Integrating Technology: A Baseball Analogy

A quick post in honor of the St. Louis Cardinals, who pulled off a miraculous win in Game 6 of the World Series last night.

I've seen several emails and web sites that rank the 100 best iDevice tips or the 50 best web sites for education. Honestly, I have no problem with those sites and I've learned about several useful web sites and apps by reading such articles. I also understand that these sites want readers and articles that 'rank' various apps or sites can get a good number of page views.

My problem, though, is that it's tempting for instructional technology leaders to present these large blocks of resources to teachers as a method of assisting them with technology integration. If you are a teacher and are already overwhelmed with the need to cover content, manage student behavior, give periodic assessments, contact parents, develop lesson plans, grade assignments, enter all of this into a student information system, (and on and on)... you may be doing them a disservice.

When I was younger, I loved baseball. I wanted to pitch but didn't have the size, arm strength or accuracy to be a good pitcher. That didn't stop me from wanting to know how to throw a curveball, slider or knuckleball. I remember goofing off while warming up for a game and our team would throw (OK, try to throw) all of those pitches to one another.

Of course, most of those pitches aren't practical for the vast majority of aspiring young pitchers. Most of what you'll read about coaching youth baseball will tell you to focus on developing a fastball and a changeup. Why is that? Part of the reason is certainly about avoiding injury to young arms while trying to throw an arm-stressing pitch like a curveball. That isn't all of it, though. Even at the major league level, there are pitchers that can have great success while having only a couple of great pitches. One of the best relief pitchers ever has dominated hitters with basically one pitch. We know why, don't we?

A young pitcher with a good fastball and changeup has some great qualities. The mechanics of the two pitches are similar, with slight adjustments to grip style, pressure and ball position. Good coaches will work with them to know how to throw those pitches properly, where to locate them and when to use each pitch. Those decisions are based on the hitter you're facing and aspects of the ongoing game like the score, any runners on base, the number of outs, who's on-deck and things of the sort.

We should be using a similar strategy when helping teachers integrate technology in the classroom. Let's find the best resources that can be used in most any situation. We won't start with 50 or 100... let's start with a few. We'll work with teachers on those few resources until they're confident that they know how to use them. Once they know how to use the resource, a good teacher should be able to determine when to use each resource based on factors like the subject area, the particular student(s) involved, the time of day and year, what other activities are taking place in the school and community, and so forth.

In baseball, good coaches teach kids the basics and ease in to the more advanced concepts. Make sure you're doing the same with your technology integration strategies. There are some great pitchers out there that only have one or two superb pitches, so let's not assume that every teacher needs to be an expert on all of the technology resources available.