1. Core business (Digital Fluency Intitiative)

Today we covered an introduction to manaiakalani (and some history), as well as some key skills for using the Google suite of applications. 

Manaiakalani History

When Dorothy explained the problem they were finding in their community in 2006 - the students' lack of engagement, lack of enthusiasm and lack of achievement - that really resonated with me (still today). 

I was fascinated by the story of Jenny She and how she had a new entrant class writing a book, illustrating a book, then reading that book, recording their reading and then watching each other's recordings. I thought that was brilliant. 

Google Skills

Omnibox

The omnibox was new to me. I knew you could search directly in the url address line and you you didn't have to open up a Google search page. I am forever opening a calculator, so it will be much faster for me to access a calculator through the omnibox.

Google Groups

I like the idea of Google Groups. In the past when I wanted to email a group they've usually been in a Google Classroom of mine so I've checked the option in there to email all the students, but what I love about Google Groups is when someone new is added they will have access to previous emails.

 I particularly liked the adage Dorothy gave us: “Just because you can doesn't mean you should”. I intend to keep that in mind.

 

I've made a note to myself that when I'm creating a Google group that I shouldn't invite, I should only add (unless I'm asked to invite in an exam question).

Google Profiles

I have some cleaning up to do on my Google profile because I tend to add accounts where other people are using Gmail on my computer or where I am checking emails on somebody else's computer. Now I know I should be creating separate profiles and only having the one account under each profile.

Google Docs

Another tip we had today was to set your permissions on your folders to “anyone with the link can view”, which I've never used. I've always been nervous about giving wide permission of things I have created in case they're not of high enough quality for people to see. I realise now that I can use “anyone with the link can view” as the default and then change the permission for anything that should be kept closed down or more secure.

I was very surprised to be told that we should not be using underlining. I sometimes underline on slides that I am presenting in class for emphasis. I sometimes alternate between underline and bold or I use both sometimes. So it was interesting for me to learn that the protocol with writing in the digital age is that underline is saved for hyperlinks, which makes sense.

 I have used the built in styles titles and headings. These are familiar to me because I have used Word documents in that way. I was very excited to see how easy it was to make a table of contents and how it could be updated as you added or removed headings from your document.

The thing I was most fascinated with was voice typing, which I am using now to write this blog. I was incredibly surprised that voice recognition could correctly type the name Behrouz Boochani.

I loved the Explorer option because the pictures were free, legal and cited and I love that you could copy and paste text and automatically get it cited with a footnote. However, as I created my Google documents, I tried copying and pasting text and I didn't notice an option for citing the source when I did that. So if anyone can help me with it that's one of the things I still need to learn.