Tech Training for non-tech people!

Written by Stacie Gibson

During the school holidays YRTS facilitators took the opportunity to run tech training for all of the YRTS staff. As an admin staff this was very daunting having had little to no experience in the use of technology, or so I thought. The thought of even attempting to look at coding or game development was foreign and a little scary. But I was determined like all of the other staff members who were about to venture into unknown territory and to give it a go.

We started with LittleBits, a very popular tech with all of our partner schools students and teachers. Pink, green, orange and blue soon meant more to me than just a colour. Blue is power to give the littlebits life, pink is an input like a slide dimmer, green is the output like a light and orange is the wire that allows the connectivity.

With a background as an audio and lighting technician I suddenly realized that I knew a lot more about Littlebits than I had originally thought. It all started to sink in and make sense. Grabbing myself some wireless transmitters and receivers with some lights and a dimmer, I was able to create a small replica of a wireless light which you could use to light someone on stage. Sound triggers that you can attach to RGB LEDs and use at a dance party. Pressure sensors that turn on a light or sound a buzzer like what you’d find in a kids toy. Littlebits are a part of our everyday lives and we use them every day, the training taught me this in addition to opening my eyes to what we teach the students.

I definitely took a liking to Littlebits and since the training have even assisted students to use as part of our Introduction to Design Thinking program. As much as learning new things is scary I took away a few very valuable lessons from the week of training:

• Always give everything a go in life, you never know what you’ll be great at. The unknown is only scary as the unknown.
• There is no such thing as a stupid question, always ask it is how you learn.