What to do with just two

We had a session today with an equal ratio of presenters and participants. The participants had very different experience with ICT. It seems harder to talk conceptually with those who have had very little exposure to technology.

Terrible Aircon

Today a colleague and I ran a session in a room with aircon that had the participants either distracted by their shivering or falling asleep from the heat. Not really an idea environment for learning. Despite the conditions the participants engaged quite well with the workshop. In this instance they where looking for more direction than the other workshops I have run recently. Thinking about it, given that Google Apps is a new set of tools, it isn't surprising that people are looking for direction. Having said that they still seemed satisfied with discussion of the concepts and possibilities. It was interesting to see that the participants were concerned that they need to us Gmail for somethings and their email client for others they needed permission to use both. Once they got the message that there is no problem using both environments they seemed much happier. They certainly seemed to have the expectation that they should be able to get everything they need from one environment. I felt that we were enabling participants to be flexible, agile and adaptable. Seems to me we are helping to open a door to a different attitude toward technology, a change in state of mind where it is ok to stop, think, look. It sometimes seems all it is about is taking away panic.