Technology misbehaves….so what

17/02/2008 by nicola.

This has been a very demanding week - with technology challenges including - presenting my first 2 F2F training sessions to staff on how to use the VLE, some of whom had never heard of eLearning before; and the VLE had random problems throughout the session with different odd things happening with every activity.

On the followup day, the system continued misbehaving and we also use a tutor/presenter pc where you can control all the pcs in the room so instead of everyone having to look towards the front, they can see e.g. a PowerPoint on their own screen - this started behaving strangely with individual pcs ‘dropping out’ of the connection - so trying to present and reboot individual connections - then we finally got what is known in IT terms as the ‘blue screen of death’ on this pc - fortunately everyone was laughing about it.

We borrowed a laptop for remainder of session and somehow managed to use the VLE to complete some designing / course building activities, but I was very concerned at the time that I was presenting in order to try and persuade people who are not that comfortable with technology, that using it is a good thing !

The email servers went down all day on Wednesday and I tried to set up a new laptop at home and I also got a random ‘blue screen of death’ the second I switched it on - but after seeing one earlier this week (haven’t seen one in maybe 5/6 yrs) decided I wasn’t having any of it - and rebooted and it worked. I am also getting the odd random message on booting up to say things like - it can’t find an operating system but again I’ve decided to ignore it - and try again - before packing it up and sending it back to the supplier… and my learning point from this is that sometimes computers like humans send out ‘dramatic’ messages but also equally like humans, they just need to take a few moments to sort themselves out.

Fortunately its all behaving now - am typing from it at this moment. Getting used to my new phone has equally been fun - its just like when you first start a new job, you may get a laptop, phone or whatever on day 1 and you need to start communicating immediately…can all be good fun and games.

On the last two days of the week, 2 of the servers supporting our VLE - melted too so people were reporting either no or random access to their courses.

On my online course, its been great to be involved this week - its really nice to see a course from the point of view of a learner, because I can experience the same ‘getting used to a new system’ feelings again as well as ‘getting used to joining a new community’, it is easy to forget experiences or challenges which at the time can cause a lot of stress for students, the more time you spend away from studying. Using social media provides similar experiences too. Also, in the virtual worlds, its not that much different, there may be slightly different challenges to face, but those ‘getting started’ feelings replicate across whatever online experience you have.

Compiling ideas for icebreakers is fantastic, its so helpful to get other ideas and putting it in a discussion forum or wiki or similar community ‘page’ is a really good way to share ideas about what can work and/or not. For anyone who is new to eLearning or contributing anything online, the more fun you can make it, again, finding the balance between helping students get going and then letting them shape it - is the same whether you are learning using a VLE, virtual 3D world, wiki etc Except that in a 3D virtual world, you can be much more flexible with your environment, your discussion forums are not a custom option to choose when designing, a facility within a system that manages them in one place. You can record discussions in a virtual world e.g. Second Life, anywhere ( I think, need to investigate more ).

My overall reflection on the week, is that technology does go wrong, but I think that if you make that assumption when you are first planning out a course/session, giving people an area to report technical difficulties so they can get help, encouraging others to share experiences - and provide ‘old fashioned’ backups such as contact tel nos (e.g starting / help / preparation info) all makes it less stressful. I don’t have any great insights here but its been a nice series of gentle reminders that peoples’ concerns may be different every time you have - new members of a community, new student cohorts etc because everyone may be using different versions of everything and we are no longer limited to one device; allowing people to explore the technology so that they are not overwhelmed by it and providing ‘escape routes’ when things don’t go as planned.

Its nice to think that a few years ago, these kinds of frustrations would have bothered me a lot more, would have been much quicker to ring IT support, more inclined to send an electronic device back when I can’t figure out something - now it just feels like problems are never either too difficult to sort and/or temporary….here’s hoping

Posted in Technology, eLearning | Print | 2 Comments »