What does dealing with mistakes “properly” mean in practice?

Just to be clear, and to save you wasting your time reading this, I’m not referring to mistakes by pupils. I don’t go along with the currently fashionable view of “failing” as something to be lauded. If you make a mistake, fine: admit it, learn from it, and get over it. But don’t celebrate it for goodness’ sake! If you’re interested, I explain myself here: 7 reasons that the FAIL acronym fails.

No, this article is about teachers and trainers making mistakes, in particular those concerning technology. My “mantra” has for a long time been that when it comes to technology, it’s not if it goes wrong, but when. But what if the technology goes wrong when you’re about to demonstrate or present something to a group of teachers?

The first time this happened to me, I was mortified. I’m so paranoid about things going pear-shaped that if I’m giving a talk, I’ll email the slides in advance, upload them to my own website in case I need to download them when I arrive, take them with me on a usb stick and, for good measure, print them out (three slides to a side, with lines next to each one) so that if necessary I can ask the organiser to give everyone in the audience a copy. Paranoid or what?

Anyway, something went wrong when I was meant to be demonstrating to a group of tech-challenged and technophobic teachers how to use an interactive whiteboard. For some reason, the whiteboard didn’t work, which I think you’ll agree might be construed as a problem. But I just carried on anyway, while someone else sorted out the problem. All the time I was thinking, “We;;, this is a great advert for technology, isn’t it?”

At the end of the talk, one of the teachers came up to me:

“We’re really pleased that it all went wrong at the start.”
“Seriously? Why??”
“Because if that sort of thing can happen to an experienced person like you, it’s OK if it happens to us!”

I think that’s a reasonable proposition, but I also think he might not have thought that if I’d wasted half the session trying to sort it out. I know that I get quite frustrated and annoyed when the presenter is faffing about trying to get a video to work or something like that — especially if I’ve chosen to attend their talk rather than someone else’s.

They will often say that it was working before, and I’m sure it was — I know how flaky technology can be. But then what matters is not the fact that something has gone wrong, but how you deal with it. If you can’t show the video, talk about the topic instead. Send us a link afterwards if necessary. Do something, but don’t waste everybody’s time.

And that’s what I mean about dealing with mistakes properly. Compromise. Sort it out later. Have a workaround aka a Plan B ready.

See also: