We know each other. We have been promoting the power of #edtech together for a while now.
We may have met through Twitter, various #EdTech conferences, #EdCamps, or found each other in the hallways of our school – but we always found each other.
So, what does this new wave of #RemoteLearning mean for our #EdTech crusade?
How to Share our Experience
Our head start with our #EdTech experience is invaluable to our colleagues. It may exhaust you to answer questions from the past ten years of your professional learning presentations, however, remember that your colleagues know you as the person who can help and they remember something you showed them something from a long time ago.
So when you (re)share something with them be efficient and neutral in your delivery. After all, they already remember you showed them this once, so no benefit to remind them.
Consider the most popular requests as invitations to create reusable content – blog post, podcast, social media post – which can be reference multiple times.
How to Capture Other’s Experiences
Our colleague’s experience as sound instructors with a novice online background is invaluable to us. We may have forgotten the differing learning curves of different tools; some tools are for using right of the shelf and others require more training than we have time for right now. Know the difference, or your colleagues will doubt you, not the tool.
Consider building a survey with another important department or leader in your school or district. The feedback you want is from two groups: the recent converts and your #edtech people in the schools. If the survey comes only from you you run the risk of only hearing from those confident in their #edtech skills, and you already know those people. A survey that originates from an overarching district department or the Principal is more likely to have wide-ranging participation and offer more and better insights into the current state of #edtech and where everyone wants to be in the future.
…Are Done Now?
We are not done.
We have enough insight and long term vision to guide the path of colleagues. We have experience in the “Look Fors:” interoperability, longevity, ease of use. We need to influence the Deciders in our schools and districts to revisit this as soon as the students are done for the school year, we need a big ole debrief with all our teachers and their digital resources they just used. They might feel like sticks and dirt to a technologist until you start to identify the easy transfers to make to your school/district learning management system (LMS).
We need to forecast what this same scenario might look like at the beginning, middle, or possibly the end of next year. Help your leadership create an idea of what a virtual Back-to-School night might look like. Share how we could ease our families and teachers into more virtual spaces by Flipping Back to School and other time-consuming/concentrated events.
Maybe consider ways you could share with your faculty how you were overwhelmed, but what you were still able to do. Everyone needs models of resilience where they do not already have experience.
So, what does this new wave of #RemoteLearning mean for our #EdTech crusade? It means we are newly valued and we need to hustle to keep and transfer that value to a better experience for our students and their families!
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