Working remotely

'Sowing Seeds for the Future’, the conference themes were Equity and inclusion, Futures, and Wellbeing I’ve just spent two days at Addington Raceway as one of the sponsors of the Canterbury Primary Principals Association 2021 leadership conference. I always enjoy…

The best digital tools are the ones that encourage students to create, collaborate and showcase their learning in a new way. We want to encourage students to think about which tool is best for what task; merging digital literacy skills…

Hāpara Dashboard gives teachers Google superpowers. It is a building block to creating personalised learning in your classroom or across your school.

Collaborate in order to build our future During lockdown, I had the opportunity to present at New Zealand’s first virtual Impact Unconference. With an overall theme of ‘collaboration’, it aimed to help participants generate ways to collaborate in order to…

One of the real joys I have had over the past month of lockdown has been watching my own children, as well as teachers and leaders right across New Zealand, try new things. We’ve also tried some new things at…

In a rapidly changing landscape, leaders are inevitably presented with complex challenges. How quickly we adapt and how effectively we communicate is crucial at such times. With NZ's move from Level 3 to Level 2 about to become a reality,…

We know that when we are experiencing times of disruption, communicating the right information to the right people at the right time is critical. For organisations (including schools and businesses) to truly adapt, they need to be responsive. So how…

We love the idea of a smart way to share and curate useful resources for educators and communities - especially at this time! This idea started out as an idea from a small rural school district in Alberta, Canada -…

In times of disruption communicating the right information to the right people at the right time is critical. And knowing beforehand who will do this in the moment is also vitally important. Does the responsibility to get the messages out…

…there is a need to balance the management of critical adaptive responses within and surrounding the organisation, with thinking and emotions. Adaptive leaders are both optimistic and realistic. To thrive in this challenging, sometimes overwhelming, complex environment, they find sanctuaries…

Check-ins are a great way to gauge students’ feelings and being able to emotionally support them if and when needed to be ready for the day.

While Learning Architects was born out of my experience as a principal, teacher, technology geek and leadership coach, sometimes the ideas for this support come from much closer to home. I have two daughters and both are currently learning at…

In a world where technology and artificial intelligence seem set to take over, I feel secure in the knowledge that the human connection is still the single most powerful teaching and learning tool that we have. “Teachers instruct of course,…

The Clifton StrengthsExplorer is an innovative online tool designed for 10 to 14-year olds to complete that helps them discover and then develop their talents. It is unique because it provides students, their parents, teachers, and school leaders with guidance on how to build on each child’s gifts.

Google Classroom is ideal for educators and schools who want to work remotely. In its many features, one of the most important is that it provides teachers with the ability to share information with students. This can include an 'assignment'…

Google Classroom is ideal for educators and schools who want to work remotely. With its numerous features, one of the most important is that teachers can share information with students. Teachers can send an 'assignment' which students complete, a video,…

Google Classroom is ideal for educators and schools who want to work remotely. In its many features, one of the most important is that it provides teachers with the ability to share information with students. This can include an 'assignment'…

Google Classroom is ideal for educators and schools who want to work remotely. In its many features, one of the most important is that it provides teachers with the ability to share information with students. This can include an 'assignment'…

Google Classroom is ideal for educators and schools who want to work remotely. In its many features, one of the most important is that it provides teachers with the ability to share information with students. This can include an 'assignment'…

Now that all classes throughout New Zealand have closed, it is time for many teachers to quickly figure out how to distribute work to their class. The good thing is that you have options, one of which is Google Classroom.…

Watching and listening to news from around the world it would be an understatement to say that it’s a time of disruption and uncertainty for schools. Monitoring and responding to the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic situation as it spreads throughout…

One of the aspects I love about this time in the school calendar, is the level of energy that staff, students and leaders have. There’s always a sense of positivity at the start of Term 1, and with most teacher-only…

Electric Garden is an innovative programme where learners engage with computer science concepts through gardening. We are inspired by their vision of digital enablement of all Kiwis now matter where they live, and proud to be their PLD provider.

