DISCLAIMER: No old-timers were harmed in the making of this post which in no way is attempting to disparage the state of old-timeliness. The intended audience of this post is the tech literate teacher who wishes to bring others into the light. Let it be known that “old time” is a mentality that even newer teachers might be afflicted with. Conversely, an experienced teacher could be very tech-savvy. “Old-time” does not refer to physical age or the season in one’s teaching career. Simply put, it’s about the reasoning, not the seasoning.
Let’s start with some questions:
If you’re a tech-savvy teacher, how could you make tech friendly to old-time teachers?
How would you begin coaching teachers on using social media to facilitate teaching?
I offer some suggestions:
Instead of the shotgun approach launching a ton of social media platforms at them at once, start small. Start with one platform and teach them to use it well.
If you’re going to pick a platform to start from, choose the most familiar. For some, that may be blogging, since it can be readily understood as journaling on social hot sauce. Where did the word “blogging” come from anyway? I’m going to guess it’s a blend of "brain" and "logging" as in detailing what’s in your noggin.
Once they start blogging well, don’t let them get complacent to sit on their laurels. Continually challenge them and up the level of difficulty. Tease (engage) them by embedding content from other social media sites. Example of a tweet about a blog post embedded in a blog post (confusing?):
Let’s start with some questions:
If you’re a tech-savvy teacher, how could you make tech friendly to old-time teachers?
How would you begin coaching teachers on using social media to facilitate teaching?
I offer some suggestions:
Instead of the shotgun approach launching a ton of social media platforms at them at once, start small. Start with one platform and teach them to use it well.
If you’re going to pick a platform to start from, choose the most familiar. For some, that may be blogging, since it can be readily understood as journaling on social hot sauce. Where did the word “blogging” come from anyway? I’m going to guess it’s a blend of "brain" and "logging" as in detailing what’s in your noggin.
Once they start blogging well, don’t let them get complacent to sit on their laurels. Continually challenge them and up the level of difficulty. Tease (engage) them by embedding content from other social media sites. Example of a tweet about a blog post embedded in a blog post (confusing?):
blogged about my awesome first experience with #CAedchat http://t.co/2ZANUJl5Kx via @weebly
— Michael To (@MichaelTo_Edu) December 8, 2014
Want to learn how to do this?
This could admittedly be a tad risky, but what is there to lose really? If fear and anxiety are keeping old-time teachers from embracing the new, what’s a little more water under the bridge? The key is to slowly turn on the faucet, starting with a sprinkling of positive experiences and building to a stream of success. Focus on the positive and what they can do instead of what they can’t.
When you assess that the old-timer is ready to move on, make the move and continue to draw comparisons between what they may be familiar with in the physical world with what you would have them learn in the digital world. For example, if you just transitioned from blogging to Twitter (by way of a smooth embedding of Tweets in blogs, perhaps), you can say that Twitter is like that messenger bird which will take your note and deliver it somewhere. Every message that goes out has at least one hashtag stamped on it. The hashtag is the address of the mailbox that the bird is delivering the message to. If there is more than one hashtag, then the bird delivers copies of that note to the other addresses. If you know a particular hashtag, you can look up all the messages delivered by birds to that address. If you have a Twitter follower, the bird will always deliver to them a copy of all messages you send out. Of course, it’s a little more complicated, but that could be a basic starting point to get the bird flying.
I’d say that this explanation might make a little more sense to a newcomer than the model where Twitter is cacophony of birds tweeting messages to each other in the world tree, with some birds picking up the tune and relaying it to other birds who copy it in turn.
Fortunately, the talk on Facebook might be a little easier for your old-timer, since Facebook itself is fashioned around the real-world analogue of its namesake.
It’s even easier with Google+ with its Circles and Communities. How much more intuitive can you get than that? If you don’t start the tech talk with blogging, you can start with Google+.
Finally, the last thing you can do in a day for your student is to affirm them and assure them that every person was once an old-timer until they became born-again technicians. Not even babies are born doing right by tech (even though it may seem that way).
This could admittedly be a tad risky, but what is there to lose really? If fear and anxiety are keeping old-time teachers from embracing the new, what’s a little more water under the bridge? The key is to slowly turn on the faucet, starting with a sprinkling of positive experiences and building to a stream of success. Focus on the positive and what they can do instead of what they can’t.
When you assess that the old-timer is ready to move on, make the move and continue to draw comparisons between what they may be familiar with in the physical world with what you would have them learn in the digital world. For example, if you just transitioned from blogging to Twitter (by way of a smooth embedding of Tweets in blogs, perhaps), you can say that Twitter is like that messenger bird which will take your note and deliver it somewhere. Every message that goes out has at least one hashtag stamped on it. The hashtag is the address of the mailbox that the bird is delivering the message to. If there is more than one hashtag, then the bird delivers copies of that note to the other addresses. If you know a particular hashtag, you can look up all the messages delivered by birds to that address. If you have a Twitter follower, the bird will always deliver to them a copy of all messages you send out. Of course, it’s a little more complicated, but that could be a basic starting point to get the bird flying.
I’d say that this explanation might make a little more sense to a newcomer than the model where Twitter is cacophony of birds tweeting messages to each other in the world tree, with some birds picking up the tune and relaying it to other birds who copy it in turn.
Fortunately, the talk on Facebook might be a little easier for your old-timer, since Facebook itself is fashioned around the real-world analogue of its namesake.
It’s even easier with Google+ with its Circles and Communities. How much more intuitive can you get than that? If you don’t start the tech talk with blogging, you can start with Google+.
Finally, the last thing you can do in a day for your student is to affirm them and assure them that every person was once an old-timer until they became born-again technicians. Not even babies are born doing right by tech (even though it may seem that way).