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.