Simple Remote Learning Fixes

Windows 98 is in the house!

I was asked what our spec-ed teachers can do to help students with IEPs who are struggling with technology at home.  This might not be the answer they expected, but here's 30 years of IT experience at work, and it follows the screensaver I always ran when I was a full time IT technician:  SIMPLIFY!

For many 'tech' is something out of their comfort zone which means you're battling a confidence issue as well as the tech problem.  For others, especially younger people who have been told they're digital natives who intuitively understand technology (which is hooey) you get the Dunning-Kruger Effect in full blossom and have have to back them out of the assumptions they jump into too quickly.


Here are the simple how-tos for tech support which will resolve the vast majority of technical problems you'll face in our bizarre new world of COVID19 bubble remote learning (you'll be building digital fluency in your users too!):

THE BASICS FOR TECH SUPPORTING REMOTE LEARNING

1. Have you tried turning it off and on again?  You'd be amazed how often that solves things.  There is a lot of data moving around in a computer and the person using it may very well have interrupted some of those processes.  Rebooting a computer lets it sort itself out and undo those interruptions.

2. SLOW DOWN! (it's a theme) Actually read the error - the computer is trying to tell you something, slow down and read and understand it. Many people tend to make assumptions and then start mashing buttons and messing with settings.  This makes it even harder to fix the probably simple issue that kicked this off.

3. Get good at searching online for a solution.  Don't paraphrase, put the specific message you're getting in the search and you'll get specific how-tos, you'll also get a sense of how common what's happened is.  Include details.  What operating system are you running?  Windows 10?  Windows 8?  Windows 7 even though it is no longer supported by Microsoft but your school board won't update?  Mac OSx?  ChromeOS?  What model of computer are you using - it's stamped on it somewhere.  Get details and use them in your online search. 






4.  Having said number 3, the internet is populated with idiots, so don't believe everything you read on the inter-webs - be critical!  Look for quality answers from a good source (it's NEVER Reddit - see the brilliant commentary on the right).
A Chrome answer from a Google page?  A Windows answer from a Microsoft page?  A Mac answer from an Apple page?  That's where you want to look - and then SLOW DOWN (theme, remember?) read and understand what they're saying.







5.  Make one change and test it.  As Charles from MASH once famously said, do one thing at a time, do it very well, and then move on.
Running off half cocked is what too many people do.  They end up making things worse by digging into settings and mashing buttons.  If it worked before, it's probably a single thing that changed.  Slow down, read and understand what's happening, isolate the problem, solve it - then reboot to let the computer sort itself out!




The technical side of things is only one part of the technical support equation.  Dealing with user psychology is the unspoken, secret side of the business.  User resilience plays a big part in why you're facing the many technical issues you've been tasked with solving.  It's a lack of confidence that prevents people from solving many of these issues themselves, not the technical complexity of the issue itself.  As my Dad once said, if a person built it, I can fix it.  Until we're facing alien technology, you got this.

If we can build confidence and encourage everyone to take on responsibility for using the tech, everything tends to work better, the user included.  Don't ignore the psychology - make a point of congratulating yourself or your user for resolving their own technical challenges - it helps bridge that confidence deficit.

6. BONUS:  it's usually something simpler than you think it is.  When I was looking at blade server failure that had just knocked over 600 employees off the network for no reason everyone else in the department wanted to dive into software settings.  I went and looked at the thing and realized it had been plugged in to the wrong breaker (plug), and it kept popping when over 400 connected at time.  Others wanted to get into settings, I checked to see if it was plugged in properly.

Mike Meyers has a similar story in his CompTIA A+ Study manual:  a colleague was bragging about how great his security firewalls were on a new server.  Mike bet him he could get into it and the guy took the bet.  Mike put on overalls, walked into the office saying he was there to do some maintenance and the receptionist waved him in.  He walked into the server room, unplugged it and walked out of the office with it under his arm.  The receptionist didn't notice because her internet was down (he'd just walked out with the thing that served it).


