Well, we had a big kōrero in our murumuru matihiko (bubble group) about the Google Exam. The exam was harder than I expected because there were lots of questions seemed designed to trip me up, rather than actually find out what I can do… and I had to really think “well what does Google want me to say here?” . I guess I have been left with the overall feeling that my sites and my blog are a much better reflection of what I have learned and can do in the digital world, much more than that Google Educator badge! And because of this, our murumuru were discussing, well, could the External Recognition day be held earlier – say, in week 8 – so that our final day together can really be a celebration of our growth, rather than be tainted by failing or passing an assessment that perhaps doesn’t accurately or fully reflect the extent of the amazing learning we have acquired through the DFI.

If the exam WAS held on an earlier DFI day, it would also free up people’s head spaces for some of the learning NOT covered in the exam – e.g. all the DigiTech and coding stuff – it’s not part of the exam, so why not get the test out of the way, then in Week 9 we could dive into all this cool new learning once we are not feeling anxious about a test. He whakaaro pai, nei?

Dorothy Burt:

Dorothy talked about all sorts of opportunities to stay connected! E.g:

• the Manaiaklani Alumni – remember we can be added using our personal address rather than school address – in case we change roles/schools etc – simply email Vicki! (done). (Dorothy promises we will not be spammed).
• Lesson Bytes – if we make a cool lesson/ DLO etc, we can submit stuff to Manaiaklani to be shared – and bought from us (in the form of Prezzy Cards!)
• Coaching opportunities for DFI: If a teacher applies, and release is required – Manaiakalani pays for the reliever.
• Online Toolkits – We all have the skills to run one now! So, step up….?
• Reading practice Intensive: I would be interested to hear whether this content is fit for Māori medium kaiako – it’s so hard to be shown amazing resources and be told “Oh, just translate it if you want it in te reo” …
• Maths Intensive: Yeah, I am already signed up for this, lucky me. Signed up as a coach but I am committed to getting as much out of it as my colleague whom I am coaching!

Take-aways & Next Steps:

I have been trying to get my head around how I can manage blogging with 3 year levels and massive ability range, and have come up with a plan that my Tau 5 and 6 can begin blogging in Wāhanga 2, and plan that Tau 4 will use this time to work through Cybersmart skills with our amazing kaiāwhina, and possibly take care of our class blog so they are beginning to learn how to blog.

Reflection:

The skills and content I have learned through the DFI are so useful, every day. I am so much more confident in creating fit-for-purpose Google stuff. I feel that the skills I have learned will continue to decrease my workload and generally make things more streamlined and fun. As a school leader I feel I have gleaned really really useful tools and strategies for managing data and information. 

The bubble groups really helped with DFI learning – both of my bubbles were so supportive, and were safe spaces to practice, ask for help and make mistakes. I really liked this way of managing the larger group, and enabling us to form friendships and relationships.

I feel like there might be an un-addressed issue in the DFI – I would like the chance to hear the Manaiakalani team’s thoughts about the research and data around kids and screentime – sometimes I reflect that we are madly working on ways to use devices with students, and yet last week I was reading about research showing the detrimental effects of more than one hour screentime per day. Undoubtedly, the majority of students at my school would spend a minimum of an hour on screens once they get home… and I know that the DFI is encouraging us to use tech in the most efficient and elevated ways possible – but still, an hour spent doing a really cool coding session is still an hour of screen time…

Aside from this niggle, I have had such a great time on the DFI and feel very lucky that my school has given me the time to participate.

Thank you amazing DFI team – 

 Hinewā, Vicki, Dorothy, Kerry, Amie –  so much for such skilled and thoughtful course. I found all of you super easy to understand and to listen to (which is by no means a given in online meetings), and really appreciate the time you have clearly taken to organise your thoughts and content, resources and flow.  I think DFIs are an incredible opportunity and I strongly urge anyone who is given the chance to SEIZE it! 

If anyone is worried about spending 6 hours online once a week for 9 weeks – don’t be! The half-hour breaks are perfectly timed, and they really make the days bearable. Pro tip: WALK AWAY from your computer as soon as the breaks begin, do NOT be tempted to finish the final little… no. Go outside!

