#edtechresolve, part 1: edtech empathy exercises
This is the traditional time of year for charitable giving. We try to share our good fortune with those less fortunate. Then we make resolutions to be better people on the New Year. Some of us are fortunate enough to have strong ed tech skills (and/or tech bravado) and can easily be lulled into a sense of superiority as we help others throughout the year. The approaching New Year is the perfect time for us to pay our knowledge forward, but try to do so without the bravado that undermines our very help.
So I resolve in 2012 to improve the way I offer tech help: to help the tech-challenged in a way that enables and respects their ability to help themselves. This post is the first of two installments as I mull ways to improve my tech help offerings and follow through with my “pay it forward” resolution. May this warm up my muscles for edtech help to the needy while respecting dignity, frustrations, and phobias. Three empathy exercises come to mind. Each has happened to me in some form, and I learned from it. Perhaps you have some empathy exercises of your own.
Three EdTech Empathy Exercises
- Phone techs
Try giving computer directions over the phone — blind.
Select a task such as learning to put an attachment on email or save an attachment with a new name in a new folder inside at least three other folders. For extra variety, do this on an operating system you have not used for two years. The computer in use at the other end of the phone must be one you have never seen (no school district issued “models” allowed). If you are seething after just a few instructions and begging just to see what is happening, that’s what your tech-challenged peer feels like every time you start giving directions about “click on this” or “minimize that.” Improve your empathy (and verbal directions) further by extending this exercise to an octogenarian at the other end of the phone.
- Why’s Guys
Pretend you have a three year old with you at all times, asking, “Why?” Do not move forward to the next step until you answer the question — every time. If you forget to explain to your invisible three year old, you must restart the entire task but may never repeat the same explanation or analogy to explain “why?” you did that step. - Timed Tech Taboo
Just as in the party game of the same name, try to avoid forbidden words. Appoint an independent (non-geek) judge to prepare you for a session with a tech-challenged person. Speak for five minutes about the tasks you will be doing with your needy case — without uttering any and all computer terms. Set the timer on your iPhone or Android. Every time you slip, restart the timer. How much concentration did it take to last for five minutes? That’s how hard your tech-challenged peer works to focus on the directions you rattle off as he/she tries to keep up. If the task you plan to teach takes ten minutes, practice until you can achieve ten minutes on your timer. THEN approach the needy person and teach the task.
you learning about computers wasn,t easy for me either but i am taking a computer technology class and have lerned so much about how to navagate the computer and how to educate my class. so i would say when you don’t know or understand how something work, as question, research or take a class on it
Comment by tahiti hamer — December 18, 2011 @ 6:29 pm
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[…] an “A.” I hope to improve my peer teaching performance to earn that “A.” Last week I wrote of my resolve to improve the way I share edtech expertise with tech-challenged teaching […]
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