I like to play with new technologies. There are plenty of interesting things out there, but a recurring problem of mine has been to actually put them in effective use in the classroom or school setting. Some people and places respond well to “Here’s something cool – go play with it.” They will play, explore what’s possible, what could go wrong, and if things add up, put it into use. Many people don’t – they’d (rightly) need to see some examples of use, and the benefits. So some technologies get left behind, sometimes because they’re dud technologies, sometimes because no-one’s given it a good shot. Which is where having a teaching load on top of the IT manager job is really quite nice. You can experiment on your class. You have a context in which to use such technologies. That’s not to say other analysis doesn’t need to happen – an assessment of the tech needs to take place before and after. But it provides a starting point for further discussion.
For example, a few weeks ago on the weekend I set up a Q-and-A site ask.jmss.monash.edu based on the open source OSQA software. It is based on stackoverflow (now the stack-exchange collection of sites) – some kind of merging of social networking, forums, and news sites. I’m not aware of any school using this type of software. I deployed this to my IT class to get an idea of how students would use it. Certianly, it was a small and unrepresentative sample, but within a couple of days I had some idea of how what students were doing that was productive, unproductive, good, and evil, and some clues on how it might go pushed out further. Now I can enter into discussion with other staff on how they might use it, and have some starting points (good and bad) that otherwise would not be there.
Similarly, my increased use of google sites (or at least more ownership in my use of it) has given me better ideas how to make the most of it in class.
I’ve started using google presentations for most of my classes (at least in classes where it fits); this lets me embed the lesson in the subject webpage, and the students can look along as they go, or refer back at a later point. A small change to attaching a powerpoint, but I didn’t know that was possible until the classroom opportunity presented it. Last class I tried giving one student write permissions to one such presentation, and making him the ‘scribe’ for any blank ‘discussion’ slides. It went quite well, both for the student (I picked one who was often distracted or disengaged), and the rest of the class (down the track).
Without the teaching load, I wouldn’t know about these things. I think I’ll aim to try one new technology (however small) each week.