Our day began with THREE quick awesome tips – thanks Vicki!

1. A new feature in Google Meet for the presenter to share their current screen via Chat – with one click – (at bottom right if you are presenting)
2. The options to use pen that come up when presenting a slide deck; and
3. Zoom tool when viewing a google meet presentation.

Dorothy Burt: Empowerment

Dorothy talked to us about how hard it is to be empowered when you are struggling to access the basics… and about the decile ranking system. It felt odd to me to be hearing about this stuff without discussing it in the context of privilege, racism, and of our history (in education and beyond) that has lead to and perpetuates this situation. I guess I agree that having equitable access to devices is one small part of addressing this, but I hate to think that we are assuming “Oh, my kids have Chromebooks, we now have equity in our school & community”.

I felt like Dorothy was perhaps preaching to the converted with the information about conversations, lack of oracy in young people – definitely all the teachers at my school are highly aware of this and are working every day to address it – but perhaps for some of our group, this was new.

EDOS programme – yes our school is aware. Maybe we need to put out the information again, if it’s ending for new participants in July.

Deep Dive: Future of Tech with Vicky and Kerry

• Teach kids to ask questions!!!
• See next steps
• Kerry – Algorithm Charter for NZ! “We’re at the starting blocks of a very exciting, dynamic time”

Chalk n Talk: Generative AI with Vicki

This was so useful, it’s helped me feel more positive towards AI and more interested in the possibilities. I love this quote from Vicki: (regarding AI)

“It’s like having a super creative robot friend”.

AI helpers to check out: ReadAI for taking (and analysing) meeting notes, MagicSchool, … see slideshow for more!

Chalk n Talk: Computational Thinking and Hangarau Matihiko

Kerri has an awesome resource –  unpacking the jargon of the Digi tech curric into learner objectives. Very useful.

Create: Coding!

• Vicki’s Pick – Toxic code! (Cool, note it requires a fair bit of reo pākeha)
• I looked at: Stepping it Up: 
  • Basics of coding with Minecraft – really like the step-by step at own pace learning. It’s really clear. Downsides: too much reo pākeha for some of my tauira. I know there is reo māori Mincraft so, just have to do some more digging to see if there’s an equivalent-ish intro type thing…
  • CS First – wouldn’t let me sign in, gotta ask my admin (be aware of this if using with tauira)
  • Khan Academy – less reo pākeha, and pretty cool!
  • I love the Raranga Matihiko site – so many great ideas and so much reo māori – mīharo! The Sculpt GL tool – oh my!

Explore: Programming – Dance Party with Hinewā!

It takes longer than you think! But really fun. Dance party seems a great place to start with Coding. I can see the tauira will need a lot of time to play and explore before they would be ready to create something specific! Great way to teach about counts in music. I made an Encanto dance party – this link might not work for one week, after that it ought to….

Take-aways & Next Steps:

• Check out the 10 breakthrough technologies of 2024 – could be cool to explore with tamariki?- Plus breakthrough NZ technologies. 
• Check out and share RocketLab resources!
• Do another email-out about EDOS
• Go have more of a look at the Raranga Matihiko site, maybe see if  my colleague or I could find time to do the Sculpt GL lessons.
• explore the Kahn Academy coding lessons with class – intro to JavaScript
• I think I also need to have a wee look at Hello Ruby – looks very fun.

Another big day but feeling much more upbeat than at the end of our last one. Possibly due to having a bit of time after 3pm to finish off and digest info at my own pace. It feels luxurious to have NOT had to rush to a meeting!

Deepening our understanding of the Manaiakalani story with Dorothy Burt:

Oh, it was cool to understand the thinking behind the image depicting the Manaiakalani network – each circle at the edge of the bubble being one of the schools, with the colour telling whether it’s high school/primary/Catholic/Māori medium. Such an effective image – I would love to see that code extended to the other clusters, so that at a galnce you can see how large each cluster is, how many high schools and primary, etc.

Wondering if we have a glitch in the flow of info – have no knowledge of the event at KPMG on Friday – I hope our Lead Teacher has heard about it. Perhaps it’s not for us!

