We are all guilty of not being able to switch off from work sometimes. This can be even more so when we have apps such as Outlook and Teams downloaded on our mobile phones, notifying us every hour of the day, even on weekends. But what is this doing to our wellbeing? It is very important to remember to set boundaries with the digital world, and this includes turning off your notifications!
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams offers different ways to access, receive, and manage notifications. These settings include how, when, and where your notifications appear, custom settings for channels and chat, appearance and sounds, turning off specific messages, and so on.
To manage your notifications, select Settings and more 
in the top right of Teams, then select Settings 
> Notifications 
.
Top tip: completely turn of all notifications if you’re on a holiday or just some well needed time off from work, and switch them back on when you return to work.
Outlook
Schedule your notifications on Outlooks and take charge of your quiet times. Having notifications of emails from Outlook on your days off can be very annoying, or distracting if you’re trying to get work done!
The settings process for managing Outlook notifications will differ depending on what device you use.
Outlook Do Not Disturb feature:
You can even schedule when you’d like Do Not Disturb to be enabled:
This website contains monthly webinars on various topics surrounding online learning as part of the a wider Future Teacher 3.0 project. There are a selection on monthly webinar topics dating back to March 2017, some of which have since been revised. Each webinar begins with a short introduction and then in many cases engaging and interactive presentations from guest presenters.
The Teaching Online series of episodes on YouTube shares 11 short videos (approx. 3mins each) presented by Dave Cormier. Dave Cormier is an educational activist, researcher and online community advocate. These videos serve as guiding principles for teaching online. It comprises of the following episodes:
First in a video series to help academic staff make the “fast switch to e-learning” in response to the challenges presented through this COVID-19 epidemic. This is an introduction to the approach in a series of videos produced by Vrini Rossi, they have been co-created and are developed using low the solutions. The videos are freely available and are hosted on Vimeo, however have been recorded by screencast-o-matic.
This course hosted on Future Learn was developed by The Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology including Leigh-Anne Perryman, Martin Weller and Lesley McGrath. The course explores four myths: that learning design is about technology and content; that innovation and accessibility are incompatible; that researching online learning is an ethics-free zone, and that educators’ online identities are irrelevant. On this course you will develop personas to help course design, apply accessibility guidelines, examine your digital identity, discuss the relationship between technology, content, people and pedagogy in online courses and consider ethical considerations in online teaching.
The whole TEL Course on Blackboard and Canvas is useful generally to support all areas of learning and Teaching online. It includes a range of material which spans more of the topics in the Resources for Teaching including many Creative Commons external resources and links as well as Swansea Universities guidelines and support. There is a whole section on Connect, Communicate and Collaborate which provides a range of tools and activities designed to help you practise with asynchronous and synchronous learning and Teaching methods. You can work through the activities at your own pace, engaging fully with all the activities in this section will enable you to experience online learning for yourself, and this will give you a wealth of detail to draw upon and some practical ideas to challenge your students.
This course draws on the expertise of the The Open University – a global leader in online learning. You will explore online learning and the wide-ranging benefits it brings to learners. You’ll discover the skills required for online study and evaluate your own study skillset. You’ll also examine how students form online communities and how they benefit from flexible study arrangements while still being supported by dedicated tutors.
This blog post aims to help educators who are new to using assistive technology (AT) with students. It gives an overview of what AT is, best uses of it and examples of how it benefits all learners. The article also covers assessment process involving AT, as well as considerations around support for AT.