7. SUPER BONUS!!!  PUSH YOUR UPDATES!  If you're on Windows type in update in the search bar and it'll walk you through them - being out of date can stop your machine from working properly, especially in our interconnected techosystem (see what I did there?).  Being out of date also opens you up to all sorts of cybersecurity headaches.  If you're on an Apple product, the process is similar.  Chromebooks need updating love too, don't forget it!

There is nothing magical about digital technology, or any technology really.  Our inability to manage it usually comes down to either a confidence problem around a lack of familiarity or an over falsity of confidence based on a lack of genuine expertise.

When you're trying to get students connected during an emergency situation don't over-complicate things and look for the easiest fix first.  I've seen 'experts' diving into Chrome settings and spending an hour messing with things and still coming up short.  The IT tech in me always wonders why they don't spend five minutes uninstalling and reinstalling it.  The point isn't to show off your prowess (though I'm not sure that wandering through settings randomly trying things for an hour would do that), it's to make things work.

In short, be humble, be helpful and be solutions focused which includes addressing where your user is in terms of psychology.  That'll get 99% of your technical challenges sorted in our bizarre #COVID19 remote learning bubbles.  For the other 1%, that's why we have IT departments.

Pandemic Reflections: F2F Has Way Better Bandwidth

I'm a teacher with a lot of technical expertise.  I don't just teach effectively with digital technology, I teach the subject itself.  Fifteen years working in information technology in roles ranging from systems implementation to technical support and training are what led me into teaching the subject.  When I began teaching in 2004, elearning was beginning to evolve out of distance (ie: mail order paper based) material.  I jumped on it the summer after I started teaching at Peel DSB.  At that point elearning was a very loose HTML webpage where you had to write code to display the content properly.  I had some very interesting experiences teaching senior, university bound English on that system.  When I moved to my current board I volunteered for their pilot elearning program and taught a variety of elearning courses purely online, and then did a blended face to face introduction to elearning while teaching the mandatory career studies course.  One of the best things to come out of that project was that all of those students had a very clear idea of whether or not elearning would work for them.  A third of the class never wanted to see it again, and the correlation between students with IEPs and students who had trouble with elearning was nearly 100%.

All that to say, I've spent a great deal of my career exploring how digital technologies might augment our teaching, but I'm also well aware of the shortfalls.

The recent pandemic shutdown has driven a lot of teachers and students online, and the framing by our Ministry early on was very elearning focused, but a colleague in our first ever staff video conference said something that resonated with me:  this isn't elearning, it isn't business as usual, this is emergency response remote learning - we're not 'going online' we're doing everything we can to keep education alive at a time when it's too easily dismissed.  This might sound like an arbitrary distinction, but it isn't.  Not everyone needs to go online, and in many cases (as in the 2011 career studies experiment above), we have a sizable portion of our student population who cannot learn effectively in that space.  When you also toss in the inequity of online learning, it leaves option looking like a very poor go-to.  As educators, whenever we see the system roll out an undifferentiated, blanket response to an issue (like EQAO), we should take a hard pedagogical look at it.  Uniform responses that don't honour our student (and teacher's) individual approaches to learning and teaching are, by definition, unresponsive and ineffective. 

Since the school closures happened I've been very conscious of the economically disadvantaged students who have been cut off at home.  This may very well be a home that isn't safe, isn't providing adequate care and isn't where the student wants to spend their time.  The "stay at home" message that started this off is couched in privilege.  For many students home isn't a nice word.  I've been frustrated by the lack of initiative shown in this crisis, but the digital divide many of our students face was something we could have addressed before, but didn't.  Some leaders are now using that lack of equity as an excuse to do nothing, which strikes me as the worst kind of hypocrisy.  If we messed it up before, we're messing it up now for even more people because what we didn't do before is an excuse to do nothing now?  Wow.

I'm also staggered that there is evidently no one in the largest school system in the country who is responsible for emergency response planning.  We seem to be making it up as we go and delivering planning by press conference (evidently this are no communications going to boards before hand to begin preparing), and we've already lost three weeks planning something that should have been in place from the go.

You know what's harder than teaching remotely?  Teaching remotely using unclear and constantly changing expectations.

