Managing your online workflow

Today we looked at a variety of ways to manage your workflow online.  I learned a few more tricks for gmail which I’m thrilled about. One of those is the add ons which enable you to customise not only the look of gmail but also the functionality.  I’m also going to try the ‘pause’ which prevents mail pop ups which gives you the ability to turn off mail notifications for a period of time.  This might be really helpful during presentations or when I’m teaching, provided of course I remember to turn it on.

Asana, the app I’m already using to organise and plan things is also an extension that works with Google applications.  I’m looking forward to seeing how useful that will be. I’ve been a fan of Asana and Instagantte, the sister app from Asana but haven’t used them frequently of late because it’s an external app.  Hopefully this will give me the option to keep on top of my tasks better, something I don’t think the Google mail/task interface does very well.

I think the gmail dashboard is long overdue for an update.  I dislike that you can only have four categories, I guess Google tries to push you to use labels but it would be nice to have the option to pin your frequently used labels to the top.  

Google Hangouts was a lot of fun for first time users, especially when we attempted to record a group hangout discussion on some of the progression levels from the new Digital Curriculum.  

This term has got off to a good start in terms of my own teaching inquiry which is to look at  building capacity within schools. The Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive DFI days we are running in the north are also helping to accelerate this which is having a very positive effect in the secondary schools I work in.   A number of participants have shared what they learned on the DFI at their staff meetings which is great to see, this is the kind of change that needs to happen to accelerate collective capacity that Jansen, Cammock, & Conner, ( 2001) talk about.  

References:

Jansen, Chris; Cammock, Peter and Conner, Lindsey. Leadership for Emergence: Exploring Organisations through a Living System Lens [online]. Leading and Managing, Vol. 17, No. 1, Autumn/Winter 2011: 59-74.