I’ve been ‘playing’ with digital learning and technology for a while now. My first blog post was in 2006 and my first podcast was in 2012. It’s Sunday night and I published a podcast over an hour ago. It usually takes a while to get onto iTunes, because first it has to go to a podcast hosting site called Blubrry. I did this a week and a half ago, and it went to Blubrry and then to iTunes pretty quickly. But tonight the new podcast won’t move to that first step, and I have no idea why? Even after I ‘ping‘ the website, (even though that should happen automatically), my post won’t go to Blubrry. That’s the frustrating thing, I don’t think I did anything different but somehow it won’t work. It might need time, and everything will be fine in the morning by the time this is published. It might not and I’ll have a whole lot of troubleshooting to do.

I do podcasts for fun. I do podcasts to learn. I’ll learn from this, but right now it doesn’t feel like fun.

Educators, as you head into the new world of ‘remote learning’, while we cope with social distancing, empty schools, and COVID-19 continuing to keep us physically separate, please realize that the technology doesn’t always work as planned. It doesn’t always work for the neophytes, and it doesn’t always work for the people like me that think they know what they are doing. When you get frustrated, and you will, remember this: Remember a time when you were really excited to teach a lesson. You stayed up late figuring things out and setting up the handouts for kids. Then you got to school and the photocopier jams horribly. You have no time to get your printing done. Dang! Your whole plan is done and needs reworking. At that point, you didn’t say to yourself, “That’s it, I’m never using the photocopier again!” That would be silly.

You’ll try using some technology for the first time and it won’t go as planned. You’ll try doing a video conferencing lesson and it will flop. You’ll have students doing things you didn’t expect them to do. And you’ll work it out. You’ll connect with your students. You’ll laugh at yourself and they’ll laugh too. You’ll get a lesson or two from a student that knows more than you. And soon, you’ll feel much better about the technology and the strategies you are using.

Oh, and even then, there will be times when the technology doesn’t work… and that’s ok.