Category: Digital Capability

Online Productivity

Online collaboration on documents for example (or spreadsheets or slide presentations) is still not something many instinctively do. Most staff are a very much still locked into working with software on their computer and saving local rather than in the cloud. Oh yes – and then emailing whatever they have produced out to everyone for input or comment. Not great as of course, everyone could wind up with a different version of the same file.

So cloud-based collaboration is a great thing if one can get everyone in a group into using it.

There are of course 2 bid players in this area – Microsoft and Google. Which do you think is the best? If you haven’t used either and want to know more check out these tutorials for Microsoft and these for Google.

One big advantage that Google has over Microsoft – Google is all free!!!

Digital Capability

Whilst some may say that teaching hasn’t really changed, it is hard to deny that technology does not have an ever increasing role to play both in and outside of the classroom. Yes it may be true that teaching can be basically broken down into presenting or providing information (knowledge) and then creating opportunities for students to practice and produce ‘outputs’ using that information or knowledge

it may be true that teaching can be basically broken down into presenting or providing information (knowledge) and then creating opportunities for students to practice and produce ‘outputs’ using that information or knowledge, but technology provides so many options to bring the information or knowledge to the students and also new ways for students to work with that knowledge and in ideal circumstances, create new knowledge.

There are many reasons that ardent anti-technology teachers can cite for not wishing to engage too much with technology but possibly one which affects all teachers, (pro or anti technology) is confidence in using the technology. The digital capability of staff is a real concern and we need to build our understanding of and confidence in technology generally.

The Joint Information Systems Committee have been doing a lot of work in this area across Further and Higher Education – check out their Digital Capability work.