How many tabs can a teacher have open at one time?

Following on from last week's learning we continued the journey of working smarter, not harder.

Our main focus was on learning how to use Google Hangouts, plus a few extra tips and tricks.

Google Hangouts:

Today we experienced Google Hangouts, firstly 'hanging out' with Dorothy, where she spoke about LEARN and we listened and followed on a shared screen. Following this, we then 'hung out' in small groups learning how to share our screens and speak about our favourite place. You can see below some screenshots of our first conversation as a group and what it looks like. It is amazing how something simple like turning a microphone on and off and sharing a screen seems so complicated for the first time.

Later on in the day, we had a go discussion a students blog post from the Summer Learning Journey and having it recorded at the same time. I don't think it was truly successful, for a number of reasons; lack of understanding around the task, tech issues (the recording didn't do the sound initially), nerves around most of us not wanting to 'fail' or 'look stupid' ... or maybe that was just me. But it could be a great thing to try with students and for staff to use at different times. 

Workflow:

We continue to be given skills/extensions/apps/ideas to make our workflow better. We focussed on three things; emails, calendars and Keep. Many of the things in email and calendar I had already explored so it didn't feel so helpful, though I did get to change my email background to a personal photo so that was nice.

Keep, however, was a different story. This seems to have many uses - list-making, note-taking, a place to keep ideas and lists and the ultimate hack ... turning text from a picture into text! That is mindblowing and we can't wait to try it out with our Sharp Reading sheets. We have already started to make a list of comments or pictures that we want to use often. Another member of our group uses it to drop digital stickers into their students work because the children missed the stickers. You can share lists between others so that is helpful for Angela and I and our workflow. 

In terms of thinking about the pedagogy that sits behind all of this, I would like to take some time to reflect on what Dorothy talked about. 

Learn is the sticky idea that most people struggle with. We are all, always learning but Learn is the bit where we access what we already know. Dorothy spent some time breaking the idea of Learn down a bit more. 

Exploring the idea of RATE was a good reminder.

R - recognising effective practise

A - when we have recognised it then amplifying that effective practice. This does include understanding the data and then amplifying that across other classes

T -  Turbocharge is where technology clicks in and allows us to amplify our effective practice

E = Effective Practise

What do we do that does this in our class? Do I do this? Having some time to explore this would have been helpful. I also wonder if it is something that we should be exploring as a school? What does YMS see as Learn? 

Hmmmmm, more to process around some of this but the tables are being packed up and my brains stopped working.

And the answer to the screen title is .... Many, many, many tabs (though One Tab or Toby Mini will help you to control the many).