{"id":268,"date":"2012-01-13T09:41:32","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T17:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/?p=268"},"modified":"2012-01-13T19:08:29","modified_gmt":"2012-01-14T03:08:29","slug":"to-gel-or-not-to-gel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/?p=268","title":{"rendered":"To Gel or Not to Gel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Some days I just want a really good gel pen and a brand, spanking-new journal notebook. Those are the days when I am tired of hearing about, talking about, and learning about technology. It can all be a bit overwhelming. I think some of the people that tweet and blog have some genetic predisposition to using technology. I do not. I have to work at it. And, for me, it is frustrating. It seems that things never actually behave the way I want them to. I will give you an example. I wanted to create the background to my Twitter profile. I read about it in a book. I tried to follow the directions and three hours later (on a Saturday mind you) I gave up. I paid $4.99 on my Mastercard to get it to behave. I didn\u2019t want to do it that way. I wanted to do it myself.<\/em><\/p>\n

Okay, another story. So I decided it would be a good thing to follow some of the people in my district who were blogging. As a Director of Instruction, with technology in my portfolio, that seems important for me to do. And frankly, some of these people are posting great material (see Peter Johnston<\/a>). Unfortunately, what happens is I often miss their new posts. In order to get these posts, I need to subscribe to their blog (if they have included that feature). I was finding it cumbersome to subscribe to blogs as it clutters up my mailbox, which is already protesting over too many emails (and, frankly, I like a clean email inbox, too). So I decided to learn about Google Reader. I put all the blog URLs into Google Reader so I could then create an RSS feed to my Flipboard on my ipad (I may not even be using those terms right in that last sentence!). Now, I love my Flipboard. It helps me manage the flow of information. And, at a quick glance, it allows me to get all the information I need, whether it is catching up on twitter or following blogs.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is not the end of the story. I wanted to create a summary paper of all the recent posts that educational leaders in Surrey schools were creating. I felt it would encourage others and they might realize their colleagues are also posting good information. I have seen others do this through paper.li or summify.\u00a0 This seemed like a reasonable goal. I googled the directions, watched a video, read some FAQ\u2014all of which I found very time-consuming. In the end, I created a paper for the #sd36learn hashtag. That was not my goal but it gave me a chance to practice. I still haven\u2019t created the summary paper of Surrey blogs but I am waiting to see if summify will fit the bill. Actually, I tried summify but it isn\u2019t working as I hoped. The gracious people behind it responded to my tweet for help and gave me additional instructions. Unfortunately, it isn\u2019t generating what I had envisioned. \u00a0I will have to find some other tool (another day, when I am not feeling so overwhelmed).<\/p>\n

Which all brings me to a point. (You were beginning to wonder, I bet.) I am not the only one that finds it laborious to use technology. Don\u2019t get me wrong, sometimes it is the most rewarding part of my job.\u00a0 However, some of us are just challenged. Yes, technically<\/em> challenged. And I guess that is why it is important for us to pay attention to the learning needs, styles and interests of our colleagues<\/em>. It works best for me when someone actually shows me what to do (just in time, when I want and need to learn). Then I need them to watch me try to do it myself. I describe this as hand-over-hand (and, please, do not do it for me because if your hands are on the device, I am not learning). Then, they need to release me to do it on my own.\u00a0 That works best for me.\u00a0 And, personally, l would like them to check back with me later because my brain feels overstuffed and in between I actually sometimes forget how to do things.<\/p>\n

We need to keep this in mind as we provide support to educators. They need to do it themselves, we need to provide the right tool for the their purpose, they need just-in-time training and we need to continue the gradual release of responsibility (with plenty of patience). Remember, those of you reading this post probably have a natural attraction towards technology. We need you to help those of us that don\u2019t. And, finally, please be patient with our learning or we might just throw in the towel and return to our gel pens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some days I just want a really good gel pen and a brand, spanking-new journal notebook. Those are the days when I am tired of hearing about, talking about, and learning about technology. It can all be a bit overwhelming. I think some of the people that tweet and blog have some genetic predisposition to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6,8],"tags":[9,10,50,19,52,287,30,34,45,286,46],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovativelearningdesigns.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}