"NEW", The Terrifying Technology Term

Why hello there!
Fancy that, you dropping by to read about how scary new technology can be.

Here at ISPP we've been adopting all kinds of amazing tech at light-speed. In the past year we've unleashed an army of google apps marching into our classrooms, an airforce from apple and a navy of websites keeping us afloat. Our joint task force of teachers are deploying enough blogs to create our own internet! And while I think that this is just fantastic, to some people this can be absolutely terrifying.

Now where did that file go. I hit enter and now I'm renaming, not opening! The printer doesn't print, no wait, now it's printing four thousand copies of the same butterfly! I THINK I DELETED MY MEMORY. AHHHHH......hhh...hhh.....

Take a deep breath. Count to five. Let it out.

Computers are not smart. They are plastic and metal and silicon and electricity that have been designed and built by humans. They can make our jobs easier, but they are only as clever and fast as we are capable in their conduction. As people's expectations of productivity rise and the skills of the brilliant young minds in our classrooms develop, it can get very frustrating when things don't work (quickly) and very intimidating to try new things in case of undesired or...gulp... even indeterminable results. And for those of us who are teachers, you know we're always on a tight schedule.

You are not alone. We understand. There is no mistake with new technology that is embarrassing to ask for help with; half of these things have only been invented since you ate breakfast, figuratively speaking of course.

I always tell my colleagues that patience is the ultimate technology skill. Another important one is to face your fears. With the advent of things like cloud storage, backups and detailed revision histories,  there is very little we can't recover from. Take chances. Be open minded, be risk takers, and try it out. You might just surprise yourself with what you can learn by experimentation. And when you get stuck, I'm here to have your back. So are your colleagues. So are our students.

What can we learn this week?
-M