Over the winter break, I had quite a bit of time to revisit television shows that I enjoy. One of the shows that I found playing over and over again on several different channels was the somewhat addicting show Kitchen Nightmares starring British chef Gordon Ramsay. For those who have not seen the show, the premise of the show involves Ramsay and his quest to turn around a struggling restaurant and/or  a struggling family. While the plot can be somewhat formulaic (I find the BBC version of the show much more entertaining and less like FOX reality television) there is still a fair amount of entertainment watching the foul-mouthed chef transform a restaurant. Typically, Ramsay helps to create a menu that is usually described as simple, fast, and fresh.

When I returned to school after the break, as I sat in lesson planning sessions, it dawned on me that there may be some value of Ramsay’s mantra when it comes to educational technology. As I listened, I heard a lot of great ideas piled on top of each other to create a very large scale and lengthy project, I realized I might have been watching a “classroom nightmare”. When I use the word nightmare, I am not implying that the ideas were bad, but rather there were too many good ideas and not enough focus.

When trying to integrate technology into classrooms, we often fall into the trap that more technology is better.  If you shared a project where students used Google to research, wrote an outline in Microsoft Word, recorded their voice into a Voki, and embedded that Voki to a Glogster, most people would believe that it was an impressive project based on the amount of technology being used. However, when you dissect what learning objectives are taking place, the fact of the matter is the students are researching, organizing, and demonstrating knowledge or understanding. The question becomes, do all of those elements as well as the time it takes to complete them overshadow the learning objectives?

This is the trap of the classroom nightmare. Each of those components alone help students meet those objectives, yet when put together, it can dramatically impact how well those objectives are met.

Ramsay’s mantra of “simple, fast, and fresh” can help to avoid these kind of classroom nightmares.

Simple

In the show, chefs create overly complicated menus and dishes that in end diminish the quality of food and the restaurant itself. In the classrooms, teachers are tempted to create overly complicated lessons and projects when using technology in the classroom. Ramsay’s solution is to simplify the menus and focus on quality rather than quantity. This solution can be equally true in the classroom. By going back and focusing on the learning objectives, teachers can create simple lessons and projects that are focused. By focusing the lesson on a particular skill or tool, the student can achieve a single learning objective with greater success then if it was combined with several different types of objectives. For example, when researching a particular topic, a teacher might allow students to use Google search and use Google Docs to record notes. The problem with this lies in how much exposure the students have had to these tools. This lesson falls into the classroom nightmare trap if the students are learning about those tools simultaneously while still trying to process new information in the research. If the objective was to research new information, then a simplified lesson might still use Google Search, but it would most likely be broken into two smaller pieces where there is some pre-teaching of Google Search, and then the focus would be on the quality of the information itself. If the students didn’t have exposure to Google Docs, then it might just be better to use note-cards or a process the students are familiar with as to not draw the focus off of the research. Then it might be appropriate use a second lesson to accomplish the next objective of organizing and understanding the research where students might use Google Docs. By breaking down and simplifying the tasks based on objectives, the student is more likely succeed.

Fast

One of the goals of a restaurant each night is to turn tables, and on the show Ramsay stresses that by creating a simple menu that will allow for faster preparation, thus more customers. Fast does not mean that quality should be sacrificed, but rather it should allow for more opportunities for high quality. In the classroom, the same concept of doing something quickly applies. By keeping lessons simple and short, there will be more opportunities for different types of learning. For example, too often lessons or projects involving technology are so complex that they span several hours or class times. The duration of the project not only lessens the impact of the learning objectives, but also takes away opportunities to create new lessons or find different ways to reinforce and practice concepts.

Fresh

Above all, Ramsay preaches keeping things fresh. Frozen or processed food not only doesn’t taste good, and ultimately won’t draw people to the restaurant. The same can be said for keeping things fresh in the classroom. Outdated lessons and irrelevant content hurt student engagement and motivation. When integrating technology, lessons can also become stale if students consistently use a single tool isolation. For example, if a student only used Microsoft Word for composition and editing, there is a high likelihood that the student will lose the motivation to use and be creative while using the tool. However, by using different tools for composition and editing such as Google Docs in conjunction with Microsoft Word and Apples Pages, the student can use each tool to help meet different learning objectives. Where Microsoft Word can be great for individual composition, Google Docs can provide an incredible collaborative experience in both composition and editing. Apple’s Pages can do well with composition, but can serve as a great publishing tool using the ePub format. Each of these tools can be used for slightly different objectives in addition to basic composition. By keeping the tool and the content fresh and relevant, students will be more motivated to use the technology tools to accomplish their tasks.

 

Like the restaurants, many teachers start out with the best intentions when planning lessons. However, technology has the ability to distract teacher from their learning objectives. Technology provides many amazing opportunities for creativity, collaboration and communication, but some times it provides too many opportunities. Remember, less can be more. The next time that you plan to integrate technology into a lesson, remember your objectives and ask yourself: “Is it simple, fast, and fresh”?