Technophobia

It's easier to give training sessions to people already involved with Educational Technology because you can start your presentation showing the tools and making people enthusiastic by being an enthusiast.

However, whenever I am going to deliver some session to the general ELT public, I try to begin showing them that there is no need to be afraid of technology. There are always those reluctant teachers who think those tools work only with you because you are young, you know the technolgy, etc...

To help these teachers feel a bit more confident, I try to show them that there has always been and there will always be "technology". The thing is that we don't see the technological appliances we use in our daily lives as technological anymore, we simply "use" them, and the same can happen with webtools, as long as we are not afraid and reluctant about trying them.

Here is a video I usually show in the beginning of my training sessions because it
humorously expresses this very idea:


(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek)

My colleague Karenne Joy Sylvester has written a very insightful post about this topic too, illustrating these ideas with a personal story of her childhood.