[music playing]

OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Janet Hernandez: Welcome to Technology and Distance Learning Symposium brought by OTAN. It's March 3, and we're doing this for a couple of days. And I hope that you're able to join and look at the other sessions that are going on in the next couple of days. Our session is called Getting to Know Gmail Beyond Sending and Receiving Emails. We're starting right now, and our session goes till about 4:15.

Melissa Baumunk: Thank you, Janet. So Janet and I are your presenters for today. We are both ESL teachers at Rowland Adult and Community Education in Rowland Heights, California. And we are also a part of the Digital Leadership Academy that is being offered by OTAN. So this is a two-year program. And with that program, we are taking courses and working together to design and distance learning course to be implemented at our school. So really we are very excited to be a part of the Digital Leadership Academy, and this opportunity through OTAN. And even more so, we're excited to be your presenters today for this session. So once again, welcome.

So some session information as we get started. This will be a 90-minute demonstration session. So we will do a little bit of demonstrating and guiding, and you will have the opportunity to dive in and explore some of what we are presenting today. So we said it at the very beginning, we'll do a quick reminder. It is helpful if you are able to join from a computer or laptop to fully engage in this interactive session today.

Also, have your Gmail account open, we will be asking you to go into your Gmail account and trying out some of these features that we will be covering. Throughout the presentation, you will have some time to, like we said, go in use these features, play with some of the settings to help you meet these objectives for today's session.

However, if you are not able to join from a computer or laptop, we understand. Just know that we will provide this presentation for you so you might want to just maybe take notes along the way and try to access or utilize some of these features at another time when it is more convenient for you. But it is intended to be a really engaging session for everybody. Any questions before we move on? You just kind of raise your hand or put them in the chat. OK, all right, we will continue.

Janet Hernandez: OK, so our objectives today, there are several things that we want to cover. Hopefully by the end of today's session, you'll be able to search for emails, especially specific emails that you're looking for, especially if you have a long list of emails, and you don't know where that email is. Melissa is going to show you how to search for emails specifically. We are going to create labels or folders in our Gmail. She will show you how to do some appropriate reply options. We'll take a look at those.

And then we'll see how we can change them as well. We'll show you how to manage your contacts, how to schedule outgoing emails because there's a great little device there on Gmail that you can schedule outgoing emails. And then lastly, we're leaving some time to explore some additional features in the Settings menu because if you use Gmail, you'll see that there's a lot of tools. So we're going to explore some of those towards the end. And then again, give you the opportunity to personalize the closing of your-- on your Gmail, your signature down at the bottom.

So like Melissa said, hopefully, you're able to log in to your Gmail account, have it open and accessible maybe side by side to this presentation because we are allowing time after each objective for you to go in there and play and practice the skills. We really thought about this presentation where we wanted you to do it during the presentation and not leave it at the end. OK, so hopefully, you utilize that time.

Melissa Baumunk: Thank you.

Janet Hernandez: You're welcome.

Melissa Baumunk: OK, so we're going to begin with using the search bar. So if you have Gmail open, I know Cindy showed how to kind of follow alongside by side looking at my screen and your screen at the same time, you're welcome to do either or you can just follow along with what I am showing here.

And like Janet said, we will give you time after to then try it for yourself. So at the-- when you open your Gmail at the very top, or just above all of your messages there's a bar, that's the search mail and chat. So you may have seen that in your Gmail.

And within that-- I mean, I don't know how many times it's happened you've gotten an email and you're like, oh, let me find that email. And you're scrolling through the list of how many hundreds of emails that you have, and you can't quite find it. You get 50 mails-- emails a day from the same person. And so on this search bar at the top, there's a little drop down.

It's a little drop down caret, you click that and then you just-- you'll find a lot more options to search and filter your emails. So you can type in from, your searching for an email from a particular person. You can enter their name there. Something you sent to someone, maybe you remember the subject was meeting or lessen whatever the subject had, or has the words. So you remember it had this word in it. So there's just a lot of options here to filter, and hopefully, filter out some of the emails you know it's not in to find a very specific email. So at this point, let me open my Gmail.

Janet Hernandez: And as Melissa is explaining, if you have any questions, please utilize the chat because I'm monitoring it and we're taking turns. So the chat's open and if you have questions or even if you have comments or some extra ideas, please we will share them as soon as we get them.

