#TechTipTuesday – Summer Holiday Tech Prep
On Tuesdays, I share a Tech Tip on our social media pages to assist our staff in their use of technology as it relates to their role.
It is the LAST week of our End-of-Year Checklist series. If you are jumping in now, you can check out the previous posts:
- Week 1 focused on Learning Management Systems (Teams, Seesaw and Class Dojo)
- Week 2 focused on Digital File Organization
- Week 3 focused on Social Media
Here in MVSD, the remaining items on our formal checklist are almost exclusively internal reminders for our staff. These include things like what to do with their devices if they are heading into a leave of absence (LOA) or changing roles, how building renovation schedules may affect tech access/storage in their spaces, and reminders about divisional PD that occurs through the summer. As such, these topics are not as universally suitable to an audience beyond our staff. However, with that being said, it is the LAST week of school and I cannot stress enough the importance of ensuring our devices and systems are set up in a way that helps achieve balance while away from our positions. I spoke a bit about this to kick off our week yesterday.
For those of us who are 10-month employees, and our 12-month employees taking summer holidays, I recommend turning on your automatic replies indicating you are not available for an immediate response. Not only is this polite online behaviour so that potential contacts can manage their expectations appropriately, but it can also help to reduce any feelings you may have surrounding a “need” to respond even when you are not at work. (I’ll include a tutorial below for those who operate within Outlook).
If you previously had your work email on your smartphone or personal devices you may consider removing it for the break. Alternatively, you can go into your settings and disable all notifications for the break. For those who are in positions where they have what I call “high priority” contacts that you want to stay connected with regardless of the time, you can also make mail rules or further customize your device’s notification options to allow for these contacts to come through while others are filtered until you return. For me, I have my technician team and school division office team set always to come through as I know that, if they are contacting me while I am away, there is a very valid reason. With this being said, I also work with an amazing team who would not overstep this action and I recognize that not everyone always has colleagues who operate in this way. As such, take the steps that work best for you and the parameters of your role!