WebedtecH

This diagram by Gartner illustrates the “hype cycle” for most technologies…where’s your favorite?

I hate to admit it but their placement of various technologies on the cycle seems relatively accurate. What do you think?

This is a new series we’re beginning here at Webedtech. We’re going to focus each week on Toastmasters and various topics involving speaking and presenting such as better presentation techniques, tips, and club management advice.

This week’s topic: Following the manual

Toastmasters has a long, tested educational program of manual speeches (manual as in book, not labor) designed to guide club members through a logical growth of speaking skills and techniques. I recommend anyone new to speaking or Toastmasters and trying to develop their techniques rapidly take the Competent Communicator’s manual to heart.

If you’re not sure how to get the most from your manual speeches, talk to your club’s VP of Education or your mentor and lay out an approach to working through your manual speeches in a dedicated manner. Here’s a tip if you have a hard time coming up with speech topics. Choose a topic that can span several speeches and work through it over the course of the manual speeches. For example, if you decide to do a series of speeches on Parenting, you can work the skills of each manual speech into the delivery of the different aspects of Parenting. This multi-part presentation will also stretch your ability to present a speech over more than a five to seven minute time span.

Ok, it’s time. Fantastico is finally offering Wordpress 2.5.1 as part of their automatic upgrade so I guess it’s time to make the leap and upgrade the site. I’ll keep you abreast of how well it goes…assuming I’m still here when it’s done.

Update - The upgrade seems to have gone smoothly.  Only time will tell with testing, but for the most part it looks like I’m in business.

Spending time writing a tirade about a topic only to have it disappear from your blog is more than slightly annoying. Now I have to see if I can rewrite it without losing the fire and passion that started it in the beginning.

The summer holidays are quickly approaching here in the States and while our fancies turn to thoughts of vacations, beaches, cookouts, and other frivolity we should keep something in mind…a lesson taught to us each year we manage to forget by the time school begins again. The most effective tools we have are the ones simple to understand and implement. If you do not have to struggle with the operation of the tool, the completion of the task is more efficient and effective.

In the project management schools of thought no project is to begin without a mission statement and a charter. The concept of defining the “mission” of a technology tool for your students provides you the yardstick (or meter stick as warranted) to determine if the tool is delivering on it’s promises to you and your students. Will a word-processor help your students write better? Probably not. Will it make the reviewing and editing processes more efficient? That’s much closer to the possible result and a better measure of the tool and it’s classroom viability.

“If you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail,” is the common paraphrase of a true axiom. If you only have one or two tools you have no choice but to push those tools to their limits in pursuit of your project goals. I’m not saying you shouldn’t investigate other tools, improved systems, and newly developed technologies, but you want to avoid becoming the tool collector with 10 different word processors available but no resulting work.

Identify your specific goals, look for the tools that match those goals, and evaluate the tools on those merits. Keep it simple and your students will thank you. No one would drive a car if it had the controls of a 747 to do the same job. Those controls could come in handy someday, but as part of the educational process they just get in the way.

Kick back, relax, and think…”how can I make my student’s lives simpler?”