Finding Unread messages in Gmail

With a large inbox it can be hard to find all you unread messages Tech-recipes have a method for doing this that I have adapted here and made a quick video to show how.

1. Go to Your Gmail account
2. In the Search box at the top of the page, input the following:
label:(unread inbox)
3. Click the Search button

A list of all unread emails located in the Inbox will appear.

If you need to do this frequently, you can save time by Making a quick link

1 Go to you email settings and search labs for the quick links feature and enable it.

2 While having the unread mail up as above add a quicklink by clicking add a link on the gmail side bar. You can then always bring up unread mail easily.

Here is a video showing the process.

Finding Unread Gmail from Media team on Vimeo.

A little more info here about how you can achieve the same thing for mobile

1. Open Gmail for Mobile.

2. Select Menu.

3. Select Search Mail.

4. Input label:(unread inbox) and select Search.

A list of all unread emails located in the Inbox will appear.

How Good is Good enough?

 
“A school or schools operating in isolation is no longer good enough in my mind.”
Why? this is the way things have always been done and it has worked.

The potential understanding of what is out there has changed we often apply this to our understanding of students learning.
At the school level we are now seeing this take place and I am happy to be part of groups that are trying to network develop and connect on behalf of their regions.
In New Zealand I think we are on the right track with regional capacity being developed by the key stakeholders. Regional groups extend pre-existing clusters and therefore connectivity. 
A fantastic example of this is

Manaiakalani an Auckland Community who are achieving multi dimensional improvements for their community.
The result is a ambitious project that is looking to bring 1:1 to a community without huge financial resources and includes wireless internet access to homes supported by Housing New Zealand.

This community is trying to transform itself led it seems by the Tamaki Transformation Programme Board. The complexity of successful change makes it vital that we look beyond ourselves and look to others while understanding that the sharing.

So what are the features of this project that we could look to for our preferred futures????

• Long term vision and community ownership of outcomes
• No constraining of dreams big expansive goals such as bringing connectivity to students in their homes
• Working with multiple agencies and supports
  • Housing New Zealand
  • Work and Income New Zealand
  • External consultancies eg Hapara putting interface layer over google docs that is purpose built for learners and schools.
  • 
  • Folksonomies by this I mean communities of goodwill eg software developers
• Focus on student achievement and well being
• Connected thinking and community

So what do we need to do?
At a regional level we can use presently operating networks such as principals associations and curriculum interest groups and add to them further collaborations with. Think LONG TERM 

• The willing
• Charitable Trusts
• Regional and local councils
• Multiple Govt agencies
• Libraries
• Tertiary institutions
• Community Educational Leaders

I like this video which tells a story about why collaborations are so powerful

 

Kia Kaha Manaiakalani

Googlewave don’t believe the hype?

Google have many of us waiting to find out what wave is and what it might mean for us. Having had a bit of a read around the place and not having an invite myself I became interested. Rather than add yet another review the connections I looked at showed something new and powerful The you tube example is a realtime dialogue with translation. Below this in the iframe is Daniel Tenners take on what Google wave is and isn't for the full page is found here. Personally I think this is going to be big for collaboration and that connectivity is going to be the big delivery point for personal learning in online connected real time environment like google docs etherpad and google wave.

Ride the wave if you have trouble reading the frame below Daniels website is only a click away

Google docs Ulearn

Some Ideas for Google apps integration and use of Google docs. These simple tools are so connected and so online that they are changing the way we work play and collaborate (or me any way ;—)  ).  You are able to edit and add to the slides below. There is a lot more to add to the story so please have a go and I will be able to reflect on how this can grow from a simple start. Connectivity is King, Queen, Matai and Keli’i

Googledocs a quick learn

We are starting to use google docs for our students

Why for those who are not sure?

Once we get over the wow look at this, look at that; we need to focus on how to improve learning.

Nick Rate has a good idea for writing the pic below links to his full post with examples.

Colours could also be used to identify (multiple concurrent authors is powerful learning just ask Vygotsky)

• ownership
• parts of speech
• editing process
• thought process
• de bonos thinking hats
• perspectives
• main ideas
• disagreement
• discussion points

This Google presentation has some other good ideas

 

I am working with some teachers on this tomorrow and it needs to be about teaching and learning

the good thing with google docs is I know it can be just that.

Tinychat is big collaboration

Came across this from an oz/nz online meeting and think it ticks the right boxes.

