Tech overwhelm? Go slow.

I am a conference fanatic...I'll admit it. I love going to edtech trade shows, Google Summits, and educational conferences. I love hanging out with my people and talking nerdy about education. I love seeing all the cool new ideas and tools out there. I come home with a million amazing ideas, totally pumped up and ready to transform everything!

And then?

...yeah.

My notes stay filed away in a Google doc and I never try anything. Or I try something, it doesn't work the way I thought it would, and my students are left in a frustrated pile of confusion while I race to make emergency copies and find the pencils. I vow to never try it again since it obviously doesn't work for my class. Or I try everything! And though I am thrilled with my totally revamped classroom, I find myself deluged with emails from parents and students who can't find the new logins and don't know how to navigate my brilliant new setup.

After 8 years training and coaching teachers in edtech tools, what I know for sure is that if we go too fast and put too much pressure on ourselves we will overwhelm and burn out.

We know this. As educators, we don't expect our students to master anything on the first try. We painstakingly craft a unit that will introduce key concepts slowly, scaffold the learning, give opportunities for practice, feedback and more practice before we expect mastery to take place. We put students in groups so they can work together and help each other. We guide them through peer reviews so they can hear constructive critique from one another.

We rarely set ourselves up for success in the same way.

So, my advice for adding in new tools or techniques:

Just try one thing.

Went to a conference? Saw something interesting during an in-service day? It won't do any good unless you put it into practice. Choose just one thing and commit to trying it as soon as you can.

Reflect and iterate.

Tried one thing? Amazing! Did it go well? Not so well? It's ok! Take some time to reflect and then make a small change. Get some informal feedback from your students or their parents. Then try again. Maybe you expand a little bit or maybe you tweak. Then reflect on how that went.

Keep your "core tools" small.

There is always a learning curve when introducing a new tool. Focus on just one thing at a time and make it your mission to really teach your students how to use it. Then add just one more. Once they have a small set of tools they know really well you can spend less time on the tech and more time on the project or lesson.

Find the pain points.

When choosing your one thing, start by looking at what's not working well in your classroom or what could work better.

Maybe grading summative math tests is not a problem, but you wish you could give formative feedback faster. So instead of taking on a fully paperless math classroom, you keep your paper tests and add some Google Form Quizzes throughout the unit that give automatic feedback.

Or maybe your physical design project is really effective, but you wish students could reflect and share more about the process with a wider audience. You could have students take photos of their work, post them to SeeSaw and add a caption or audio reflection discussing their design process. Parents can see their work and QR codes or links can be shared with other classes.

The main thing is to be open to change, but to be purposeful and measured in how you go about implementing it. I hope these ideas help you quell the panic to try every new thing out there and to focus on just one thing this week that will help solve some classroom challenges for you!

Found the pain point, but need some ideas for how to address it? Drop a comment below and let's brainstorm together!