I will re-post my second week reflection, wrongly place on the discussion thread for last week, later tonight. Here I want to answer the questions asked about the the survey. Firstly, there is that law, closely related to Murphy’s, where anything that can go wrong will, and it is especially true of digital technology used in front of other people. How many classes have been stalled by a YouTube video not loading or a device taking forever to buffer, and these are the tools that have worked perfectly fine just moments before being brought into the classroom? It almost seems like it has to be a trial by fire (either that or the technology has a mind of its own) to get digital literacy into young children’s education.
All of this to say that in taking the Survey Monkey questionnaire in class, we should almost expect technical difficulties. This was a very familiar experience for me, having lots of electronic fits and starts in my on-line Master of Educational Technology program. The calming and upbeat answer is that kids don’t get so worked up over computers, smartphones or whatevers not working. In fact, most of them seem capable of working around these glitches, rather than my determined, digital immigrant way of repeatedly doing the same thing until something works – how many times will I need to repost before I get it right? Otherwise, the survey gave me and my team (Danielle and Hedy) plenty to discuss while we tapped away on our screens, waiting to submit our collective results.