7 new tools I’ve got to learn (and am still learning) this year.
If you haven’t heard of Notion, Discord, Butter, and Curius, let me introduce you (without any detailed how-to guide as I’m still learning too).
I am a child of the Google Drive era.
I remember how excited I was when seeing my schoolmates and NGO-mates using Google Docs and Google Sheets to organise and sync our work. And I am still using them for sure.
But I was fortunate enough to have a chance to work with cool peeps who are way more up-to-date with the technology, more innovative, and more tech-savvy.
Below are the tools I’ve got to learn in 2023.
1. Notion - Your Entire Workspace in One Place
Knowing and using Notion to me feels like I am being upgraded from the child of Google Drive Suite to a (cooler) organised version of myself.
Notion is designed as your virtual home to organise information and create exactly the way you want, as just one person, together as a team, or across a whole company.
Notion is pretty user-friendly, function-wise and interface-wise.
What I have seen myself and others use Notion for:
Record and organise their knowledge base
Write documents or journals
Manage projects
Track their to-do lists
Make a webpage
Create portfolios
Design a course syllabus and resources
Track their emotions even
And I guess there are more that I haven’t yet discovered.
1-minute story time:
I was first introduced to Notion by a friend when she is planning something cool, but it went over my head. Then I was re-introduced to Notion by joining DreamMakers (And you know what’s so cool, that you can check them out by visiting a site they made using Notion here). Not gonna lie, using Notion for the very first time was really overwhelming.
But they have prepared me well for MỞ - as they also use Notion for lots of things.
However, I know for a fact that if I came to this blogging course knowing nothing about this platform I’d be still be as fine. MỞ takes very good care of the student experience with the way they incorporate this tool (and all other tools).
2. Discord - Your Place to Talk and Hangout
Knowing and using Discord to me feels like I am using Teams and Google Meets to talk to my friends and using Messenger to talk to my boss. Both professional and fun.
An invite-only place to hang out. Discord servers are organised into topic-based channels where you can collaborate, share, and talk.
What I have seen others use Discord for:
Message the team based on topics and groups
Online co-working space, like Zoom calls
Have a reminder of upcoming events
Have fun
30-second story time:
I learned about Discord also through DreamMakers. And I also had the very first online co-working experience ever during this time. I thought Discord was something so new until I heard its ringing sound on my friend’s (who’s not a part of DreamMakers) desktop. He’s been using it the whole time and I didn’t even notice.
3. Butter - Your Tool to Run Engaging Sessions
Knowing and using Butter to me feels like the ability to use the Buzz button of Yahoo Messengers in the old days.
Butter enables effortless workshop planning, facilitating, and recapping while ensuring the interaction is super engaging.
Butter has:
built-in agenda planner
integrated collaboration tools (e.g., throwing emojis into the facilitator’s face - virtually of course)
auto-generated recaps
4. Curius - Bookmarks for the extremely curious
Knowing and using Curius to me feels like being able to use a highlight and a pencil on paper books, but virtually. Don’t even know if this sentence makes sense.
This is a browser extension for collaborative bookmarking, highlighting, and note-taking.
You can save and add highlights directly within your page, without you moving back and forth between the page and a Word doc to capture what you read.
30-second story time:
I tested this out, then uninstall it to screen record how to install and use Curius from the get-go (Inspired by
‘s instruction video). However, I messed up.So here I am writing this blog with screenshots.
5. Excalidraw - Hand-draw your Diagram
Click here to explore Excalidraw
Knowing and using Excalidraw to me feels like I am brought back to my high school era with x-axis and y-axis, but this was fun-er.
Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.
5-second story time:
I had to Google to know x-axis and y-axis, as I learned Maths in Vietnamese back then.
6. Substack - Publish your Blogs, Podcasts, and Newsletters.
Click here to explore Substack
Substack to me feels like Yahoo!360 Blog, but smarter (and exists).
Substack's simple system lets you publish to the web, email, and our app simultaneously so you can find new readers and always reach your existing audience.
You can publish:
Blogs, articles
Podcasts
Newsletters
15-second story time:
During a Writing Club with MỞ, I said “I hope Substack doesn’t disappear the way Yahoo!360 Blog”, without touching wood (Touch wood = Trộm vía).
7. YayText - Text styling tool for social media.
Not gonna lie, YayText made me feel that Meta needs a better embedded tool for making a post pretty.
You can generate a variety of cool Unicode font styles and can copy and paste them into Facebook, Twitter, etc.
My extra 2 cents:
I also use Get Emoji to copy emojis to my Facebook posts when I’m on a laptop.
A bit of reflection
My few-years-ago self may have continued the same way of doing things, as I actually hated to admit I’m not as smart as others.
I may be a bit late on this learning journey compared to others, but I am at the right moment of my own journey.
But to recap my current mentality, I will use two enlightening quotes:
A good question is one you don’t know the answer for. A bad question is one that never gets asked. (referred by and , MỞ)
I expand and conquer new borders for my comfort zone, not getting out of it. (said The Khánh Ngọc)
What is a new tool you have learned this year?
#wotn4 #day10
Bài viết thuộc thử thách viết 30 ngày của khóa học Writing On The Net.
sameeee i was in AWE khi vừa vào học ở MỞ e kiểu where in the heck did they find all these cool stuff??? vì trước đó e chưa bao giờ nghe về Curius, Butter, Substack trong khi nó siêu cool:D kể cả Discord dùng bao nhiêu năm rùi thì khi học WOTN e vẫn shock về độ optimization của server.
honestly đóng tiền học viết nhưng học được bao nhiêu thứ khác nữa í:)
em iu 🧈 butter