I know that we have a new facilitator in our area, I will check in with my in-school lead teacher about when we get to have him work with us.

I didn’t know there was one web page with all Blogs on it – seems a great idea – I will share this with colleagues – check out the RSS feeds (?).

I wonder if there’s a similar page for sites – are all the facilitator-made cluster sites hosted on one place?

Secondary events calendar – with Kerry – This is such an amazing resource, the discussions look so interesting – I need to share this with my friends at Westland High. And yes I will join some, too!

Dorothy encourages us to put all sorts on our blogs – not just DFI stuff – this is something I had not considered!! – e.g. things I am learning about, PLD, info from staff meetings, etc. Interesting.

Opportunity in term 3 – sharing proff inquiry. I will think about participating!

Talk with team about whether any of these would be useful: (from Dorothy’s Connected presentation)

Chalk n Talk: Leading Learning using Google Sites – with Kerry – Yay!

• My Learning hub represents me as a teacher. This is where I deliver my learning from. I like thinking about my site in this way. I also love Kerri’s suggestion to teach FROM my site, I don’t know if I do this enough.
• As I listen to Kerri, I feel i can make a site that caters for 70% of my ākonga but not at all for those who need to wriggle and move (constantly) – they simply don’t want to be online for my whole maths time, nor do I want them to be… wondering what solutions are here..
• “You can have your planning in the bottom of your site footer” – what does this mean?
• VISUAL HIERARCHY – keep in mind when designing site!
• I am just so impressed with the time management of the DFI team. Thye knew this would be a 20 minute rather than half hour session. (HOW???). You all are amazing!

Explore:

It was so useful to have time to critically explore other sites. A couple of my faves are this junior site because it is so clear and simple, and I love the buttons (made in canva possibly?).

We talked about giving credit if we use content/whakaaro from another site, yes this makes perfect sense. Ka aroha atu, ka aroha mai…

Remember to link our class site to school site and vice versa.

I am feeling really happy with how my site is shaping up:

Hāpara Workspace:

Could be useful?… not at this stage, for me, I think. Kāore āno – not yet…

CyberSmart:

Looked at Term 3 content: smart relationships. Viki reminds us it works really well with PB4L skills, and naturally lends itself to exploration when we are blogging. This is rich for learners.

Blogging Tips:

Responding to a comment – responding via email is not ideal as that isn’t shared on the blog. Best ways are to do via the blog post. Cool I will remember this.

Take-aways & Next Steps:

I have a bunch of awesome info to share with various colleagues:

• The class site examples with my own colleagues (maybe via our Lead Teacher)
• Kerri’s fantastic secondary connect series with my Westland High School colleagues
• I want to make myself an avatar – Pixton is student friendly. Bit emoji cool too – as an add on.
• Continue improving my awesome site, still want to get it showing more student voice and input.

Questions:

How are teachers keeping anecdotal notes? Any smart ways?

Anyone experienced with Numicon? Anyone found ways to merge it with digital learning?

I was a bit flat today, a few things going on in the background that have been taking up brain space. I found it harder to concentrate on the DFI learning than usual. Despite that, I still learned heaps.

Hāpara tip: With Kerry Boyde-Preece

Dashboard – Drive – All Docs – can see ALL docs not just those that are filed. Handy. Kerry also suggests bringing up this Hāpara view on screen once a week (or so) and having a Drive clean-up. I will definitely do this.

Dorothy Burt:

Floorboards: “The kaupapa of LCS is simply collecting the best of teaching over the last 20 years and translating it into this digital age”

We are now looking at how to get the best of the LCS pedagogy, there are conditions that maximise the impact of the LCS pedagogy. These words are Visible, Ubiquitous, Connected, Empowered.

Dorothy asks us: If the DEFAULT is VISIBLE, then what genuinely needs to be private?

Visibility works along the lines of ‘No Surprises’ – teachers make the learning journey accessible, everything the learner needs is present in advance.

Deep Dive: Amie with Multi-Modal learning

Design for Learning – Chrissie Butler video: “We know that there’s always huge variability in the learners… and that’s a consistent..”

So exciting, my main thought is, before I go an spend hours creating a MM site for fractions, is there a database I can search to see if someone has already created what I want? And then I can redirect my energies to create something new!

