Workshop It.

One of the things that I am excited to do on my campus in the very near future are technology workshops for students and for teachers.  These might look like 20-30 minute brief sessions demonstrating an isolated tech tool or a feature within an application that is already used on campus, such as Schoology, Burlington English software, or any of the Google Suite applications.  Ideally, these short sessions would remain focused on one or two techniques so as to remain manageable and thus easily incorporated into students and teachers daily lives.  I find that I am often talking to people about apps I’ve found or cool things that you can do with Google forms and the like, but formalizing these discussions would make them accessible to more people and increase the digital literacy of our school.  So, what do seasoned librarians say about teaching tech skills?

Crystal Schiff, a TechSoup for Libraries blogger and public librarian, talks about hosting a basic I.T. program for staff; You Can Do I.T. teaches staff how to trouble-shoot common technology issues encountered in the library such as, videos loading slowly, preventing computer viruses, and understanding basic hardware.  

Amanda Hovious of Designer Librarian, gives a nice overview of the types of tech tools to include in your repertoire, such as, transmedia tools, dictation tools, collaboration tools, and even spreadsheet software.  She mentions six other categories, but you get the idea.  There are a host of technology tools available that unless teachers take the time to learn, students miss out on using.