Five Tech Skills Teachers Should Have
On Saturday The Wall Street Journal published a report on the technology skills every employee should have. The report was written for a business audience so while there is crossover that applies to schools, not all of it applies to schools.
Inspired by reading The WSJ’s report, I came up with my own list of tech skills teachers should have today. Take a look and then let me know if you agree with it or if there is something that I should add to the list.
Troubleshooting
Nothing derails a good lesson plan quite the way a tech hiccup does. Things like enabling cookies, enabling or disabling pop-ups, and adjusting network settings can often get your lesson back on track without having to call the tech support staff. Head here to get my visual guide to tech fixes for teachers.
Video Creation
Making a short video can be a great way to give students feedback on an assignment, to provide clarification on how to do something like solve a math problem, or to deliver a complete animated explanation of a complex topic. A video doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective. Recording your screen with ScreenPal or Screencastify is sometimes all you need to get your point across.
Automation
We all have mundane tasks that we have to do that take away from the fun parts of teaching, working with kids. Automating some of those mundane tasks gets us more time for the fun stuff. To that end, learn how to create templates in Gmail or in Outlook, set-up automatic grading for quizzes in Google Forms or in Microsoft Forms, and streamline your meeting scheduling process.
Search
A few weeks back I amazed a crowd (“crowd” is a bit of an exaggeration) by using domain refinement to find publicly available Google Documents. That’s just one of many simple but powerful search strategies that can go a long way toward helping you and your students find new and useful information. But you can’t teach those techniques to your students until you’ve learned and practiced them yourself.
Graphic Design
Years ago Tony Vincent convinced me that good graphic design does make a big difference in the way that students perceive the teaching materials you share with them. To this day I’m still working on improving this skill. Knowing how to use Canva or Adobe Express definitely helps. Getting good guidance from people like Tony, Garr Reynolds, and Nancy Duarte also helps.
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