IT-Jam dialogue

In a very fast developing world of IT solution for education and learning, it can be quite challenging to keep yourself up to speed, and be at the forefront at the same time as you have to plan your education, and all thr other tasks that comes with the job as a teacher.

One solution to this problem could be an online IT Jam dialogue!

At an IT Jam you will be giving a short introduction to an IT solution that can be incorporated in your everyday teaching. The person that presents the IT solution is considered the ‘expert’ and also answer any question, answered by the rest of the participants. In theory everybody can benefit from an IT Jam, but the target group are people who work with pedagogical IT solution in their everyday job. The goal is not to become an ‘expert’ in the solution that are presented during an IT Jam, but to gain an insight at different technological solution.

The idea for an IT Jam were presented in a Facebook group were the members have a mutual interest in IT and education. The members of this group were asked if they would freely present any IT solution they use in their job. There were no limits to the type of technologies.

There were a lot of interest to the IT Jam, some were also interested in just listening. The media that were going to facilitate the IT Jam were Zoom. The participants were instructed to download Zoom beforehand, and were notified that the whole thing were going to be recorded and made public.

The IT Jam were kicked of by the facilitator with a warm welcoming and a presentation of the rest of the hosts. The facilitator also established some common ground rules, also called net-etiquette along with an introduction to some of Zoom’s features. The participant that were presenting used the screen sharing feature in Zoom.

The IT Jam went really well, everything ran smoothly, the speakers were ready and well prepared. The facilitator made sure that everything went according to schedule and one of the other host made sure to present the question that were posted in the chat.

After the presentation there a common discussion on some common concerns with using, introducing and learning with IT.

The facilitator and the rest of the host conducted a person-person interview afterwards with one of the participants that gave a presentation, and a participant that where listening.

The chosen media for the IT Jam were Zoom. Zoom comes with a lot of different advantages compared to Skype or Google Hangout. It is free to join from your browser, you just need a link from one of the hosts. In Skype you need to have every participant in your contact list, that can be quite problematic since most of the participants came from a public Facebook group. Zoom can also facilitate up to 100 participants at once. It is very fast to mute and unmute in the program. The screen sharing feature works really well, you can share a single window or your whole screen, that way the presenter can have his or her notes in the background out of view from the rest of the participants.

This way of sharing knowledge of an IT solution is very fruitful. It doesn’t take a lot to facilitate and can easily been repeated in the future. The media Zoom is a great tool to use. It is also possibility to implement different topics such as specific solutions that are targeted a certain age group, classe, course – an example could be : You are going to teach a 7 grade in math, the topic for the 2 hour class is: parabola. Then the participant knows in forehand what the topic of the IT Jam is, and they can evaluate if they can contribute to the topic.

Do you think that any future IT Jam could be anything for you? Then leave a reply down below with a mean to contact you with any future IT Jam.