Browsing the multi-modal sites – thinkings:

Identity – I loved this site. My questions were, approx how long was the kaiako thinking the students would spend to complete these tasks? E.g. was it a week’s work, a month’s? And how did the ākonga know the time expectations?

NZ Dinosaurs – the ‘getting hooked’ really worked!

Matariki – I liked this but was frustrated when some of the content was unavailable, this was such a good reminder to me about Dorothy’s kōrero this morning about VISIBILITY! 

Visuals: I really loved the sites which used heaps of still images, e.g. taking an image from a School Journal and using it as the header on the site – wondering what are the copyrights around this? Update: Things published by Min of Ed are all fine to be sued in this way.

I noticed how lots of the sites were across-level, e.g. many classes would be able to access the one site, I will keep this in mind when creating my site.

I am not super stoked with how my site has turned out so far, as Kerry warned me I became caught up in the minutiae, BUT I think I can continue to massage it into a useful site that will help colleagues as well as me.

FIgJAm:

Navigating it: Ctrl pinch, Space bar to move around

CyberSmart snippets

Smart Parents: Jeepers this is something I really need to think about as a leader in my school. We currently don’t have a plan beyond our kawa of Care sessions. I will revisit that useful prompt slide to help get us started, and talk with our Manaiakalani lead teacher about what this might look like.

Take-aways & Next Steps:

Check out some of the Class on Air lessons

Empower some Smart Parents!

I’m blogging again about a real steal because I want to talk about the author’s regard for art. I don’t think he appreciates art or likes art because the characters think a pile of rubbish is “art”. The art critic says”cant you just see your life in that pile of social waste?”. He is an absolute nutter that art critic. At the end the patrons all excuse themselves because they have no wish to learn about all the art in the art gallery. Patron one says”I just remembered-I need to put the cat out”. Patron 2 says”And I have to put the cat in”. And patron 3 says”I don’t have a cat but it needs something”. So that’s my real steal blog 2.

Dorothy Burt: Share

Another interesting session with Dorothy. She spoke of the massive digital revolution in 2005 (creation of Youtube, mā): all these giants saw the power in humans wanting to SHARE and connect. Traditional ways of sharing are constrained by time, place, people. We share to make connections with other people. For sharing to be satisfying, it requires a satisfying audience.

Manaiakalani project “Maintains a relentless focus on the positive” (… affordances of living in the digital age).

Share to (finish) Learn(ing) – I like these additions! That makes sense. We can do both – we can share to learn, AND then share to finish learning. Dorothy spoke about how important it is to give students the opportunity to practice FINISHING a task – how important this is as a life skill.

So, Learn Create Share can be seen as linear, AND (or) as a cycle.

(Hmmm… I muse to myself… the feeling of never finishing anything sounds a lot like being a teacher!)

Dorothy notes: It doesn’t matter what platform you’re on – whānau will eventually stop commenting on platforms! SO… please don’t hang all the power of Learn Create Share on whether or not whānau get engaged. It’s a holy grail, but not the be all and end all. Sharing with peers is very powerful.

REMEMBER how powerful the sharing is – Manaiakalani students who SHARE via blogs are the ones who see those big leaps in learning.

Deep Dive: Forms with Kerry Boyde-Preece

• I love that people can use a Mote response. That’s new to me.
• I had a go with creating a Form my ākonga can use to let me know how well they’ve understood the take (content) of the lesson. I aim to use it within the week:

Chalk n Talk: Google MyMaps with Hinewa

• SO AWESOME!
• Remind tamariki to NOT publish their home address if we are wanting to create and share MyMaps!! (private vs public info)
• I had a play with the data from our cohort. I am so excited to see what our ākonga make of this amazing platform… I bet they will think of uses that I have never considered.
• Starting points in class: explore some examples in My Maps, work out what would be useful data, then go for it. Maybe start by collating a set of data all together, use MyMaps to do some things, THEN go create and use individual data sets later on.
• Can view MyMaps in Google Earth (under the 3 dots). (Hinewa notes that the more layers there are, the less good it is in google earth – so have a play before sharing with tamariki).
• Here is my MyMap!

