Five minutes later he called the reception desk and said: "You've given me a room with no exit. How do I leave?"
The desk clerk said, "Sir, that's absurd. Have you looked for the door?"
The man said, "Well, there's one door that leads to the bathroom. There's a second door that goes into the closet. And there's a door I haven't tried, but it has a 'do not disturb' sign on it."
Often we make it very difficult for ourselves. Sometimes the answer is staring us in the face, and we can't see it due to all the complexities we impose upon our lives. Just like the man in the hotel room, if we are unfamiliar with the context, we can easily overlook the obvious. While using the Smartboard during one of my teaching sessions at university this year, I was trying to erase part of the work on the screen. I was struggling, trying to erase each word as if I had an old dry wipe board in front of me. I was making the classic mistake of trying to use new technology as I would use old technology. It took one of my students to point out to me that circling the appropriate text with the wiper and then tapping in the middle was a great short cut. It seems obvious to me now, but at the time I didn't know.
The same thing happened to a lot of people last week when I tweeted that in PowerPoint's presentation mode tapping the B key blacks out the screen, and tapping the W key makes the screen go white. There are many technology shortcuts similar to these, but most of us don't know about them. More often than not it takes a friend or colleague - or more likely, a student - to point out a better way to solve a problem. That's the great thing about social media - it connects us to all kinds of useful expertise and great ideas. But for social media to change our behaviour, we have to be open, and amenable to correction. Life is an adventure, and one in which we need to be willing to take a few risks. We have to swallow our pride now and then, and admit that we don't know it all. Once in a while, we need to try all the doors... and we especially need to push on the door that says 'Do not disturb'.
Image by Steve Wheeler
Often we make it very difficult for ourselves. Sometimes the answer is staring us in the face, and we can't see it due to all the complexities we impose upon our lives. Just like the man in the hotel room, if we are unfamiliar with the context, we can easily overlook the obvious. While using the Smartboard during one of my teaching sessions at university this year, I was trying to erase part of the work on the screen. I was struggling, trying to erase each word as if I had an old dry wipe board in front of me. I was making the classic mistake of trying to use new technology as I would use old technology. It took one of my students to point out to me that circling the appropriate text with the wiper and then tapping in the middle was a great short cut. It seems obvious to me now, but at the time I didn't know.
The same thing happened to a lot of people last week when I tweeted that in PowerPoint's presentation mode tapping the B key blacks out the screen, and tapping the W key makes the screen go white. There are many technology shortcuts similar to these, but most of us don't know about them. More often than not it takes a friend or colleague - or more likely, a student - to point out a better way to solve a problem. That's the great thing about social media - it connects us to all kinds of useful expertise and great ideas. But for social media to change our behaviour, we have to be open, and amenable to correction. Life is an adventure, and one in which we need to be willing to take a few risks. We have to swallow our pride now and then, and admit that we don't know it all. Once in a while, we need to try all the doors... and we especially need to push on the door that says 'Do not disturb'.
Image by Steve Wheeler
Push on the door by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.
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