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Manage your emails more effectively using the Four D's

23/5/2017

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Emails! Some days I feel like I drowning in them. They fly in from everywhere - administration, staff, subscriptions, professional learning networks, parents and now even students. Keeping on top of my inbox absorbs more time than I would like some days. A lack of time to get everything done still remains among the top complaints of classroom teachers.

The solution is not to just forget about emails. My organisation runs on email, as do many in this age. It is the primary method of communication on my school campus between admin, support staff and teachers.  Ignoring emails can mean you miss last minute changes to timetables or meetings, important messages from parents or school wide alerts. 

So in our busy teaching days, how do we swim instead of sinking in our individual ocean of emails?

Introducing the Four D's

I was introduced to these recently and I like them. They seem like a really good way of effectively managing your work email account.
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Delete it
​The fastest and easiest way to clear out your inbox. If the email doesn't apply to you, doesn't interest you or requires no further action from you, DELETE IT! Leaving them in your inbox is just going to clutter it up.

Do it
If you have an email that can be actioned or responded to in a few minutes, then do it! Handling small jobs on the spot and moving on prevents your future self being burdened with a pile of smaller tasks.

Delegate it
In some cases the email may not concern you or may be better handled by someone else. Pass it on. It is often wise to respond to the sender, copy in the person you have delegated the email to, explaining the situation and thus avoiding the sender thinking you have ignored them.

Delegation can also mean filing. We sometimes have emails with useful information we just need to keep. This is when we delegate that email to a folder for future reference. I have a whole library of folders that I use to file away important emails so I can access them as I need them. I have folders in relation to day to day operational things, parent communication,  online subscriptions, professional development records, receipts and so on. The types of folders you create will rely on what you need in your individual role. 

Defer it
Deferring seems to be everyone's favourite way to deal with emails. Most of the time we are either making work for our future self that can easily be forgotten or adding emails to increasingly large pile we never get back to. 

Deferring emails must be done carefully. If you have an email that will take a little more time to respond to or that requires some thought, you can defer that for your future self to take care of. Do this purposefully by flagging it within your email client which will add it to you to do list.

Manage your subscriptions

You don't always have much control over who emails you at work. But you can manage your subscriptions. Many teachers are members of online programs, professional learning networks and social media. Managing your preferences on these accounts or unsubscribing completely from email communication can go a long way in cutting the junk that clogs up your inbox.


I hope your have found this guide helpful. Please share any other strategies you find useful when it comes to dealing with your email inbox.
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Teaching kids file management with OneDrive

8/5/2017

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Getting children managing their own files is essential to developing them into skilled users of technology. I have been finding Microsoft OneDrive in collaboration with Word, PowerPoint and Excel in the Office 365 environment is a wonderful vehicle for developing these skills across devices and operating systems.
I see it almost daily as I make my way around the school. Teachers laptops, with desktops that look similar to the picture below:
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Poor file management often results in things being lost and systems running poorly. As many teachers are not "digital natives", file management is not something we are necessarily very good at ourselves. This can then mean that we are not considering the development of these skills in our students or modelling it well to them in the classroom. As our students engage more frequently with technology and continue to create digital products, they need to be mindful of how they are archiving their work. Similarly as teachers, we need to ensure that student work is saved as evidence of their achievement.

Setting it up

We have a mixture of devices running in our 1:1 classroom environments. The majority of our students are still working on iPads, but this year we have opened up our BYOD program to include Windows 10 devices. Office 365 and OneDrive works across platforms, so all students can access the suite of Office applications and OneDrive easily on any device. In addition to this, our trusty IT team has very cleverly developed a script that allows student OneDrives to connect automatically when they log in on a shared school device in the Lab. ​This allows our students to work across operating systems and provides a place for students to save their work regardless of what they are doing or where they are. 

Teaching good habits

After setting up student OneDrives, I have worked with each class to help students learn to manage their files in OneDrive. Student OneDrives will follow our students all the way through their senior years of schooling and in those years could well get out of hand. I compared managing their OneDrive storage as similar to managing a drawer of clothes and that it was much easier to locate a pair of socks in a well organised drawer than a big jumble of random clothes.
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With a little guidance, the students created a folder for the current school year with sub folders for different subjects. Some older students who have been 1:1 for a couple of years, created folders for their previous school years and tidied up their old documents also. Considering that we were doing the digital equivalent of cleaning their rooms, they were pretty enthusiastic. 
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The second key point made with the students was about what students were calling their documents. So many students had a list of Word documents called "Untitled", "Untitled (1)", "Untitled (2) or other generic names like "maths work". When asked what they were, the students had no idea. This helped me push home the point about labeling documents well. I was able to demo how a well named document could be found using the search feature on any device. 

