Living and learning: trying 3 new things
It’s been a couple of weeks for trying new things, so I figured I’d do a recap here.
Trialling Zoom Whiteboards
Today I ran a kick off session with three charities we’ll be working with to explore adapting and embedding a digital skills framework in their organisations. We chose to experiment with Zoom Whiteboard for the first time — we normally use Miro or Mural.
Using something new always takes some time to get used to, and I was expecting some kinks to iron out during the session. However, for some reason, despite the sharing settings being right (I think), one of the attendees couldn’t move around the board or interact with it. All of the others could, though, which was baffling. I sometimes struggle to think of alternative solutions on the fly in sessions like this, and I didn’t have a back up plan prepared like I normally would when using a new tool. But thanks to a friendly and helpful bunch of attendees, we worked around it by: creating a Google doc to collaborate on instead, and the one person who couldn’t use the Whiteboard worked on their own Miro instead. Not ideal, but we still achieved what we’d hoped during the session.
At the end of the session, I realised it wasn’t possible to share the board with them (again, something to do with settings or maybe just a Zoom limitation?) so they didn’t have their work in a shareable and usable format to continue working on. I ended up replicating everything in a Miro board instead and sharing. But it’s not time lost…it’s a learning. I’m not sure I’d use the Whiteboard feature again for external workshops, but for internal sessions where there shouldn’t be any sharing challenges, it could be one to consider. I may well be missing something here…please let me know if you love whiteboards and I’m doing them a disservice!
Working out Airtable syncing
For the digital skills project I mentioned above (more on that in coming weeks) we’re exploring how we can use Airtable to sync a list of resources to multiple tables owned by other organisations. I’ve been researching how this works, and technically I think it should work…but until I’ve actually sat myself down and tried it out I’m struggling to get my head around it. But, as with anything that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable or out of my depth, I’m procrastinating on it. Maybe tomorrow will be the day to get on with it — Fridays are often quite quiet at CAST.
One thing I’m noticing across these two things is that trying new stuff out can be mentally taxing and time consuming, and I’m often left with a sense that perhaps I’ve missed something, that it should be easier to use or understand. Sometimes just taking them for a trial run is the best way, though as you’ve seen above, it can lead to mixed results! Other times, asking for help or watching some tutorials might be more successful…
Working in another setting
A couple of weeks ago I packed up my car and my two cats (pictured) and drove 9 hours — spread over a couple of days — to the North of Spain, where I’m staying for 6 weeks to work and explore. I’ve never done anything like this on my own so it’s an exciting and slightly daunting experience. I’m surrounded by trees, hills and birds in a rural village of about 4 houses. The neighbours have been so welcoming, giving me a glut of apples, chestnuts and peppers from their land.
So far I’m loving it and I’m looking forward to adding more new experiences to my list in coming weeks!
