One of the biggest hurdles I have come across during the past year is finding time to show the girls how to do things on their devices. Your first reaction might be, the kids are so good with their devices; surely they do not need to be taught how to use it. You would thinks so, but the reality is far removed from it. Even though they can create a Facebook account and record every minute of their life on snap chat, they are really not very good with doing useful stuff on their devices.
Since they are digital natives, training them are not that difficult, if you show it to them once they can usually figure it out from there. However I am the only teacher at the moment who feel comfortable doing training like this, so to find time to get to all classes – 15 of them in total – is a challenge.
In the past week, I tried to show them how to create a folder system in their Google Drive, in preparation for the exam. (Classroom is great with automatically filing, but you still need to organise it) I quickly realised I am not going to get to everyone before the exam, so I will have to make a plan.
So I stuck my tablet under the document camera and recorded a 3-minute video. It might have taken 27 takes until I was satisfied, but it worked. There were a few hiccups along the way. Since I was using my personal iPad, I had to make sure that no personal details are visible. I had to select a Classroom that has some files in, but is not yet organised and every time I did a retake I first had to move all the files back before I could start again.
At first, I wanted to send the video to the learners, but after thinking about it, I realised that it would be better if they could work on their tablet while watching the video. (This is a problem we are coming across very often. Tablets are not very good at doing to things at the same time.)
So, I email the link to the teachers instead and they showed it on the overhead projector in the next register lesson. This enabled the learners to create the files at the same time.
What would have taken up at least a week of free lessons I managed to do in an hour (and two hours at home getting the video up to a level where I am kind of happy with it). Sometimes technology can save time.
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