Techlearning blog

In the very early days of the web, pundits set great store by the idea that there was a veritable army of experts just waiting for the opportunity to help any school student who approached them. I thought then, and I know now, that anyone who is earning a living through their expertise is too busy to give of that expertise on demand.

Does that mean that I, and others, don't give freely of our time and expertise? No. But it does mean that students need to think about how they approach people. I think the examples of how I have been accosted will demonstrate what I mean.

In no particular order...

I received an email from someone who purported to be undertaking research for his degree in information technology in education. He wanted to know what scholarships were available to schools for spending on students wanting to study educational technology. To test out how difficult it might be to unearth this data, I did a search -- and came up with dozens of possibilities within about three minutes.

That was using a search engine. Not exactly arduous or intellectually challenging, I'm sure you'd agree. The hard part comes in stage 2: looking for companies and other organisations that might offer scholarships or alternative funding streams, and then exploring their websites and, more than likely, emailing or even (shudder) writing to them to garner more information.

In fact, I can think of several ways to go about getting this information right off the bat. None of them is difficult, but also none gives an instant answer. I can only conclude that the person who emailed me is either not intelligent enough to be doing an MA, has no research skills or is bone idle and thought it would be much easier to get me to do their work for them. I know which one I'm plumping for.

I sometimes get requests which are so ludicrous they are hilarious. Like the time I received an email from a "student" asking me if I could let them know what educational technology was going on across the whole of Britain as he had to write an essay on the subject.

Another time, I received a very similar request. But that time the student was a little cleverer. Realising that some incentive would not go amiss, he said that if I helped him he may buy my latest book. Now, leaving aside the profound lack of commitment on his part, let's suppose he had bought my book. I would have earned the royal sum of 70 pence, or just under a dollar and a half, for spending several weeks doing his work for him. Now there's someone who either thinks I'm a fool or who really does not have a grip on the value of time or the value of money.

Sometimes, I receive requests from students using girls' names. Now either they really are girls, in which case they need to be more careful about giving a total stranger their full name and school name, and their email address, or they think that I'm more likely to respond to a  "Louise" than a "Lou". Maybe they're correct, in theory. But it's never worked with me yet, so don't waste your time.

Possibly the most audacious request for help was a voicemail message I received. I have a phone number on my website, which can be used either for sending me a fax or for leaving a voice message. Someone left me a message saying that they were going for an interview as a Technology Director in a school in a couple of days' time, and needed me to phone them "urgently" to tell them the sorts of questions he was likely to be asked.

A number of things struck me about this. Firstly, there was nothing on my website at the time to suggest that I gave careers advice, although since then I've written a book on how to get a job as an ed tech leader in a school.

Secondly, not only was there no suggestion of paying me for my assistance, but he also expected me to phone him, thereby incurring phone charges too! (There was no such thing as Skype at the time.)

Thirdly (and this was the clincher for me), I just figured that if someone was so clueless as to not even be able to figure out for himself any of the questions he was likely to be asked, there was no way on earth that I was going to do anything that might help him get a job in a school. I think kids should have the best brains as teachers.

Now, none of this means that I and others won't help students in their research, but I think that teachers could do much to help students be successful in their requests, perhaps by suggesting the following.

• Understand what research actually is, and what it is not. It is not the same as trying to get someone else to do it for you, or to give you what you want on a plate. In other words, expect to do some work yourself.
• Introduce yourself properly. Either suggest your teacher or tutor drops me an email, or give me the name and email address of your teacher or tutor (with permission, of course) so that I can, if I wish, check out the genuineness of your request.
• Say what you've found out so far, or what you've done or are doing to find out. I won't respond to an email that asks me to tell you how much schools spend annually on average on computers. I might respond to an email that states that you've found out that the average spend is X, and asking me if that accords with my own experience as you're attempting to determine the broad spread of spending.
• Offer me something in return. For example, how about an exclusive article every so often detailing your findings so far.
• Show some commitment, by showing willing. A quick perusal of my website will tell you that I publish a free electronic newsletter called "Computers in Classrooms". If you subscribed you'd be showing me that (a) you're not regarding this as a one-way street, and (b) that (hopefully) you're serious enough to want to see if the newsletter contains, or will contain, information that may be of interest to you.

I have to say that I do wonder, sometimes, if the sort of behaviour I've described in this post is not so much evidence of ineptitude or idiocy but, rather, symptomatic of an age in which many kids are so Narcissistic that they cannot imagine a situation in which others, having failed to recognise their innate brilliance, are not falling over themselves to pay them homage and grant them their every wish.