Melissa Baumunk: OK, so this is my inbox. And everyone's inbox will look a little bit different. And I'm sure you're just very comfortable with how yours looks, I'm comfortable with how mine looks. I know some people might say, Oh, that's-- whatever. It might be unorganized, might be organized, however [interposing voices] chaos. So I would just click up here, and let's see I want to look for-- so gale, he's my coordinator. So I want to look for an email for him so I could just simply, from my inbox, click up here the search bar, look for an email from Gale and suddenly, the emails that I show here are all emails that I have received from him. OK, so that could be the first way I can search for an email.

The second way I can search for an email is really the same thing, but I'm going to hit this dropdown, OK? And let's see, I know I got an email from Gale, same person, and let's see it had the word CASAS in it.

Janet Hernandez: I was going to say CASAS.

Melissa Baumunk: And he sent me something about CASAS, so I just want to find that email. So I will filter that out, and now I have fewer emails. And now they all have CASAS. So I'm going to look and see which one was it that I wanted. Yeah, this one right here with my CASAS schedule. And so now I have the schedule that he sent me for CASAS testing.

So again, I get a lot of emails from this person, but I knew specifically I wanted to find the one with the schedule that he sent to me so I was able to filter it that way. Or let's see-- from-- let's see. We've gotten a lot of emails recently from OTAN in preparation for today's session.

Janet Hernandez: Right.

Melissa Baumunk: So I'm going to type "from OTAN," "search"-- and here we go. Lots of emails from OTAN. "Present your information," "reminder"-- so I can filter out all those other emails from people from work or students in one of my classes, and now I'm only going to see emails that I have received from OTAN.

Or maybe I want to see OTAN has the words "TDLS." And it filters it out, and now I'm only seeing emails from OTAN regarding TDLS. Because I do get emails from OTAN for DLAC and other reasons. OK. So before we go any further, if you have any questions regarding searching in the chat go ahead and put them-- searching in your email-- go ahead and put them in the chat.

Again, as you can see, you can search by date, so within the last day, within the last three days, within the last week-- has an attachment. So I just want to see one that I received from Gale and it has an attachment. I can click "has an attachment" on there.

So there are a few ways to filter out your emails to really narrow down and not have to sift through so many emails. OK? All right. I'm not seeing any questions in the chat, which is fine. That's because they're busy searching. Right? Hopefully. And look at-- now I'm having my blue teeth. Boy, we worked really hard on that. OK.

OK. So now it is your turn. Yeah. So now, like we said, after each objective we want to give you the opportunity to practice. Now it might have been that you've already used that search bar, but maybe you've only done it by name. So now I really want you to get in there and have different-- search in different ways.

See if you can use a search bar and maybe search for something more specific, or play with options that you weren't able to play with before. Because when we're on work time, we need to send out our emails or do our emails and we don't really have the opportunity to play. So utilize this time right now. Go onto that search bar.

OK, so Laurie put something here in the chat. "Have several email accounts, not all Gmail." Laurie, I'm not sure if that was a question or a comment. This feature is that we demonstrated today specifically for a Gmail account.

So was that a question, if you're able to do that in other email accounts? "How to incorporate all." All right. Let me see. I'm not make sure what we're trying to find, but we can look at it together.

Janet Hernandez: I think she might be asking if she has several Gmail accounts

Melissa Baumunk: Oh, I see. I see. OK. So I am only searching in the Gmail account that I am logged into. so if you have several Gmail accounts-- yeah, I am looking at-- sorry-- one mail account.

So yeah. I have several Gmail accounts. I have several email accounts, not all Gmail. But I am specifically logged in currently on my work Gmail, so when I'm searching I'm only going to search within my work Gmail account since that's the one I'm logged into.

Janet Hernandez: That's a good question. I wonder if-- can you go back onto that search bar and see--

Melissa Baumunk: Yeah.

Janet Hernandez: --if there's an option there?

Melissa Baumunk: "Size," "date," "search." Oh, here we go. "All Mail." "Inbox."

Janet Hernandez: We don't see it on your screen.

Melissa Baumunk: Well, let me--

Janet Hernandez: We just see your--

Melissa Baumunk: There we go. "All Mail." No, I don't see if you can search--

Janet Hernandez: Yeah, to have it on different-- because yeah, I have two different Gmails, and every time I search it's only been on the one that is currently open. OK. There's a question here. It says, "don't include chat."