So here we are, in a pandemic situation that people have been warning is coming for years.  Our solution is to throw elearning at it, and (so far, 3 weeks in) do nothing to address the fact that thousands of Ontario students don't have the devices at home and/or the internet connectivity to access it - and those are the students who most needed education to support them from the beginning.

There is a reason why we truck in students on diesel fume spewing school buses each day to a face to face learning environment; public education is the great equalizer.  More than anything else it helps us find the best in our population and enable them to achieve beyond the socio-economic situation they find themselves in.  For wealthy students school can feel like a step down from a life of choice and excess, but for others it is a bastion of reliability; the only time in their day when they're talking to dependable, capable adults.  For some it's the only time when they aren't hungry, and our solution in an emergency situation that demands isolation is to ignore them?

Level 3 means you can take a time and date out of an email
and put it in an online calendar, this isn't rocket science.

Let's say we get the digital divide under control and manage to get everyone connected (we haven't and we won't, but let's imagine we did).  Now that we have everyone online and using an appropriate device, we need the majority to leverage digital skills they haven't developed and get them learning remotely.  Ontario doesn't have a digital skills continuum, other than some vague language dropped into other subjects here and there, yet we were increasingly expecting students and teachers to use digital tools in school and now they have suddenly become a necessity.  I teach computer technology and have a well developed program, but I only reach about 100 students out of the 1300 in our school.  If you count the business tech courses and media arts that also build digital fluency, all together we'd be lucky to reach a quarter of our student population, the rest have basic, habitual digital experience - like most of the population.  What we're doing with elearning is akin to handing out books to illiterate people so they can learn at home with them.

Could elearning work?  It has in my experience, and I'm seeing some of my very digitally fluent seniors doing outstanding work online now.  I've had some very positive elearning teaching experiences where we leveraged technology and created a remote learning environment that was rich and responsive.  When it has happened, it was with a digitally focused and experienced teacher and voluntary students who also had the resilience and technical expertise to make it happen.

When you teach online it feels like you're looking at your students through a wrong-way-around telescope.  I described this recently in terms of bandwidth.  When you're face to face with someone you're able to read their body language in fine detail.  The tone of their voice isn't a dimensionless thing coming out of a tiny computer speaker, but it doesn't end there.  I've had students with obvious (when face to face) hygiene issues that I'm able to notice and subtly address by getting our councillors involved.  I'm able to leverage the fantastic food school resources our school offers to get hungry students fed when we're face to face.  I'm able to overhear student conversation in class that gives me the context I need to connect with them more effectively.  I'm able to present body language and nuance of voice that develops trust and a human relationship.  I'm able to differentiate instruction with students quickly and effectively while face to face.  I'm able to close the digital divide for all my students when they enter my lab.   Doing all this in school means I'm also doing it in a place with social conventions aimed at teaching and learning that define and direct what we're doing - you don't get any of that online.  There is a reason we learn best face to face, it has way better bandwidth than any digital option.  Even if you and your students are digital ninjas, remote/online learning is always going to be a lower bandwidth, less effective option that face to face learning.

In a perfect world we'd develop our staff and student's digital fluency and engage in augmented 21st Century learning using digital tools and connectivity to enhance our ability to collaborate and communicate (and be ready for bizarre emergencies like this one), but it makes for a poor replacement; educational technology for augmentation is a worthy pedagogical goal.  Educational digital technology replacing face to face learning isn't pedagogically motivated, it's usually tied to scalability and the resultant monetization of a platform, usually with an eye to reducing costs and centralizing control.  The elearning push by Ontario's current government was entirely focused on this without any thought given to the digital divide, dearth of digital skills and pedagogically reductive nature of remote elearning.

This pandemic has shone a harsh light on the inadequacies of our system in terms of emergency response and digital skills training, as well as highlighting the ongoing digital divide.  A good that might come of it is that we begin to address all of these issues and build a more resilient and effective education system that is able to take initiative and respond to an emergency situation without taking a month to think about it.  The resultant remote learning will still be inferior to what we can do in school, but as it stands now we've taken too long to do something we're not ready to do anyway.  As we limp out of this situation, we need to take a long hard look at how unprepared we were to deal with this.