Even if the students take a little time to get into the swing of saving to their OneDrive, I do think making students responsible in this way is going to give them the opportunity to develop stronger file management skills and organisation. It also broadens their thinking about digital systems, data and data transmission. 
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Embedding Forms in OneNote for Self-Reflection and Peer Feedback

4/5/2017

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 A recent update to OneNote is the ability to embed Microsoft Forms into a notebook simply by dropping the direct link on the page.

Microsoft forms allows you to create simple quizzes with multiple choice, ratings, or short answer responses. It boasts a really clean user interface, that is easy to apply an attractive theme to as can be seen below. Creating a quiz is quick and easy to do. You can share your quiz via a link, QR Code, via email or it can be directly embedded. I have found it useful for creating lesson exit tickets as well as formative and summative assessment. In today's lesson with year 6 students, I used it to collect student reflections and peer reflections via the Class Notebook.

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​The students completed ​activities in pairs using Little Bits to create small electrical products. These activities are available in the Inventions Booklets on the Little Bits website here. 
​After completing their product, the teams had to complete the self reflection in the OneNote Class Notebook. The feedback Form was on the activity page that was distributed to all of the students notebooks (using the Class Notebook add in). The students did not have to leave OneNote to complete and submit the questions which made collecting student feedback and reflections very easy.  
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Microsoft throws down the gauntlet

3/5/2017

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Soooooo last night I stayed up until 1:30am (Aussie time) to watch Microsoft's Live Education event to "learn what's next". After a long day today and many cups of coffee, I am not so sure it was the best decision. Through the haze of blurred vision and incessant yawning I got a preview of some of the exciting products Microsoft have developed specifically aimed at the Education sector. This presentation communicated a strong message to me - that Microsoft are paying attention to the needs of schools, students and teachers and are working hard to deliver. It was a reminder to other players in the game, that they need to step up their game and not neglect education.  
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Minecraft Code Builder

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I am guilty of trying to avoid the Minecraft craze in schools, hoping it was just a phase. It seems Minecraft is here to stay and is going to be even more useful now that Code Builder for Minecraft has been introduced. I have always been for tapping into student interests and making educational connections, but never really made the connetcion in Minecraft until now. This feature will provide a highly engaging way to directly address key curriculum descriptors in a highly engaging way.
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Code Builder for Minecraft: Education Edition is a brand-new feature that allows educators and students to explore, create, and play in an immersive Minecraft world. Partnering with familiar learn-to-code platforms like ScratchX, Tynker, and a new open platform called Microsoft MakeCode, players can not only develop computational thinking but can also apply their creations across the curriculum.
​- Microsoft 

So I now join the Minecraft party, kicking and screaming. I will be spending a day while in San Antonio for ISTE, doing a 1 day Minecraft Education Teacher Academy. You can sign up to do this here. 

Shiny New Devices and Operating Systems 

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The event also introduced the new Surface Laptop which is just plain sexy to look at and sits at a competitive entry point as a student device. It should be noted that selecting improved specs does make the device considerably more expensive, but these specs are not necessarily required by a student. The most appealing features of the Surface Notebook include:
  • Touch screen
  • Capable of digital inking with surface pen
  • Light yet sturdy and attractive design
  • Runs a full Windows operating system
  • 14.5 hours of battery life
In my experience over the last few years, the touch screen and digital inking capability of the Surface Pro 4 has made it a standout in the classroom. While the iPad Pro also boasts a lovely inking experience with pencil, it lacks the full operating system and the possibilities that come with that. Buying an iPad pro in Australia with keyboard, pencil and similar specs puts it in the same price range. 
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Pairing with their new devices, Microsoft launched Windows 10 S, a shaved down version of the operating system which also boasts tight security and speedy deployment features. These are ongoing issues in schools, as is the need for quick reboot between users of shared devices. In the demonstration, the device running Windows 10 S did boot up at an impressive speed. Anyone who has taught in a school computer lab situation, will know how very dreamy this is.

