I’ve just done a feedback survey at school to try to understand why teachers don’t use our intranet more. I’m keen to do some internal workshops on flipped classrooms, BYOT etc but wanted to see what general attitudes were beforehand.
There were two recurring themes:
- it is an extra that gets in the way of real teaching
- it is too complicated to add to
Many of these same teachers will happily figure out how sites outside e.g. Facebook, holiday sites and ebay work. These sites are no more complicated than WordPress (on which our intranet runs).
So what’s happening?
Well, my current thinking is that there are two things we’re doing wrong. Both of which have to do with what Bruce Lee might call “emotional content”
- The focus is on the finger
In Enter The Dragon there is that memorable line “concentrate on the finger and you miss all that heavenly glory.” Many staff, I think, see posting to the intranet as exactly that: posting to the intranet. It is not, for example, sorting out homework for kids, or showing examples of work so students can comment, show off and discuss.
- Public should be the default
It is understandable, especially in a school fro Primary year group, to be worried about privacy. We have policies to address this, e.g. no full names, no pictures in public not authorised by parents etc. But …
It is senseless to have to log-in to see a lunch menu. Or a curriculum. Or a list of spellings. This “everything is private” status seeps into much of the other work on the intranet. It makes it feel that whatever is up there will not be seen. The content does not become “emotional”.
There is no point, I think, doing any Education 2.0 workshop until people understand those two points. Anyway. Cluetrain thinking may all be a million miles away but we will get there.