Tools of the Trade

Every tradesman knows the quality of their work is a direct reflection of the quality of the tools they use.  The same analogy can be applied to online education - there are certain invaluable tools that I need to be able to do my job properly.  Moreover, there are certain tools that my students need to be able to access in order to communicate with me and complete the work I set them.  I'm sure every teacher around the world can relate to that issue, especially in the past 12 months. 


("Tools of the trade Project 365(3) Day 352" by Keith Williamson is licensed under CC BY 2.0)

I have to say this is not a new thing.  Salmon (N.D.) in her five stage model of emoderating highlights that the very first stage of online education requries the students to have access to the tools and systems that they require to use throughout their journey.  Similarly, and unsurprisingly, teachers are the same.  I dare say that, with regard to online learning, every subject specialism has it's own unique requirements and therefore software and hardware specifications required by teachers working in those areas are likely to vary.  But as a mathematics educator this has always been a huge challenge largely owning to the problem of unique mathematical notation.

However, recently I found myself quite perplexed.  

Since the beginning of 2021 I have been working to mentor a student teacher who is new to the realms of teaching online,  Moreover, she is now in the position of teaching elementary statistics for the first time to a group of entry level students.  So, one of the key issues I wanted to highlight is the importance of the pen.  (To save me from having to recap the content of my previous blog on this subject, you can find the link here.)

Given that my student had access to MS Teams (which provides an online whiteboard app) via her own laptop, but no access to any teaching resources, policy or procedural documents I set out on a mission to get the resources she needed.  Eventually we got permissions to view the policy documents, and a laptop, but no provision of a pen.  Every other lecturer on campus has access to a device which comes with the use of a pen for writing on screen.  But apparently my mentee can't get one?  And it's not an issue of cost because the device she needed cost £20 on a well known online shopping site named after a famous rain forest.



Apparently this is policy issue! This policy states that software purchase has to be approved prior to purchase to ensure that it meets with the requirements of some document stored in a dusty folder somewhere that hasn't been looked at in decades.  It's a pen people!  More to the point, try teaching without a pen.  It's a nightmare.  You spend hours making up powerpoint slides or worksheets and faffing around with equation editors, snipping tools, widgets and gadgets just to put a simple calculation on the screen, a job you could do in two seconds if you had a pen.  Will it enable some hacker to break into our systems and steal data?  Probably not.  But will it enable a teacher to demonstrate and model the logic required to perform calculations to a group of students who are bored witless with the death by powerpoint approach?  Yes!!  

Meanwhile all of this trouble could have been avoided if my mentee had been given a device which was more appropriate to her needs and certainly in line with sort of tools and equipment that she will be using when she graduates and goes out into the real world without the support of a mentor who just so happens to be well trained in Online and Distance Education.  At what point in this pandemic did policy and procedure override common sense?  

OK rant over!  But if anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation, there are some tools out there that I have found to be very helpful in supporting my students in learning maths online.  But that will be the subject of my second blog - "Tools of the trade part 2".  

You can follow me on twitter @McintoshMclean.

References

Salmon, G. (N.D.)  The Five Stage Model [Online].  Available at:  https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html# (Accessed 3rd March 2021).

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