Week 7

The topics this week turned to what is somewhat more familiar territory for me.  Many of the administrative tools covered are already familiar to me since I already use many of the Google tools to keep myself organized and on track.  I have used Google Drive for some time to store my compositions in the cloud and to share them with collaborators as well as transmit them to colleagues around the country and the world.  I started using this after Google began restricting the size of files that could be sent as email attachments which made it difficult because score files would often exceed those limits.  I have used Google Calendar also because it syncs directly with my cellphone so that once an item is entered on any of my platforms all notifications come to me wherever I am.

That being said, I did have a little learning curve regarding the presentation and newsletter assignments.  The main reason for that is that I am more familiar with the Microsoft Office programs than these particular Google versions.  I usually work in MS Word and create presentations with PowerPoint.  The Google versions are not that different, but it still is a bit of a challenge when one is used to one procedure to adapt to a slightly different command structure.  In some ways this was a similar challenge to what we experienced in the transition from using Finale to Noteflight or Musescore in earlier assignments.

The creation of a quiz in Forms was an eye opening experience.  I had not been aware of just how easy it was to construct this interactive type of form and the process the grading through Flubaroo.  I did find that the grading in Flubaroo doesn't work as well for short answer type questions as it does for multiple choice or checkbox items.  Short answer still requires more judgement in scoring the questions than the program is able to provide.

I still continue to be amazed at the number of creative apps that we are being made aware of through the PLN.  The value of this tool is becoming more evident all the time and this is definitely something that I will keep up with even after the class is complete.