Sheets with Vicki

Everything I learned in this session has gone straight to my Hot Tips Section – in my Google Keep.

Analysing blog data using sheets (and graphs) with Amie:

Okay this play time was really useful. I can see why we just get time to play – you sort of need to do trial and error with all of those customisable things, rather than be talked through it. Good to keep that in mind when it’s time for the tamariki to play. Our ākonga are not blogging individually much at the moment but I think we can do some analysis of our class blog first of all. I think I might share a spreadsheet with them with the data simple and protected, so they can’t accidentally delete that as they play.. Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s great for them to experience what happens when they do change data, see the real-time changes in the graphs… we’ll play.

I had a go with different types of chart, some more and less useful but learned something from all of them!

Cybersmart snippets: 

Financial literacy! Yeah great idea to teach this – I will pass the site on to my colleague too. I wonder if any of these Cybersmart challenges have been created i te reo Māori? Talked to Hinewa – no, and for the learners I work with that’s fine – because the quests are quick (so I don’t take up too much of our precious reo time using reo pākeha) and the learning is so important that I am okay with teaching it in te reo pākeha so that we can all make sure we understand clearly.

Take-aways & Next Steps:

• Sign up for Toolkits – if I have headspace – if not next week, then next term.
• Plan a statistics unit using Forms, Sheets, MyMaps. Oooh, the ākonga are going to love it!! (Plan it first Tiff, don’t jump in till I have worked backwards from end to start point to ensure they have the skills they need).
• Have a go at using the Google Form I made in class, tweak according to feedback – I aim to trial it before next DFI.

In reading this week for my task board I choose a book called the real steal. It’s a play and I thought it was a bit random like all the other plays that school journals do but I enjoyed it. The scene takes place at the art gallery. There are 3 patrons there(people who buy the paintings),a art critic,a security guard and the curator. A thief comes out of nowhere and wants to steal a painting but the art is all rubbish especially the art that was literally a pile of rubbish. In the end the thief stole nothing and the patrons brought nothing. It was random and funny. I liked it.

I managed to catch some thoughts here, some scribbled on paper, and I will definitely need to revisit a bunch of today’s info to better understand everything I began to learn today! Holey moley, what a fun and thought-provoking day.

Dorothy Burt:

Hanga – creativity. “Creativity Empowers Learning, Digital Technologies Empower Creativity”.

Check out Hannah Burton, Class on Air.

Check out Lifelong Kindergarten Group – playfully creative people.

I do sometimes wonder about what sort of attitudes we might be subconsciously giving to tamariki with all our digital attention and encouragement – I hope the pros outweigh the cons – but I think they probably only do with very skilled and conscious teaching – which, I guess, is part of the point of this DFI.

Deep Dive: Media with Amie:

Google – video: 25 years in search – strangely moving, I had a tear! Feel like sharing this with staff.

Is it time I start supporting groups of students to document some of the upgrades around our school? Upcoming Olympic Warrior upgrade perhaps? See Zac Moran’s site here.

Mmm, student podcasts – will I explore this? – see Kōrero Point England – interesting.

Levelling up – I chose to explore Youtube – I made this playlist of the song choices from our bubble group from session 2.

Chalk n Talk – Kerri with google Draw

• Guides! Handy!
• Eyedropper tool under the fill icon – don’t need colour picker extension anymore
• Connectors – play with these – do they move if we move the boxes they’re connected to?

Chalk n Talk – Hinewa with Google Slides

Oh, my!

Cybersmart Snippet:

Great kaupapa – how to evaluate /look critically at online information – revisit!!

Take-aways & Next Steps:

• I think it’s time to try using a new profile and switching between for diff realms of my life – I have been resisting this but 
• Check google settings for students for Youtube – see Vicki’s slide show
• Media Challenge: Vicki gave us the challenge to share a photo of some of the media we enjoy at home. I shared my whānau wall and my inspiration wall. These are the two sides of my hallway. One of the reasons I love these so much is they feel like a testament to my independence – having stopped living with someone who didn’t like a lot of “clutter” on the walls, I have so enjoyed having the total freedom in my own house to plaster my walls with these images and words. I love pausing to enjoy them, and my kids often pause to have a look, a chat, ask a question about them. And, I still have clear wall spaces in other parts of my house!
• Kerry – Hāpara – we can reposition student tiles! Consider how Maths looks in Hāpara – how could ākonga share paper-based learning?
• Use the google drawings sandpit – maybe make buttons for our wāhi ako…?