I’ve just spent the most fabulous day at St Mary’s Catholic School in Rotorua supporting their STEAM Extravaganza. My role as a guest speaker was to introduce them to the Sustainable Development Goals and help them learn how to use these goals. This post is aimed at helping you make learning authentic using the Sustainable Development Goals.

Doing this allows us to understand what makes Aotearoa distinctive and unique. Te Takanga o Te Wā is a document published in 2015 to support the understanding of Māori history for year 1-8 students and their teachers. When utilised well, this resource provides all students with a knowledge-base they can identify with.

Learn about the Gallup Q12 engagement matrix and how to ask the right questions to gauge how emotionally engaged your employees are. Learn how this can enable you to create a more productive, happy and effective organisation.

Many educators across New Zealand are learning to embed the new Digital Technologies Curriculum into their programmes. This blog post will help you learn how to easily integrate Computational Thinking into your classroom for Progress Outcome 1.

Learn how to make strengths-based learning come alive in your school by developing a strengths-based curriculum for school leadership, staff, and students

This post is aimed at helping children to cope with traumatic events, but providing resources and strategies to support them, their families and educators. Last Friday, Christchurch suffered an horrific terrorist attack.

Are you stuck on how to begin understanding Computational Thinking as a new key competency in the technology curriculum? Are you wondering how to implement it (CT) into your school-wide learning areas?

Discover your school’s levels of engagement, hope, entrepreneurial aspiration, and career and financial literacy. This post is to let you know of an upcoming webinar to help leaders decide whether this tool is right for their organisation – learn how you can measure what matters most with the Gallup Student Poll.

Does your leadership practice intentionally help develop relationships amongst staff? Read this post for 5 ways to build the team and develop staff culture.

As we reach the end of another year it is a great time to reflect on our journey. We are really grateful for being able to work alongside a large number of innovative and passionate educators throughout New Zealand and Australia.

This is a question that many educators would purport to have as a guiding principle in how they, and their organisation, works. Yet so much about how we ‘do’ education seems to me to be premised on a negative approach.

Shona is focussed on developing curious, creative thinkers with digital technologies. Shona facilitates programmes and strategies that empower teachers in the use of technology. She is focussed on improving student learning through critical thinking and problem-solving.

Having one to one devices in schools is becoming far more apparent, but how do we make sure these tools are enhancing learning to a multimedia level rather than simply replacing pen and paper with a digital tool?

Have you ever had the problem of transitioning from one Google Environment to another and wondered how on earth to do this? This post will show you how to transition between Google environments with ease!

As part of Te Wiki o te Reo Māori I came across a couple of great apps this week. To help me with my te reo learning, I have always relied on the Māori Dictionary to learn new Māori words. Today I came across a couple of great apps for strengthening te reo Māori which I just had to share.

Kupu logoKupu is a new app designed by Spark which uses augmented reality. Kupu, which translates to mean “word” – works via machine learning provided by Google. Users simply take a picture, and Kupu uses image recognition to identify what is in the picture and provide te reo Māori translations for what is seen.

Kupu is an example of Augmented Reality (AR) which is a form of technology that layers the digital world over the physical world. There are a lot of different apps which perform various tasks using AR, such as finding a local cafe, mapping apps, or even a new one I use called Snoww which enables users to locate friends they follow (I use this to know where my daughter is on the mountain!).

There have been some great updates for the Google Drive interface recently. These relate to the look and feel of Google Drive on the web. These updates are cosmetic, such as icons and buttons moving, and improve a range of features while aligning more to Google’s latest material design principles.

We have written and often teach how to collaborate using many of the powerful tools inside G Suite. This article shows you how you can learn new ways to collaborate with Activity dashboard. Google has introduced a new feature inside Docs, Sheets and Slides called Google Docs Activity dashboard.

When I was a principal, I often found writing board reports somewhat tedious and mundane. In fact, in some research we conducted earlier this year we confirmed this suspicion – school leaders rated report writing as one of the tasks they dislike the most.

One of the biggest headaches for people is learning how to find items inside Drive. Overcome this issue and learn how to find files inside Google Drive really quickly and never lose a Google Drive file ever again! Read on to learn how to use filtering to quickly narrow down your +Google Drive search results and get on with your work!

