Week 2

Week 2 - DFI


This week Dorothy did a presentation that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy.  Today's focus was on Ako/Learn. I learnt that implementing a digital environment assists in reducing our workload. The ability to plan and produce this on a google document saves time and reduces the double handing of printing out paper copies and making antidotes. It also provides the opportunity for your team to collaborate. The Manaiakalani programme follows R A T as a guide to be an effective teacher in a digital age.

• R -recognise
• A - Amplify
• T - Turbocharge  

To improve my workflow as a professional, I have learnt many new skills today. Especially organizing my tabs and Gmail. At the moment my Gmail inbox is cluttered. Using the filter system, I was able to organize my inbox. Using groups - Feu'u class, all emails that are received from my class will go into a folder rather than going straight into my inbox. Quite often children share their work via google and I end up having 100's of emails and notifications. The filter has enabled me to file this in a different folder for access.
Another application we used was Google Keep. I have been using this application for a few years now. Little did I know, it had many cool features that would enhance my workflow and productivity. I was introduced to labels where I could categorize my notes and also colour coding and archiving my old notes. I was really amazed by the feature where I could take an image of text online or in a book. Google Keep had the ability to grab the text and paste it in my notes. This is very useful for me as it would save me time and effort. Often for reading, I would write a cloze activity or comprehension questions from a PDF. This tool is able to extract the words and I could easily copy and paste it onto a Google document.
I also added a new extension called 'One Tab' this tool collated all my tabs into one file and I was able to go back and rename it under a group. I found it useful as often I would have several chrome windows open with heaps of tabs open. This was definitely a useful tool for improvement in workflow.

Today we also learnt how to use Google Hangouts effectively. My group and I worked together to assign a Google Hangout meeting and we were successfully able to share our content on our screen and also be able to collaboratively engage in a discussion. However, using the Quicktime tool - the microphone option was disabled. We used this application to capture the screencast and our Google Hangout meeting. Next time, we will ensure that we will check the microphone option on Quicktime before we record our meeting.
Some tips for a successful Google Hangout meeting, I have learnt that when a person is talking, it is best to turn your mic off to avoid the feedback noise, try not to have sunlight behind you as it creates a silhouette on the video and in a meeting it's nice to show that you are present by displaying your video.



Hope you enjoyed reading my learning journey. Please free to comment or leave feedback.