Melissa Baumunk: Oh, yeah. There you go. "Right next to 'has a chat attachment' it says,

don't include chat. How would chats land in email in the first place?" So I'm going to step in here. We did not address chats in this search. We just very specifically were focusing on the Gmail part of the search. Let's see. Renée has a comment. "You can also use the minus sign to eliminate some from"-- Oh, that's a good tip.

Janet Hernandez: Yeah.

Melissa Baumunk: So you can say @gmail.com, so find all email from people sending from @gmail. Good. But then "minus"-- ooh, that's getting really deep. That's like advanced search. "Minus," and then put a specific email. Good. That's good to know.

If you're wanting to know what Renée added, go ahead and check out the chat. Because you can search-- like, for example, I guess we can search "all @rowlandschools.org," but then minus someone specifically if we know it's not from them. Good tip, Renée. I like that.

Janet Hernandez: That's a great tip.

Melissa Baumunk: OK. But as far as chats, yeah, we did not address chats. OK, so Toni's saying that her school doesn't use Gmail but uses Outlook. So there's probably some of the same options and filters in the search bar. We only use Gmail, so I don't really use Outlook, so I cannot address if it's similar. I'm just assuming it would be, only because some of these accounts are-- someone else is saying, "No, they are very different."

Janet Hernandez: Well, then there's your answer.

Melissa Baumunk: OK.

Janet Hernandez: Oh, wow.

Melissa Baumunk: But you may have a personal Gmail. Some people have their work email account, whatever system work uses, and then a personal Gmail account. So-- all right, so give us a quick reaction, your thumbs up, if you were able to just-- very simply, we started out pretty simple. Were you able to search and find a specific email? Click thumbs up. Thank you, Toni, for your thumbs up. Renée.

Janet Hernandez: OK.

Melissa Baumunk: So--

Janet Hernandez: Matt.

Melissa Baumunk: That's good. I'm seeing some thumbs up, some checks.

Janet Hernandez: Yeah.

Melissa Baumunk: Good.

Janet Hernandez: Good. That means you guys are utilizing this time to really play, which is the goal, really. I feel like sometimes I go to sessions and I learn all this information and I take all my notes, and then I have to find the time to play. So good. Use this time to play as we're going through our objectives today.

Melissa Baumunk: OK. So next we're going to move on to labels. OK. So within labels in Gmail we're going to look at how to create labels to organize emails. I want you to think of labels as folders in your email Inbox, even though they are called labels.

And there are several options from your Inbox to create a label. There's a gear that says "Manage labels," and the arrow here is showing it should be on the left side of your Inbox. There's also a plus sign that says, "Create new label." So those are two ways to create a label in your email setting-- or in your email Inbox.

And then there's also a gear that says "Settings." So there's a few-- so when Janet and I started talking about this, she goes, "Well, I do this to create a label." And I go, "Well, I do this to create a label." It doesn't matter. Either way you've got--

Janet Hernandez: Takes you to the same place.

Melissa Baumunk: --you'll create a label.

Janet Hernandez: Yeah.

Melissa Baumunk: So just use whichever one is easy, comfortable for you as far as creating labels. Let's see.

Janet Hernandez: And it's always towards the bottom of that menu. So if you already have labels that you've created, you really have to scroll all the way down to the bottom to get this-- the shortcut. I was always doing at the old school way, where I would go to the top and click on the gear that says "Settings" and create my labels that way. And then Melissa showed me the shortcut, and I love it.

So like I said, we're sharing. And if you have another way, please put that in the chat. We can put it out there for everyone else.

Melissa Baumunk: OK. So once again, here is my Gmail Inbox. And if you look at the far left, these are my labels. So I have a few. And these are all that I created myself. So you may have none there if you haven't created any yet. You may have some created yourself. As you could see, I've got to scroll, scroll, scroll. I'm going to click "More" and I'm going to keep scrolling. So you may have to click "More" at the bottom, but you're going to scroll down here.

And these are the two options I showed you on the previous screen. You can either click the gear that says "Manage labels" or you can click "Plus" and create a new label. OK, so these are the two quick ways you can do it. Another way, at the top of your email Inbox towards the right--

Janet Hernandez: That's a gear.