My real respect for this comes from the lack of barriers to entry. This is a video conferencing space

that allows people to video chat with up to 8 participants and chat with upto 100 others. I tried to join a couple of rooms that were on Iran and the election. There was no one in them and I guess that shows that purpose is required and that we need a tinychat only when we need a chat. So when do we need one.

• When the people are far away and we know them but can’t be with them.
• When we are co-constructing a topic, event or experience
• When we are wanting feedback form an unbiased and neutral
• When creating home school partnership
• If we believe there is some extra learning and competencies being created as a result

Tomorrow is a big day

Extracts from what I want to say about the need for open access fibre networks to connect learners, learning organisations the world over.

I was unable to attend the first planning meeting of the group who have organised this event but have since understood the brief given for this part of the day’s programme to be look at Wow technology .

I was somewhat uncomfortable about this at first because afterall we were to address school principals. People who have had technology pitched to them over along period of time. Often we have shown you the big picture, the future, nirvana, the promised land of technology. And the education landscape is littered with failed promises, the unused and the past its use by date. We all know there are some realities around education that have not always worked in well with life on bleeding edge of technology. 

So before we consider wow factor I think it is important to look to look at the future through rose tinted glasses, through binoculars and under the microscope. We will not be able to do this in the timeframe of one day or meeting but what we may be able to consider is relationship of network connectivity to what we are trying to achieve as learning organisations. This will add to our ability to move towards a preferred future rather than the default one.

Connectivity is at the heart of this meeting and we will briefly outline the different types of network connection people are using to be part of the internet.

In terms of wow technology we have chosen a video conference and matched its participants to further discussion the potential of learning over networks.

This we hope will give a working example of the capacity of fibre optic bandwidth unachievable without such a connection.

We will look at what one New Zealand Council believes about the need for open access fibre networks.

What is happening with infrastructure

A student starting school today if attending till year 13 will leave in 2022.

From Ian Jukes

 

In Broad Sweeping Generalisations

We are increasing the number of devices because of

• Weight
• Cost
• Battery life
• Reliability
• Connectivity
• Functionality
• Value of the network to which they connect

The implications are

• We need either greater simplicity/reliability of equipment or greater technical support
• Increased device density requires better internal networks especially wireless
• Learners create more as well as consume
• School/community partnerships and
• anytime anywhere anyhow learning grows
• Much of this relates our new curriculum whose vision is “for young people who are confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners.”
• And this relates perfectly to networks and connections.

I hope it goes well tomorrow.

Reason 1 Why we are moving to the cloud?

Who Wants to manage servers?

What's the purpose of managing these?

If they can't be accessed in anywhere anytime are they still of value?

The bubble share shows one medium sized schools infrastructure and we have invested many hours keeping this going.

Educational fibre loops and external providers should reduce this need.

We have moved 1 server from the rack which is the big hole at the bottom.

How do we escape? Step 1 google docs

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

Netbooks are go.

We are always looking for technologies that enable learning and engage learners. We have this year initiated a 1 to 1 netbook programme for year seven students. I have never been happier in my beliefs that connected students will learn better. A bold statement I know but the students learning is evident both in the classroom and out. We have had to extend access to our social networking site elgg with over 100 concurrent connections to the database. This is becoming the hub of literacy development (see Below) as the community kicks in. Here I see Metcalfe's law showing true in education only with a few subtle differences. Metcalfe's law states that "the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system" Well the same can be said for learning value as more people connect the more we can learn from each other. The students are also empowered by knowing the other people they see on their network. I will ask some of them questions about this next week but first need to get a list of network beliefs off my Chest. Please add to this via comments.

Network value and function depends on:

• Number of people connected
• A feeling of ownership
• A feeling of engagement
• Network having multiple links student-teacher, Teacher-teacher, student-student, student-parent etc
• The ability of the network to support multiple concurrent connections which requires:
  • High density Wireless provision
  • High Speed internet provision
  • Access to appropriate learning and social networks
  • Anytime anywhere anyhow

Ownership and personalisation

The personalisation of the device comes from its size, connectivity and obviously belonging to the user. The photos I have taken around the school as I came across students and netbooks. All after class out of school.

Here We can see weekend engagement of students in the social network at Southwell School.

Shozu mobile uploader

I have been using Shozu with my n95. It think it is pretty good sofar. Following is a movie of how to and a sample I have recorded with Divneet.

Just shows why so many people are marking mobile use a key tech trend.

