Can Technology be Fun?

Absolutely, but it can also be frustrating as well. From the previous posts, you know how I feel about practice and backups. But it is also important to point out that using technology in the classroom can be fun. And when teaching has an element of fun, students remember.

The year was 1996 and I was working for a young company named NETCOM, an Internet Service Provider. This company was based in San Jose, CA but I worked in a large call center in Dallas, TX. I taught technical support and customer support classes. In the technical support classes students were trained to assist customers as they tried to connect to the Internet with their modems (most were 4800 or 9600 bps). Many of the students had never seen the Internet before they were hired and attended our class. It was intense and if they failed the test at the end of the 2 week class, they were not offered a job. A fun thing we did in class was a "Surfing Scavenger Hunt". Students were given a list of 20 items and told to surf and record the website that they found the item on. One of my favorites was "songs about sea monkeys". Try it yourselves.

Teaching tip #4: If you are sending students on surfing adventures in cyberspace, make sure they are prepared for "questionable" materials. The Internet in 1995 through 1997 was like the Wild West, you never knew what to expect from a web site until you visited it (case in point - does anyone remember www.whitehouse.com? It was most definitely NOT where the President lived. Go to wikipedia for more history on the site). Another trainer working with me sent a group on their scavenger hunt, and found himself in a lawsuit for willingly making a person go to web site that they found offensive. This student who sued us (and lost) was trying to make a quick buck, but how it changed our class was with the introduction of the signed disclaimer form.

Today most students are aware of the content on the Internet, but from a teaching standpoint, it is good for us to be cognizance of the possible content as well. Sun Tzu, in "The Art of War" tells us “Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” Be prepared and remember, SEMPER GUMBY.

If it can Fail, It Will

Thinking about various technology disasters in the classroom brought me to a memory that I have tried rid myself of - JAVA Programming. I was teaching JAVA for the first time, in a classroom that had 20 PCs, overhead projector connected to teacher's PC, printer, and Windows 2000 with the latest software. Or so I was told. I prepared for class, reading the teacher's notes and text, reviewing the PowerPoint, and checked out the sample programs on my own computer. Remember, I was assured that the PCs in the classroom had the latest software on them. And then, the first night of class.

Now, before I finish the story, I have to make a couple of points. While this was the first time I had taught JAVA, it was NOT my first programming class to teach. For example, I have taken and taught FORTRAN, COBOL, PASCAL, BASIC, C, C+ and various pseudo-code languages (Anyone remember LOGO on the TI99-4a with the turtle?). I had years of experience with web pages, starting with Windows 3.1 and Mozilla, through all iterations of Internet Explorer and Netscape. I even created my first web site in Unix with a shell account, when you could only "surf" with text. So, JAVA was not my first rodeo and this was not a new experience. I was a seasoned professional, and should have been prepared. But Murphy's Law prevailed.

Teaching Tip in Technology #3: Practice makes perfect. In this case, practice on the same equipment the students will be practicing on. To make my point, let's go back to the first night of class, with 20 students with (as I found out later) had a wide range of experience with PCs and JAVA (from "I could have written this Book" to "Now, What's a Mouse again"). The lecture and PowerPoint went fine, but then it came time for the students to write and compile their first program ("Hello World"). The instructor's PC demonstrated the procedures fine, but when the students tried to copy this simple program, things fell apart. The correct software and compiler were not loaded on the student's PCs. No one was available at the Help Desk. You see, I had tested on my PC and on the Instructor's PC, but failed to check the software on the student's PCs. Lesson learned the hard way, but you better believe the software was on those PCs the next week. Again, SEMPER GUMBY.

Flexiblity with Technology

For years, working with teachers and trainers, I always told them my motto when working with technology in the classroom - "Semper Gumby". For those of you who understand Latin, you may recognize this phrase. I stole the "Semper" from my years in the Coast Guard. Our motto there was Semper Paratus - Always Prepared. So, my motto then is loosely translated as Always Flexible. With technology in the classroom, flexibility becomes a skill that it is imperative that most teachers/trainers learn.

Have you ever had the perfect lesson ready in a killer PowerPoint, only to have the bulb burn out and not be able to get a replacement until tomorrow, or worse, next week? Ever had a computer programming example ready to demonstrate and have a hard drive failure? These two examples (and yes, they are both real) are but a few that have plagued technology teachers throughout the years.

Teaching Tip in Technology #2: Always have a backup plan, when using technology in education. If you have to have paper copy, code written out so that you could copy it on a whiteboard, or simply a lecture ready to go, have a backup plan. You never know when technology will rear its ugly head. So, Semper Gumby - That is Always Remain Flexible, But Be Prepared.

Welcome to Teaching Tips in Technology

As the Dean of Advanced & Applied Technology and a teacher of technology, I have used technology in the classroom for as long as I can remember. So, I am creating this blog for a couple of reasons. First, as an opportunity to write down some of my "best practices" and share them with any who care to read this. Second, as a record of history, to see what has been done in the past and begin to speculate on what we can do in the future.

In 1986 I had just graduated with a BS in Management Information Systems from the University of Southern Mississippi. I went to work for a company in Birmingham, AL as a trainer of their proprietary software. This software worked on Remittance Processing equipment, that is, equipment that optically and magnetically read a remittance, which is a bill and its corresponding check. Each bill has a scanline that contains specific account and billing information that is read optically and then the check is read and encoded with an amount that the operator keys in. A company might have a "lockbox" where they process multiple company's bills, so they would use the same equipment with a different program for each company's scanline. I taught them how to write the individual programs. The software was written in a "pseudo-code" that when compiled would translate into Pascal for its final compilation and resulting .EXE file. This was a two week class and even though we worked on computers, the coolest piece on technology that I used in the classroom was a portable whiteboard that could scroll between 5 different screens. What made it even more amazing was that you could print one,two or four screens on a piece of thermal paper. It was clear enough so that a decent copy could be made and distributed. Even though it had 5 screens, you could only print the first four, as they passed by the built-in scanner. Also, black ink worked best.

The first Teaching Tip in Technology: From the early days with this white board, the first tip is: Remember that the teaching is what is important, and that the technology should be a tool to enhance or improve the teaching. At the time, this whiteboard was cutting edge. Everyone wanted to see it and use it. But the importance of component in the two week training course was not the whiteboard, but the information that allowed customers to create working programs that their companies would use.

Join me again for another Teaching Tip in Technology.