I’ve long been interested in emerging technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality. You probably heard of virtual reality and augmented reality. I remember one of the earliest examples of virtual reality which was a software product by Apple – QuickTime VR which was an amazing software package.

This post and short tutorial is for G Suite for Education administrators and ICT leaders. It shows you how Google protects privacy inside G Suite for Education from the start of August.

Have you ever forgotten your password to log into your G Suite (former Google Apps) system? This can be a real pain, especially if you are not at work and need to do some work! This post will show you how to set up something called ‘password recovery’ by putting in an alternate email address that you can use to recover and reset your Google password.

As more and more of our workplaces move to cloud-based environments such as G Suite or Office 365, often times we are sending others a link rather than a document. This tutorial will show you how to insert hyperlinks into Docs, Sheets and Slides.

This post is based on a workshop I offer which will help you learn how automation can simplify your digital life. In it, I demonstrate a number of handy tools which can help you learn to use automation in various shapes and forms in order to save yourself time, simplify your digital life and make life much easier.

Maximize the impact of your school’s or district’s GAFE strategy with actionable, objective data by learning to use Hāpara Analytics to make decisions. This new tool from Hāpara enables school or district leaders to gain valuable insights into how well technology is being used by staff and students.

I think of Trello as a virtual post it note tool with some really handy extras – a bit like post-its on steroids! Not only is the visual design of this tool really easy to use, but it has a range of great features which make it super useful for teams.

This post explores the question: ‘what is the relationship between productivity and great leadership?’. . When the pressures of leadership mount up, your ability as a leader to make better decisions will be tested.

This shows how to use Hāpara Workspace to differentiate by approach or strategy. If you want to be able to provide your students with personalised pathways for their learning, or assess them using different strategies suited to different needs, then Hāpara Workspace is for you!

Being able to establish and manage groups is a basic skill for every educator. It enables them to target the challenge level, or the resources, or even the assessment to the needs of different students. This post shows how groups work to support differentiation in Hāpara Workspace.

Yipee!!! This is a long-awaited request from many who have switched from offline spreadsheets to Google Sheets. Finally, Google Sheets support for rotated text has been added. To do this simply click into a cell in Sheets (Format > Text rotation).

Hāpara Workspace is a powerful set of tools. Workspace enables teachers to personalise and diffentiate learning for students. This post will help you understand the student view of Hāpara Workspace.

One of the really painful parts of ‘going Google’ for schools and businesses occurs when users sign up prior to the organisation moving to a G Suite (formerly Google Apps) account. This can create what is known as a ‘conflicted account’ if the user signs up for this personal account using their organisation email address.

Effective goal setting is one of the most important reflective processes in any learning environment. It is an area of teaching (and leading) which is critical to helping learners become self-managing. Learn how to start the year with goal setting using a Google Form.

Do you want to increase your productivity? Make sure you never miss a to do, keep lists and more with this FREE tutorial on Google Keep. Google Keep is a free note-taking tool from Google which you can use in all sorts of interesting ways to increase your productivity.

Have you ever found the plethora of planning files floating about your computer cumbersome and difficult to manage? Here is a free planning template for teachers I have designed that will transform and streamline your planning processes. This template has made a difference to over 5,000 educators across NZ and Australia.

Google Calendar now works better on iOS devices with these shiny, new features which you’ll love: Month view and week in landscape view, so you have even more ways to see your schedule at a glance.

When you get the next Gmail iOS app update, you’ll notice some really useful changes. This is the biggest oveNew Gmail app on iOSrhaul of the app in a long time (nearly 4 years) so is probably quite overdue really.

Hāpara Workspace is a platform for teachers and learners to create highly personalised learning experiences that deepen collaboration and differentiation throughout the learning cycle. There are a wide range of ways in which you can use this tool to enhance the learning for your students.

I am excited to announce the launch of this new project UNwebquests.nz on behalf of the United Nations Association of NZ. This is a project I’ve been working on for a while now and it’s finally time to put it out there for Kiwi educators to consider as a great way to supplement their school-based curriculum, particularly if you are wanting to help your learners explore the more global and complex issues of our times.

