Learn from the national officers...

With 5 national and 5 state officers posting blogs every month, it can sometimes be hard to keep up with all the new information being posted.  I want to take this opportunity to discuss a specific blog written by our former international president, Morgan Thompson.  Morgan listed and explained, “10 of the best DECA tools you’ve never heard of.”  The blog lists the following tools:

1. Studyrails- allows you to schedule study time and will alert you when its time to study. (*www.studyrails.com-website is temporarily down)

2. Asana- application to keep track of deadlines. (www.asana.com)

3. Diigo- software that lets you annotate your web research and is really helpful when doing online research. (www.diigo.com)

4. Sliderocket- an alternative to PowerPoint and keynote that has unique and creative slides and presentations. (www.sliderocket.com)

*5. Etherpad- allows multiple people to work and edit a document at the same time and is very useful with team members on a paper or project. (www.etherpad.org)

*6. Moonfruit- a free website builder that is really effective for those that are doing a chapter project. This will help promote and publicize your project! (www.moonfruit.com)

7. Easybib- a website that will put together all your citations and create a bibliography that you can put at the end of your paper. (www.easybib.com)

*8. Dipity- this tool will help you organize your information chronologically and is really good for long-term planning. (www.dipity.com)

9. Quizlet- a website that will enhance your studying techniques through flashcards and quizzes. This is effective for those in testing events that want to win at ICDC. (www.quizlet.com)

10. Evernote- enables you to save text, audio and images and share it across computers and phones. (www.evernote.com)

This blog in particular is great for returning DECA students as well as seniors going off to college.  These 10 tools Morgan discussed will help you stay on task, stay organized, and write papers and create presentations that will amaze your audience.

I put an asterisk (*) next to numbers 5, 6 and 8 as they relate directly to my video blog for the month of May.  Etherpad, Moonfruit and Dipity will be very useful for chapters to plan and complete effective chapter projects.

For an in-depth explanation of the tools that were listed, you can read the full blog written by Morgan Thompson here: http://www.deca.org/blog/195/

With the 2012-2013 school year coming to a close, there are moments in the year we can reflect back on with happiness.  Together, we thrived and broke new records.  Wherever this next year takes you, whether it’s working hard to get to ICDC in Atlanta or going off to college, MAKE IT COUNT.