teaching.mrstacey.org.uk

The following is (roughly) my two minute nano presentation from Teachmeet 08.

[Edited to add: You can see the actual presentation, complete with waving arms, along with the rest of the Teachmeet here. Scroll into an hour for the start, and to 2:41:55 for my 120 seconds!]

Following the many complaints that many of us are ‘singing to the choir’ or ‘preaching to the converted’, I proudly present…

Ten Commandments for evangelising Ed Tech

1. Remember, other people have other hobbies. Not everyone wants to Twitter

2. Ask, don’t tell. ‘What would you like to do’ is much more powerful than ‘have you seen this new cool thing’ is much more effectively with 95% of our colleagues

3. Have the patience of Job

4. Smile

5. Be around. Some of the most powerful connections are made in corridors and over lunch. If you’re locking yourself away, you’re not making them

6. Look for the hook. Teachers at my school are checking their Google personal start page (including school messages) not for todays messages but to get the Sudoku puzzle or Garfield cartoon of the day. It just so happens that those things are on the same page as our school messages and their school email account

7. Encourage feedback. We’re pretty good at evaluating ourselves, but there is still a culture in schools that risk is too dangerous to risk trying things at school. That idea is our biggest obstacle and needs to be tackled head on.

8. Use the sandwich effect. If you get school leaders and pupils behind the idea, it puts the squeeze on the rest

9. Develop a thick skin

10 . Learn from others. As things like Teachmeet show a network is more powerful than any ‘fountain of knowledge’