Doug Woods.

Technology Consultant and Trainer

 

Thank you for visiting my site, which is constantly evolving and changing to reflect my interests and experiences in education technology, teaching and training.

 

Technology ‘Obsession’?

I have always been involved in education and from a number of different aspects. I qualified as a teacher back in 1980 and from a very early stage I developed an interest and enthusiasm for technology in education. This interest in technology is something some people would call a ‘passion’ and others, such as my wife, might call an ‘obsession’!

From its very early days, I have seen that technology could hold great potential within education; for improving teaching and learning, for reaching learners in new ways and also for reaching learners previously considered ‘unreachable’.

Special Needs Teaching

My background includes special education (SEN) teaching, which perhaps explains why I see benefits in using technology to reach the previously ‘unreachable’. More seriously, my experience in special education has given me a patience and an insight into working with people who might find technology difficult or challenging. This is an aspect which I have brought across into my more recent work in technology training.

Early Contributions to Education Technology

As well as teaching and training, I also have a penchant for developing content, or resources. This first started with my development of a suite of programs to support the use of touchscreens in education, later this was followed by programs using a ‘concept keyboard’ (an alternative to the QWERTY keyboard which allowed text and images to be presented instead of individual letters). Later again, I helped in the development of multimedia content with a commercial company working on the BBC Jam programme for schools. Even today, I advocate the use of video and screen capture resources to help teachers and schools create their own content for education.

New Ways of Using Technology in Education

I am always interested in new ways which technology could be used within education and training. I am fortunate enough to have had opportunities to explore and develop skills in many technologies, including video and, more recently, online teaching using virtual classroom technologies.

One of my greatest thrills in my work is in helping to bring new technologies and new approaches to schools and individual teachers.

Personal Learning Technology

To my mind, education technology has recently been undergoing a shift in focus. A shift which has moved from the school and a ‘centralised’ delivery and onto the learner and a more personalised delivery.  This shift is something I have come to label ‘personal learning technology’. The biggest example of this has come about through the adoption in many instances of the ipad in schools. This has grown to include other tablet or smartphone devices and today it presents a very exciting development in education technology.

You can find more of my ideas about personal learning technology in this blog post and in this one

 
Google+