Microsoft Teams - the New Classroom

I am sad to hear that Microsoft Classroom will never leave preview. After using it this year I was disappointed but had high hopes for it. At any rate, it seems as if Microsoft have taken the best of Classroom, combined it with Teams and will launch a Teams for Education later this year to coincide with the start of the American school year. The demonstrated version highlighted the collaborative nature of Teams, but I understand more is yet to be revealed in the coming months. 
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Developing STEAM units that are not full of hot air

2/5/2017

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With the STEAM (or STEM) approach to learning continuing  to gain momentum, the pressure is on for schools to jump on board and embrace the integrated approach to learning once again. In my 10+ years in the classroom, I have seen the approach to curriculum move from integrated studies to disceret learning areas and now back to integration with STEAM/ STEM and PBL (Problem Based Learning).
This approach is bigger than just going back to the good old days of integrated studies units on such topics as "Pirates", where you painted a pirate flag in art, wrote a story about a pirate in English and floated your pirate ships in tubs of water in Science.

****** pauses to reminisce about the good old days of teaching ******

We are teaching in a post-curriculum-apocolypse, where the curriculum was torn apart and reborn into highly specialised and specific areas. Bringing those areas together is one thing. The second and even more difficult part is bringing them together in ways that have authentic connections and links to the real world. We are wanting our students to work the way real world Scientists, Engineers and Mathematicians do to develop solutions to needs they identify and in ways they control. 

On behalf of teachers everywhere...
​(and sorry kids....the Pirate party is cancelled...)
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Its not all doom and gloom

Anyone who has played then game long enough knows, this is how education is. While change is daunting and letting go of those unit plans you spent hours on is heartbreaking, working on new units of work is always exciting and it's an opportunity to create something even better!

So, 2017 has become my year of opportunity as we move into developing our STEAM units across the Primary Campus. The teachers of each year level have worked alongside our Teaching and Learning Coordinator and myself to develop ideas for our units this year. It was a big undertaking to be sure and while I don't think we will get it 100% right the first time around, I wanted to share an example of what we are doing. 

STEAM 101

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A STEM approach to learning combines Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics to fuel student centered inquiry or problem based learning. In more recent years the Arts has been added to the acronym causing much debate and differing opinions on its validity in the mix. But, lets leave this debate for another blog....

Year 6 Unit: Our first attempt with STEAM

​I am really excited by the Year 6 STEAM unit that is currently underway this term and what is even better, the kids are too! Last year I sat down with the year 6 teachers and pulled together as many relevant descriptors as we could to build our unit. The difference from past approaches to integrated units was that we focused on connections to the real world, student centered learning and a problem based approach. We wanted our students to be thinking about designing solutions with real world applications.
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Brainstorming from our initial STEAM unit session
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​The unit we developed is driven by Science and Design Technologies, centering around electrical and solar energy. Our authentic connection to the real world was through the Solar Buddies organisation, who provide students in schools with solar lights they can build themselves. These lights are then sent to other children who live in energy poverty in the hopes of providing them with a light to study by. It is a fantastic organisation and the children are already seeing how they can have a meaningful impact on someone's life. The Solar Buddy light is a vehicle for us to explore design thinking and guide the rest of the unit. This week students discussed possible design considerations the company made when designing the product and discussed how something as simple as a solar light can impact lives, communities and even countries. It was an energised discussion.
From here, using Solar Buddies as a model of design thinking and real world application, students will design and build their own solar power products using a variety of materials, including Little Bits. The aim is for their designs to be made to address a specific need or problem they have identified. Students will need to develop their solution and suggest its potential impact. The culmination of this unit will be a Solar Energy Expo where teams will showcase their products to parents and members of the community. Other curriculum areas, such as Mathematics, English, the Arts and even Geography have been neatly tied in to support the unit. 

While the unit is exciting on paper, it is a little scary as well as it relies heavily on students taking charge and leading the way. It is "teacher as facilitator" in every sense of the word and it makes me nervous for sure...but you cannot discover new lands without stumbling through the wilderness a little.

Stay tuned to see if I make it out of the wilderness alive...
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Technology will never replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers is transformational  -  George Couros
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