Technology assistants: help is at hand

Toni Walton Atela (15) tells his sister (12) about a job he's volunteered for at school -- being a "technology assistant".

You're getting hot and sweaty in front of your class, trying to get a PowerPoint presentation to open on the beastly piece of junk that masquerades as a computer (which seems to work fine for other people...)? If you were teaching in my sons's school, help would be sitting there in the classroom next door...

It might not work as well in a language school (with kids there only a couple of hours a week) but, if you work in a "normal" secondary school, it takes some of the pressure off the teacher. You're not that good with technology...? You're afraid it's not going to work...? Get some help...!

And it puts the responsibility on the kids. Now, that's got to be a good thing, too...

What's Second Life? What's an interactive whiteboard (etc)?

I've been teaching on "technology for teachers" seminars for the last three weeks (and a very late "Hello" to you all if you are attending!).

Many of the questions that the teachers ask begin "What's...?" Blogs, interactive whiteboards, ipods, mp3 players, podcasting, smartboards, Second Life... What are they, and how can you find out what they are?

Places to go to find out
Fortunately, there are places to go where you can find out what a particular piece of technology is. Note, again, how far down my list Google-is-Evil comes.

1. Ask a colleague, some in the family, one of your kids (your own or someone in your class)
   
2. Wikipedia, which is great for the basic information, and will provide links if you want to find out more. Wikipedia gets slammed for being inaccurate, but it provides you with information and has no interest in selling you anything, unlike Google and the sites that appear on it
   
3. YouTube, on which you can find great videos (ok, and some that are dreadful) of the technology in action
   
4. Teachertube, on which you will find the same, with videos designed particularly for teachers and teaching and learning
   
5. Somewhere else on the web, a blog like the one you are reading now, or a directory like TeachingEnglish.org.uk
6. Last and least, Google-is-Evil
   

Muddiest points, 10 August

A number of the "muddiest points" from the session(s) on August 10 I've answered previously, so I will direct you to answers that you'll find here on this blog:

• How do you set up a "news aggregator" -- and what is RSS?
• Using "paste special" to copy text off of the Internet into a Word document
• How to change the default start page of your browser
• Which is better, text or images?
• What's podcasting?
• Coping with geekspeak
  

In a separate post, I've answered the question "Why bother with technology?"

And finally, someone wanted to know how to find things on Google. I would argue that they didn't mean Google, they meant finding things on the Internet...

Muddiest points, 6 April

Not surprisingly, as we had no Internet connection, and I couldn't show you what a blog is, "blogs" was the muddiest point for the session this morning. Always have a "Plan B", as I suggested!

Specifically, someone said "the way in which blogs can be useful in English teaching". In a previous post, I suggested some of the things that you can do with a blog...

Do feel free to use the "comments" link that you will find below each of the posts on this blog, by the way!

In previous posts I've also explained how to set a blog up, both on Blogger.com and on Zoomblog.

Two others -- which a 90-minute session really doesn't give us time to look at properly -- were RSS and podcasting.

And finally, difficulties with the terminology, something lots of people find hard -- but which shouldn't put you off using technology!

I don't know the first thing about technology

You don't know much about technology...? Nothing at all, in fact?

The bad news is that you need to learn -- first of all because that's just the world is going and secondly because for things like lesson planning and creating materials it's a very useful skill.

The good news, however, is that learning to use technology is remarkably easy -- things like Word and digital cameras and mobile phones and iPods would never have become so popular if that weren't the case.

And remember, you don't have to be an expert -- you only need to become a competent user of whatever it is you are trying to use. I say "competent" -- but I might just as well say "confident", because I think it's really a question of that: knowing enough to be able to do what you want to do efficiently and easily -- and knowing that you know you can.

How do you go about it?
Some kind of formal training -- a course on, say, Word, that is -- will always help, but that's not always an option open to you. If it's not, there is plenty you can do to help yourself -- and most technology is easy enough to teach yourself to a level of "confident competence", as I say.

