One of my favorite sayings is a twist on something my perfectionistic dad used to say: “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” I tell my kids that one of the reasons I’m out there trying out technology with them when many “experienced” teachers aren’t is because I’m way past worrying about making a fool of myself.
The jurassic computers actually worked all right—maybe too all right; 30 computers all saying the same thing at almost the same time is a recipe for a major headache in a much more tolerant group than a bunch of high school seniors. What? There aren’t a decent set of speakers in a computer lab? Apparently not. It took a while, but we finally got two of them reasonably synchronized, and then muted the rest. It wasn’t perfect; but apparently the voicethread was engaging enough that the kids quickly settled down to making the effort to hear it. And after going through it once, I showed them how to make comments—I was hoping a couple of them would try the phone option, but typing was plenty exciting for them this time, and a few ventured out to grab the marker. Today we did a debrief, and their ideas for enhancements—music, costumes (maybe just hats?), smoother transitions—were as satisfying as how much they enjoyed it.
I don’t know if the administrator was as happy with it as I was, but any time I can not only interest high school seniors in Medieval history but model taking a risk and trying new things out, I feel I’ve had a richly successful teaching experience!
And the fact that I serendipitously discovered, looking for a suitable map, that my English ancestors were certainly descended from guys who came over the channel with Billy the Bastard—it’s the next-to-last slide; I could NOT make this up!—well, that just made this one of the coolest educational experiences I’ve had in my life!!!!
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