Teachers' Page:
We start each week with a Monday Morning Meeting for staff. It's a time for information sharing, celebrating staff and children's achievements, laughter, building and strengthening the kaupapa foundations for our school, and a few tips on teaching, techie skills and even life. This page will be the place teachers can come back to if they want to revisit anything we covered in our Monday Morning Meetings.
It's really a page for teachers, but if you find anything worthwhile here for yourself, great.
There is a lot to share this first time - a catch-up from the beginning of the year. Future versions will be shorter.
Web Sites:
https://neal.fun/space-elevator/
https://neal.fun/size-of-space/
https://youtu.be/v7dMc8Na8X0?t=5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g07SCqKPOes
Techie Tips:
Open Web Links In Background
Say you’re researching something and find dozens of links on Google you’d like to open.
Time Saver: Click on each link on the page while holding ⌘. They’ll load in fresh tabs in the background.
Bonus tip:
Click ⌥ + ⌘ + ←/→ to visit the previous or next tab and ⌘ + W to close it.
Keyboard Shortcuts
⌘+ T (Opens new tab in your Browser) ⌘+ D (Duplicates whatever you click-once selected)
⌘+ R (Refreshes your browser page)
⌘+ , (Opens preferences for the active app)
⌘+ M (Minimises active window into Dock)
Shift ⌘+V (Pastes and matches the style of the document you are pasting into)
Don’t type url suffixes.
This feature works only when your iPhone confirms you’re in a field that wants an email address or a URL.
When typing the suffix (like .com, .org etc.), tap and hold the period. Then it shows some quick hit suffixes you can choose from by swiping left or right.
The text replacement feature on iPhone (syncs with Mac, too) allows you to type a short text, which is then converted to a comprehensive phrase by the iPhone (and Mac), both of which are pre-defined by you. For example: "omw" is by default converted to "On my way!"
To use this, navigate to Settings @ < General @ < Keyboard < Text Replacement, and add your entry.
I set Hi and Greetings to automatically change to Kia Ora, food to kai, and bye to ka kite ano.
Siri Tips:
Flip a coin, roll dice, or pick a number
You can tell Siri to flip a coin, roll a single die or two, or pick a random number.
For this, say, "Hey Siri! Flip a coin, or Roll a die, Roll dice (for two), pick a number", and she'll reply with an unbiased result.
Siri always picks a random number between 1 and 100 by default. You can specify a different range if you want.
Count days between ...
Hey Siri! How long until Christmas? How long until my father’s birthday? How many days between 5th April and 25th September?
Let Siri wake you up.
You can say, “Hey Siri! Wake me up in 45 minutes," and she'll set an alarm.
You can also say, “Hey Siri! Set a timer of 45 minutes" •
If you woke up earlier and wanted to delete the alarm, you can say, "Hey Siri! Delete the alarm at 3:45 pm, for example, or Delete all my alarms."
Fun with Siri
For something different, here are some Siri commands you could try. Just say
Hey Siri! Do beatbox
Do rap
Sing a song
Sing a lullaby
Tell a joke Tell a story
Tell a horror story
Tell a haiku”
Repeat the commands again and again to get different replies.
Teaching Tips:
When a student gives an, 'I don't know response...
Say, "Tell me something you do know that might be helpful."
Life Tips
Sketchplanations
Advise vs advice and other s and c's
Is it advise or advice? Devise or device? And if you're using British English, license or licence, practise or practice?
Handily, the general practice is to use an 's' for the verb, and a 'c' for the noun. So advise is something you do, and advice is something you give.
In American English, only license and practice for verbs and nouns exist. However, in British English, you would you use license if you were licensing someone and what they received would be a licence — with a 'c'. And in British English, you would practise when you went to practice.
Some places suggest thinking of the '-ice' at the end as ice which is a noun. Whatever works for you.
License/licence and practise/practice are homophones
Attribution bias:
Attribution bias includes a set of more specific biases where we may attribute behaviour to fixed personality traits or characteristics of a person rather than specific circumstances or actions. For example, a child may be labelled a genius or gifted when they actually had a supportive environment and worked hard, or someone may be labelled a loser rather than recognising specific circumstances that led to some failures.
Criticism — one of the four horsemen of relationship apocalypse — can become toxic when attributed to someone's personality traits. For example, calling someone 'lazy' rather than sharing how it makes you feel when they don't keep the place tidy.
A form of attribution bias may be applied to whole societies via the Destiny Instinct.
Specific examples of attribution bias include the fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias.
Ask the question at talks:
At times we've probably all been confused or struggled to understand a talk or a class. When I'm lost or confused, my rule of thumb is to ask, even when it's not easy.
The desire to understand what's being said fights with the urge not to interrupt the talk or ask what may be a dumb question — perhaps everyone else already knows? But in my experience, if I'm confused, others likely are too.
It helps to believe this because I know that asking will probably help others, not just myself — asking is a public service. It's very easy as a speaker to assume that others will know what you know, and so jargon and TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms - really an initialism) so easily slip in. When someone asks, it helps include everyone again.
And you're not just doing a favour for the audience by asking — it's a gift for the speaker too. If I'm giving a talk, I want people to get what I'm sharing and not suffer in silence, thinking they're stupid and I'm confusing. I want everyone to follow from start to end. It's one more good reason to thank people for the questions you receive.
Let's banish confusion, and all get to the end together by asking the question.
This advice stands, provided you've been paying attention along the way.