Digital Fluency Intensive 2 18 March 2020

We learnt about Google Hangouts or Google Meets, this could be very useful moving into possible school closure with Covid-19 Virus. I will need to have a trial with my class so I can potentially use this if schools close.  This is also how we could hold meetings during school closures.

In our session about Manaiakalani Pedagogy, the importance of authentic texts - (not created by the teacher), and students having discussions were highlighted.  Question to self?  Are the texts I am providing students with authentic?  Lenva talked to us about teachers Amplifying and Turbo Charging their practice.

I can see the benefits of using Google Keep.  It is like post-its which I used to use, but these will be be saved across all devices which will be much better.

I managed to sort out my gmail and deleted over 1200 old emails.  I have changed the theme of my gmails so I can identify my personal one from my school one.  I also learnt how to invite people to my calendar, so I can have both my personal and work calendar on one.  This didn't appear to work very well so will continue to work on this.

We learnt about Google Hangouts, how to create one, join one and record it.  We had a lot of laughs and learnt that it is best not to pin our face to the bar, or we can see no-one else.  Our group recorded our Hangout beautifully, but realised had our headphones plugged in and therefore could not hear anything on the recording.  We use Quicktime on an Apple computer.  We can use Quicktime on a Chromebook, or alternatively Screencastify.

I also downloaded an extension called One Tab which will allow me to  close all tabs in one go, but to keep them in the One Tab extension to refer to later.

A takehome for me was being able to take a photo of text on Google Keep, touch the photo, click the three buttons and  tap "grab image text"  It copies the text and rewrites it and saves it to Google Keep.  I can see this being useful to take a photo of a reading text and using it as a Cloze exercise for reading groups.

Digital Fluency Day One

Today was the first day of the Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive in 2020.

Dorothy gave an interesting background to the history of the Manaiakalani Trust and its pedagogy and philosophy.   Very interesting to remember that it wasn't that long ago that people were commenting that they would never get a cell-phone.  (I think I recall saying this at sometime in the dark distant past - how things change)

A take home from today is the use of shortcuts to make me more efficient and to safe myself time.  A few of these are
Ctr Shift B - to show the Bookmark Bar
To Bookmark something, drag the padlock to the bookmark bar
Ctrl (number) to go to that numbered tab
Shift Z to add a document to my drive - but not move it from the original place
Ctrl + shift + V - Paste without formating. (Important to do this in most cases)

We had a DeepDive into Google Groups.  Interesting to know how the Group will be used for this intensive, but it is not something I think I will use in the near future.

A good tip is to number the files in my Google Drive, so they stay in the order we wanted.

I want to try making a template for writing.  I will use Headings with the dates and fill with "Lorem Ipsum" to save the correct font.  I will create a Table of Contents and teach students how to go to the next date each day.  I can also see a use for this process in reading, where I can copy text onto a doc and direct the students to the particular part of the reading by using Headings.  This may only be useful for my higher readers.

I had forgotten about the importance of using the Explore Tool to find images which are free to use and that the APA referencing is readily available.

I really like the idea of teaching types of questions, giving students a text to read and then getting them to ask deep questions as a comment.  By putting +(peers email address) at the end of the comment, their peer will receive an email with the question.  In another session, the peer would be expected to answer the question.

I would like to trial some of the extensions which were mentioned.  In particular. Draftback - which can help with looking back at the revision history in a video format, and Talk and Comment