Five minutes on economic impact

This is intended to be a five minute post on one to one computing and price point.
While not the only issue things have to be affordable for parents and schools.
The price of the same Acer Aspire one netbook as gone up 20 percent in the past month.
Ouch !!!
So the contenders are

• The classmate pc
• The acer Aspire one
• The eeepc approx

Not sure if they have all gone up but:
What we would need to see is: offsetting this against other costs such as stationary
but also an improvement in student learning.
This is notoriously hard to measure.

Here is hoping the parent jury value and believe that a good teacher will see
students learning to learn and showing exciting outcomes and understandings
from a 1 to 1 experience.













By the way the classmate is my favorite because of the price/performance

And oops took 10 mins of time for post looks like price of time has also gone up

When do we go with the cloud?

Determined to post. In the cloud ?

As microsoft schools agreement comes to a close do we jump onto the cloud in the
hope that we won't fall through?

• The reasons why to jump

• the netbooks with microsoft are

• slower to boot
• more battery hungry
• invest development in a fading star
• are expensive and focus efforts on what is known

• Life on the cloud

• looking at things with new perspective
• collaborative opportunities to the fore
• blending and mashups are more able to personalise experiences
• anywhere/anydevice
• less complicated
• more universal
  

We have one teacher embedding dippity in one of our online spaces. Their investigation of inventions was well suited to this. So long as we keep our eyes and ears out for purpose the
web won't let us down.

going with google

I guess I am a believer in google.
But Why???
So what is so good about a google map, doc etc.
For me the same opportunity is consistent. Collaboration is my preferred learning style in this web environment. Creativity, added knowledge and personalisation make me feel as if I can serve some purpose.When we add and individualise a map we are adding knowledge value. As others add knowledge this increases further.

• historical events
• story telling where event move from one location to another
• all the place where you can eat, exercise, view
  
• all the places to collect, pine cones, water
  
• areas that are changing
• holiday spots measure distance
• school camp description
• becoming familiar with other people and worlds
• poems
  
• water quality sample results
• oral history map references

Here is a map I have been using to test some of the features in Googlemaps

View Larger Map

here is a link to a google earth in education page

Set them free

How network dependent are we?

Well we have just about signed off on the development of a wireless gateway at the school where I work. A what?
A wireless gateway is a computer networking device that routes packets from a wireless LAN to another network, typically a wired WAN. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless gateway
or off the top of my head
"A mechanism for providing wireless access to a network and controlling the traffic on it."
We are using a bluesocket solution. This will mean that all kind of devices and visitors can use our network to access the web or other resources while we remain safe in our data and internet connection.
It is funny but it strikes me that both are necessary now. An organisation needs to be able to host others on its network as life without internet becomes informationally untenable. This is coupled with people's realisation that their devices are wireless capable if only the environment in which they find themselves can provide network access.
Devices like this psp or the eeepc above or dare I say it phones. I am just continuing this post having transferred my device from an expensive ibm x60 tablet running vista (a problem with fan noise is driving me to drink) to my daughter's $500 nz eeepc. The screen size is different but the application is the same ie the web and what it connects me to.



The network the network the network.
Friends, sounds, opinions, information, differentiation, images, diversity, provocation, articulation, video, passive activity, aggregation, automation etc etc.
Outside of this there are many other applications of course but I feel the involvement of others is what makes the network the place to be.

The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies:

• thinking
• using language, symbols, and texts
• managing self
• relating to others
• participating and contributing.

All of these are network related. Now I am not saying that
network infrastructure is all there is BUT I can't see us resolving
key competencies without it. This all makes " the kids pay price for cellphones on Weblogg-ed " a sad read.
Let's ensure our organisations have wireless networks that are secure but they
must be open and able to be utilised widely. What do you think??

Infrastructure - network

It look to me that in most cases applications are moving to the network. My colleague and friend Mark Craven was talking about his belief that cloud computing is the way to go.

"cloud computing -- where applications and files are stored on a large, centralized supercomputer or network. The end user accesses his or her files using computers that are more streamlined but less sophisticated than today's typical machines."

I see some exceptions today with the power etc not quite there for video editing, high end gaming etc. But overall I think that Mark is right. Cloud computing is simple, reduces admin over heads etc. At the school where I work email, calendaring, planning, learning, photo galleries, wikis, forums etc already happen on the web. Portfolios reporting and collaboration are happening in this space also.
This is an organisational cloud in my mind.

Assets for cloud computing

• big pipes with the network to the internet and back
• virtualisation of servers so that demand can be met
• from whole resource
• back up of data to provide high Qos and response time
• clear navigation and service understanding
• consistent interface and a central portal organised
• scalable so that new applications and client can be added

.