Some suggestions, in approximate order of most to least helpful:

• First and foremost, use the technology -- it's like language learning, something many people will learn by doing
• Secondly, use it with curiosity. Most people -- even people who are confident, fairly "expert" users, use very few of options computer programs offer them. Be curious -- examine the drop down menus, find out what those icons you never use are, for example. Someone else in the staffroom has a really neat handout? How did they do it?
• Thirdly, find someone that knows. Sure, you can find things out for yourself but the fastest, simplest way to find out is to get someone to show you.
• On the Internet, you've got tons of great stuff which will help. Try searching Google-is-Evil with the name of your program, the word "tutorial", and what you are trying to do [example] -- and look for a result published by a US university (written with people like yourself in mind!)
• On most programs, your F1 short cut key will bring up the "Help" section (or else use "Help", which you probably have as the last item on your menu bar).
• Fairly low down towards the bottom of my list would be buying yourself a book. Many are written by people who may know lots about the technology, but would never have made good teachers!
• Right at the bottom of my list would be buying a book in a series with yellow covers on it entitled "... for Dummies". It's a hugely successful series (I guess lots of people identify with the "Dummies" in the title!), but most of them are exceptionally badly written, in my experience.

In a previous post, you had links to sites that will help you with the technological terms.

And finally, enjoy using technology -- whether it's your digital camera and pictures of your holiday or using the Internet with a class.

Once you start to enjoy it, that's when you start to feel confident...

Muddiest points, 17 March

The following were the "muddiest points" from our session on March 17th.

• "What's the purpose of this blog?" someone asked, a great question, which I've answered in a separate post. (One of the things I like about the muddiest point technique is that it makes the teacher think!)
• "How do you actually create a blog?" is a question the session doesn't allow time for, but which I've answered previously. You have separate tutorials for Blogger and for Zoomblog (two of the big providers of blogging services), and a comparison of the two, to help you determine which might be better
• "Why is Firefox better than Internet Explorer?"
  
• "Webquests" someone else said -- for which you now have a series of useful links

New to technology?
Several people made comments along the lines of "I've almost no experience in information technology and I don't understand anything yet" and "it's all new to me and I need practice". You now have some suggestions on how to cope with that...

Basic tools

In our introductory session, the following things were all mentioned in your "Task 1". Click the links provided here to learn more.

Task 1
The following are things that you should know how to do:

• Create and organise your Favourites (aka Bookmarks)
• Run Windows Explorer (for exploring what's on your PC, not what's on the Internet, for which you need Internet Explorer, or another browser)
• Find images on the Internet, store them on your PC, and then reuse them
• Use the "paste special" function to paste text from the Internet into a text document
• Use "view thumbnails" to see what images you have in a particular folder
• Change the default start page on your browser
• Use your keyboard shortcuts
• Create a Word document using a Word template
  

The following are things that you might want to use:

• Firefox (an alternative to Internet Explorer)
• Podcasting
• A blog
• RSS

Understanding the technical terms

"I just don't understand the technical terms," someone said the other day.

There are various places you could turn to for help:

• Someone that knows who happens to be right there at the time! Ask us in the Internet Room, if you are there...
• The ict4lt.org site (that's Information and Communications Technology for Language Teachers) has a good glossary (as well as lots of other interesting links under "resources")
  
• Webopedia, which describes itself as an "online dictionary and search engine for computer and Internet technology definitions"
• Google-is-Evil (or some other search engine). On G-is-E, try adding "define" to your search [example]

The above are in approximate order of preference, note. First a person, not technology at all, with a specialist site (possibly one you have bookmarked) before a search engine.

Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer is used for exploring what you have on your computer -- and also for organising what's on it, by creating folders and subfolders.

It's not the same as Internet Explorer, which is used for exploring what's on the Internet.

How you get to Windows Explorer


There are various ways you can launch Windows Explorer, all of which you can see in the image, above:

• Using "My Computer", which in effect launches Windows Explorer for you
• Via the "Windows Explorer" icon
• By right-clicking on the "start" button (bottom left of the image), and then choosing "Explore" from the pop-up menu
• By clicking "start", choosing "Run" and typing "explorer" into the box
  

What can you do with Windows Explorer
There are lots of useful things you can do with Windows Explorer, some of them essential to then being able to find things easily on your PC.

