The Tech Commandments

Editor's Notes

• #2: …or ‘things I think will help teachers who feel unprepared or lack confidence when embedding technology into their practice’…
• #3: 1. IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL NOT COME!I have been involved in, and made aware of, many projects that have been funded with sums of between 10 – 100,00 pounds. The ideas behind the projects are reasonably sound: to provide a digital space for students to gather and form a community of practice…to form a site identical to Facebook for students to use that is protected from unwanted stalkers or trolls. These beautiful follies look great, but inevitably, there is little or no engagement from the intended audience. Why?Because this is just another space that does something that they already do elsewhere. So it's another site to learn to navigate, another username and password to set up and remember. Lesson here? GO TO WHERE THE STUDENTS ALREADY ARE!But learn that there are limits. If your students are on Facebook, go to Facebook…but if you insist on then using Facebook as a replacement VLE, then don’t be surprised if your students flee to Snap Chat. Because they will allow you to have a foot in their digital door…but don’t want teachers / adults to start taking over their space sand telling them how to use it.Also – how can students learn digital literacy skills if they are being protected or ‘nannied’ by being asked to use a ‘gated community’?Think of all of those thousands of pounds you will be saving – money that can go on other stuff.
• #4: 2. DON’T LET THE TAIL WAG THE DOG! Andto make sense of this, look at the next slide.
• #5: 3. KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!You have been asked to use technology in your session, but shoe-horning it in for the sake of it means that it’s not used well or with any enthusiasm and you risk confusing your students. Don’t think ‘how can I use Prezi to teach next week’s session on widget making? Think ‘I’m doing a session on widget making and would like to enhance it with some technology. What lends itself well to this?If there is nothing that you can think of...don’t use technology. Using it for the sake of using it does not enhance the learning experience, and can actually do damage.Use what you are comfortable with. It doesn’t need to be all singing and dancing – in fact, the more elaborate and high falutin’ your set up, the more chance of something going wrong, the more chance of it taking up too much time, feeling out of your depth and then deciding that you never want to use technology again.(I’ll let you into a secret: it’s not true that everyone under the age of 25 is a tech wizard. Nor for that matter that everyone over 25 is a fossil who can’t even use a calculator. So you don’t need to be Yoda.)So something as simple as this….(next slide)
• #6: …is a perfectly acceptable way of embedding technology (and a bit of self-directed learning) into a session.
• #7: 4. LOOK AT TOOLS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATESFor any one thing you want to do there are probably half a dozen sites that will do the job. Want to use a film? Well, there's YouTube, Vine, Vimeo, TED…etc…Want to make a presentation? You could use PowerPoint, Prezi, SlideIdea, Animoto, SlideRocket, ClearSlide…you get the picture.The sheer number of tools that do the same thing is enough to give anyone a headache. Think of the tools that are just ‘out there’ (and that new ones are added every day and others are being taken down regularly) and the headache becomes a migraine. I find it all too much and my job is solely based around technology. So yeah – I empathise totally.So what to do? Think of the vast array of tools out there as a box of chocolates. And treat them exactly the same way you would treat a box of chocolates. I always go for the strawberry creams and the Turkish Delight. I love the toffee pennies in a tin of Quality Street. But I am not a fan of the purple caramel and brazil nut thingies, nor am I overly keen on the noisette triangles or the coconut chocolates. So I avoid them. I like PowerPoint (more on this is a minute) and am quite fond of Prezi…but avoid SlideIdea and rarely use Animoto. Not because they are bad tools, but because I would rather stick to one or two tools and use them fluently than know enough about 6 versions of the same thing to give me a headache and ensure that whatever I produce looks average.
• #8: 5. POWERPOINT IS NOT EVIL!The people who use it badly are evil and have given it a bad name! PowerPoint is actually rather lovely, and, if used properly, can enhance any session or meeting. Ever used PechaKucha? 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, little – or preferably NO text, so the presenter is forced to make their point in 6 minutes and 40 seconds. RULES OF POWERPOINT:No more than 12 slides (unless it’s PechaKucha - http://www.pechakucha.org/)Keep text to a minimum – bullet points of clear, concise information should be a cue for the narrator – not a scriptUse more imagery and fewer words Oh-and keep the text large, sans serif (plain) and in blue or black. Avoid green and red text – the rods and cones in our eyes don’t see these colours as ‘well’
• #9: Here’s an example of a PowerPoint slide with an image of a television pasted onto it, and a film uploaded just by clicking on Insert and Video, then simply selecting a film I have stored on my ‘OneDrive’ (by following simple onscreen instructions). It plays anywhere, and there’s no need to make sure my presentation is packaged with a film file. That often goes wrong, so I avoid it.And to prove that PowerPoint does not need to be linear, but can go in any direction, the orange buttons on the right are simply shapes (Insert – Shape), which, when I right clicked on them after putting them on my slide, gave me the choice to hyperlink to another slide. The buttons should work…give them a go (but once you have chosen, you cannot go back…)
• #10: Oops! Now click on the button on the bottom right hand side to move on…
• #11: Well done! Now click on the button on the bottom right hand side to move on…
• #12: 6. WHEN YOU FEEL READY…THEN BE BRAVEA lot of people shy away from using technology in the classroom because if it goes wrong they’ll look stupid. If they need to get one of their students to look at it, they’ll look stupid and lose their ‘power’.Rubbish.This doesn’t contradict the KISS message I gave you just now. But when you feel comfortable with something, and when you feel confident about using it…don’t be afraid to THEN push yourself a little further.
• #13: 7. RECYCLE WHAT IS ALREADY THERE!Look at these sites. They all have one thing in common. Other people have made things, uploaded them and then allowed them to be shared freely with anyone. So they can be used as they are, downloaded to your machine and tweaked or tinkered with, and save you from doing what teachers do so often: reinventing the wheel. The green circles on the top right will take you to:ScribdSlideSharePreziJorumNLN
• #14: 8. REMEMBER THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL GO WRONGBut you won’t lose your job and nobody will die because of this.Have a Plan B in case it all goes wrongOnly use stuff you feel confident using and have used before. BUT if you need help or it does go wrong, use the situation to your advantage and get students involved in trying to make things work. Helps communication, collaboration and problem solving skills, and deflects attention from your sweating palms
• #15: Recap.