Surviving as a teacher these days requires a special set of skills. I’ve written about the fact that my guidance counselor advised me not to learn how to type thinking I wouldn’t need that skill. Boy was she wrong. She had no clue what I would need to know with the advent of the internet and personal computer. Kind of like we have no clue what kids will need to know. Because things are changing so quickly, we need to be able to learn at speeds that are barely imaginable. Traditional teacher PD certainly won’t cut it. There really is no way to learn everything that would be useful and there is no way to keep up with the rate of change, but we can be as efficient as possible.
Multi-tasking
Technology has brought us some inventions that make it possible to learn anywhere. One of those inventions is the podcast. Podcasts are audio learning machines, really. There is a podcast for just about everything. You can learn about pet care or advertising. There are quite a few education podcasts to choose from but the key is that podcasts can be listened to while you are doing something else making them a very efficient way to learn. Driving, mowing the lawn, and other tasks that can be done automatically are great opportunities to learn from a podcast. Some podcasts are for entertainment but even if you are listening for entertainment, that frees up other time. I use podcasts to learn how to do things or stay up to date on information I need for classes I teach.
Don’t Redo, Revise
New initiatives and change can seem overwhelming. I hear a lot of fear from teachers when there are new initiatives or things are changing again. Change is hard and we are getting inundated with change all the time. Many of us are struggling to keep up and it’s scary. It can seem even scarier when we think we are going to need to revamp everything we do because of a new initiative or new learning. This is a fairly common reaction. It’s natural, but if you can catch yourself in this reaction, you can harness new learning instead. The reality is that things are going to change but it doesn’t mean everything needs to be redone from scratch. It means you need to constantly be revising what you are doing using new information and tools. Make small revisions that are manageable.
Double Dip
Using new learning in a variety of ways can help to more efficiently use time. When you learn how to do something new, see if you can use it in more than one place. A new tool could be used in more than one class that you teach, perhaps, or in another part of your practice altogether. Need to revise a lesson or unit? Could it be used to fulfill a course requirement or professional learning task? If you create something new, could it be used for multiple purposes?
Decide What’s Important
Pick and choose what you spend time learning how to do. We can’t learn everything. It can be tough to figure out what will be lasting and what won’t. A strategy I use to decide what to spend time on is to consider how long something will take to get good at using, consider how frequently and how widespread I’ll be able to use the information or tool and then decide whether it’ll be worth it. Today I found an interesting technology tool but it’s going to take a bit to set up and then I only have one place I could maybe use it. I’ll file that away and see if I still want to use it when I’ll have more opportunity.
Delegate
Since I know I can’t learn everything and I’m slower at learning some things because I’m not a digital native, sometimes I farm things out. Students can do a lot of work and they can sometimes do it faster, especially if it’s technology related. Also, I have younger colleagues that are way faster at learning technology than I am so sometimes I see if they might find a use for something and then they show me how to use it. I only do this when it makes sense for someone. For example, I have a colleague who is brilliant at learning how to use new technologies and I found a spreadsheet program that I thought she would have a use for so I shared it with her. She dove right in and figured all kinds of different ways to use it. Once she previewed it and was able to share how she was using it, I decided it would be worthwhile to spend the time on it. I’ll discuss how I have used it next.
Organize Information
On aspect of learning with the availability of the internet, the profuse amount of information available, the speed with which information grows and changes is that it is hard to manage it all. Some things are great resources but maybe you can’t or don’t want to use it immediately. Having a system for organizing information, resources, software programs, technology tools, websites, and ideas is imperative in being efficient. The spreadsheet program I mentioned above is called Airtable and we have used it for a number of things and I have started using it to organize resources and tools I want to come back to. Airtable allows you to sort in a variety of ways and even has a variety of views. I created a column that identifies the stage of learning the resource represents. For example, is it something I am already proficient at using? Is it a tool I may want to learn but don’t have time to learn right now? I can sort all the things tagged with “learn” and it will show me all the resources or tools that have that tag. I can also tag by topic so if it relates to a class I’m teaching, I can come back and sort by that tag when I’m ready to plan for that class. It doesn’t really matter what you use to organize your ideas and resources but to be efficient at learning with all this information at our fingertips, having a system is important.
My colleague Lori & I are taking into consideration all of these issues around efficient learning as we develop only high impact, relatively easy to implement professional learning at Bold Edventures. Teachers just don’t have time to waste on learning that is not immediately relevant and will not impact our classrooms.