• create a new folder (via File >> New >> Folder, shown in the image, right)
  
• create sub folders (right-click within an existing folder, choose New >> Folder, and name appropriately)
  
• rename a folder (right-click it, and choose "rename" (or select the folder and hit the F2 shortcut key))
• examine what is in the folders, with the "view thumbnails" function the best way to see what images you have in them
• reorganise files into other folders (select whatever you want, holding down Control or Control+Shift to select multiple files, and simply drag to whichever folder you want them in)
  

If what you have created doesn't seem to appear, hit the F5 key to refresh the view.

Organising and naming your files and folders logically becomes vital when you have a lot of things on your computer.

Go to "start" >> "search" if you still can't find it!

>> More on Windows Explorer

View thumbnails

The "view thumbnails" function is useful if you want to see what images you have got in a particular folder. In the image above we are seeing the files as a "list" -- and we can't actually see the images.

If you have saved things to your PC from a digital camera, for example, you've probably got names like "DSN5987" -- not terribly helpful, especially when you have several hundred of them!

Assuming you are using Windows, if it's Windows 2000, go to "View" and pick "Thumbnails".


If you have Windows XP, you have both "thumbnails" and "filmstrip" (as shown in the image, above). The latter gives you a much larger version of the image (great for determining which of those several hundred pix you just took on your camera should be trashed!).

If it's a Spanish PC, you want "vistas en miniatura" from the "ver" menu.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard short cuts -- such as using the "Control" key +S to save the document you are currently working on -- are not something that you actually need to use.

If you aren"t using them already, you must be accessing the same tools either by the menus or by the icons. From the menu, File >> Save, for example, will have the same effect as Control+S, and clicking the diskette "Save" icon will do the same.

What are the keyboard short cuts?


If you pull down a dropdown menu you will be able to see what your keyboard short cuts are -- as you can see in the image above.

Start to use them and Control +A, +C, +F, +S, +V, +Z, +X (etc) will soon become second nature to you. Go ahead: explore the menus in Word and Internet Explorer and Firefox and you'll soon discover what each of those is for.
Why use the short cuts?
Two reasons. One is that they"ll save you time -- they're faster.

And, more importantly, if you learn to use them, you've learnt something new about using your computer -- and learning how to use a computer more proficiently makes you more confident about using it.

It's a bit like learning a language. When you acquire more words, better skills, you can do more; when you can do more, you feel more confident, and you then communicate more successfully. It's a snowball effect.

Try the shortcuts…!

Firefox, not Internet Explorer

Firefox is a browser (shown above), for viewing websites -- an alternative to Internet Explorer (IE). It's very similar from the user's point of view, but has a number of interesting features.

Among its advantages:

• It's arguably safer than Internet Explorer, being less likely to trigger some of the malicious things lurking out there on the Internet
  
• It adheres to "standards", not something that can always be said of Internet Explorer; standards -- among other things -- allow designers to create websites that you can then use no matter what browser or computer you are using
• It has lots of neat little "extensions", which include the ability to add search engines (and other things) to your toolbar. In the image, right, you can see that I can thus make the same search ("lesson plan ELT") on several different search engines; I didn't find what I wanted on Google-is-Evil, so now I'm going to try Yahoo. My other additions include Answers.com and Wikipedia (good alternatives for search) and -- for films -- the superb Internet Movie Database (IMDB)
  
• It gives you "tabbed browsing", which is great if you're the kind of person that likes to have lots of different web pages or sites open at the same time. You can just see the "tabs" in the image at the top of this post -- I've got the Barcelona-Online directory open, as well as a site called PC Hell, for example
  
• You can save bookmarks where they are more readily accessible. In the image at the top, you can see that the one on the left takes me to my Bloglines account
  
• It works much better than Internet Explorer on some sites -- like Hotmail for example (try downloading something from your Hotmail inbox in the Internet Room and you'll see what I mean: using IE you can't!
  
• It's not Micro$oft
  

Among its disadvantages

• Google-is-Evil is at least partly behind it
• A few sites you can"t view properly in Firefox (generally because the design of the page was sloppy)