White Board on Observation Day

One of the English teachers is being observed today. I haven't worked with her a lot, but I have had the chance to chat with her from time to time. She tends to have a lot of connection issues with her blue tooth (I am so glad that the new boards aren't blue tooth).

Yesterday, she came down to my room. She said she wanted to use the white board for the lesson she was being observed during. She wanted to project a worksheet in word and fill it in. She wanted to know the best way to do it. I'm a fan of showing rather than telling with technology, mostly because I'm not sure I tell all that well (never sure what level of terminology is going to offend or confuse, and easily travel into tangents). Besides, showing gives the learner a chance to try it for themselves right away, which helps them remember. If they don't try it until they go back to their room, they are more likely to forget, and a lot of egos won't let abide by having the same thing explained again. So, we went back to her room.

The first problem, of course, was getting the entire word document to show at once. Fortunately, I'd just figured out where that button was in Word 2007. So, I explained where to click while she did it. I did the same thing to show her how to get ActivStudio to allow her to annotate over the desktop. This seemed a better option than using the Word Marker because she didn't want to save the annotations, and, with this being an observation, I didn't want her to have to deal with the same difficulties as the Calc teacher did--learning to wait for the program to scan the annotation, and having to remember to switch back to the marker.

After walking her through it, I closed everything down and had her try again without my help. I sometimes worry that teachers might feel that this is a bit condescending, but I find it effective. I set them up for success and let them succeed. If they can't get it without help, we start over. I try to not go too many steps without a pause for practice--that isn't going to help "set them up for success." I think that's a bit difficult for someone used to searching for the button that seems to make sense and just trying it. I can get ahead of myself if I'm not careful--and that is only going to confuse and frustrate the teachers. So I try to limit it to four or five mouse clicks in a row, then practice.

So, after getting it right, I left and let the teacher practice on her own. I promised that I would swing by right before the observation and make sure she still remembered everything and see if she needed anything else. And, I assured her, that if I was there observing, too "just in case" it wouldn't seem out of place to the Principal--the coach is supposed to observe.

This morning, about an hour before I was due to visit her, the English teacher showed up in my room with another question. She said that she had everything down, but wanted to know if there was a way to have students fill out the same form, one group at a time. I think I'm also better with being shown than told. I've found (and this is going back to when I worked at the help desk in grad school) that people who are having problems with technology don't always explain it in a way that I follow, and sometimes miss details. So, to avoid frustration on both ends, I've taken to the habit of cutting to the chase and asking them to show me, before I start trying to fix the wrong problem.

So we went back to her room. What she wanted was to put up the desktop annotation screen, write on it, minimize it, bring up a new blank one, and have the students write on it, minimize it, bring up another one, and have a different group write on it. Ok. Not a question I was actually able to answer right away. So I tried it with minimizing. Didn't seem to work--when I tried to start a new one, it just brought the minimized one back up. So, I went with save, close, open a new one. That seemed to be exactly what she had in mind.

I offered again to hang around. She decided she was nervous enough with one person observing. So, I told her I'd make sure to hang around my office and, should she need me, to just send a kid. I'll catch up with her after the observation and see how it went.