Community Update – September 2017

Kia ora everyone,

Woohoo, it’s nearly school holiday time!

We’ve got some great updates for you as we head towards the end of September and look forward to the school break. It’s been great to visit a few of you in my recent travels around NZ.

A big welcome to the following new members: Lynda from Alfriston in Auckland, Emma from Riccarton in Christchurch, Yvonne from Waikari in North Canterbury, Trin from Shotover in Queenstown, Hannah, Nigel and Deb from Kaikoura, Raewyn from Greymouth – we are delighted to have you join our community.

We are changing the name of the community from Office Staff Learning Community to just the Online Learning Community. This is because principals and teachers also want to join the community.

Given this, we will be redesigning the environment so that it is easy for teachers, office staff, and school leaders to find the courses and content that matters to them.

New features

Members can now send one another compliments! This is a little like an instant message, but with an emoji attached. Thanks to Emma for her inspiration, we’ve used minions to inject a bit of fun into this. Here are  of the other options available:

Go on, give someone a compliment!

Great new content in the forums to help you quickly solve problems

1. How to use a Google Form to create a student wellbeing survey – Anna from Everglade
2. How to insert a watermark in a Google Doc – Trin from Shotover
3. How to set up a group email list for parents – Anna from Little River
4. How to send a Google Form to parents – Rhonda from Windwhistle
5. The 5 types of email filter – by Rob for members

New Courses

We’ve got a number of new courses coming in October for you to take advantage of:

1. Organise Your School With A Staff Booklet – this is a short course (10 videos consisting of just over 30 minutes) which accompanies one of our most popular template for G Suite, the Staff Booklet. This template brings a wide range of organisational information into one place, thus making it easier for staff to find key documents. If you work through this course and implement this template it will make a huge difference to the organisation of your school.
2. Tame Your Email – Fundamentals – a short course to help familiarise you with the email interface. This course will be followed by two more we are working on now to take enable you to really take control of your mail.
3. Best Practices for Organising Cloud-based Systems – you will learn important key concepts about working in the cloud, plus loads of handy tips and tricks to save time and make yourself more efficient.

Have a wonderful holiday,

Rob