The days are getting warmer, the kids are getting restless, the Christmas activities are coming out, the end of year events are happening and it's time to not only start clearing art off the walls, send home the forgotten pencils down the back of the desks. The holidays are coming. Whilst it can be easy to put jobs in the January pile, perhaps think about taking some time to tidy your digital drive and tick that one off the list!
We've put together 7 top tips to help you clean up your digital world:
1. Go through anything not in folders
Ahh, the abyss of unfiled documents that is "My Drive" Take a few moments, grab a cup of tea (read: wine) and start deleting and filing. You'll thank yourself in January. Not in the mood to go through each one? Make one folder, call it 2022 and drag everything in there. That way your drive will be clear for the new year. TOP TIME SAVING TIP: Hold down command or control and click on all the documents you want to move and then either right click and add to a folder or drag them into the folder.
2. Clear your desktop
Having multiple files on your desktop of your laptop can really slow it down. As above - delete or store in a folder.
Better yet... move everything into a folder then upload it to your Google Drive. This frees up storage on your laptop and makes it run faster. Plus if your laptop dies you don't lose anything as it will all be in the magical Google Drive cloud. WIN WIN.
3. Moving schools?
Moving schools and want to take everything from your Google Drive with you but don't want to share everything to your personal drive and then to your new school email? I'm sweating just thinking about it.
FEAR NOT - Google Takeout is your solution. Well, the best we've got.
You can migrate/takeout up to 100GB of data including docs, Classroom posts, sites and more! Just tick what you want. You can migrate files to another Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or a download link.
TOP TIPS:
Delete some stuff you don't want to get under that 100GB limit if you need
It won't copy anything that has been shared with you so you will need to go into your shared with me folder and make copies or add to your drive.
4. Sort your digital tools
We often use other digital tools like Seesaw, Scratch, Canva, Book Creator - you name it. And old student projects can fill up space - fast.
Time to:
Archive any classes
Save any student work you may like to use as exemplars (ask students first!)
Delete student work that is no longer needed (especially random unfinished work).
TOP TIP: Using Seesaw? Depending if you are using the Paid or Free version there are different ways of dealing with the end of school year. You can find more info here on end of year Guides on Seesaw here.
5. Clear your unread emails
Ok, ok. Hear us out.
You're either: the person on the left or the person on the right.
Whichever one you are, clearing your emails is a useful job for your digital wellbeing (and the sanity for anyone who is the person on the left).
Did you know for every unread email you delete a kitten somewhere in the world smiles? Be the change.
TOP TIP: Working in Gmail? Go to your inbox, click on the little arrow beside the box at the top, select "unread" and just do it - hit that delete button. Let's face it, most of those emails are just Black Friday sales anyway.
6. Take photos of student work
Have your students created some awesome physical art? Dioramas? Class mural? Take photos of anything cool that you can use as examples or jog your memory of cool stuff to do with your class next year! and.... save it to your Google Drive 😉
7. Reflect on your digital journey
The last couple of years have seen a huge infusion of the digital into our classrooms. Take a moment to reflect on some of the tools, systems, programmes, lessons, resources that worked, didn't work, were successful, tools or lessons the kids loved.
Also have a think about what digital blockages you have - anything digitally that doesn't feel efficient? or taking too much time for you or the students?
Clear your digital mind and file away those neat tools for 2023 and beyond.
If you need some support for you and your kura to find the right tools for the job, speed up your digital workflow or upskill yourself for using digital technologies in meaningful integrated ways - get in touch!
We do fully funded free PLD for kura all over Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Flick me an email here and let's get the ball rolling for 2023!