Five Tech Things on a Friday v.4

It's time for this week's edition of Five Tech Things on a Friday!  Hope everyone has had a great week!

• If This Then That, better known as IFTTT, is one of my very favorite tech tools.  Their slogan is "put the internet to work for you," and that's exactly what they do.  When you sign up for IFTTT, you can browse through thousands of "recipes" or create your own.  Recipes can do things like send you a text when it's going to rain, save all of your Instagram photos to your DropBox, or email you reminders at a certain time each day.  This happens to be my favorite recipe:

ifthen

Save links from favorite tweets to Pocket!

Whenever I see a tweet with a link I'm interested in reading, I favorite that link in twitter.  IFTTT then automatically puts that link in my Pocket so I can read it when I have time.

• Speaking of Pocket, let's talk about another favorite tool of mine.  Pocket is a "read it later" service.  I often see things I'm interested in taking a closer look at while I'm browsing the internet, reading emails, or chatting on twitter.  But, I don't always have time to read articles the moment I find them, so Pocket allows me to save them for later and read them at my convenience.  You can read your Pocket online or on their apps.  I also love that there is a Pocket Chrome Extension.  If you install this in Chrome, you can easily click the extension when you are browsing the internet to save a link for later.
• I am so excited to see more and more teachers signing up for twitter!  It's such a great place to connect with other educators.  One of the best ways to get to know other teachers on twitter is through a twitter chat.  This week, I stumbled across this great document that that lists the day, time, and hashtag for a ton of educational twitter chats.  Look through the list, find a topic that interests you, and join the conversation!
• Since Thanksgiving is on the horizon, I thought I'd share this article from the New York Times, "Cooking the Turkey Dinner, With a Little Help From My Phone."  The article includes apps not only to help you cook your dinner to perfection, but also Turkey-themed apps to help keep the kids out of your hair while you cook!
• Finally, check out this video from the MacArthur Foundation on the 21st Century Learner: