Taking Concepts for Granted

So far my fifth grade teachers and myself have worked very hard to create this new blended learning environment where students are competent  in creating, manipulating and understanding digital files.  To date, the kids have done some amazing stuff with their journaling app (PaperDesk) and their pdf annotator (DocAS).  They have done so well and understand digital learning environments enough that we have decided to move into "phase 2".  Of course, we aren't quite sure what phase 2 is yet, but we do know that it involves teaching these students some modern digital concepts that we sometimes take for granted.

Many times over the years I have heard educators or technology people say that the teacher didn't need to know the technology as well as the students, the teacher needed to know how to guide students.  I used to make this statement myself.  I am beginning to think that this was partially a mistake.  Maybe we have taken this concept to a point where we do not feel responsible for teaching our students some basic modern skills.  We take time out of our days to teach students how to do things like organize their locker, organize their binder or organize a paper, but we don't take the time  to teach them how to organize themselves in a modern way.  If you were write down all of the resources available to students today, the list would be staggering.  We are using all of these resources in schools, but instead of teaching the students how to organize their digital lives, we essentially allow them to "stuff it in the closet".  This is unacceptable and we need a solution.

This discussion with my fifth grade staff started because of an email.  We provided our students with email and just assumed they would know how to use it.  We talked about being polite, but not how to double check email addresses, using the CC feature or organizing their inbox.  We hadn't even considered teaching them how to use email signatures or the more "adult" features of email.  On the one hand, the kids did know how to use email, even those who had never used it before were taught in seconds by their peers.  But...

I had a parent come to me complaining about a grade her child received.  The child was to email the teacher, but the teacher said that the email never arrived so the child got a 0.  I explained that the child probably had mistyped the teachers email address (which I had just spoken to the students about a few day previous) and at this point there was no leniency on that issue, but to double check my guess I would like to see his email.  This is when I realized our mistake.  This child, this 10 year old child, had been deleting his sent email right after sending them because he wanted to keep his email organized.  He had been deleting emails from his inbox after reading them (including instructions from teachers) because he wanted to keep his inbox clean.  We taught this child how to send and receive messages, but we didn't really teach him how to effectively use email.

This has been troubling me ever since I realized what was going on.  I approached the fifth grade educators about my "phase 2" idea and will now be meeting regularly.  Our first order of business is to teach students how to effectively use email.  How to make decisions on what to delete and what to keep.  How to make folders and sub folders so information can stay organized and how to search their email to find information they need.  These are basic 21st century concepts and they are just as important as organizing their binders, lockers or anything else in their lives.  As adults, it is our responsibility to understand these basic concepts as well, just as we would understand they other types of organization.  It is our responsibility to know enough about these concepts that we can instantly offer suggestions to students without having to stop and think about it or having to ask someone else "Is it possible to make folders in email?".

They are the digital natives, but we are the guides.  We are not absolved of our responsibility to join the 21st century.  It is not ok to sit back and allow the students to learn new technologies in our classroom without learning that technology ourselves.  In order to be good educators, we must be good learners.  I think that is the main difference between and educator and a teacher.  A teacher helps students learn a specific subject.  An educator helps students prepare for life.  Which one are you?

Below are some resources for students and the 21st century.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills
National Education Technology Standards for Students
The Center for Public Education

The Importance of Professional Development

Mobile learning is a huge topic in education today. Some people want to run to it and others want to run away. I don't usually get on band wagons, but I did get on this one. I had been waiting for something like the iPad for years before it was released. I had seen the potential and benefit of cell phones in the classroom, but they didn't have quite enough features and those screens were just too small....then came the iPad.

The iPad changed how we view education and truly revolutionized the possibility of the learning environment. The cost of the iPads made schools rethink computers in education and suddenly everyone is purchasing iPads for their schools, but many of them are missing the point. One day I was driving down the road and I noticed a sign in front of a school that read "This fall each child will receive an iPad." And I thought, so what? Tell me something important, like what are you going to do with those iPads? Although the right equipment is important, the pedagogy behind how we use the technology in our classrooms is much more so.

Studies have shown that purchasing equipment for classrooms, but not providing the proper professional development is a great way to ensure the program fails. No amount of computers, smart boards, iPads or classroom performance systems in the world will change the classroom if the educators don't have certain things in place. The first is educator buy-in. Successful technology integration cannot be forced on people, but people can be persuaded to try certain things and hopefully that will make the difference. Consider this scenario:

I was working with a group of educators in using the iPad in the classroom. As a part of this training, I had them creating comics in Comic LIfe, a video using iMovie and a video using Explain Everything. One of the educators in this group fought me every inch of the way through this process. She didn't want to make a video (in either iMovie or Explain Everything) and luke warm to the idea of Comic Life. After a lot of gentle nudging I finally got her to create a video on classroom expectations. I doubt this educator will ever make another video, but now that she has had this experience, her students are allowed to create videos using iMovie or Explain Everything or comic using the Comic Life iPad app for class projects. They have never had this option before.

