Lisa Beecham is a Professional Business and ILM Management Trainer with expertise in Business Administration, Customer Service and Leadership.
Lisa is also Lead Respect Champion within her organisation. She promotes sustainable business and positive personal development across training provider network in South Wales. Lisa’s top priority is to ensure that learners are able to act on and implement learning gained from her classroom, online and e-learning courses. Lisa has a range of qualifications in Digital Learning Design, a Diploma in Leadership and Management and a CIPD in Learning and Development Practice. Lisa is a keen gardener and shares her passion for the natural environment with her young family.
Twitter @ACTbusinessLisa
One Giant Leap Towards Digital Learning
I have been a promoter and advocate of using digital tools to train and develop learners for about six years, before that I had been a traditional PowerPoint and flip chart sort of trainer for 12 years. Why mess with a tried and tested formula? The answer was primarily that the traditional methods were not as interactive or engaging as they could be and as technology now plays an integral role in most of our daily lives, it’s only right it should feature in our learning.
So where to start?
I didn’t have time to research what was out there that would fit the type of delivery I was doing, or spend hours learning how to use all these tools, so I signed up to Twitter and started to follow trainers like @Panda-RosP, teachers and the #edtech hashtag. It was a steep learning curve but so many people offered to help me get started or pointed me in the right direction. Time to develop classroom activities and resources is always limited but it is surprising how quickly ideas start to flow once you start introducing small swaps.
My first foray into digital delivery was an experiment. I had set up a free account with www.quizizz.com and had sat down with my quiz ready to run on my laptop whilst also playing the learner role on my phone and tablet simultaneously to see what the learner experience was like and it worked well. The next day I levelled with my class that I was new to digital delivery and wanted to try to include more digital tools in their sessions and not very surprisingly they were only too willing to join me in the adventure.
After the success of online quizzes, I started using a free Nearpod.com account which allows you to pull in your existing PowerPoint presentations and build in interactive quizzes, polls, collaboration spaces and more. There’s a whole community of teachers sharing their lessons so it didn’t take long to pick up tips. You do need the internet to run a live lesson but very little digital experience.
Using Nearpod in the classroom has proven to be useful in lockdown too. I can still deliver my interactive presentation using Microsoft Teams. Learners type a code into their app on their device and are then instantly involved, collaborating and sharing content examples from their own homes. Lockdown has given everyone a push towards being more digital and many initial fears have been overcome. It has made digital learning necessary, but has also created an impetus from which to springboard. Nearpod has been so successful and is so easy to use that over half the learners on the Business Administration Level 4 Apprenticeship have chosen to use it to create their own presentations to share with the class as part of their assignments.
Nearpod isn’t the only tool that’s easy to use and supports learning. Learners can curate and share digital resources they have found using Wakelet.com, an online platform that lets you share websites, images, articles and tweets. This not only encourages learners to critically assess sources but also introduces CRAAP assessment or Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose to the learning experience.
As time goes on, more and more tools are discovered. I have found some to be intuitive requiring fewer digital skills and others harder to master. The key is to try them and see what works. There are YouTube tutorials for most of them and free courses on https://ideas.com/tools-resources/ and https://education.microsoft.com that can help you master design and create impactful digital sessions.
The biggest piece of advice is: don’t be afraid to fail it’s sometimes the best way to learn how a tool works and what it’s capable of. Most of all, have fun and your learners will too.