Animation with Amie:

Amy has so many great ideas.. e.g. Talking to kids about being an artist, how vulnerable it is to be creative, and not shaming anyone else for this, for making mistakes… great idea to think about how I will share and model  these thoughts with students.

I made tētahi anuhe (a caterpillar). (I gave it good strong eyebrows, I feel like we need plenty of role models with strong eyebrows. we’re an under-represented part of humanity).

So fun, I did not want to stop. I haven’t yet completely followed the brief -I haven’t grouped and resized my anuhe – but I have some plans of how to add this, I think a wee anuhe climbing up along the edge of the slide – so watch this space.

Edublogs – Amie:

Revisit Amie’s whole presentation, it was stuff I really need to check/discuss with our DigiTech Lead Teacher – Checking settings of student account, make sure settings are correct so we are meting our obligations under Te Tiriti.

Hot tips:

Control D to duplicate (copy and paste in one) – for duplicating slides and images!- (Note, in a doc these buttons create a shortcut to a bookmark!). (Avoid the spectacular mistake!)

LOOK THROUGH Vicki’s slideshow about google slides – to learn about Speaker Spotlight!! Oh, my!

This are going straight to my Keep list…

Phew, brain full again.

Hāpara tip:
On All Classes, click the star to add that class to ‘My Classes’ view.
The edit button will edit the icon for myself, not others.

Kerry on recent PLD about Differentiated Learning:
A school in Auckland has looked into Differentiated learning – they have levels: Ace, pro, legend, titan – students decide which level they want to work at – watch video later.

Dorothy Burt:
Effective Teaching, Accelerated Learning
Understand, Know and Do: these comprise the Ako/Learn part of the curric.
Recognise, Amplify, Turbocharge
Recognising effective practise – the questions Dorothy asked were great – I wasn;t quick enough to catch them – where can I find them? The first was along the lines of: “What framework does your school have that gives local curriculum…”
Remember to reflect on HLPs – check out the slideshow

Amplifying effective practise: this is about us as teachers – accessing and shares ideas and resources

Turbocharge: this is about the learners. How is it different to amplify?

Emails:
Star then add to tasks (Vicki might touch on later)
UNSUBSCRIBE without opening email!!
Signatures – look at slide

Google goodness:

• ‘group tabs’ function – I spent ages doing this when I was first taught rthis, only to find they disappeared when I shut my laptop – I am keen to look at the slide to learn how to save!!
• Workspaces – I can see this will be super useful for my regular meetings and work days, I am looking forward to setting some up.
• Google meet – when presenting – select Share Chrome Tab if sharing video or audio!
• Calendar Shortcuts: Simply type D Y W or T to toggle between views (obvs day, year, week, today)

Create Task:
This was useful to practise and quite humorous. I enjoyed and learned from taking a deeper look at two Summer Learning Journey tasks and responses. Here is the video I made with my buddy, Janelle.

Take-aways & Next Steps:

• Remind my colleagues to – and make sure to do myself – practise google meets with students.
• Google Keep: Put Keep app on phone and use in laptop – start modeling with staff how handy this is, e.g. make notes and share in Thurs morn meeting, end of week bits n pieces email to staff, etc
• Workspaces – set up one space to see if I like it.
• Watch the video Kerry mentioned about Differentiated Learning.

Check this out!!!
Clicking this:

Gives me this:

HOT tips from DFI
DAY ONE
– docs.new
– @today
– to PASTE without format: CNTRL SHIFT V

DAY TWO
– In Google Docs there is a Side panel (arrow bottom right) for Keep, Tasks, Maps, Calendar = yesss!
– Google Keep – location-triggered notifications!!! Wow
– You can add a Keep note directly into Google docs!!
– In a blog: Changing size for a video – change height in the code side to 360 (from 480)

And that is very very useful!

