1. Dropbox.com is a tool that I've heard about from friends, but have never used. Drop box appears to have the ability to allow me to share files between my work and home computers, and a variety of other technology options such as cell phones. DB also enables you to share files among a variety of people. I feel that Dropbox would be helpful as a school administrator in the following ways:
* Enable collaboration on specific projects and tasks among office staff.
* Enable collaboration between faculty members on specific curricular projects.
* Enable information distribution to groups of faculty and or staff members, such as grade report expectations, deadlines, proceedures, etc. to happen more quickly and consistently.
2. Dotvoting.org is a tool that I was actually pretty excited to see on this list. We often use physical dot-voting as an administrative cabinet at my school. This web tool enables a group of people to have input into decisions that need to be made, or priorities that need to be set, without necessarily needing to be in the same place at the same time. As described in the overview, this can work well to allow people to respond more honestly based on their true feelings on topics rather than being influenced by the votes of the group when you are in the same room. Dotvoting.org would be helpful as a school administrator in the following ways:
* Cut back on the need to schedule even more physical committee meetings in time that is often already over-scheduled.
* Enable faculty and staff to have more buy-in on decisions that are made because they've had the opportunity to contribute to the decision.
* This tool could be useful with student groups, such as student leadership, in getting feedback from their peers regarding school issues and student activities.
3. PDF Catch is a tool that enables the user to search for e-books and documents in PDF form. Searches can be done by book title, subject, etc. and quickly pulls up books and articles related to your search. I feel this tool would be useful in the following ways:
* This can provide the opportuntity to preview a book to determine if it is an appropriate resource for student learning, faculty/staff professional development, etc.
* This tool would be beneficial to a variety of committee research that may need to be done, and can be shared electronically among committee members.
* This tool can save a lot of time in researching topics for a variety of school uses - curricular development and change, student life, educational trends, etc.
