Who Say's You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks?

 I began the day with some trepidation - not sure if I would find this course too hard or too easy. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.  While I did know a lot of the content there are always new tips and tricks that you can pick up to make your life easier.

I already had quite a good understanding of the Manaiakalani Story as my school has been involved in the Outreach Programme for a number of years.  I really like how the use of technology is removing barriers to learning and is making sure that everyone has an 'even playing field' when it comes to accessing learning.

I have picked up a number of tips and tricks today that I will use in my future teaching and with my class.  I has never seen the use of Table Of Contents in Google Docs and I can see many uses for this.  I like the way that the table of contents links back to the headings that were used.

It was also great to get a refresher on using different types of headings and titles in Google Docs.  I usually just changed the size of the headings manually rather than using the shortcut in the tool bar.  This will save me so much time in future!  Also the not so gentle reminder to not underline title - as kids think it is a link, was great.

One of my key learnings from today was that you can change the accent for voice typing.  I have used voice typing a lot with different classes but had never known about changing the accent.  I was so impressed with it that I made my 'Create' poster about voice typing. 

Google Docs is something that in the past I have used for typing - preferring things like Google Drawing, Piktochart, Venngage etc to make presentations on.  It was a fantastic reminder about the adaptability of this tool and the way it can be used in different ways.

There is so much valuable learning from a day like today.  Whether it be thinking through how you can use Google Groups in your personal life or ways to streamline your professional life.  I love getting different short cuts to use so things like shift+z to add shortcuts of files to other folders are brilliant.  Another shortcut I'll use is command shift < or > to change font size.

It was interesting that we were asked to put initials at the start of document names - I have got into the habit of sharing Docs through Hāpara and appending the students name to them.  This way I can ensure the docs are in the correct folder and are named correctly.

Over all I have taken a lot from today and am really looking forward to continuing my learning next week.