I very much struggled with coming up with a topic for this month’s article. There were many nights where I would sit down to start writing but nothing would come to mind. Then the other night, at soccer practices, this topic came to me. I was running a drill and asked a player to play in the wing position. This player is normally a striker so he just stood there like a tree while the play went around him. I first took it as him boycotting the position but then I heard him utter these words ‘but I do not know how to play this position!’ I could tell by the tone of his voice it wasn’t boycotting the position but real confusion and feeling of loss in his voice. This made me take a step back and think. I addressed his concern to the whole team by reinforcing that he does know how to play that position. I told the team that everyone knows how to play every position, beside goalkeeper, because it comes down to 5 basic principles; running, communicating, passing, finding your teammates, and shooting. Each player on the team agreed they can do those 5 basic principles so I told them if they kept those 5 things in mind then they could play any position. Yes each position does have some unique aspects to them but built off one or more of those 5 basic principles.
You might be thinking. Ok James that is great but what does this have to do with AV, IT, or even higher education? Let me tell you how these relate. How many times have we, or someone on our team, been assigned a task or project, and they respond ‘but I do not know how to do that!’; I know there have been many times that I have thought this or even said it. I genuinely believe that we are just confused and feeling lost when it comes to doing something new and out of our comfort zone. This article is not to talk about stepping out of our comfort zone, even though we should, but to point out that we do, indeed, know how to do it. We might not know some of the unique aspects but we do know the basic principles to start learning. I understand maybe I am making some assumptions here but I do feel confident that if you are reading this, then you have some of these basic principles down. Here are the basic principles I feel we all have.
- Reading to understand
- Communicating
- Understanding the needs of the school and our students
- Basic technology skills
I feel we all have these basic principles down or we would not be in the position that we are even if this is your first job and you are an entry level tech. We all can read to understand. This allows us to read white papers, user manuals, articles, etc.. and take what we read and understand it in a way that will help us better serve our users. We might need to read it a couple of times, ask some questions or even sit on it but we finally understand what it is trying to tell us and how we can use it. Communicating is something we do everyday. Yes there is good communicating and bad communicating but either way we are doing this everyday. We communicate with our teams, our bosses, customers, and even each other. This communication allows us to share what we know or read, but also allows us to learn from others. We use our communication skills to make sure we are understanding the tasks in front of us. If we do not understand the task in front of us, we then keep the communication going until we do. Understanding the needs of the school and our students. We all work at different schools across the globe. Each school and students have their own needs and because we are in the environment we understand these needs. We get to interact with folks that come to our schools. We get to learn what they like and what they don’t like in our spaces. We get to learn what they are looking to do and looking not to do. With this understanding we can build our systems to meet their needs. This doesn’t mean what we build will work in every environment but it will work in ours. Lastly we have basic technology skills. Yes we might be at the level where that basic skill is just powering on the device or we could be at the level of designing a whole AV system for a unique space. Having this basic technology skill allows us to build our tool belt. We can start adding other technology skills, like networking or databases, or lighting, or audio, or etc.. but we need to have a basic understanding of technology to build on.
If we keep these basic principles in mind then we can tackle anything that comes our way. We might need to add and build on these basic principles but when boiled down these should be at our core. Having these at our core will allow us to take on new challenges and step outside of our comfort zone. As we step outside of our comfort zone we build and learn. As we build and learn then our comfort zone gets larger and larger. This all stems from our core basic principles.