Technology is supposed to make your life easier, but when using social media and other sites it seems to add more to an already full plate for most educators. So how can you still use technology and make it simpler? Well one way is to use IFTTT, which stands for If This Then That. IFTTT is a site that allows you to make technology recipes. For example, let's say that I am art teacher and I use my smartphone to take pictures of my student's artwork. At the end of the day I go home and upload these pictures to a photo website such as Flickr to share with staff, students, and parents. By using the IFTTT website I can instead create a recipe like this: IF I take a picture THEN automatically load that picture into Flickr (set them private, so you can choose later which pictures you want to share). Let's say I have a classroom blog, then I could create a recipe that looks like this: IF a blog post is created THEN email parents to let them know a new post has been created.
IFTTT already has many recipes already made by others that you can use. Just think of the possibilities! This would also be a great site to use with students aged 13 and older.
You have to sign up for an account in order to use IFTTT, but the sign up is easy and takes 2 minutes or less.
This is a great video made by Matthew Woodward to help get you started.
