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AppVent Calendar Day Twenty-Three – @rondelle10_b

By December 23, 2019No Comments

Hi and welcome! Behind today’s door on the calendar, we have none other than Bukky Yusuf suggesting one of her most useful apps.

Bukky is someone I have known personally for many years now and proud to be able to call a friend. In organising this post we discussed exactly how long we thought we have known each other… We think it must be well over 5 years and prior to that via social media, far longer. During that time we’ve worked together many times, for example, we both served together on the advisory board for Innovate My School. We’ve also spoken at and attended many events together such as #WomenED, BETT and TeachMeet London to name a few. She’s got an awesome CV which you can read more about here, but for me, Bukky epitomises the very best of what being a modern educator is all about. She’s supportive, she shares, she helps, she represents, and always has a firm focus on doing things to improve the learners she teaches and colleagues she supports. Thanks for taking the time to contribute, Bukky! Merry Christmas!

Over to Bukky…

 

One of my very favourite apps is Google Keep.

I was introduced to it about 5 to 6 years ago by an ICT manager within one of my previous schools. It has since become an app that I use every single day because it helps me to save time and eases my workflow. 

This app is a note-taking application. It works for me as I tend to think and note ideas down on the go. When something quickly springs to mind, I can use my mobile to make an electronic note rather than scribble it on a piece of paper which I ultimately lose.

I also use it to create to-do lists, with the handy checklist boxes. This also helps with my shopping lists…

I can save screenshots from my mobile immediately onto Keep or add images that I want to save from different social media platforms. In order to make it easier to search, I need to ensure that I save them with memorable titles or keywords.  

Keep is synchronised across all my work devices and I can immediately pick up where I left off.

The recording feature allows me to capture voice notes which are immediately transcribed. I can then easily share these via a number of platforms including email, WhatsApp, Twitter or straight onto Google docs. While using work-provided devices, I use voice dictation to help reduce the time I spend marking. As I verbally note what students have done well and improvement points, it’s transcribed so that I can then send it across to Google Docs so that I can amend the font colour and then print the written feedback for every student. Next lesson, I hand the written feedback to each student so that it is glued into their exercise books and acted upon.

I like the ‘post-it note’ effect as I view the notes on my mobile, tablet or PC. The notes are easy to colour code in ways which best suit your preferences. For example, anything which I have made red is a visual prompt to act on it quickly. I can also ‘pin’ notes which are a priority or that I need to quickly refer to.

Keep also allows me to be proactive and set up future commitments using its reminder feature. I use this to set up weekly and monthly reminders with links to documents that I have to review and update.

You can group items together by creating labels. Your full list of labels appears on the left-hand side of whichever device you use. In order to add a new note to a particular label, you include the label name as a hashtag.

If you are new to Google Keep, below is a YouTube tutorial which will talk you through the main features:

 

Thanks so much to Bukky for sharing Google Keep with us today. It certainly is a tool that I use myself in similar ways to how Bukky does above. I also use it to grab text from images using its Optical Character Recognition (OCR) option. This extracts text direct from an image which you can then copy and paste into other text editors to work with. I find it very useful for lots of activities.

Thanks once again to Bukky for taking the time to write for the AppVent Calendar. You can find her on Twitter @rondelle10b. Her blog can be found here: https://teachleadco.wordpress.com/. I’m looking forward to working with her again on the NetSupport Stand at BETT where she’ll be speaking on Thursday 23/01/2020 at 12pm.

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I hope have been finding the AppVent Calendar useful. I can’t believe it’s nearly all over! I’d love to hear what you think about the ideas shared. Your feedback either in the comments or on Twitter is very welcome. I’m looking forward to sharing more with you tomorrow!


 

If you like the resources I share and my approaches to teaching and learning with (and without) technology, I work with many schools supporting them with consultancy, training, support and more. If you feel like I could help you, drop me a line via my contact page and I’ll be in touch.

Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson, @ICTEvangelist. Click here to learn more.

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