This week is interesting as I wouldn’t usually describe my forays into edtech as full-blown projects! However, I am involved in a bigger project due to planned rollout of iPads for various student cohorts. However, this project is at quite an early stage so I am trying to take everything in so that we implement good practice and avoid banana skins as the project progresses.
We had developed a proposal for a staff iPad pilot with a group of 6 teaching staff, which crossed with the wider student implementation project and hence became subsumed within it. However, we are running our pilot as an autonomous group within the larger project.
Some good practices that I think we are following:
1) Project is about altering pedagogies as much as using the technological tools – we’ve identified strands of activity in terms of pedagogical affordances, and we’re setting out to explore how the iPads can help (or not help, as the case may be!)
2) Community of practice – the whole aim was to try to create a beacon group of staff who could then pass on expertise to wider groups of colleagues. We all work closely together anyway and I am planning regular get togethers to foster this.
3) Detailed plan and timeframe – these were developed (by me!) with milestones at proposal stage
4) Collecting information about students’ tech uses and habits – we are planning a survey of our incoming cohorts as there is little data on this which is specific to our faculty or discipline. Trying not to make dangerous assumptions!!
Some banana skins to avoid:
1)Inadequate consideration of risks and risk mitigation – for our pilot, I will use the JISC risk logs to develop the risks identified at proposal stage, track and mitigate what we can. There are some risks I have already identified
2) staff time and resource issues- we are short of resource, both in terms my my time as I have a full teaching load and other responsibilities, and because one of our learning technologists, with prior experience in this area is on leave – again, I’m going to have to monitor this one closely and flag it in my progress reports…
