Shaun Wilden's Blog

I am writing this sitting on a plane back from Cyprus where I have just spent the last three days running some technology training in a joint project between OUP and the ministry of education.

Ok, running tech training for teachers is hardly innovative but these days I spend most of my time training people online rather than in the classroom so I had been looking forward to this week for a while and it had been months in the planning.

To get to the beginning of this week has taken countless number of emails back and forth trying to arrange everything from finding a suitable venue through to assessing the needs of the group. The initial brief was simple – provide hands on training for state schools teachers who for the most part don’t want to use technology.  These teachers seem to be typical of many I meet around the world. They know they need to try and reach their students, their schools have invested in IWBs and in many cases computer labs but then not invested in the training.  Demotivated after lots of ‘this is what you should be doing’ talks, the teachers needed simple, hands-on things and lots of ideas for how to implement them.

The one condition was given the investment being put into the training, one of the demands was that the teachers would have to demonstrate learning by the end of the three days.  To do this we came up with the idea of small peer microteaching / presentations that the teachers consented to do to video as part of the final day.

We decided that the training should address using IWBS , collaborative writing and projects, utilizing some websites and making use of dvd both online and publisher produced.

Day one of the training in a brand new EU funded computer lab somewhere just outside of Lefkosa.  With the selected teachers turning up, the training got off to inauspicious start when the first teacher through door approached me to ask if we were really going to be using technology!  Before giving a look of horror when we affirmed that we would indeed be switching on the computers.

On the first day we covered using dvds (simply because this seemed to be the less daunting thing for the teachers). We then looked at collaborative writing, from using simply mindmapping tools online to showing how students could all work together using google docs. Many of us take such things for granted but the sheer joy and looks of amazement when the teachers could see they were all typing into the same document was quite something.  As part of the training I had set up a shared blog (deciding that posterous was the simplest to use). On this I put all the links to things we used, left instructions and small tutorial videos made on jing.  To bring day one to an end I showed a few examples of class blogs and directed them to a writing task I had left on the blog based on a video.  Rather speculatively I set homework to follow my instructions and set up a blog that they could use for day two.

It was clear from reactions and comments at the end of the day that it had been well received but I didn’t really think more than 3 or 4 of the group would actually go home and do the homework. However, I did tell them they could email me during the evening for help etc and I was genuinely surprised when a few of them did.

Arriving for day two, I found many of the teachers there before me, computers switched on and asking me questions before I had even fully got into the room. It dawned on me that most of them had actually made a blog and embedded a video into it.   You could sense the pride in the room and the realization that this was something they could actually do with their students. Questions rained down from how can students write on it, how could each class have a page, what else can they do with it.  The fact that it was a small group and I could give hands on advice, really spurred them on and throwing the plan out of the window (dogmatists rejoice) we proceeded to look at what else they could do. How to make and embed quizlet flashcards, making animations using dvolver, uploading photos and using voice recording,  making use of word clouds.  Each was introduced, worked through together and then time allowed for hands on practice.  For me the results were stunning, here was a group teachers many of whom was openly ‘afraid of technology’ embracing it, suggesting ways to use it and at times peer teaching each other how to use it,, suddenly from not knowing what ‘embed’ meant they were telling each other how to do it like pros. One of the issues that arose (that I had not anticipated) was people not knowing the difference between linking and embedding..

Next came IWBs and it is very revealing, given that all of them had them in their schools, that none of the really knew what they were and how they worked.  Even an  ICT teacher was unsure as to what they were.  So more time for more hands-on,  give them the space and the safe environment and within a few minutes they were at the board trying to write, use screenshade and  genuinely delighted to find that board is really no more than a mouse and monitor.

Sending them home that night with some software for the books they use in the school the homework this time to prepare something to present to the group – three simple questions would be addressed.

What did you chose? Why did you chose it and why did you choose to use X technology with it.

When it came to microteaching the next day, I was blown away. One by one the teachers came up suggested what they would use, why they would use, stating pedagogical reasons for using a piece of IWB material or showing how the material could be extended via the web tools we’d looked at.  Here they were , comfortably showing off a mind map,  adding to their  blogs. All of the teachers deserve mentioning for their efforts but the one that stood out for me was the woman who on day one asked if we were really going to use technology. Now she stood and showed off how to use the spotlight and reveal features on the board to enhance a piece of material  – something she had only learnt earlier that day. On top of that she had gone  – on her own – to voki and used it to create a blog exercise for her students.

Looking back now on the three days, I feel renergised, living in the tech bubble that I do it is very easy to forget the basic needs of teachers. This group has shown me that with the right investment and time and following the age-old mantra of keep it simple, practical and purposeful really does work.

Why did it work so well? I think the time to set up properly was almost as important as the training time and even with all the preparation (as with any lesson), we had to change our plans, reacting to the students.  Ensuring we picked simple tools and things they really had to use like the IWBs helped get motivation high.  Having ‘reward’ moments – the google doc, starting a blog, embedding something, all served to both give the feeling of satisfaction and the ‘wow I really can do this’ moment. But most of all it worked because it was hands on, apart from showing them how, they did it all, they made stuff, the worked how to use it and like learning a language, the moment it became personalized is the moment that learning took place.