Managing Workflow - DFI Session 2

Talofa lava,

Another great session at DFI today with lots of new learning for me!

Google Hangouts was an interesting learning curve for me and one that I am still getting my head around. I found it challenging to focus on what Dorothy presented at the beginning of the day as it was a totally new experience (I'm so used to someone presenting being in the same rom!) - however some key points that I picked up were:

1. “If its worth teaching its worth capturing, if its worth learning its worth capturing” - D Burt
Sharing what we're doing in our classrooms is how we as educators are going to get the best outcomes for our learners. I love looking at and reading about what others are doing - I often borrow ideas or use these to springboard off to enhance my teaching and learning programmes.

2. Effective teachers + digital affordances = accelerated learning
Recognising, amplifying and turbocharging what we are doing in the classroom will help to ensure that we are effective practitioners.

Practise is definitely needed with navigating, casting my screen, creating and inviting people to be part of a google hangout. We had some technical difficulties with recording our hangout today, but I'm hopeful that the record option will get rolled out for our domain soon. A lot of new learning for me but I'm keen to explore how I can use this with my students and collaborate with other classes.

Attempting to use google hangouts AND record the process. 

Exploring the settings in gmail was mind-blowing for me - both for my personal and professional life. At the beginning of the day I had 100+ unread emails in my inbox, not to mention numerous folders (I'm currently down to 78 - yay!). I constantly feel overwhelmed by the amount of "work" that I need to do. I think the priority inbox will work well for me and I'm keen to get started on this tonight while its still fresh in my head!

Google Keep is another tool that is amazing - I already use it to replace the stickies on my mac. I love that I can have it on my phone and computer, switch between my accounts easily and that it updates super quickly.

Grabbing the text from an image is going to be extremely useful for my literacy programme. Another way that I'd like to use it is to take my handwritten notes from meetings, take a photo and then grab the text - fingers crossed it will be able to decipher my hand written scrawl! Another tip that I picked up is to create a comment bank in google keep to use when giving feedback to students. This could be a great time saver!

I can also see some great benefits with google keep in my personal life. I've already created a grocery shopping list and shared it with my husband. I just need to figure out where the supermarkets are on his commute home so that it will notify him to pick up the items!

So many great tips today and I'm confident that they will help with my workflow!