Recently at school we decided to upgrade our presentation rooms with mounted speakers and new data projectors. As part of this project I decided to run some maintenance on the other data projector setups in our learning commons to sort out any cabling or plug issues so that teaching staff could access the technology as easily as possible. Including the presentation rooms, now complete with fancy wall mounted speakers, and the rest of the learning commons, we are lucky to have enough mounted data projectors for every teacher to use one during a class.
After constructing a fancy guide complete with helpful images and a table of contents on how to use the new audio and data projector HDMI setup, I thought it might be important to also include some compelling teaching and learning reasons for the use of data projectors. Over the years I've heard a number of people citing the thinking around the 'death by powerpoint' effect which, applied as a blanket criticism of the technology, I've always thought was a bit unfair. It seemed to me that it was akin to criticising the use of feedback by using an example a teacher who gives feedback consisting only of vague advice and generalisations. It's not the feedback or use of data projectors in particular that is the problem but rather how they're being used. At any rate, here's 4 reasons I feel are compelling for using data projectors and e-presentations of some kind in teaching and learning:
1) More time for the good stuff in class. Students spending less time copying frees us up for more quality instructional time. We get to do the stuff that really makes a difference like one on one explanations and feedback/forward etc. Fantastic!
2) My personal favourite - use images that relate specifically to the concepts we're teaching. Great for helping students stay with us when we're explaining and encouraging deeper understanding of concepts, especially complex ones. Google image search isn't amazing on a metaphorical level and using a graphics tool of some kind to composite/mashup our own teaching and learning images can be useful here. Check out these GIMP tutorials I made a few years back for an English task. They'll give you everything you need to cut, combine and fancify images for a useful e-presentation. Believe or it not, with a bit of practice it's even possible to do it really, really quickly!
3) Task instructions accessible for all. Next time someone says, "what are we doing again?" we can just point at the screen and say, "have a read of that Percy, think about it and then ask me for help if you need it." If combined with 2, we can cover verbal, written AND visual for the important stuff. Fancy. Or if a student is away, they can still access content without us going to extra work to provide it for them.
4) Helps mental wanderers. If a student loses track of what we're saying (although we know that never really happens because we're so incredibly engaging) a quick glance at a concise, non-wordy, to the point, point with images that support the main concept(s) get students back on track and with us.
While I've always believed that good e-presentations and data projectors can give some excellent teaching and learning gains I've also noticed that people can need support to use them well. In an effort to do this I explained to staff that the as well as the usage guide, 4 compelling reasons and new setups in the presentation rooms, I was happy to be available at the beginnings of lessons to help with any issues and more than happy to discuss the ins and outs of using these ICTs in classes. If we're going to use an ICT or group of ICTs in teaching and learning that we're not already using then it's likely we'll need some form of ongoing support in different forms to recognise the benefits and develop the necessary skills for their use. This is particularly true when the teaching and learning gains are greater with the use of multiple ICTs. When developing useful e-presentations in the past, I had always used not only the projector itself but also libre office and GIMP (an open source graphics app) to create images and lay them alongside content that illustrated concepts (both literally and figuratively) well enough to be useful.
A week or so after emailing the guide and my fancy list of compelling reasons for data projector use, I went for a walk round some classes and found that 41% of teachers were using the data projectors either for content delivery and support (via an e-presentation or online ICT of some kind) or for watching videos. Obviously the use of visual, written and verbal mediums via a range of ICTs isn't going to be happening in all classes all the time but given the gains I was still keen to see more teachers and students gaining the benefits of their effective use. Particularly given that we have open learning commons and some really impressive practice with useful images combines with concise written content and engaging verbal delivery was openly on display for other teachers to see. Given all this I'll attempt to combine my thoughts on this into two truisms around teachers and their use of ICTs in teaching and learning:
Truism 1 - We need to be able to recognise compelling teaching and learning benefits for an ICT or group of ICTs before we are willing to put time into developing the necessary skill to use them. This usually needs to be more than just listening to someone else explain the benefits and may require us to actually see them in action and even better, be able to look at some data that shows learning gains of some kind.
Truism 2 - After we are convinced of some potential learning gains, we need ongoing support in developing expertise in using the ICT. If this involves the use of multiple, new ICTs, this is even more important.
Expecting teachers to suddenly become proficient in three different ICTs, in retrospect, was perhaps a little unrealistic. In the case of the use of data projectors, I realised that if all of us were to use them well teachers actually needed to develop skills in two additional ICTs as well as the projectors themselves. Firstly a presentation ICT of some kind and secondly a graphics app to adequately manipulate and combine images to a useful state to illustrate the concepts being taught. One of the key aspects of this support is that it needs to be ongoing and timely. While one part of this might be a staff-wide delivery of some description, this will only be useful if combined with on the spot support when we need it. As with the data projectors, many staff had tried to use them in the past, had some trouble around plugs, cabling and/or their laptops and basically given up in frustration.
In summary, if any of us are going to risk investing a significant amount of time in up-skilling to use ICTs in teaching practice, not only do we need to see compelling teaching and learning gains, we also need ongoing support to become fluent in their use. It's rarely enough to present something and then expect others to be convinced enough to invest time in upskilling or even worse: believe some ICTs are worthwhile and then lack the necessary support to develop adequate expertise to lead to a sustained change in practice. This has major implications for 'rolling out' an initiative in a school and what we choose to put our time into developing. If we believe that the use of particular ICTs can really give some good teaching and learning gains for our students then we need to be careful and realistic around our planning and implementation of the support around them for other staff. Perhaps if it's something that a number of people already have skills in while other teachers could see some serious gains in their classes we might even question whether a staff-wide approach is appropriate or effective at all. Staff-wide approaches can also suffer from timeliness issues – if something could be relevant to us as a teacher at a later date but isn't relevant right now, we're unlikely to invest time into learning it. To avoid these two pitfalls, perhaps we might look more towards an inquiry model or implementation at a department of professionally learning group level. However we make these decisions though, if we want to see teachers develop the necessary motivation and skills to use useful ICTs effectively, I'd suggest it's well worth keeping the two truisms of teachers and ICTs use in mind.
