Emerging Technologies Consulting

Rob Weir offers some good advice to faculty as they think about preparing for technology use in their classes.  I agree with most of it, but one thing he never mentions is talking to an educational technologist.  Most campuses have at least one around, and if they’re good, they operate by most of the advice that Weir gives.  They can find out what a faculty member’s teaching goals are, their comfort level with technology and recommend something that will work for them, and even help them get started using it.  They will try (usually) not to overwhelm a faculty member with too many options and stay focused on teaching, not on the technology.

I usually recommend trying one tool at a time.  And if you can’t figure out the basics in less than 1/2 hour, move on to something else.  Like Weir said,  technology should make your teaching easier or better, and a tool that takes forever to master usually isn’t doing either.  If school starts for you in a month, now is a good time to start playing around with some tools.  Other advice I’ve often given faculty is to use the tools for a while before you ask your students to.  If you want to try a blog for a course, you’d better at least do some blog reading and commenting, better yet, blog yourself.  It’s also a good idea to let your students know when something is an experiment.  Explain why you’re using what you’re using and get some feedback as you go along.  They’re much more forgiving when something doesn’t go quite right if you’ve let them know it’s new to you.

Using technology in the classroom can really add something to your teaching and to your students’ learning when done well, and it takes some trial and error to figure out exactly how to use it well, so don’t be afraid to give something a shot this year, get some good feedback and tweak it for next semester.  Sometimes you do get lucky, and things turn out great the first time around.