The List of ICTs Alwayses

What things should we always keep in mind when thinking about ICTs and education? Probably a bunch of stuff! And I expect everyone would have a somewhat different list of these. At the risk of being over-assertive and incorrectly using English, I’ve decided to title this list as “ICT Alwayses”. IE: The things we should always do when thinking about using ICTs in teaching and learning.

In the interests of disclosure, I'll point out that this is a slightly edited version of my final post over in ICTs in English on English Online. I'll be blogging edited versions of some of my favourites from the old list in between new fortnightly blog entries. Stay tuned for new content later in the week! 

So without further preamble, here's the alwayses list:

1. Always think about our learning AND the learning of students when considering an ICT. Sometimes these two groups will have things in common but other times there will be issues that are not so important to one but really important for the other. Some ICTs work well for the needs of one group and not so well for the other while some work for both groups. It’s important we don’t miss out on some potential if we’ve only come across discussion around one of these contexts and not the other.
    
2. Always have a learning intention or outcome in mind when implementing an ICT. Even if someone really important is suggesting or ordering you to use something, ask: what will the learning outcome(s) be? Sometimes a delightful accident can make ICT use worthwhile even if we don’t have an outcome in mind but to really use them well we need to plan what we expect to get out of them.
    
3. While doing number 2, always be open to new learning possibilities that may not necessarily be part of your original learning intention. This is probably true of most things we can use in teaching and learning but particularly true with ICTs.
    
4. When learning about the use of an ICT, always be resilient and pigheaded and promote resilience and pig-headedness in others. Coming to grips with ICTs is often highly challenging! You’ll usually need every ounce of resilience and stubbornness you can get. And to make it even more challenging, often the most powerful ICT will be the most challenging to use. There’s an old software engineering concept that can help us here.
   
   If us or our students vertical line of “frustration maximum - I can’t deal with this ICT anymore” comes before the red and blue lines intersect. We may give up on a potentially powerful (blue line) ICT before we realise the possible benefits of it. This is why lots of people use ICTs that aren’t particularly powerful (red line) as they are less frustrating to learn in the short run. Sadly, we can be less willing to spend long enough learning about a potentially powerful ICT (blue line) unless some handy individual like ourselves can explain the future learning benefits. This also highlights the needs for ‘Alwayses #1’ - if we’ve got a clear reason for and ICTs use and benefits, the pain of learning the darned thing might be enough of a motivation to keep going.
    
5. Always be open to students using their own ICT expertise and give them guidance on how to harness this for the relevant learning. We don’t always need to know exactly how to use a particular ICT (clicks, menus ins and outs etc) if we understand the capabilities and learning potential for it. If students have expertise in an ICT, we can give them advice and feedback on its use in a subject area without knowing exactly what to click, push or interact with.
    
6. Always look for ways to collaborate. Whether it’s to develop your ideas on e-learning, work on the resourcing of an ICT, discuss their uses or find out about how other people are using them, there’s always going to be something out there that will be relevant to your students and their contexts! You just need to find it...
    
7. Always be excited about ICTs....some of the time. Computery technology (that’s my technical term for computing technology that is connected to computers in some way but not always an actual computer) is always going to get annoying and make you want to rage-quit eventually. Seeing as we can’t be excited about computery stuff all the time, being excited about it some of the time is the next best thing. This also rubs off on our students. Even if you can’t remember or do 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, sometimes Alwayses number 7 can keep you going long enough to sort out the others. Teaching and learning is rarely clear-cut, perfectly planned and executed and discrete. This is particularly obvious when we throw ICTs into the mix.
   

It’s likely there are a bunch more alwayses out there that can help us get the most out of ICTs but hopefully the above will be of some help in the future. Please add some feedback with your own alwayses, questions, comments or anything you disagree with. We have some pretty diverse opinions on teaching and learning stuff and this is this diversity is even greater around ICTs and e-learning. Sharing these opinions and working to understand different perspectives can only make us better at helping improve learning for our students.