The Magic Bullet – A Plan

Scott McLeod has a post about Blogging vs Life.  His main question – how do we learn all these new and incredible technologies without sacrificing our lives and families?

Let me rephrase the question.  How does a first grader learn to read when there are all those phonetic pronunciations, vocabulary words, punctuation and grammar rules?  The answer isn’t difficult.  All our students learn to read.  They learn a few new things each week and they practice these new things every day.  First graders spend a lot of time reading books.  As the years go by, they become proficient readers.

Technology is no different.  If you want to learn about new things, you should periodically learn something new and practice using that technology to make yourself a more effective or efficient teacher.  As the years go by, you will become a proficient user of technology.

Almost ten years ago, I worked for the state.  Each year we went through an evaluation process that included the development of an action plan for our own growth.  I was suffering from the same dilemma as most teachers today.  I wasn’t keeping up with new technologies, and I felt it was impacting my effectiveness as an educational technology professional.  During my annual review, I decided I should learn one new thing each week for a year.

I had one advantage over other professionals.  This learning process was part of my professional action plan, so I could learn new things at work.  Normally, I would use thirty minutes at some point during each day and read about a new technology.  If a ready about something that was interesting, I would spend more time on it.  During the first year, I more than doubled my goal and I learned over 100 technologies.  More importantly, I was using many of these new technologies in my day-to-day life.  By exposing myself to so many different technologies, I was able to see advantages to using certain software/hardware over other options in my work.

Anyone can do this.  We all have some time every day.  Teachers have planning periods. I have office hours that aren’t always utilized by my students.  Everyone can listen to podcasts during the daily commute.  I live fifteen minutes from my office.  That amounts to half an hour of listening each day, or 2 and half hours each week.  Most of the new things I have learned in the last two years have come from podcasts.

Over a ten year period, learning one new technology each week will expose you to 500 new technologies.  Here’s the text from a PowerPoint slide I show my freshmen (click for larger image).

Now look at the ISTE NETS for Teachers standards.  The first standard has two parts.  The first basically says teachers must understand the same technologies that the students are required to understand.  Standard IB says teachers must:

demonstrate continual growth in technology knowledge and skills to stay abreast of current and emerging technologies.

Staying abreast of current and emerging technologies requires a plan.  You should decide how you are going to approach learning new technologies.  It may be one new technology per week or one new technology per month.  The most important thing is to write down your plan.  My list of Recent Technologies has doubled since I started it in 2001.  It will double again.  Without a plan, you will be farther and farther behind.