My first DFI blog

Introduction 1

Tips 1

So what? 2

Things I wish to learn more about 2

Kia ora rā e tātou mā.

This is my first entry into an edublog blog, and a first blog for me in a very long time.  It feels really good to reflect.  I’d like to share my learning for my first DFI workshop today.

Introduction

Firstly, there was an introduction to Manaiakalani.  This was great for me as I’m teaching for the first time at a Manaiakalani school.  We talked about DIGITAL EQUITY and how this can affect students across all socio-economic spaces.  So how lucky are our students to be involved in a space where there is work done to ensure digital equity?!  

Secondly, I learnt quite a lot about how to use a google document.  I thought I knew how to use a google document however I’ve learnt a few little tips.

Tips

• Tip: Control Shift V  –To paste without the formatting

• Tip 2: Use the ‘normal text’ pop down button to make ‘Titles’ and ‘Headings’ which can then be recognised when making a ‘Table of contents.’
• Tip 3: To make a Table of contents – Insert, Page Elements, Table of contents, and then choose your style
• Tip 4:  You can add a heading later, refresh your Table of contents and then it will update it with the new heading
• Tip 5: Press the @ symbol and you get lots of ‘smartchips’ options such as entering in the date, a timer or a draft email which will leave you a draft email in your gmail account that you can edit or send later
• Tip 6: You can add a bookmark by pressing the image to the left of the url and it creates a bookmark for you
• Tip 7: You can create shortcuts within folders in your google drive so you’ve got relevant information in the the relevant folders
• Tip 8:  You can drag and drop images into remove.bg and remove the backgrounds so you can have an image for a display
• Tip 9:  You can change the colour of the background of your google document, have a table, insert images and blurbs, then make the table border the same colour as the background so it looks like a well set out poster
• Tip 10:  Tools has voice typing and citations which can help with those who struggle to write/type and those who need to reference at university respectively.
• Tip 11:  I can explore these further and learn more

So what?

I can use these useful tips to make my work more interesting and efficient.  I can show/teach these handy tips to my students.  They are the future and need to be better than us, and they need to utilise these different tools to their full capacity.  Getting them to delve deeper into using such tools will assist them to further explore and discover new knowledge.

Things I wish to learn more about

Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know.  But I happen to know that I don’t know anything about extensions.  My next steps is to delve into that before the next DFI session.  So that I can be even more confident as a teacher teaching at a Manaiakalani school.