Help kids learn tech skills without teaching tech skills

I have had multiple conversations lately about teaching technology, teaching with technology and learning technology skills. We know a large part of getting comfortable with technology is a result of just using it. Not taking a class, not reading about it but just trying it out. Young people are great at just trying things. Adults are usually a bit more cautious and prefer to acquire some knowledge about the technology before trying it and messing it up. Yesterday's conversation with a co-worker touched on how adults growing up without the immersion in the technology world lack the language and the building blocks that allow for comfort with the tools they must now use. They are required to use tech tools in their job without the time spent learning the basic skills to build upon. When I first started teaching “computer classes” to adults (before the Internet was a household word), I often spent time on terms and definitions, identifying and naming parts of the computer or application components. People sometimes felt this was boring, but without it, I could not continue teaching the class without using words and phrases like “point to this thingy” or “press the button on the big square box”. 

Talking with Ashley, one of our elementary media specialists, recently confirmed by experiences with students. Even though they have grown up with devices and gadgets, students have similar issues as the adults who are trying to get up to speed. Students have spent the time using the tools but they don’t necessarily have the language needed to explain it or build on the skills they have. When being assessed on their tech skills it is quite possible that they know how to do the skill or concept that is requested or referenced, but they don’t realize it because there have never been words put to it in their mind. 

Children learn a lot about their world by adults modeling and verbalizing their daily activities. For example, if while your child is young you go outside to play every day, at some point during the day you probably say “let's go outside to play”. Then you proceed to get ready. You may even talk about getting your jacket and putting shoes on and opening the door. What if you never use the words outside or inside when talking about that activity or while doing it, you just get up and do it in silence or while talking about something else. Later on, when you say “let's go outside to play” the child may have no idea what you are talking about. He knows how to play outside, he can physically get outside but he does not know what you are asking. I recently learned that verbalizing what you are doing while you are doing it is called self-talk in the speech therapy world. It is a key strategy that parents naturally use to interact with their young children and teach them language. It is something I have done for years but didn’t know it had a “name”. 

Self-talk could be a nearly effortless way of helping students learn the language of the technology that they use. If we only focus on learning technology by using it or teaching it specifically as an event, we are missing out on a huge teaching and learning opportunity. Teachers use technology every day. I can’t think of any teacher who does not check their email at least once or project something from their computer each day. What if you verbalized the steps while you were accessing the materials you use during the day or researching an answer to a question that a student posed? Suddenly the technology is not magical but there is a method and some logic to how things work. They could find out that you searched your Google drive for a keyword in the lesson you planned to use to locate and launch the document, or you clicked on the Recent view in your Drive because it makes it really easy to find the file you worked on yesterday. You might explain that you are opening a presentation that you created in SMART Notebook to demonstrate the ideas they are learning about today and that you need to navigate to your folder on the network to open the file that was named “Hooray for Adjectives”. And that the file is easy to find when you sort the files by name in the window by clicking the column header.

I remember doing this narration of steps at home quite often with my first child but I don't recall it as well with the rest of them.  I plan to work on it this year at home for tech related and household tasks.