BLACKPOOL AND THE FYLDE COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP REVIEW 2021
The application of innovative technology in online teaching Dr Fraser N. Hatfield
Introduction In March 2020, the nation went into lock-down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to this date, Blackpool and the Fylde College had been steadily introducing its academic staff to the Microsoft Teams software in the previous year. This was very fortunate, as all teaching went on-line and Teams became the platform to facilitate this. The movement to online working happened extremely quickly, and for my part I felt under-prepared. I found the first few weeks were quite difficult, learning how to use Teams and continuing to deliver teaching from home using PowerPoint.
Strategies and interventions employed and rationale behind them Fortunately, my home computer was a workstation-level laptop, running Windows 7 that was powerful enough to do most things I needed. Over a period of a few months and as my confidence in online teaching began to improve, the system I used started to expand. The hardware and software expansion evolved organically. I continued to try out different combinations of equipment and software and different ways of teaching, to find the most suitable methods for myself and my students. Over a period of time my laptop computer started to resemble a full computer system. The following peripherals were added in tentative steps to the system. My system eventually expanded to include: • An additional USB keyboard. This keyboard was used instead of the laptop keyboard. • Two monitors were added to the side of the laptop and complementing the laptop screen. My focus was then moved away from the laptop, and towards the screens, emulating a normal workstation setup. • Storage space was increased with two Portable hard drives. • Printer. • Webcam. • Headphones with microphone. • ‘Snowball’ Microphone and Speakers. • Graphics Tablet and Pen (‘Ugee’ 10 x 6-inch Tablet), [UGEE,2021]
• Epic Pen Software, [Epic Pen, 2021]
The graphics tablet and pen were used for writing on the screen in PowerPoint and Word documents. The
82
