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Post date: Aug 22, 2015 3:11:07 PM
(Seven Strategies to help your readers understand new information)
My mother-in-law, Jane, sitting at her kitchen table for conversation and some bird watching.
Our Renewal of Vows, 2001, with Jane. We got married in her yard the summer before.
My high-tech classroom at Hawkeye; we have large touch-screen monitors that are all-in-one computers. The four screens on the back wall make it easy for students to follow tutorials.
Snack time for the grandsons (and finishing up a game on the iPad).
In the past week, I said goodbye to the role of part-time babysitter for my grandsons over the summer and looked forward to resuming that of Community College Professor. Then, just as I was about to return to Hawkeye Community college for our Prep week, my mother-in-law died. While her death was anticipated, it was still a shock. At 93, she had enjoyed a great deal of independence, living on her beloved farm until breaking a hip in June. Other health problems took their toll and we laid her to rest this past week.
One of the things I loved about her was her sense of humor: shortly after I became a grandmother, she called me up and said, “Hello Grandma Dargan – it’s Grandma Dargan!” She was fascinated with the idea of her bachelor son now being a husband, step-father, and grandfather and loved pictures of Mike with the two little boys. Jane had a remarkable life and I was able to help her document some of her experiences in an extended account of the death of her first husband, meeting her second husband, and their lives together. I was thankful we had taken the time to record her story and realized that a great deal of the information we needed for her obituary was in that document. However, we spent a long weekend scanning in pictures in preparation for her visitation and funeral and composing content for the brochure for her funeral.
I tried to juggle working on my new class websites and found myself struggling with the new technology. We are switching vendors for our Course Management System from Angel to Canvas. While I had all of my handouts revamped, syllabi tweaked, and a decade of teaching online under my belt, the new environment with its unfamiliar terms, interface, and overall design became the Enemy!
I had already created the basic structure of material into Modules and uploaded a great deal of content. But my tired brain froze up when I encountered the question of whether or not I wanted a discussion board to be “pinned.” I couldn’t resist the flurry of images in my mind: pinned? Are we going steady? Does this mean that I placed it somewhere in the course? Are the rest of them unpinned?
What was wrong? How could I—Geeky Grandma!—be struggling with technology? I LOVE technology; I enjoy learning new things, stretching my comfort zone, and then using what I learned to help others. I got up, stretched and went to put on my pajamas. I looked in the mirror and said to myself, “I’m exhausted. I need sleep. I’ll figure this out later.” I realized that tired brains + new technology = GROUCHY GRANDMA. My fatigue, grief, and stress were getting in the way of processing information. I decided that I would contact Sarah, our person on campus who has been training people in Canvas, and get some help!
As technology evolves, we must all meet the challenge of learning new material full of terms and concepts that we do not fully understand at first. What can we do to help ourselves? In addition, sometimes we are trying to figure out the technology enough to explain it for others. How can we make it easy for our readers?
Here are seven strategies in one of my favorite formats: a table. It’s called a Step/Action table and I learned how to do it back in the early 1990s when I worked at a large Insurance company in Des Moines that had embraced Information Mapping.
Above all else, keep your sense of humor. After an hour of assistance from Sarah, who is an old friend, I thought I was good to go. Back in my office, I worked away and got four of my five classes published. However, I could not get the last class to cooperate; it was way past lunch and I was hungry and tired and stressed. I took a screen shot and sent it to my friend: where is that tool bar to the right? She sent back a quick reply: scroll over to the right! (It was there all along, but I was too tired to notice).
When you’re tired, hungry, grieving, or stressed do not try to learn some complex new App or game. Take care of yourself, be willing to ask for help, and keep your sense of humor. Use these seven tools the next time you are trying to learn something new, or help others learn a new process or technology.
....and, Grandma Dargan, you're missed.
Last Updated August 22, 2015
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