you to make connections between many of your online services. You create recipes that trigger an action in one service when something happens with another service. An example that I used in class was every time the daily weather for White Bear Lake was posted on the Weather Channel, IFTTT would add  that weather data to a new row in one of my Google spreadsheets. My students then compared the weather data that they were collecting for class with the data that was automatically added to the spreadsheet from the Weather Channel.  Essentially it is a way to automate some of the tasks that you do already, freeing up some of your time. It also has features that can do some pretty cool and unique things.  For a more detailed description click here.

IFTTT is also an app for Android and Apple.

Tip #2: Stay in the loop: Community Ed Teacher Page

You may have seen the new "White Bear Lake Teachers" page in your list of courses in Schoology. This page was created by the folks in Community Education to keep you in the loop about professional development opportunities.

"This will be where we post all flyers from Colleges and Universities offering professional development for teachers. We are moving away from paper flyers being placed in mailboxes and moving toward an online posting of flyers. We decided Schoology is the way to go to forward this communication to teachers."

-Kristine Wehrkamp

Tip #3: Notifications or not. The choice is yours.

As you are being enrolled in various courses and creating your own, you may or may not want to get an email about everything that happens in the course. Luckily, the choice is up to you! This is how you change notifications for a specific course and here is reminder on how to change notification settings for your account.