Melissa Baumunk: It's a gear. And you can click that also. So three ways that we know of to be able to create a label. So I'm just simply going to click this little plus sign down here at the bottom, "Create new label."

And you can label it whatever you want. If there is a particular person you work with that you get a lot of emails from and you like to keep track of that correspondence, you can put that person's name. If you are a teacher and you have a class or more than one class that you teach, you can label it the name of your class. If you work in the office or you're an office manager and you have different maybe staff that you communicate with, you can label it maybe something like "Office staff."

So really this is your Gmail, you can do with it what you like, but that's the easiest one, "Create new label," and this will pop up. "Manage labels," you can click that and then it brings you to this screen.

Janet Hernandez: One more options here.

Melissa Baumunk: Yeah and then you just can click your-- scroll down a little and click "Create new label." It took me to the exact same place. It just was two clicks instead of one. So let me go back.

And then that third way I showed you, which is this gear at the top right. I would click that. Now I'm going to click "See all settings." I get this again, way too many choices here, but I would click "Labels," scroll down, "Create new label."

So again, different ways to do the same thing. But to keep things simple, the simplest way is right here, straight from your Inbox. Scroll down until you see it. Like I said, you might need to click "More" and continue to scroll, and then just click that "Create new label. And that's the quickest, simplest way we have found to get there. So--

Janet Hernandez: There's a question in the chat.

Melissa Baumunk: OK.

Janet Hernandez: It says, "My Inbox keeps retracting and I cannot remember how to change that." Retracting. Retracting. I'm not sure what that means. Give us an example.

Speaker 3: OK. Can you hear me?

Melissa Baumunk: Yes.

Janet Hernandez: Yes.

Speaker 3: OK. So you know how you can see your Inbox, you can see the "Manage labels," you can see everything on the left-hand screen?

Janet Hernandez: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Mine, you can't see. It like retracts back?

Janet Hernandez: Oh. OK. She's going to show you.

Melissa Baumunk: OK. So look at my screen again. So at the top-- so right here at the top where it says Gmail there's these three lines to the left of that M envelope. And I click that, and it goes away. Is that-- if that's what's happening, give that a try. So it's just this little button up here at the top.

Speaker 3: That was so simple, so simple I just couldn't remember.

Melissa Baumunk: That's OK. That's exactly why we're here. I do that sometimes too, and I'm like-- what did I just push?

Janet Hernandez: You know what? That's so funny. I press that all the time, only because like I said I'm on only one monitor and so I have to squeeze everything in here, and sometimes I just need more space to read the titles of those emails. So I just retract everything and then bring it back. So I'm always pressing those three lines up there.

Melissa Baumunk: I love that though because we have questions like that, why did this just happen, but it's OK. It shows one more thing we can demonstrate--

Janet Hernandez: Yeah.

Melissa Baumunk: --on here. OK. So let's get back to you guys and give you a chance to play. Jane's got a task for you.

Janet Hernandez: Yeah. So here we go. Now it's your turn, OK? So we want you to take this time and create some labels. For example, when we started the new session I put my Beginning High Class as my label, and then as a sub-label I put Classwork or Homework and then Communication and Test. So every time I received emails from that class, I was able to put it in the correct folder to save it, because that's really what they are.

So try and think of either a class that you have not created a label for or in general, if you work in the office, maybe a colleague or office staff. Melissa had said she gets a lot of emails from Gale, our ESL coordinator. I know you already have your label for Gale. So do I actually. He actually has three different labels. But try and see if you can think of someone else or another group that you can create a label for-- and a sub-label, to even be a little more organized.

Melissa Baumunk: Give that a try. We'll keep our eye on the chat if you have any questions that come up while you are trying that. Yeah. You'll just go into your Inbox, scroll down and click the plus sign. Create a label.

Janet Hernandez: It's the easiest way. And if you've created labels for things that you want to share that you think are pretty clever, go ahead and put those in the chat so-- sharing is caring. We all learn from each other. So if you have something, a label, a special label-- we have our OTAN labels. We have our DLAC labels. Gosh. If I brought up my email right now--

Melissa Baumunk: I know. I'm very vulnerable, showing my email to the world.

Janet Hernandez: I know. And that's why that plus sign to create a label-- if you have a lot of labels you've just got to scroll all the way down to find it, but it's there. And it just makes it a lot easier to create those labels.

