With the huge number of schools that continue to move to Google, there are many instant wins, or “low hanging fruit”. However, beyond this, further positive outcomes for school leaders, administrators, teachers and students often seem out of reach, usually for one significant reason.
An ongoing attachment to low expectations coupled with outdated and ineffective habits. These habits can often reside amongst a small but significant part of a school’s staff – and they are steeped in the language of the filing cabinet. While we are now 17 years into the 21st Century, using devices that are fast, robust and cheap, outcomes/behaviours/habits can often be limited by using outdated language – eg files and folders, sending things to people etc.
Changing our language doesn’t cost a cent and can have huge, positive outcomes for everyone in a school community.
When I work with schools, I focus on Tools first, then Workflow and finally Habits – old habits we need to let go off and new habits we need to embrace. Focussing on just one or two of these aspects in isolation can lead to a continuation of the old school, binary, apartheid situation that has pervaded our schools for too long – resulting in “show pony” teachers who are good with ICT and the others – the “dinosaurs”. In my experience, some of our best teachers may not initially present as being confident with ICT – and adopting this approach of Tools/Workflow/Habits can help to liberate them from this unfair labelling and to re-launch them into their career.
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