Transformation Teachers Programme

Found my self at home today having lost my car keys last night and full of cold! So it was the perfect opportunity to explore the web presences set up for our participation on the transformation teachers’ programme. The first thing I wanted to explore further was the edublog and try writing a ‘page’ rather than a ‘post’. So I typed into google the blog domain given me. No result. So I made second attempt. No result. So I decided to try another domain for another web presence. No result.

By this time I had completely convinced myself that the technology was at fault not me (of course!). So I turned to a more manual task until help arrived in the form of my husband, by which time I had condemned new technologies off the face of the planet.

He asked me to read out the blog domain and he typed it in to google. No result. He then asked to look at the instructions himself which Judy had given out to us on the first session. Cheek, I thought, he doesn’t believe me! He took one look and said to me ‘Call yourself a teacher! You can’t even read! You’ve been putting in the wrong information. Within seconds he was into my edublog domain much to my embarrassment and I was able to proceed.

Typical mistake? Yes, I think so, for those of us who are not native to the brave new world of ICT, and who can be so quickly derailed and disabled from learning independently. I can read ,and read very well. But in this situation I failed to read a simple piece of information correctly because I was intimidated by the technology. The lesson I learnt is an important lesson, and one which is more about psychology than a reality . We are in control of this technology and the sooner we empower ourselves and take command of it, rather than wait around for others to do it for us like I did, the sooner it will work for us and make the difference to our professional lives and personal sense of achievement.