In my calendly I too have a gap after each call, time to gather my thoughts for the next meeting. Time to make notes from the previous one or fire off some emails and await responses whilst I hop on the next call. Yet zoom fatigue still happens on days when I have 5/6 calls a day. Sadly this is common. So I also actively manage my calendar with my calendly. If it looks busy on a morning next week I will book out the afternoon for admin/catch up time. If something urgent crosses my desk that time is available but otherwise it's time to catch up on the busy morning.
App fatigue is something I have seen in colleges I have been working with recently. Staff openly telling me that they cannot learn another app. Now I'm not sure this is true but I take their point. They cannot take on anything else new at this time as they are so busy. Catching up on missed practical activities or the dreaded TAGs that are thankfully now over! I get it.
Sheep dip cpd was introduced to me by Chloe Hynes from PD North. I chatted about it on my appearance on the Edufuturists podcast too. I've even spoken about it on the FE show on www.joyfm.co.uk as well! It is when we 'dip' staff into our agenda CPD. We have decided staff need to have this training, we dip them in and hope it sticks and becomes their new way of delivering their practice. Unfortunately sometimes the dip doesn't stick and there are no changes to practices. Sometimes with educational technology we are guilty of this too. We show staff a shiny new tool and hope it will appear in their lessons tomorrow and everyday there after. Delivery and approaches to CPD are not where I'm going here but will happily blog those too if you give me a nudge.
App fatigue has come about through this dipping of staff into training for new apps. We have dipped them in Wakelet, Edpuzzle, Flipgrid, Nearpod, Adobe, Canva, Kahoot, Kami and more! How many are staffs go to tools now? How embedded are they? Have staff had time to develop their skills further? Have we re-visited to support them? I was at a college recently and I showed a tool and the attendees finished my task really quickly. When I asked how they had managed to finish so quick they told me they had had this training before. So I asked, why haven't you continued to use it? Have you found your why? Answers varied but time and not finding their why were the winners.
Finding your why is when you find your why for the tool/thing/approach that you are being trained on. Why would this work for you and your students? Why would you change your approach? An example is British Values from my own development. It was an add on to my lessons but I went to some training that showed me that by embedding it I would be able to have richer discussions with my students and I had found my why, I changed my approach.
I was asked by a college recently to upskill staffs digital skills and I asked what training had gone before and a long receipt roll of training was reeled off. No wonder the staff have app fatigue. I decided to narrow the scope. With a working party we selected 6 core apps that worked for that college and those students. I'm not listing them all hear as they may not be right for you. We looked at each tool and identified all the possible why's for using each of them. Although some dipping still happened we took a variety of approaches and there was a shift.
Revisiting apps staff have seen before will divide an audience, some will need a refresher and some won't, but by sharing why's and use cases rather than the clicks and bricks the sessions take on a different flavour. Clicks and bricks are when I show staff where to click and the features of a tool, not how it would look and feel in a classroom. In sharing the whys of a tool with staff you hope they come with you and it will be wonderful. It isn't always, but I have had more success with this approach than continual dipping.
I will share one tool, Slido. It doesn't have to be Slido you may prefer another audience response system but Slido is my preferred tool. Slido inserts into an existing presentation, on either PowerPoint or Google Slides. It is one of the simplest ways to integrate technology into an existing lesson. Staff at one college couldn't believe how easy it was to set up and it did (after a quick dip and a workshop!) become their normal way of working. Every lesson has 3 Slido interactions now, 1 at the start, 1 in the middle and 1 at the end. Students engage on their phone via the camera with he QR code, minimal set up and training needed. In the simplest way a rating Slido can be used where learners evaluate their own progress and inform their teacher. I've seen word clouds used and the distance travelled in the lesson is shown by the increased use of technical language from the students in the word clouds. Gamification via the quizzes means Slido wins for me.
There will (hopefully) always be shiny new things in the educational technology world, but that doesn't mean we need to show them off all the time. Beware of app fatigue and look for ways to support staff with their own EdTech journey, meet them where they are and show them the tools that will help. Dipping can be distracting.