Learn how to enable safe search on Google with this tutorial from Learning Architects. Includes Youtube safe search, safe search on Google and ideas for safe search engines for kids.

Learn how to use Hāpara Highlights, a really clever part of Hāpara Dashboard. Highlights allows you to gain visibility into student documents and browsing activities so you can confidently keep students on task and support digital learning.

Hi I’m Dayna from Mangere Central School and I attended a 3-day workshop called Empowering The Digital Office. Being in the administration area of the school I find it difficult to find really good PD and this was ideal for everything that I needed.

Page Numbers in TOCsThe table of contents in Google Docs makes it easy to organise and navigate long and complex documents, providing a list of hyperlinks that users can click on to jump to that part of the document.

It’s amazing to see how some everyday problems will be solved in the future. How might technology such as this solve other common problems? These uses of nanotechnology will blow your mind.

This post explores the idea of how to bring your vision to life and empower others. Free resource ideas to help you learn some practical strategies to enhance your team.

Learning to be an effective digital citizen is an interesting and, at times, challenging journey – whether you are a student, teacher, school leader, or a parent. This idea: ‘The Triple Filter Test – Is it true? Is it good? Is it useful?’ will enable you to help learners judge the quality of their interactions in the online world.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to interact more closely with your audience when presenting something. Finally, this new feature within Google Slides allows you to make interactive slideshows with Slides Q&A (questions and answers).

This presentation is focussed on strengthening feedback with technology. It draws on a range of ideas from current research as well as a variety of technology tools which can be adapted for use in the classroom and across the school.

I hope you are taking time out to relax and recharge this weekend. This is a good reminder of the importance of balance in the life of a leader – whether you are a school leader, a business leader, or a leader of a group of learners in the classroom.

Here’s a really smart and fun experiment to do with your class – how to turn a smartphone into a projector! This tutorial takes you through what you need and the steps to set up a simple projector. There’s loads of good science learning in this fun activity for the classroom.

I’d like to introduce you to a new type of technology called ‘knowledge mapping’. Read on to learn more about what knowledge mapping is, how Ideaphora make it really easy and extremely powerful, plus you can sign up to learn how to win a grant for US$1500!

This video by Jay Shetty from the Huffington Post is really inspirational – take a moment to view it, pausing and noting some of the key messages (there are a lot of them!).

This series will explore the question how might social media drive real change? A range of issues relating to social media in schools and communities will be examined, with the aim of helping readers.

Google’s gmail app has a plethora of useful keyboard shortcuts to make dealing with email quicker and more efficient, giving you time to spend on other tasks. This tip is especially useful for those users who are working from laptops or are have lots of email to deal with.

Hāpara Smart Share offers an easy way to share and copy documents to students from Teacher Dashboard. It lets you specify everything about a copy from one page which greatly streamlines teacher workflow, thus saving you time. Check out this video to learn how to use this powerful feature…

One of the great benefits of cloud based systems such as Google Apps is that you can easily recover lost files if you’ve deleted them. In most cases the user can do this themselves and the administrator of the system can even control for how long some data is stored before being permanently deleted.

The groups feature in Teacher Dashboard makes it easy to share documents to subsets of students, or to view smaller groups of students. It is a building block to creating personalised learning in your classroom or across your school.

I am lucky enough to be attending the Google for Education Moonshot Summit in Amsterdam. This a special event which is organised by Google for Education. This event is an invitation-only, special event that brings together innovative teachers and education leaders from around the world to design education-focussed ‘moonshot’ projects that move education forward.

Enable email post links and sharing buttons – this allows someone to click a button associated with a blog post in order to email it to others. These tips are really useful because you can establish a routine with your class blog where students, once they’ve posted to it, can email their parents/caregivers.

Learning how to use Google Drive offline is an important feature within the Google Apps system to understand, especially if you are a person who travels a lot to places with unreliable wifi connectivity. Read this post to learn about offline mode in Google Drive…

Teaching digital citizenship is a critical aspect of being a future focussed educator. This article was featured on the Christchurch Connected Educators’ blog as part of Connected Educators’ Month in New Zealand. It describes a teaching sequence I led at Seven Oaks School where we initiated some learning about cyber-citizenship.

