It was interesting to hear the back story of Manaiakalani. I have been in my present job for 12 months, previous to that I was in a school that was not involved.
The 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy is something I am very interested in and would like to strengthen this is my school. I would like it to become the way we work and be visible.
I have never been a big user of Google Docs. I stuck to what I knew, word, etc. I now feel much more confident with Docs. I have learned to use extensions and add-ons.
- Talk and Comment
- Anyone can view
- Doc to Form
- MindMeister
- Word Cloud Generator
I really liked the formatting, using headings and title, I think I will use this a lot for Board reports and other things.
Google Groups is another tool I found interesting. I have set up a group for my staff and board and will set up another for a PB4L group I belong to. This seems to be a very easy way to not only share information but keep track of that information as well.
Some of the short cuts we learned today were great.
- Command shift T - brings back a tab
- Command shift Z - to make an alias and shift to the top level of the drive
- Command shift V - only copies the text - this is a favorite
- Adding a number in front of a folder name means it will always be at the beginning of the list of folders in my drive - another favourite, means I don't have to go searching for folders I use all the time.
I learned about voice typing, how to change it to recognise an NZ accent. I have learners at school that I think this will work really well for. I like the explore feature, that it can explore the web, images and also my drive. This will be really handy when working on strategic plan documents, I think.
I have a teacher that did the DFI last term, now that I am working through it I will be able to help him to implement these things in his classroom.
- Voice Typing
- Version History - being able to label and name different versions of the same doc will be handy
- Highlighting text and being able to ask questions and direct these at individuals and getting the students to ask questions of each other.
A very simple thing that is already making things easier is to take the text away from the bookmarks bar. Now it only shows the icon, this means I can see all the bookmarks I have and for me has made it more useable.
