Photos, Calendar, and Keep... Oh My!

I've been having fun using some practical Google tools this week. These three are not only going to help me in my professional organization but also personally. It takes some work to organize life with a family of 6! Here's what I've discovered this week.

Google Photos:
My iPhone is breathing a great, big sigh of relief now that I'm not using all of my available space for pictures! Google Photos makes it easy to transfer all of your pics to the Google cloud. Once you give permission for the app to access your photos, the syncing begins immediately.

But, wait! There's more! GP has a built-in "assistant" that automatically makes albums, animations, collages, and movies from your pictures and videos.  You can choose to save their creations and/or make your own.  Here is an animation I made using some photos of my middle daughter playing dress-up in my old dance costume:

And here's an animation that was automatically made by GP from a video of my youngest:

Along with animations, you can create movies and collages, and use many different filters and effects to enhance your photos. Here's a photo I took of the Kansas capital building in Topeka with an added filter and vignette. I think it looks like a postcard!

Within GP, you can do a search for a specific type of photo. For example, if you search for "beach", it will bring up all of your photos of a beach.

There are so many more tips and tricks to Google Photos, so you'll just have to check it out for yourself. 

Google Calendar:

I have tried a few digital calendars in the past ten years or so.  The first one I fell in love with was my Palm. I loved that it was color-coordinated for each member of the family. Alas, that went the way of all Palms, and I had to move on.  

After searching for a while, I came across an app called Cozi. What's great about this app is that you can share events with other family members and integrate sports calendars, school calendars, etc. The downside is to get all of the features, you have to pay for Cozi gold.  

I took some time off from Cozi for a while because I was required to use my work Outlook calendar for my job, and there was no way to sync Cozi to Outlook easily.  This took away my ability to share a calendar with my husband, which was a bummer, so when I left that job, I went right back to Cozi, and sprang for the gold subscription.

Now that I'm taking this Google Tools for Educators class, I decided to give Google Calendar a try.  So far, I'm really enjoying all of the features. I can make separate calendars for work and personal events, as well as color-coordinating. Everything is seamless between all of my devices, and I love that! I can share my personal calendar with my husband, and I can share my class calendar with parents. I even embedded my class calendar on this blog! 

Try it for yourself!

Google Keep: 
This tool is FANTASTIC for organizing all of the random thoughts I have throughout the day. I use WAY too many sticky notes on a day-to-day basis, and this replaces most of them.  I can make quick notes, voice memos (helpful when on the go), reminders (that show up in my calendar), to-do lists (that I can check off - a gratification I NEED), and even snap a photo! There is also the ability to assign tags to notes and color-coordinate. Can you tell I'm obsessed with color-coordinating?

Isn't it pretty?

Plus, like everything Google, you can access your Keep from any device.  No longer do I need to bring home my stack of sticky notes with all of my reminders for the day. It's all right there in Keep! I'm just getting started with this tool, but loving the ease of it. Play around with it, and see if it's right for you. This site shares ten creative ways you can use Keep.

Next week, I will be exploring YouTube, Story Builder, and a few other Google tools. I can't wait to tell you all about it!