Today at lunch I was helping two fellow teachers with an administrative task. We needed to retrieve some information from a web site and email that information to someone. We needed the names, email addresses and ID numbers of all students in one section of a class. All that information is in our Blackboard system, in the gradebook. Blackboard has a utility which will convert the whole gradebook to an Excel spreadsheet which is immediately offered for download.
Once we had the Excel file, we had to extract the information (name, email and ID) from grades. Blackboard placed all three pieces of data in the first cell. We needed to send this information as an Excel spreadsheet, so Blackboard “helped” us by putting everything into the proper format. We highlighted all the columns after the first column and deleted the extra information. We did not want to include all the grades for the students (FERPA).
The last step was saving our work. We clicked save. Excel gave us one of those Yes-No-Cancel dialog boxes where only an expert can know what to click. It seems Blackboard’s definition of an Excel spreadsheet is different from Microsoft’s. Excel asked if we wanted to lose any formatting of the document. The options:
Yes – lose the formatting and save the file as a non-Excel file
No – change the type of document to an Excel spreadsheet and save the formatting
Cancel – the only option where everyone was clear on the meaning.
We wanted the “No” option. Whew! Fifteen minutes into this we finally had the file we needed. Now we needed to email it. Instead of typing the URL of our mail server (mail.findlay.edu), the person at the keyboard closed the browser (I’m withholding the names to protect the innocent). We happened to be at Panera. They have free wireless, but getting a browser going is at least a three step process. The person at the keyboard told me that when the browser starts, it goes to a page with a link to UF email. We were at
mail.findlay.edu
and we needed to go to
ufonline.findlay.edu
I would have just changed the first part of the URL. The person controlling the keyboard felt it was easier to shutdown the browser and start all over.
A couple of minutes later, we are back online. We still need to send that email. We go to UF web mail. Then we realize we don’t know the email address of the recipient. That information is on a corporate web site. The browser is closed again. Hmmph.
“Why did you do that?”
“I had to get out of web mail.”
“Why didn’t you use CTRL-N to open a new browser window?”
“Who has time to learn those shortcuts?”
Indeed, who has time to do anything else when it takes half an hour to copy a file from a web page and email it to someone? We actually had 35 minutes invested in this little activity by the time we finished.
In my technology classes I emphasize two points. Technology can make a teacher more effective at teaching some subjects and more efficient in completing administrative duties. It’s the title of my blog! Teaching more effectively by using technology is something that can take years to master. Becoming an efficient user of technology doesn’t take nearly as long. Efficiency is achieved by learning all the basic tools offered by a modern computer – copy/paste – keyboard shortcuts – moving quickly from one application to another – managing files – knowing what tool to use for each little job.
Today we spent an extra five minutes getting out of problems cause by an erratic mouse. It was a laptop with a touch pad. The slightest movement made the mouse jump half way across the screen. I was trying to make this whole process a “learning experience” so I wasn’t the one using the computer. Once I figured out that the touch pad was too sensitive, I pointed the user to the control panel and adjusted the sensitivity to a reasonable setting. For the last 18 months, the user had this jumpy mouse. It only took two minutes to fix. That little bit of knowledge paid for my lunch.
How many teachers or students do you know who use a computer in an inefficient way? How much time is this costing them? How much more time could we spend interacting with our students if we do become efficient users of technology?