What makes a good ICT role model? Please take our incredibly short survey at:
ictrolemodel
Advertisement
Last night I watched the first two episodes of The Killing, a 20-part Danish thriller. I have never been to Denmark, and as far as I can remember I’ve never seen it depicted on film or video. But my impression of Denmark is now as follows:
These days, doing a good job as an ICT or Technology Co- ordinator/Subject Leader is not enough. In order to get on in your career, you have to be seen to be doing a good job. In this series, Alison Skymes looks at ways of making a good impression.Today: how to read more efficiently.
Alison SkymesWhen it comes to reading, most people approach the material in the same way they approach a packet of cornflakes. In an age of information overload, that just ain't good enough. You have a job to do: not only to keep up-to-date for your own sake, but to do so in order to keep your supervisor and others informed. How you gonna do it?
Here are 9 great tips.
If the material is well-structured -- in other words, if the person writing it was more concerned with making sure you could get the gist quickly than with his own ego -- efficient reading should be as easy as falling off a log. But even if the writer spent more time thinking of flowery descriptions than worrying about your need to get stuff done, you can still save time by reading it properly.
Here's what you do:
1. Don't even open the document. That's right: just keep it closed, and spend 5 minutes thinking about what you're looking for, and what you think the document might contain in relation to that. Sounds like a waste of time, right? But it ain't, because what you're doing is setting up some mental hooks on which to hang ideas as they come up from the material, or from your interaction with the material.
2. Read the table of contents, if there is one, as that will help you get a feel for what the document contains. Well, with any luck: if the author has used totally unhelpful section or chapter headings, like "All's well that ends well", you won't have much joy.
3. Always start at the end. Well, at the summary, to be more precise. That often comes at the beginning, in the form of an Executive Summary. Whatever. Read it first, because you'll be able to cut to the chase without all the intervening argument. Like the man said: Just gimme the facts, ma'am.
4. If you still don't have what you need, well, you're going to have to read more of it. Start by reading the first and last paragraphs in each section. The first one should say what is covered. If you've chosen a good source, the final paragraph will summarise what's just been covered.
5. Still not enough? OK, start again, but this time read the first sentences in each paragraph too.
6. Put these techniques together to read the newspaper quickly: the headline and first paragraph, plus the picture and picture caption, should tell you all you need to know.
7. Good website articles and blogs should help in two other ways: firstly, they ought to be short; secondly, they should be tagged -- and the tags should give you a good idea of what the piece is about.
Efficient reading isn't the same as speed reading, but you can always do some things to help you read faster:
1. Ask yourself if you really need all the detail. If the answer is "no", then you can skim-read the document. A good way of doing this is to train yourself to look out for certain "signpost" words -- and then ignore the rest of the sentence. For example, "for example" is an obvious kind of signpost: it tells you that there is an example coming up. Duh. Well, if you already get the point, or you don't need the detail, why waste time reading an example? Another signpost word is "Moreover": that is often used to embellish a point, and whilst it isn't the same as an example, if you're in a real hurry you might want to skip it. At least for now.
2. Another thing you can do is to read more words at once. You can train yourself to do this, and there is software that can help you. I tried out Rocket Reader. It's a program that tests your reading speed and comprehension, and trains you to see more words at once. The reading/comprehension test is a little artificial: in a real context, you would probably have some familiarity with the subject matter, hopefully some interest in it, and almost certainly some forewarning of it. As for the section that trains you to read more words at once, I'm not sure how permanent the results are, but there's nothing to be lost by trying it out -- especially as there is a ten day free trial of the program.
By reading efficiently, you can become more knowledgeable about more things. That will help you a lot when your boss starts asking for your opinions on things.
It comes in handy at parties too.
I hope you've enjoyed this series. What strategies have not been covered in your opinion? Do leave a comment if you have any suggestions.
These days, doing a good job as an ICT or Technology Co- ordinator/Subject Leader is not enough. In order to get on in your career, you have to be seen to be doing a good job. In this series, Alison Skymes looks at ways of making a good impression.Today: learning how to write efficiently.
Alison SkymesAnyone can write, right? Um, think again! A lot of people equate "long" and "unfamiliar" with authority. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Writing should be plain, simple, and well-structured, and fit for purpose. Simple really!
There is nothing rocket science-ish about this. The main question you have to ask yourself is: do you want people to actually read what you've written. If the answer is "no", and you intend your long-winded prose to "bury bad news", I'm afraid I can't help you.
So, assuming that your motives are honest, here are 7 useful tips.
1. Avoid jargon. Jargon is any specialist term that non-specialists are unlikely to have heard of, or may they have heard of it but without really knowing or understanding what it means.
2. Avoid adverbs. Most of the time you can take out words like "really" or "very" -- what, for example, is the difference between "useful" and "very useful"? Either it's useful or it ain't. The only time a relativistic approach makes any sense is when you compare two or more things. Thus, if product X is useful, and product Y is even more useful, that's fine.
3. Avoid speech mannerisms like "In fact". If it isn't a fact, why bother to say it?
4. Summarise, summarise, summarise. Why should any concept or proposal take more than half a dozen bullet points, or maybe a side of Letter or A4, to explain? In fact (oops, sorry!), why not send it as a single text message?
5. Structure the document (1). For example, have a summary at the beginning. That way, your audience can read that and then skip the rest until they have more time. Or they may even decide they don't need to read the whole thing at all.
6. Structure the document (2). For example, insert a table of contents. Even if the document is only 10 pages, or even 5 pages, long.
7. Structure the document (3). The first paragraph of the document, or of each section, should set the scene and tell the reader all they need to know.
If you wanna stay on the right side of your boss, don't try to be clever: the simpler you make things, the more intelligent and indispensable you will appear.
Tomorrow: How to read efficiently.