This latest GEG NZ Spotlight From the Classroom is focussed on the questions from the community. These questions have been grouped into these themes: Personalising learning Google Cardboard Using Google Plus and Google Hangouts Google Classroom An overview of and invite to the inaugural…

In this video describing how sharing works for Google Docs, the Google team explain how we used to share files prior to Google Apps (now called G Suite). These ideas also apply to the sharing of other aspects within the Google ecosystem.

We are excited to announce a new course Google Apps Essentials 1. This course is designed for beginners to intermediate users of Google Apps for Education and is aimed at helping you understand the environment and maximise the collaborative possibilities.

When moving your organisation to a cloud-based system such as Google Apps for Work or Google Apps for Education (GAFE), it is important to be aware that there are a number of common pitfalls.

The latest GEG NZ Hangout on Air – Maker Culture. This is our first hangout on air to involve students and we were delighted with the discussion and ideas shared. A huge thank you to Anne Batchelor, Liz Fairhall from Selwyn House School in Christchurch, as well as Bridget McKendry and her students from Fab Lab XcCH in Christchurch.

Don’t miss this awesome professional learning opportunity coming up at Banks Ave School on 25 March. This course is ideal for those who are new to Google Apps as well as those who have had it for a while and now want to start maximising its potential.

1:1 and device theft is becoming a key issue for schools, especially as we surge ahead with more and more devices in schools. Unfortunately, the issue of security and theft will likely become more of a reality for many of our colleagues. Certainly Principals and ICT Leaders who want to protect the investment (of either the school and/or parents) this is an important area.

This tip shows you how to search using the Chrome Omnibox – Google’s combined address and search bar. In Google Chrome, the search box is also the address bar as in other web browsers. This combined feature provides much functionality, which, if used effectively can save you lots of time.

We are pleased to announce that Learning Architects is a member of the Apple Consultants Network (ACN). The ACN is a worldwide group of consultants who have proven expertise at advising and deploying Apple technologies.

The SAMR Model is a widely used way of thinking about technology adoption. It stands for: “Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition,” and was developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura.

In this Google Educator Group NZ (GEG NZ) Hangout on Air we spotlight how the design thinking process can be used in education. Also three of our new Google Certified Teachers – Anne Batchelor, Alyx Gillett and Barbara Reid share how they are using a simple design thinking process to explore an issue they are currently facing within their educational community as well as their experience at the recent Sydney Google Teacher Academy.

I had the pleasure of helping out with the latest Google Educator Group hangout on air spotlight last week and I must say, it was inspirational stuff! Michelle George and Karen Belt from Pt England School and the Manaiakalani Trust showed us their approach to accelerating literacy learning for Year 1 students in a 1:1 environment using iPads.

We are pleased to announce the first Google Discovery Day & Masterclass – Wellington will be held in Alicetown, Lower Hutt on Tuesday 17th November and Wednesday 18th November. More information and to register for this awesome professional learning opportunity please click here…

This HoA as part of the GEGNZ community had as special guests Dorothy Burt and Fiona Grant who focussed on blogging and their experiences from the Maniakalani project in Auckland. Lots and lots of really useful tips and tricks with resources and ideas to follow up on.

Augmented reality is something that is often talked about at conferences when referring to the technology of the future and it is certainly something to keep an eye on. The future of augmented reality is an exciting prospect; here is a video which explores an aspect of this technology called articulated naturality web.

This is the video from the very first Google Educator Group HoA event of which I am involved in. Thanks everyone who is supporting this exciting community as it establishes throughout the country.

Learning Architects in association with Mike Reading are offering another Google Discovery Day & Masterclass in Christchurch. This day offers an experience for educators who want to learn more about the power of Google Apps for Education. Choose one of two strands and go in depth for a whole day!