Melissa Baumunk: OK. So if you've given this a try and you successfully created a label, just like before give us a little thumbs up reaction or something so we know you were successful in doing that. All right good.

Janet Hernandez: And we're on time here.

Melissa Baumunk: OK good. I'm seeing some thumbs up, so folks are able to at least create a label. If you want to dig a little deeper, you could try to create a label and a sub-label. We didn't show you yet, but you can move your emails over to those. We're going to get to that in a little bit. All right. So thank you. I saw some of your thumbs up. If I didn't see a thumb up, I'm guessing you're OK. And I don't see any further questions in the chat.

OK. So next, this one is a biggie-- replying to emails. OK. This is a biggie, because we have a few options here. So when you receive an email you can "Reply" simply to the sender, so the person who sent the email to you, which is typically what we want to do. There's a "Reply all" where you reply to every person who received that email.

And then there's some "Smart replies." That is a feature in Google. My other email, my Yahoo email, does not have that, or at least not that I've seen. So within Google there are some-- what is called smart replies.

So if you look here at my screen, this is just an email Janet sent me. And when I receive an email, at the far right there's these three dots which I can click. And I can reply, and that's just the one arrow kind of off to the left. And if I click that, I will reply to Janet and Janet only. OK?

Just below that is a reply to all, and it's two arrows going to the left. And if I click that, it will reply to everybody that Janet sent the email to. OK? I say use that button with caution, because many times you mean to reply to the person who sent it to you and you might inadvertently reply to everybody and say something that you intended only for the sender. Yeah. And some people not don't even know that there is a "Reply" and "Replay all." So just know that there are two options.

Also at the bottom there are some auto-generated smart replies that Gmail offers. So this one says, "It works!" "Got it, thanks!" "Got it!" And I can just simply click that. And it will reply, "Caution. From what we're told, it will reply all." OK? But that might depend on your default settings, which we're going to look at. So again, we have this "Reply" up here, "Reply to all," and then these "Smart replay" options at the bottom.

So I'm going to share my screen at the moment and look at some options that we have in our settings. So within your email settings you can default reply behavior. There's a setting there for that.

You can set your default reply behavior to "Reply" or to "Reply to all." There's a choice, and it will automatically default to one of those. I went ahead and went into mine, and my preference is just to reply to the person who sent me the email. Because I said nine out of ten times that is who you intend to reply to.

Next, there is the "Smart reply." You can turn that on and off. So if you noticed here I have "Smart reply" on, which is why I received these quick reply choices at the bottom of this email. You can actually turn that feature off, and then they won't even pop up for you. So again, this is a personal preference, what you prefer to have in your settings.

And also Gmail has this lovely feature. When you send an email-- I don't know if you've ever noticed, but when you send an email at the bottom there's an "Undo" button that appears for a short period of time. And if you send it off and go, "Oh, shoot. I forgot something," or "Oh, shoot," you can undo that email really quickly before it is sent off to the receiver. And in your settings you can set a timer on that, so how long you want that pause to last before the message will actually send.

So let's take a moment. I will share my screen so we can look at some of those together. OK. So once again, here's my Inbox for this. I'm going to go to the gear at the top of my email Inbox. And if I hover over that gear, it will say "Settings." So I'm going to click that, and I'm going to click "See all settings."

So here we are. These are all of my settings. And I'm in the General tab of "See all settings." I'm going to zoom in here so you can see it a little better.

There's an awful lot here. We're not going to look at all of these at the moment. But if you can see here, I have my "Undo send." So when I hit "Send" on my email, I currently have it set to 10 seconds. And I will have that "Undo" option for 10 seconds. So within 10 seconds I am able to hit "Undo" and that email will not send.

You can change that to as little as 5 seconds, or as long as 30 seconds. So you can just set that to whatever you like. I initially had it set for 30 seconds. I'm like, oh, cool. That gives me more time to think about it. I'm going to set it for 30 seconds.

But then there were times when I wanted to send something to someone right now and I'm like-- did you get it? Didn't get it. We're sitting there being--

Janet Hernandez: And I'm like no, I don't have it yet. Doh.

Melissa Baumunk: I set it back down to 10. But really that's a personal preference, whatever you like. The next one here, "Default reply behavior," you can have that "Reply" or "Reply to all." OK. And I have my default reply to simply "Reply," which means it will that reply will go only to the person who sent me the message. OK?

