Two weeks ago John Oliver did a lengthy piece on cryptocurrencies on his Sunday night HBO show, Last Week Tonight. In that show he went over the three pieces involved in understanding cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrencies themselves. Because of the complicated nature of the topic, Oliver conceded to Seth Meyers on Late Night that before he started writing the piece he really had to keep his audience in his mind. When he presented the information on cryptocurrencies he needed to remember that his audience is who he was five weeks prior when he started to learn about the topic. This really got me thinking about technology and working with our educators to integrate that technology.
In 2009, Simon Sinek gave a TEDx Talk "Start with Why." In that TEDx Talk he brought up Everett Rogers' concept from 1962 on the Law of Diffusion of Innovation. The theory tries to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. My job is to know about those technologies and be able to best integrate them into the classroom, helping to move teachers forward and understand where each person is on the diffusion scale. I've been in my current position for almost a decade, and over the past decade I've learned about SMART Boards, iPads, G Suite, Web 2.0 tools, and more. This statement by John Oliver really struck a cord with me because classroom technology moves at the speed of items trending on Twitter.
When I ran my first professional development session ten years ago, it was about SMART Boards and SMART Notebook. Our district had just outfitted every classroom with SMART Boards, and I thought it was necessary to show all of the teachers how harnessing the power of SMART Notebook could benefit their lessons, their students, and their time. Since that first session, SMART Boards have become an after thought but teachers are getting this technology, new to them, in their classrooms every year. This past year I did an introductory SMART Notebook session at the state wide technology conference, which is attended by about 3,000 educators. It was the largest audience I've ever presented to and most of the attendee in the session were new to SMART Notebook. Even people who attended the session who were familiar with SMART Notebook, walked away with a few new tips they didn't have before they arrived. I bring up the SMART Notebook example because no matter where we are with technology there is alway someone who has just discovered it. When we (technology educators) present new technology to teachers we need to remember the wide-eyed kid we were when we first saw something cool demonstrated on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or at the latest technology conference and said, "I need to know how to do that." We also need to have an understanding and remember our audience (district personnel) and where each person is at on the Diffusion of Innovation spectrum. There are staff in our district we run to because we can't share new technology fast enough and other personnel who will hear about it next year from another teacher in the district and tell us about it again as excitedly as we were when we heard about it. Like within our classrooms, we need to make sure we are differentiating technology for our teachers. We need to make sure to show them the basics so they understand how the technology works and integrates into their classroom and also show some of the higher level things the technology can do to intrigue our high flying educators. If we can manage our expectations of technology integration with our districts and help educators along the Diffusion of Innovation spectrum we should get educators who have a better understanding for classroom technology, more interest in trying to innovate its uses in the classroom, and overall, a better comfort with the speed at which it changes.
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