Dr. Steve Wheeler at UCC.

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Steve Wheeler from University of Plymouth at UCC for a lunchtime seminar. Steve presented "It's Personal: Learning Spaces,Learning Webs" which he was later to present online to the Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks Online Symposium http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/blogs/ples/

It was a happy accident that we were able to host Steve, via his Blog we noted he was in Cork on other business, and with a couple of quick eMails everything was arranged - the efficiencies of the online world made manifest.

You can access an audio of the session here:http://www.ucc.ie/academic/ionadbairre/SteveWheeler.mp3 (15mb, 1hr)

And view the slides on Slideshare via Steve's blog here:http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/10/its-personal-learning-spaces-learning.html

Find the pain point

If you want to use technology in teaching, great, but first understand why you want to use it. Find a pain point, a teaching problem the technology will help you solve, and you are much more likely to see the process through. If you are using technology just to 'be modern' in your teaching, forget it.

A couple of years ago I did some research about usage of the Blackboard VLE in UCC. Academics I spoke to had differing views of their level of usage:

"I hardly use it at all, I only put up my powerpoints and handouts"

to

"I use it very extensively, I put up all my powerpoints and all my handouts."

For all practical purposes, regardless of their perceptions, they were all in the same boat. They put their materials on the VLE, because they had large classes. Copying and carrying 500 handouts for a lecture was torture. The VLE took it away. They used it for that, and stopped right there. They had solved their pain point, and nothing else bothered them enough to get worked up about finding a tool to solve it. But it was that issue, not quality, or access issues, that motivated most staff to use the VLE.

To successfully adapt a new technology tool, it has to solve a problem with an amount of effort that seems proportionate. Find your problem first, and then try to find the tool to solve it. The latest web 2.0 buzz topic might not be it.

So what's your problem? What takes you the most time and effort for the least learning benefit to your students? That's your pain point, and a good place to start.