So this is a good time to go in there and check what your default reply behavior is, because you don't want to be accidentally sending replies to everyone within an email--

Janet Hernandez: Yeah.

Melissa Baumunk: --if you really only meant to send it to the person who sent it. I mean, a typical example of that is the boss sends an email to all staff, "Meeting this Friday." It goes to all staff. And if you reply without knowing, reply all, and say something very personal-- "You know, I'm not going to be able to be there because"-- and it's personal information, but if you had that on "Reply all," everybody sees that.

So just be really aware of that "Reply" and "Reply all." I have my default there, like I said, on "Reply." It doesn't mean I can't reply all. I just have that as my default. And the other one I want to look at are the smart replies. So I had "Smart replies" on just because I wanted to be able to show them to you, but I typically keep them off.

It doesn't matter. Again, this is a personal preference. Do you like to have the smart replies on? "Got it!" "Thanks, I'll be there." They're just really quick, simple replies. Or you can have them off. Doesn't matter. That is a personal preference.

So when I'm finished setting those to the way I want them-- I didn't really make any changes, but if I did this "Save Changes" button would be dark and then I would click "Save Changes," and it would save all of those changes for me.

Janet Hernandez: Yes. So--

Melissa Baumunk: Oh, sorry.

Janet Hernandez: I was just going to say just make sure that if you do any changes, that you save them down at the bottom. Because again, you have to go way down to the bottom of that page and press "Save."

Melissa Baumunk: OK. So now for a little bit of playtime.

Janet Hernandez: Yeah. So those are some really good options that you can do in the General setting. So again, we're going to give you time. You probably were doing it at the same time Melissa was, but go in there. And just like she said, it really is personal preference with the behaviors, the reply messages or the buttons that you choose to use or not use, but know that they're there for you.

You can "Reply" or "Reply all." I don't know about you, but when we get a general email from someone-- yes, I know that it's polite to say thank you or received-- but again, everyone gets that if you click "Reply all." And some of us may not want to be receiving 20 emails of thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. So just recognize that that is a choice and an option that you can change on your settings.

Then also go on to that "Smart reply." And if it bothers you that it's there, then you can simply turn it off. OK or if you like it, then you just keep it on.

I think my favorite one is that "Undo send." That was I think towards the top of the General settings. So you have some choices there. And it's funny, we were playing with it the other day and just like Melissa said, she had changed it to 30 seconds. And then we were playing with our emails and she's like, "Did you receive it? Did you receive"-- "No, I haven't, not yet." And it's like-- oh-- because, you know, we changed it to 30 seconds.

30 seconds is a long time, but some of us need that time to maybe-- ooh. I forgot to say that on the email. Or I forgot the attachment. And how many times does that happen? So give yourself some time when you do send a message just to make sure that it's exactly what you want to say and the attachments are on there.

So go ahead and play with those for a little bit. And again, anything that you want to share, that you've used, go ahead and put in the chat, or any questions. And that way we can address it. And again, if you got it, you checked your "Default reply behavior," it's the way you want it, you checked your "Smart reply," you turned it on or off depending what you want, you set your "Undo send" to whatever time you want, then just give us that quick thumbs up so we know that we can move on.

All right, good. We have a couple of responses there. Great. OK. Yeah.

Melissa Baumunk: Oh, wait. We have-- let's see. Yes. So it says, "Is the 'Undo send' a waiting period before it sends the email?" Absolutely.

Janet Hernandez: Yeah.

Melissa Baumunk: So you click "Send," but Gmail will pause for however long you have that "Undo send" set. So I guess-- the way someone explained it, it kind of just sits there maybe in like a cloud or just in a waiting room. And once that time passes that you have it set to, then it sends and then it'll be received by the person.

So you click "Send." There's nothing more you need to do except wait out that 5 to 30 seconds that you have your email "Send" set to. OK. Good question. Conversation. OK.

Janet Hernandez: There you go. Thank you.

Melissa Baumunk: All right. So next is contacts-- organizing your contacts. So I know this session was open to everyone. If you are a classroom teacher, give me a quick-- raise your hand or a thumbs up or something if you are a classroom teacher. OK, good. So we have a few classroom teachers in here.

