In the months since finding out we were going to Montreal for 6 months, I've visited a mountain of websites looking for various things like accommodation, travel stuff, children's activities, and jobs. The other night I was sure I'd seen a blog about things to do in Montreal with small kids and I couldn't for the life of me remember where it was, nor any of the key search words to locate the site through google.
Then another night I was looking at what festivals were on at the time we would be arriving and I kept entering them into our shared google calendar and discovering that I'd entered them in ages ago! I hadn't seen them because they were entered in on a particular day and unless I went and had a forward look at the calendar I couldn't see what was there. The other problem with this was that the festival or event might be on over a period of weeks but I could only enter it in on one day (or else for the whole time but it would look like we were busy every day!).
As I was writing the fourth or fifth event into the calendar I suddenly had an epiphany. A couple of years ago I'd discovered an online bookmarking site while at work called Diigo. I'd even looked into it enough to do a mini-workshop on it with the teachers at the school where I work. I thought it was a great way for teachers to share and keep their favourite websites in one place, accessible from any computer in the school and even at home. Unfortunately, it didn't get off to a good start, well, not at all really. My original example entries were still the only ones there when I had a look recently!
So, having finally made the probably obvious transfer from one context to another, I started up a home Diigo account and added the links I'd already come across and more. I was able to make comments about each one and tag them so I could search by the categories I made up. I then had my husband join and 'follow' me so we both have access to the list and can add to it.
Now links to all the websites we like are in one place and I've tagged them by type and more importantly by the month that they occur in so we can easily see what's coming up. And thanks to Diigo I don't have to remember them all anymore!
If you find anything else we should add to our list, feel free to let me know!
Then another night I was looking at what festivals were on at the time we would be arriving and I kept entering them into our shared google calendar and discovering that I'd entered them in ages ago! I hadn't seen them because they were entered in on a particular day and unless I went and had a forward look at the calendar I couldn't see what was there. The other problem with this was that the festival or event might be on over a period of weeks but I could only enter it in on one day (or else for the whole time but it would look like we were busy every day!).
As I was writing the fourth or fifth event into the calendar I suddenly had an epiphany. A couple of years ago I'd discovered an online bookmarking site while at work called Diigo. I'd even looked into it enough to do a mini-workshop on it with the teachers at the school where I work. I thought it was a great way for teachers to share and keep their favourite websites in one place, accessible from any computer in the school and even at home. Unfortunately, it didn't get off to a good start, well, not at all really. My original example entries were still the only ones there when I had a look recently!
So, having finally made the probably obvious transfer from one context to another, I started up a home Diigo account and added the links I'd already come across and more. I was able to make comments about each one and tag them so I could search by the categories I made up. I then had my husband join and 'follow' me so we both have access to the list and can add to it.
Now links to all the websites we like are in one place and I've tagged them by type and more importantly by the month that they occur in so we can easily see what's coming up. And thanks to Diigo I don't have to remember them all anymore!
If you find anything else we should add to our list, feel free to let me know!