Calendar, Keep, Mail, Meet and More...

If it's worth teaching it's worth capturing - make learning rewindable.  

This was a key take away for me in relation to the Manaiakalani pedagogy.  When we were learning about RATE I could see the links to the SAMR model.  I know I need to work on the Turbocharging part of this by bringing in more element of the Digital Technologies Curriculum.  One question I did have is where can I get ideas for coding with kids - coding club?  I have a child in my class who is very interested in coding and I would love to help him build on his interest.

Google Meet

It was great to get a refresher on Google Meet.  While I felt confident with working in meet there was new learning for me here too.  I learnt about blurring the background (yes I understand it isn't recommended due to the drain on bandwidth).  I still have more learning to do around blocking people and using the whiteboard function.  I will experiment with this in time to come.

I really like the idea of using the Meet Attendance extension as this would give a record of who was involved in the Meet, and I like that only the Meet organiser needs to have it.  I had never realised that there was one sharing screen that was better for when you want to share sound so will use this in future when sharing videos etc.

Google Keep

Google Keep was relatively new to me.  I tended to use Sticky Notes in the past but Keep has so much more functionality.  You can colour code nots, share them, add check boxes, set times, set reminders, draw on them, change the background, upload screen shots, copy them to Docs.  By using the extension you can automatically save sites then add notes to them or add it to a Doc that you have open.

Grab image text - looks really good to use.  You put a photo in Keep and then click grab image text - this will extrapolate all the text for you and turn it to editable text.  The only downside to it is that it doesn't keep the original formatting

Voice memo - only available on phone

Google Keep can be shared so multiple people can have access to it and if it involves tasks they can be checked of by whoever completes it.  If you share to group, but don't want them to check off items, then get them to make a copy so you're not all ticking off the same sheet.

Google Keep can be good for insert generic comments when marking.  Simply save a comment in your keep and add it to the relevant Doc you are marking

You can also add locations, time and date to get reminders for.  This could be great for both professional and personal organisation.

Google Mail

My main learnings were you can put filters on emails so they go straight to a selected folder.  I had never known about the confidential mode which means a Doc you have shared can't be edited, printed or forwarded - this is really good for dealing with sensitive situations.  I hadn't realised you could have multiple signatures to emails but I will explore this as I am still not sure how to change between the different signatures you have set up.  I do use smart compose on my emails and it does make things more efficient

In the past I have been told how to schedule emails.  To do this you use arrow next to the send button to schedule when you want it to go.  This would stop colleagues from asking why I was sending emails late at night!

Google Calendar

I already felt confident in using Calendar as it is something my school does.  Over the last six months I have been better at adding things to my Calendar and it means I no longer have to have a diary.  I like the functionality of using Calendar to set up a Meet.

Tabs

As a person who has multiple tabs open all the time I can see the need for using One Tab.  One tab combines all tabs into one location eg having all the kids blogs into one tab - I could also name have multiple One Tabs open at once, so I could have all kids versions of a doc open in one tab and all versions of another doc in another tab etc.  This would save having to open on the kids Docs one at a time on Hapara when marking.

Toby mini is similar to one tab.  I think I will get confident with One Tab first before exploring other similar extensions.

Tab snooze will close a tab and bring it back at a set time.  You can check to see what is open but snoozed and when it is due to open again.  This is great if you have home based tabs that you don't want open at school.

The short cut to close tabs to the right looks good, for someone like me though it would take a little bit of learning as I always confuse my left and right.  I blame this on being left handed!  I could share this with my learners so they can shut unnecessary tabs to the right quickly.

Group tabs may have similar functionality to One Tab and Toby Mini does not save the groups when you close the browser.  It would be good to use if you have multiple tabs needed for one lesson.  You can colour code them depending on the group they are in.

You can put your bookmarks into folders to make easier to find and then can have the folders on the tool bar rather than in big list in bookmarks manager. A good idea is to get students to tidy their bookmarks at the start of the year.  If you have sync turned on for bookmarks sync they will sync across devices.  This was a good reminder for me to tidy my bookmarks and I will spend time with my class ensuring they tidy their's.

The last part of the day was creating a meeting with someone, recording it and then sharing it by using the embed code.  Here is the video of meeting with Raewyn.  It's not great but it fulfils the purpose of the activity.  

I found to do this I had to make sure I opened it in a new window so I got the embed option.

Well that it for this week.  More learning to come next week.