OK. Wait for those to go away. And then next I'm looking to see if you're maybe office staff, or outside of the classroom, in a position other than a classroom. Give us a quick thumbs up.

OK, good. So we have a mix, which I like. So the point is regardless-- whether you're a classroom teacher or maybe you work in the office, you hear from a lot of people every day.

If you're a classroom teacher, you hear from work, colleagues, but you might also be getting a lot of correspondence from students. So organizing your contacts is really important.

If you work outside of the classroom, maybe in an office setting, you might work with different groups of people-- our office staff, our adult ed staff, our ESL staff, district personnel outside of our building. So you might have just different groups of people. And you keep your correspondence separate, so organizing and managing your contacts is really helpful, especially-- now if you're in the office setting and you have other things you want to add to or chime in, please do, because Janet and I are both classroom teachers, so we will see this from a classroom teacher's perspective. However, this is just helpful in general.

So I'm going to show you-- let me pause here, go back into my email. OK. So fortunately for me, I pretty much add-- when I get an email from somebody, I pretty much add them immediately to my email. So I don't really have any stranger emails in here.

But, for example, here's one from Valerie Torres-- not at my building, not one of my students, but within Rowland Unified School District. OK. So one way I can add her is I can hover-- if you see, I hover over her name and this box comes up. And it tells me who she is, and it's parentsquare.com. This isn't really a good example because it's a "do not reply," but I'll click it anyway. I don't have any strangers in my Inbox that I can add.

Let me see. Well, I could try Julie Mitchell. She's our-- this might also be a "do not respond." Let me see. Oh no, there we go. OK. So Julie Mitchell. I'm going to click her name. Her contact information shows up. And then I'm going to go here and click "More info." OK? And you'll notice this box over here on the right pops up. And then I have this little person with the plus sign. I'm going to click that. And now-- oh, you don't see it, but at the bottom-- there we go. It says "added Julie Mitchell to Contacts." OK, so now she is one of my contacts.

What does that mean? It means when I click here-- sorry. Let me go back and show you that again. Up at the top next to "Settings" is that little grid, the waffle, whatever you want to call it. I can click that and I go to Contacts. And now these are all contacts who I have saved in my Work Google Contacts. And I can search Julie and there she is, because I added her to my contacts. OK?

So step number one is just adding people to your contacts. The second part of this is creating groups within your contacts, and this is where it gets really helpful. So if you look over here to the left-- kind of zoom in so that's really all you see-- I have-- again called labels, and I have different groups in my contacts.

So-- again I said I'm a classroom teacher, so I have one called "Beginning Low," and all of my students who are in my Beginning Low class, I add them to that group. OK. I have another class called Conversation. I created that label and any student who's in my conversation class, they're in that group. OK. I have DLAC, RACE ESL, which is other ESL teachers from my work, and they're in that group. So all you do once you're in Contacts is you click to create label, and you'll get a pop-up.

Janet Hernandez: Make it smaller? Smaller or bigger?

Melissa Baumunk: Well, move it over.

Janet Hernandez: Oh, you got it.

Melissa Baumunk: OK. So create label. And I'm going to click one called "Office Staff," because I have one called "RACE ESL." So I'm going to create a label called "Office Staff" and I'm going to save that label. OK. So now I have one here called "Office Staff." If you see there's no number next to it because I don't have any contacts in that label yet. So for my Beginning Low class I have 22 contacts in that group. Conversation class I have 21. DLAC I have 8. RACE ESL, I have 13. Office Staff there's no number because I don't have any contacts in there yet. So what I'm going to do is-- these are my contacts. And I'm going to scroll through my contacts. And let's see-- I've got to find someone who's-- I'm just going to make one. OK. Kirsten Garcia. I'm just going to say she's office staff. I just click her name. OK? Marieann Han, office staff. I click her name. She gets a blue checkmark. And let's find another one. Where's Janet, my Janet? OK, here we go. Here's Janet. I'm going to click her. I'm just making one to demonstrate, OK? Oopsy. And then I'm going to click "Label." So up at the top, there's this little label symbol. I'm going to click that. I'm going to click Office Staff-- not RACE ESL, just Office Staff. And there we go. Well, let me refresh that. That didn't work. Here we go. Edit Office Staff. Never mind. Let's do it a different way. Here's Fatima. On the far right, there's a pencil. Pencil means edit. And I'm going to add a label to her. I'm going to click "Office Staff," and now she's on my Office Staff label. I click out of that box. And you have to click "Save." Click "Save." So now if I look at Fatima, she has two labels-- Office Staff and RACE ESL. OK. And this will be a time saver later on when you're sending out emails to all the office staff or all-- whoever you have in your label. So-- and I do this as I add a contact. So the moment I add a contact, I go ahead and give them a label so that they're where they need to be. OK. So did we all follow how to add that contact? OK. Good. So let me pause that share. What's in the chat there, Janet?

