My name is Eleni Kyritsis, I am the Deputy Head of Junior School in Melbourne Australia, and I also work part time for Mote as the Community Leader. I love my job and everything that comes with it. Mote is a tool that I discovered while on maternity leave in 2020. When returning to work during the pandemic I loved how I was able to connect with students and provide meaningful feedback on their learning whilst they were learning from home. Now fast forward to 2022 I still love using Mote daily in the classroom. In this post I am going to share a day in the life of how I use Mote to support me as a working mum finding that work-life balance.
7:30am – Arrive at work
My role as Deputy Head is to inform teachers of any absentees and changes to the daily schedule. Through our school’s Learning Management System (LMS) I can verbally record the daily update using Mote’s MotePad and share and embed this directly into our Staff LMS page.
8:30am – Classes begin
Each morning I walk the corridors to say good morning to the students as they arrive. I have many conversations with students as well as teachers and some parents, so I find the Mote app on my phone so valuable as I can quickly record any reminders and to do items as Mote’s which I follow up with at a later time.
11:30am – Library Book recommendations
Students love reading at our school and love to share what books they have read with each other. In the library we have a loans computer for students to browse the books they can borrow. When students have read a book they can leave a recommendation by recording a Mote in the Library account. Once a week I go and share these using the QR code button and create a Bookmark. With the help of our Library technician we print these and place these inside the book cover for other students to explore and listen to the book recommendations from other students in our school. Student’s use an iPad from the Library to help scan and listen to Mote bookmark book recommendations.
12:30pm – Emails
I was observing a student whilst on yard duty and needed to follow up with their teacher at the end of lunch break. When composing the email in Gmail, I simply hit the Mote button and record my voice message of my observations and then send. This allows me to work efficiently and also the teacher listening to the recording. Mote within Gmail is one of my favourite features.
2:00pm – Year 6 Design Class
In my Design class, students are beginning a new project where they are exploring Sustainable Housing. I researched a range of websites that I would like the students to explore about the topic and shared these in Google Classroom. Using the Mote extension in Chrome I can create Sticky Motes with instructions on each of the websites to support students with their own research on these pages. Within Google Classroom, students can also use the Mote chrome extension to record a verbal comment for me.
3:30pm – Veggie Patch QR Motes
Our Year 5 students have created Mote QR Cards (similar to our Library bookmark recommendations) that we have added to each Veggie Patch with students recording what the plant is and when we should have a harvest. At student pick up at the end of the day, our parent community love scanning and hearing the students explain what the veggie patches are and what we are growing. These have become a great discussion for parents and students. I had
4pm – Administration tasks
In the afternoon I review and listen to the Motes I created throughout the day via the iOS app. I review these on my laptop and keep track of all conversations I had throughout the day or from meetings I attended.
4:30pm – Hometime
I hope you have enjoyed reading and seeing how I use Mote daily to support my productivity both in the classroom and with administration tasks.
I hope you have enjoyed reading how I use Mote throughout my day. Please share any tips or tricks with how you use Mote throughout your day.