Augmented reality (or AR as it is sometimes referred to) is a fascinating new form of technology which has great potential to transform many facets of life. AR refers to the physical world with digital data or information transposed over it. Some good examples of this include Google Maps which show live traffic feeds, or the new Google product Glass.

Learning Architects in association with Teachers Training International are offering a great opportunity for educators in Christchurch, the Google Discovery Day. Teachers can choose from a series of electives and leave equipped to better use Google with their students.

Here is a presentation delivered at the First Time Principals Mentor Symposium for the Centre for Educational Leadership, University of Auckland. This presentation is focussed on the leadership of elearning.

An ‘add-on’ is a small piece of software that plugs into either a Document, Sheet or Form that provides additional functionality. There are lots of them to choose from that perform all sorts of handy functions!

Here is a presentation given at the New Zealand Google Apps for Education Summit in Christchurch and Auckland focussed on developing a school or company ‘start’ page.

Here is a presentation given at the New Zealand Google Apps for Education Summit in Christchurch and Auckland entitled ‘Tame your email’ for school leaders and office staff.

Here is a presentation given at the New Zealand Google Apps for Education Summit in Christchurch and Auckland entitled ‘Time Savers for Busy Leaders’. It focusses on various issues relating to systems and personal productivity tips – managing email flow, handy tools to speed life up and more…

Here is a presentation given at the New Zealand Google Apps for Education Summit in Auckland and Christchurch focussed on developing a shared vision for school leaders. It is aimed at helping school leaders develop strategies for improving how they enable their people gain and deepen commitment to the vision.

Here is a presentation given at New Zealand Google Apps for Education Summit in Christchurch and Auckland focussed on enhancing school administration for school leaders – for those people at the summit who are viewing this post, this is part of a series of two workshops.

One of the greatest advantages of working ‘in the cloud’ is the collaboration possibilities this brings. There are many ways you can collaborate within Google Documents.

Are you in the position of having a personal Gmail account and a work G Suite account and keep accidentally logging in to the wrong one? Or perhaps you have a Kāhui Ako account, a personal account AND a school account! Gets confusing right?

Here are the results of some informal research conducted in preparation for an upcoming presentation.

We invite you to join us for the first annual EdTechTeam New Zealand South Island Summit featuring Google for Education to be held at Burnside High School on April 23 & 24, 2014.

Learn how to set up mail delegation; a really handy feature within gmail – email delegation. Gmail delegation allows one person to ‘delegate’ their email to another user, which is a great solution for busy school leaders, managers and CEOs

Learn how to tame your mailbox using priority inbox. Here is a neat little video describing the benefits of Google’s Priority Inbox – which is a massive improvement to gmail that saves you time and makes you super-efficient.

The flood of email is a major cause of stress in our digital world. This post will help you learn to overcome the flood of incoming emails and take control over your inbox! Mail filters enable you to classify and organise mail as it comes in, as well as perform various actions on email.

Video ‘If you give a kid the web’ featuring the students from Point England School in Auckland.

These two upcoming GAFE Summits in New Zealand. Learning Architects will be involved in all GAFE summits in New Zealand. These high intensity two day event focuses on deploying, integrating, and using Google Apps for Education and other Google Tools to promote student learning in education.

In coming months I will be adding further detail to expand on some of the ideas, particularly the four ‘building blocks’ of social media usage I’ve identified for school leaders. These posts will provide details on what tools could be used for which purpose.

Today I came across an interesting problem – how can you easily set up a class with their own email addresses if you DON’T have Google Apps for Education for your school? This is not something I’d considered, as Google Apps is free for education and is so amazingly easy to implement and use.

This is a short survey for school leaders focussed on social media. The purpose of this is to gather information about the current issues school leaders face when dealing with social media. This survey will inform a presentation.

If your organisation has moved to Google Apps but you want to continue using OutLook as your email software, then you can. It is entirely possible to continue to use the tool you love and harness the power of the cloud through Google Apps.

G Suite (formerly Google Apps) for Education is quite simply the best collaborative suite of cloud based tools there is. Here is a presentation I’ve put together to illustrate why G Suite for Education is the best solution for your school, district or Community of Learning, some of the benefits, as well as some of the possibilities.