Janet Hernandez: Well. Toni P. You could add Toni P. Let's do that.

Melissa Baumunk: Oh, Yeah, let's do that. OK. Let me get back to that screen. OK. So since I don't have any correspondence with Toni P., I'm going to click here--

"Create contact." And if you go ahead and-- I don't know how you want to do that, but if you want to type your email in the chat-- it is. Oh, it is.

Janet Hernandez: It's in the chat. Do you see it?

Melissa Baumunk: OK. I do. So I'm going to put Toni and then her last name. Here we go. Petniunis. Did I spell that correctly?

Janet Hernandez: I think so.

Melissa Baumunk: OK. And then her email address. Oh you're giving me a fun one. Antonia-- it's just I have bad eyes P antoniapetniunas@gmail.

Janet Hernandez: Just copy and paste.

Melissa Baumunk: I know. I probably should have. OK.

Janet Hernandez: I know, but she was already dedicated into that. She was already--

Melissa Baumunk: And I'm just going to give her a label. Because again, I try to make it my practice when I'm adding a contact. I'm going to give them a label. I know you're not part of my office staff, but I just want to show you how to give a label. So give her a label. I'm going to click out of that. I'm going to click "Save." OK. And now any time I see Toni's email and I'm in my contacts I'll see that she's part of my office staff. OK?

All right. So now my office staff has two people. You saw me add those two folks to my email. All right. Let's see. The next thing-- so let's see. Adding people to your label, creating the contact, and then adding a label to that contact. That's what we covered. Any questions on how to do that?

OK. We're not going to send an email yet. That'll come in the next step. I just want to make sure everyone knows how to add a contact and then add a label to that contact. OK? All right. So as always we're going to do a your turn. Now it's your turn.

Janet Hernandez: OK, so again take this time to add at least two people to your contacts. You probably have a list there of contacts that are probably not in a label. So go ahead and see if you can create a label just like Melissa showed you and put at least two people in there. Because later on we're going to be I believe sending an email using the label that you've created. It could be for one of your classes, so if you're an ESL teacher--

Melissa Baumunk: Or an adult ed teacher, or-- any type of teacher.

Janet Hernandez: Any kind of teacher, or even an office staff, or even-- there's groups at school, like we have a CCAE group, or you have the Sunshine Fun people, or the social committee. You can do those kinds of labels as well. So we'll give you a few minutes to do that. If you have any ideas of labels that you've created in the past that you want to share, again, put those in the chat so that we could all share and see what you guys have done.

Melissa Baumunk: While you do that, I'm going to go undo my office staff group.

Janet Hernandez: This is really a great time management skill, because when you have to send an email, especially when we do a group email to a specific group, especially my class, back in the day before I learned how to use this I was clicking each person's name to add them to the email. So once I learned how to do labels, just like wow-- just two steps and there we go.

Melissa Baumunk: OK. So just like before, if you were able to add at least two people-- you might already have people in your contacts, but if you were able to find two new people to add and then create a label, go ahead and give us a quick thumbs up. If you still have questions on how to do that, let us know in the chat. OK I see physical thumbs up, which is fine. You can do reaction thumbs up. Either one works.

Just want to make sure everyone's able to try out some of these things we're showing. Yeah, we've got several thumbs up there. I'm going to give about one more minute while folks are working on this.

Janet Hernandez: Laurie, you say, "Labels, repeat." What do you mean exactly? You want Melissa to share her screen to go through it again?

Melissa Baumunk: So I guess we should clarify. We have labels in your Inbox, OK, and that's different. That is labels for your email, which-- I would say think of those as folders. And then we have labels in your contacts, which is labeling groups of contacts to send messages to. So I find that confusing, because we've got, like I said, labels in the Inbox and labels in your contacts. So let me share my screen one more time.