These days, doing a good job as an ICT or Technology Co- ordinator/Subject Leader is not enough. In order to get on in your career, you have to be seen to be doing a good job.
In this new series, Alison Skymes looks at ways of making a good impression. Today: knowing when to be brief.
Alison Skymes
Many people make a big mistake when talking to their boss: they give what teens refer to as (albeit in a different, and usually seedier, context) TMI: Too Much Information. Unless your supervisor is a nit-picking, ultra hands-on, overbearing fool who is obsessed with operational rather than strategic matters, she just doesn't need to know it all, and what's even more important, she doesn't want to.
Sounds counter-intuitive, right? Well, put yourself in her shoes. She gets up at 5 am and does a pile of reading over breakfast. Arriving at work at 7am, she is confronted by the caretaker having a moan about someone flooding the boys' toilets -- again. 8.30 am comes and Mrs Grimes has phoned in sick, and her class is supposed be on a museum trip today. Then the bell has hardly stopped ringing when -- but you've got the picture by now, yeah? Do you really, honestly, hand-on-heart believe that she is gonna be interested in your 80 zigameg broadband connection?
Tell you what the boss will be interested in though:
Anything which gets the school a good press.
Anything that makes it more appealing to parents.
Anything that is likely to raise grades.
Anything, in short, that is going to make your boss look good.
So, you need to bear two things in mind before you go talking to your boss or write a report:
Fact: she is busy. Really busy.
Fact: she has taken the "what's in it for me? attitude to the next level.
Knowing these facts makes writing a progress report a cinch:
1. Never write more than a side of A4 or Letter-size paper -- and no cheating by using a size 5 font with no margins.
2. If you can, try and restrict yourself to half-a-dozen bullet points. Heck: go the whole hog and reduce it to a single tweet.
3. Lose the technicalities. Instead of writing, "We now have an 80 zigameg broadband connection", say "Teachers and students will now be able to access high quality resources from the internet -- all at the same time and in less time than it takes to blink."
But -- and this is of major importance -- always have the full story available at the click of the mouse just in case your boss wants more detail.
Tomorrow: Write right.
These days, doing a good job as an ICT or Technology Co- ordinator/Subject Leader is not enough. In order to get on in your career, you have to be seen to be doing a good job.
In this new series, Alison Skymes looks at ways of making a good impression. Today: generating a buzz.
Alison SkymesBefore I look at this, I just gotta tell you something that neatly follows on from what I was going on about last time. I ended my piece by saying you should use a spell-checker. Well, it's a pity that an IT consultancy company I came across didn't take my advice. Their "representative" (actually, some 20- something studenty-type) thrust a flier into my hand.
I read it because I had nothing better to do at that particular moment. So here's what greeted me:
"Benefit from Consultancy from the proffesionals."
Why does "Consultancy" start with a capital "C"? Why is "professionals" spelled incorrectly? Why is the word "from" used twice in the same sentence?
Those aren't the only errors, of spelling, grammar and sentence construction. Now, maybe I am looking at this the wrong way, but if these people can't even be bothered to take care over their own flier, can I really trust them to look after my IT systems? Doesn't exactly inspire you with confidence, does it?
OK, on to today's topic: creating a buzz. Here are 7 points you need to know:
1. Question: what's creating a buzz got to do with creating a good impression? Answer: plenty. Looking at it from your boss's point of view, she has spent gazillions on educational technology: the least you can do is get people excited about using it. Because, at the end of the day, that's the only thing that really counts anyway. If the technology is being used, and people are excited about using it, that will create a warm glow in the hearts of the powers that be. And that can only be a good thing, especially when it comes to dishing out the money.
2. In case you're still not convinced, take a leaf out of the politicians' book (yeah, yeah, I know). Basically, if you can't or won't actually do anything, then at least shout about it. Of course, this approach is fine for politicians for whom the long run doesn't exist. Ideally, you should have something behind the "spin". But my point is this: Woody Allen said that 80% of success is showing up. I say that 90% of the remaining 20% (is your head hurting yet?) is telling people about it, whatever "it" happens to be.
3. Make your space welcoming. Most computer labs look like something out of Stalag 17: full of notices telling you what you cannot do. How about some positive posters telling you what you can do -- and how to do it? Hey, and don't forget to include lots of examples of children's work: posters from the journals may be colourful, but they don't generate buy-in from the kids or their parents, and so they don't generate buzz.
4. Not if but when. If you say to a student "If you go on to take this subject at a higher level...", or "If you do well in this subject...", you're suggesting there's a possibility that the opposite will be the case. Be positive. Set your expectations high. People have a tendency to live up to, or down to, the teacher's expectations. Nobody ever created a buzz by making everyone else feel depressed.
5. Do some exciting work. It is possible to think outside the box and still meet all the National Curriculum requirements, or the equivalent standards in your country. Don't bore the pants off the kids: what have they ever done to you?
6. Put on exciting events. At open days or parents' evenings, have an automated rolling display, like a SlideShare or PowerPoint slide show, or a video containing interviews with the students saying how great the course is. Probably best not to bribe or threaten them though.
7. Above all, enjoy yourself. Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm. Be upbeat about what you do, and what the kids and your team are doing.
Tomorrow: If brevity be the soul of wit...
Alison SkymesIn the start of a new series, Alison Skymes looks at ways of making a good impression, starting with the 7 different facets of presenting yourself. The interesting thing for me is that they don't have much to do with ICT as such, they're fairly generic points. You might like to discuss them with your students.
Hi, and thanks to Terry for the opportunity to share with you a few of my thoughts on the subject. I'm assuming that you don't have a lot of time on your hands (who would, in these days of initiative overload?), so I will be brief and to the point.
Feel free to comment. But use a spell-checker before hitting the Send button!
Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant