A Summary of Learning

In my very first blog (ever!), I set some goals for myself for our Mobile Learning course and, I thought, what better way to summarize my learning experience than to revisit these goals at the end - a circle of life kind of experience.  Here's what I thought I would be able to do in the eight weeks we had over the summer:

1. We are looking into having an I-pad or other mobile device part of enrollment.  This will involve a virtual school community such as http://www.mybigcampus.com/ which allows teachers to post assignments and grades, students to communicate through an internal, Facebook-esque application, the community to use an internal email system as well as many other cool things.  I am currently researching the opportunities and have ordered an I-pad to check it out (it will come in July)!

2. I am planning on using the Facebook and Twitter requirements for this class to set up a long-overdue alumni follow-up site for our school.  Every one of my students promises, upon graduating, to contact me with detail of their journeys and then, when they hear I am not on Facebook, never do so. 

3. Our school is entering the SmartBoard pilot program in August.  I envision one in each of our classrooms, but I need to meet with our faculty to brainstorm ideas so that the boards become truly new tools for improving our pedagogy, and not simply fancy projectors.
So, how did I do?  We should probably look at these one at a time.

1. The iPad.  First of all, it looks like I have at least learned how to spell it this summer, keeping the ever-important "i" in lower case.  But more importantly, I have acquired one to play with, one that includes a Bluetooth keyboard and the student bundle of word processor and presentation software.  In my tinkering, I determined that an iPad for each of our students would indeed be a valuable path to follow.  I introduced the topic to teachers and the board with this short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhogVEncdrs  We then brainstormed some ideas for using the iPad in the classroom and soon realized that by setting up a school network we would be able to address a number of issues that face our school such as:

     -The need for cohesive and augmented grading standards (check out http://www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm)
     -The difficulties with downloading and viruses
     -Our desire to create a more paper-free campus
     -The student trend of attempting to always have the "best and newest" - a strain on parents
     -The lack of student and staff buy-in in our Student Growth Book (a kind of portfolio system)

Anyway, to address these topics to the board, I created a Prezi presentation (have a look if you like, I was pretty proud of it: http://prezi.com/teslrr60ijn1/technology-proposal/ ) which was well-received and, although a decision has yet to be made, I am pretty confident that our school will be adopting the policy in 2012.

2. Facebook and Twitter - these were pretty much four-letter words to me eight weeks ago.  I felt both were designed for the self-absorbed with Facebook being a "look at me" platform and Twitter serving to allow you to share such meaningful, world-changing thoughts such as "I loooove toast, anyone else out there like toast?"  To challenge these beliefs I decided to create a Facebook account in our school's name in order to communicate with and track anecdotal evidence of alumni success.  So far the response has been great, with more and more students actually requesting to "friend" the school, stories of college graduation, meaningful jobs, adventurous travel and more coming in.  It has proven a wonderful tool to meet my goal.  I still tweet very seldom, but who knows what the future holds. . .

3. The Smartboard program is still on hold, as we try and try to confirm with the Costa Rican representatives.  We shall see. . .

As proud as I am of our progress toward accomplishing these goals, I am even more proud of my learning about other technologies that make mobile learning possible of which I was totally unfamiliar.  I learned of the capabilities of a smartphone and the amazing possibilities of Augmented Reality by working with classmates on our app design.  I still don't own a cell phone, but am tempted to jump right from the stone age to the cutting edge by purchasing an iPhone on my next trip to the States (maybe I can even call it a mobile learning device and get my school to pay for it!)

QR codes now fascinate me.  In fact, if anyone reading hasn't tried it yet, generating the codes is super-simple.  Try using http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ which let's you generate a code in seconds for text, a URL, a phone number, or an SMS text.  This one took me 30 seconds, you need to scan it to get the message:

I feel like the QR code possibilities are huge in the classroom!  Plus, I sounded super-smart bringing them up to our teachers who had never heard of them, always a bonus.

We are also now considering e-Textbooks at our school to coincide with our iPad adoption program.  Our school is relatively unique in that the program is designed for students to stay from 12-18 months before graduating or transitioning, and the iPads could come pre-loaded with every textbook they would need for their career at our school.  The most amazing part is that I was considering e-textbooks a week before class began, and was so excited to see that we would actually be studying them and discussing their pros and cons in class. 

In reality, if I were to summarize my learning, that is the most important point I would make.  This course has paralleled my professional journey so precisely it is as if I designed it myself to benefit me at work.  A vast majority of courses I have taken have been 90% theory with a sprinkling of concrete classroom ideas (very important for building a theoretical foundation, don't get me wrong).  What appealed to me about this course was the theory was immediately reinforced by multiple examples of using mobile technology in and out of the classroom that I, as a teacher and administrator, could apply the very next day at my job.

Technology, Magic and Fact

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  – Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of the Future”

I am going to take a step backwards from the discussions about mobile devices centered on smart phones, iPads, and tablets to discuss my most recent encounter with mobile learning with less-advanced technology.

Our school just returned from a trip to Peru.  We travel internationally with our students a number of times per year, but the July trip is always the most ambitious.  Students spend two weeks preparing for the trip academically, studying the culture, food, religion, government, geography, history, flora and fauna of the region, as well as studying documentary filmmaking.  We then spend two weeks exploring and traveling, with the students filming, taking photographs and conducting interviews with the goal of producing and premiering a documentary film. 

This year, older students traveled in Peru while newer ones traveled in Costa Rica and Panama, so the driving question of the documentary needed to be something that would reveal a universal human characteristic, not investigate something site-specific.  With this in mind, the students decided to interview people from all walks of life in all three countries and to end the interview by asking what their one wish would be if it could be granted.  I loved this approach, as it connected the students to real people, instead of documenting simply the history of an area.

But the connection (and the tie-in to mobile learning) that I want to discuss here – and the one which made me think of Arthur C. Clarke’s quote above – happened on a small island in the center of Lake Titicaca.  To arrive on the island – which had only solar electricity, no gasoline engines, obviously no internet or cell phone signals – we hiked for hours, took sail boats and then a ferry, and then climbed another hour to 13,000 feet.  The whole time, I had a telescope strapped to my back (it was a gift from parents of a graduating student, and what better place to gaze at the stars.)

That night, as the Milky Way ran like a river across the darkening sky, we aligned the telescope and all gasped – students, teachers and locals alike – as we gazed at the rings of Saturn, saw the red giant Betelgeuse peacefully hiding its supernova destiny, and counted four moons around Jupiter.   We were literally star struck.  But, being adolescent boys, the novelty faded quickly, leaving me alone with two or three “Taquilenos”, the indigenous inhabitants of the island.  We discussed the planets and the stars, and then Hector asked me how I thought the world would end.

As it turns out, he did have one piece of mobile communication to facilitate learning, a small, battery-powered transistor radio, where he had heard of the mounting hysteria surrounding the prophecies of the end of the world in December of 2012.  Because it came over the radio along with the news, to Hector it was more than a prophecy, it was a fact.

I explained my opinion – that I believed the prophesies would end as all doomsday visions had, with a fizzle quieter than Y2k – and that if anything actually happened, I hoped it would be a dawning of a new age of knowledge rather than fire and brimstone.  He thought about this somberly, contradictions to his radio coming from a guest, and concluded he did not know what to think.

Upon reflection, I realized that this encounter with Hector illustrates our need as educators to guide students in how they process the huge amount of information they have access to with mobile devices.  Without that guidance, any information that is relayed by these technologies has the dangerous potential to become fact.

Hector and me

Pitching the Tech Proposal

Monday is a big day for me.  As I have been discussing in past blog posts, our school has made it a priority to improve our technology integration within the academic department.  With this goal in mind, I have been using my Mobile Learning class combined with additional research to create a technology plan to pitch to our school's Leadership Team. 

I began writing the plan last week in a traditional format - a Word document - but then thought to myself "Shouldn't a technology-plan be created using technology?"  That answer was an obvious yes.  So, I decided to create a presentation using Prezi.

For those of you that aren't familiar with Prezi, it is sort of like PowerPoint but 3-D.  They call themselves a "zooming editor" but this doesn't really describe the capabilities of the program.  What Prezi users are able to do is embed information within different layers of text, pictures, PDF docs, etc.  So instead of following a series of linear slides like PowerPoint, Prezi is able to zoom and pan and jump and zoom (presentation designers need to be careful not to make their audience motion sick.  Seriously.)

Check it out here:  http://www.prezi.com/

Another great feature of the site - besides the fact that it's free and that there is an "educator's package" that provides you with more options - is that a Prezi user is able to invite other editors to work on one presentation so that students can collaborate on projects for class. 

I am hoping that my research and the wow-factor of Prezi are able to convince the team to accept my proposal.  Send good vibes my way and I will let you know how it went!

The QR Code in Education

QR Codes?  What?  I had never even heard of these before doing some research today.  But then again, I don't even own a cell phone.  As far as I understand it, a QR Code (short for a Quick Response code) is kind of like the bar codes on the box of Crunch Berries in the supermarket, but instead of simply communicating a price and letting the store know when they need to order more Crunch Berries, these codes can transmit to a mobile device (most interestingly, in my opinion, for educational purposes is the cell phone with camera) all sorts of text, a URL, or other information.

It seems that these codes were developed in Japan for manufacturing purposes (to track parts, I guess) but have expanded to advertisements, street signs and other areas.  What are the implications and opportunities of this type of technology for education?  Here are some of my ideas:

1. Augmented Reality.  Taking a field trip or walking around town?  Look out for QR codes on corners of buildings, signs, etc. that, when scanned, deliver historical facts, pictures of buildings or streets from the past, or instructions for completing a task.  It's like having a tour guide and teacher in your phone.

2. Student-created Activities.  Since these codes can be created easily using free apps, why not have students create them and embed information for other students to use in the future (like the RLO's - Reusable Learning Objects - discussed in our reading Design and Development of Multimedia Learning Objects for Mobile Phones).  Perhaps you are studying the Odyssey in English Literature and students create a tour of Odysseus' travels that other students can follow around campus, learning tidbits of information along the way - a type of interactive book report.

3. Note-Taking.  Textbooks, in print or electronic, could include codes at the end of chapters that would allow students to capture an outline of main ideas in order to help develop note-taking and test-preparation skills.

I am sure there are thousands of other application possibilities for this technology.  It's exciting to see what might develop!

Flashing Lights and Beeping Sounds: Going beyond the Traditional with Technology

In my last post, I took a look at some of the possibilities of the iPad in the classroom, and this week’s readings helped enforce the potential of mobile devices in the learning process.  But the readings also re-ignited this burning fear I have of the potential fizzle at the lighting of the wick of our technology plan: that every new device we integrate into our classrooms is going to serve as simply a flashier way – a way with more blinking lights and sound effects – of teaching in the same style.  My question is: how do we ensure that the technology revolution, once accepted into the classroom, will truly transform the learning and teaching process and not simply be used as overhead projectors on steroids (or even filmstrips, if you truly want to know my age)?

I have an instinct that there are two answers to this question.  The first is the dreaded alliterative phrase “teacher training”.  Groan.  Workshop.  How can this training be more appealing to my teachers than our trainings on the college application time line or on campus safety protocols?  Here’s one idea for that: Why not allow one day a month, or take a week, to have experts train the teachers in the capabilities of the technology?  How is that more interesting?  The experts are the students. 

As mobile technology advances, there has been a tidal change in the classroom.  No longer is there a “master” of information, with students dependent upon the expert at the front of the room to instill that knowledge in them.  Now, not only is the information available using mobile devices at the touch of a button or screen, but the students themselves are often the ones more adept at using the technology to find the answers.  Fear not, teachers, we will still be needed to help students wade through the glut of information and analyze it for reliability, bias and accuracy.  But with that fear aside, why not use this trend to help teachers realize the potential of technology in the classroom.

The second answer I would like to propose is that we must force ourselves to teach and assess differently.  In the article “From Cell Phone Skeptic to Evangelist” by Angela Pascopella and Liz Kolb, the question of how to combat cheating on tests by using cell phone capabilities is addressed as such: “Another answer is to redesign assessment. For example, in Australia some educators are starting to say, “Use your cell phone on your test,” thus developing assessment to better reflect the 21st-century workforce, which embraces networking and knowledge collaboration with digital tools as one resource to gather data and construct knowledge. By developing assessment that is inquiry-based and focused on higher-order thinking skills, it alleviates the concern over using a cell phone to look up an answer or even take a photo of an exam.”  I think this idea not only alleviates concern over cheating, but gets to the core of the issue here.  In order to successfully incorporate technology in the classroom, not only use it, but change our teaching and assessment so that the use reflects the

Case Study: iPads in the Classroom

iPads in the Classroom: An Experiment in Technology

     One year ago, the president of AdvancEd, our school’s certifying agency, visited for two days.  His purpose was to evaluate our school: its facilities, teachers, curriculum, resources and methods, among many other aspects, to investigate whether we were deserving of our certification.  It was a nerve-wracking couple of days.  Before leaving, a report was given to us with observations and recommendations.  Words like “passion”, “engagement” and “hands-on” informed us that we were definitely on the right track.  The two major recommendations (read “make sure this happens before I visit again”) were the need for more uniform textbooks and the need for more technology integration in the classroom.

            Based on those recommendations, our school is in the process of devising a “Technology Plan” that includes the creation of a student computer lab, a SmartBoard pilot program and, most exciting of all, an investigation of the possibility of making an iPad, pre-loaded with needed textbooks, part of each student’s enrollment.  It is for this reason that this case study will examine the iPad mobile device, methods to integrate it into the classroom, and its capabilities to alter – perhaps transform – the ways students can learn.

            Exploring Apple’s website provides a great deal of information on the iPad, including applications that come standard with the purchase of the devise.  Many of these apps, such as PhotoBooth, FaceTime and Mail capabilities, are valuable resources, but may not immediately lend themselves to educational pursuits (although creative teachers can make use of any app in the classroom).  Perhaps most interesting within the standard iPad apps is iBooks.  This application, as the website states allows users to “find over 200,000 books and counting — many of them free. View what’s featured on the iBookstore and the New York Times best-seller lists, or browse by title, author, or genre.”  Literature teachers may rejoice at this capability, especially because the application allows readers to save PDF’s on their “bookshelf”, highlight text as they read, and look up unknown words in the dictionary.

            As exciting as iBooks may be, there is one glaring shortcoming in the classroom: the fact that the textbook industry remains so competitive and high-priced that there exists no options in iBooks to use as a course’s primary text.  Enter CourseSmart at http://www.coursesmart.com/.  This is an online textbook company that sells subscriptions to text books for 180-360 days, ranging in price from about twenty dollars to over two hundred in some cases.  The obvious limitation to this option is cost.  Who pays for the textbooks?  Most schools (and parents) would not be able to pay hundreds of dollars for each child’s textbooks that essentially expire after the school year is up.  This program has pros and cons, but for our school’s demographics, the idea may work.  Each student would receive their course progression upon enrollment, which would correspond to the text book subscriptions on their iPad.  Because we are a private, international boarding school, this one-time cost could be incorporated into our enrollment fee without much difficulty.

            Above and beyond access to literature and textbooks, iPads have numerous applications which can be downloaded for classroom use.  The applications which I can see as being required would be the classroom bundle that includes a word processing program (Pages) and a presentation program (Keynote).

 An interesting site (https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_721gdk5jtd8&pli=1) provides a slide show, created as a collaborative Google Doc, on different ways of using the iPad in the classroom.  Many of these ideas require downloading of additional apps which, usually at $9.99 each, might work for individual students but would be difficult for large classes to afford.  Needless to say, educators would need to be very selective in choosing apps in order to maximize their effectiveness and minimize cost.

This is going to be an interesting experiment.  I firmly believe that the “explorative nature” of the device will help engage students in their learning.  Our endeavors to integrate technology will need a great deal more of research and experimentation, balanced with the initiative and speed needed to actually keep up with the evolution of the technology itself.

E-Textbook Report

I had a wonderful moment last week.  I was able, really for the first time as a teacher, to assign a book report.  Now, I have taught English Literature and Composition for years, and have worked with countless students on reading, analyzing, responding to, synthesizing information - all of those higher-level reading skills which are so important to develop.  But I had never, until last week, assigned such a simplistic task: read a number of books and tell me about them.

Here's the best part: the assignment was for our teachers.

This is why: as I have mentioned in some earlier blogs, one of our goals is to increase the integration of technology in our small boarding school.  Remember that this goal came with its own, powerful external motivation: the accrediting body for our school district visited the school and made that "recommendation".  The recommendation had the same tone as when your dad used to say "I wouldn't do that if I were you".  In other words, there was an implied insistence to it. 

So, here we are, looking at how we can do that.  We have updated our computer lab with new laptops for student use.  We have a pilot program of Smart Board that we are beginning in August.  We are investigating the creation of a "digital campus" where students and teachers can post assignments, messages, rubrics and grades on student walls.  Next month, I will be presenting a proposal to the board that would make part of our enrollment the purchase of an I-pad for each student that comes pre-loaded with our software, apps, and - here's where the book reports come in to play - the needed digital textbooks.

This is the way I see it working, but I have neither I-pad to play with (coming in July) nor textbooks to cite, so correct me if I make an assumption about a technology's capabilities that is not possible.  When a student enrolls in our school, they have, because of the nature of our institution, had a rather untraditional high school career up to that point.  I am sent a pile of transcripts (the record is seven different schools by the end of tenth grade!) which I need to decipher.  I say "decipher" because the US credit system is like a national railroad system where each state uses a different gauge of track.  After that, I create an academic plan that allows students to fill holes in content and skill areas and either graduate high school or transition smoothly back to the States with a "cleaned up" transcript.  The next step I would like to see is handing that student an I-pad that has the textbooks they will need for that academic plan.  Need a semester of Biology?  180-day subscription already available.  Taking the SAT?  Access the prep course here.

Hence the book reports.  I want each teacher to investigate the offerings of digital textbooks out there and report back on their findings.  Are they interactive?  What will the costs be?  Is content complete, are they updated regularly, do they include teacher support, additional links, etc.?  So far, our best bet is from http://www.coursesmart.com/ which interfaces directly with mobile devices.  The reports are due next week, I'll keep you updated. . .