Intros
It was great to meet everyone. I like that some schools have more than one person in the DFI, I think that would be helpful for processing all the new information.

Today I had my youngest, Helen, home sick. She was working and playing at the table alongside me for most of the day. I’ll soon be teaching part days in her class, so it was interesting to see the things that caught her attention. (She likes the voice recorder option, and the @today and @(name) smart chip).

Listening to Dorothy Burt, I hadn’t understood how very closely Hāpara was linked with Manaiakalani, and how it had been created out of the needs identified by Manaiaklani schools & kaiako. That helps me understand – and feel better about the fact – that a company who seems to be based overseas has a kupu māori as its name.

Favourite hacks of the day:
docs.new – type into address bar – brings up a new google doc! Maybe this will change my life in the way that Snipping Tool did when I first learned about that? (Which was when I was managing Forest & Bird’s Kiwi Conservation Club, so that’s 10 years ago).

‘@today’ -type it in and voila, the date appears!

Make Chrome my Own:
Managed to change my name from Tiffany to Tiff. This is awesome, I have been wanting to change this for ages but have been going in via the large rather than the small Tiff icon. I am really NOT a tiffany, I am much more of a tiff, so I am feeling more comfortable now my profile name matches to me.

Google Groups:
Looking into this I discovered I am a member of 63 groups, which makes me think I need to do some managing and clearing up! I will check in with Amie and our Manaiakalani Lead Teacher about whether we archive or delete old class groups, etc.

Thinking that using Groups might give us some options for communicating more effectively with our newsletter email list – I will be exploring this more. Directly Add vs Invite – I think it would be nice to invite our whānau rather than directly add, just to give them the option to deliberately participate. I think it would be a good idea to directly add our existing whānau, as they are already accustomed to receiving school emails, and then invite new whānau. I LOVE that I could choose settings and then not have to worry about remembering to use ‘BCC’. Also that new members can go back and see old messages – I can imagine teachers would really love this.

Pātaka Kukura – Google Drive

Learnt some useful shortcuts for searching for files – I will definitely make more use of the option to search in these ways:

And also this details option:

Google Docs

Yahoo, I FINALLY have got my headings, sub headings in my document sorted how I like them, as defaults. I had been frustrated by this not being intuitive, now I know how!

@Smart Chips seem really useful – I can see immediate in-school uses for @today and the timer function.

I had been meaning to explore the draft email option and I am so stoked to have had the time to do this, I often invite collaboration on an email and this is just going to make that so much simpler.

To explore further:

• Continue to clear up my Drive
• Double-check the simple way to add a table of contents (I missed the shortcut, and can currently only get there via ‘help’) – (update: now learned, thanks Amie! FYI: Click on ‘Insert’ the SCROLL TO THE END of the options!)
• Find out whether I archive or delete older google groups (because I am an admin), or whether I simply sign out of them and leave them sitting there… for someone else to sort out…?
• Have a good look at the extensions in the document: DFI Explore – Chrome Extensions
• Maybe organise the opportunity for all our staff to have some professional photos taken..?

Creating with Google Docs:
To finish our day (apart from the fun involved in getting the hang Snipping Tool…) I had a go at making meeting notes prettier. I think they are eye-soft and relaxing, so I’ll ask my colleagues if they want to switch!

I am sure next week I will be looking at adding alternative text behind my images, resizing images etc, but for today I feel I have learned and achieved a fair bit, and I have many work-ons, so I am signing off.

I am at the bit where he is going to have his funeral for his dad it is a great book and has its ups and downs but i give it a  4.5 star rating.

I am reading Steven Adams My life My fight.

I am at the sad part where Sid Adams sadly dies of stomach cancer.

Today we watch Ink Heart but Ms paused it often and we had to answer the subtitless to get a mini chocolate bar. I got one and so did some others, we also had to infer.the activityctivity today and would definitely do it again.

  Ink Heart is a movie about the characters coming alive and having to battle and at the end, they read the book and go back to it. They movie started out  by reading the book and the characters coming to life and facing challenges at the end of the Wild book Meggie reads it again and they get sent back but Meggie stays with her family and the rest goes and lives there happy life.