Let's compare this to another group of educators. Another group of educators were implementing a 1:1 iPad program and only accepted two hours of training. They wanted their technology trainer to show them how to use a couple of apps and then they wanted a small amount of training to show the students a couple of apps and that was all. To my knowledge, this group of educators and students are struggling with the iPads and how they can change the classroom. They don't have the base knowledge necessary to smoothly use this technology in their classrooms and have have no vision for what a truly modern classroom should look like. They struggle with simple tasks such as digitally sharing files and cloud storage, not to mention web 2.0 tools.

Compare this scenario to the group mentioned previously. The students of the first set of educators (younger than the second set) can create pdf documents, manipulate files and create comics and videos as well as move files around online and use email with ease. Although they can print, they have done so on rare occasions since they have felt it was unnecessary to print papers to turn in when you can simply use Google Drive to turn in papers digitally.

There is no fundamental difference between the two group of educators or their teaching situations. There were people in both groups who were not thrilled to start a new adventure and who needed to see the benefit of infusing technology into the classroom before being willing to look at things with new eyes. The largest difference is the time allotted to each group. Four days vs. two hours. A group of ten year olds who can manipulate, create and communicate easily using the iPad versus a group of fourteen year old students who get frustrated and cannot seem to figure out what to do.

So what is the cost of a four day staff training compared to two hours? The cost is student learning. The cost is the ability to provide a high quality modern educational environment for students. The cost is the ability of educators to understand the possibilities of effectively using technology in the classroom. The cost of not providing an adequate amount of professional development is simply too high.

I would love to hear stories about your experience with teacher professional development. What has worked, what has not? Please feel free to post to this blog or send me an email to randy@technologyskills.net

iPads in the Electives Classrooms

Many times, when there is a new implementation of technology or a new way of thinking, people usually consider core subject educators.  They don't often consider the non-core subject educator, especially when it comes to funding.  When I taught music in a public elementary school, I was very fortunate to work with a principal that saw the potential of the arts and recognized how the non-core educators could help his school reach its potential.  He made sure that music, art and physical education educators were considered in any school plan and he listened to our opinions as strongly as he listened to the opinions of core subject educators.  Since I have left the music classroom and entered the world of education technology, I have attempt to take the same approach.

When my school decided to implement a 1:1 iPad program, I immediately considered the music and art educators.  I knew they could do amazing things with iPads, but I also knew they had a different way of looking at the world.  They would need a different type of support and a different type of professional development.  There were several things to consider in this approach, and which apps to use was the least of it.  I had to consider how technology could enhance their respective subjects and how I could help them manage classroom behavior in a way that having the physical equipment in the room would not get in the way or become distracting to the students.  I also had to find a way to integrate the arts into our classroom management system that allowed them to participate in digital learning without them feeling like they were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.  The solution was simple.  Patience, patience and more patience.

First let's talk about the professional development.  The electives educators were encouraged to go to the introductory training given to all of the core educators.  After the initial training (how to use the iPad, find and request apps, share files etc....) they were given the option of staying to learn more, or going off to experiment on their own and working with me directly at a later date.  They chose the latter and that's what we did.  I worked with the art teacher in using a variety of apps and using her Apple TV to project her iPad to the front of the room.  I then encouraged her to record videos of herself completing class warmups (using the app Explain Everything) and posting them online to share with students and parents. That involved learning how to use the schools classroom management system.

Classroom management systems are built with a set of tools such as discussion boards, file sharing, quiz modules and grade books.  These all fit well within the confines of a traditional classroom, but not necessarily in a forward thinking arts program.  The trick was to use the tools that were a natural fit to the arts, encourage the arts educators to be open minded to new ideas on some tools and ignore other tools that are simply inappropriate to an art program.  To date, my art and music people are using file sharing, links (to youtube videos) and discussion boards.  They are using a variety of apps on the iPads as well.

In music, students are using audio recording, a digital metronome and Garage Band to compose music. The art teacher is using apps like Brushes and Doodle Buddy for two dimensional drawing and Cast Drawing and 123D Sculpt for three dimensional drawing, and it doesn't stop there.   She uses a variety of other apps such as National Geographic in order to allow students to experience photography.  The last time I walked into her room, she had the fifth grade students looking at an image on their iPad (from National Geographic) and recreating that image using nothing but a black ink pen.  I'm no art critic (I can barely draw a stick figure) but those students were doing some really neat stuff!


For your further reading, here are some interesting website about the iPad and the arts.

http://kentwired.com/school-of-art-launches-ipad-initiative/
http://blog.cia.edu/digitalcanvas/2012/02/28/ipad-art-education-not-just-college-anymore/
http://theteachingpalette.com/2012/02/24/theres-an-app-for-that-ipads-in-the-art-room/

Student Initiative: My Big Oppsie

Last week Apple published it's new iOS update to iOS 6.  To be honest, I hadn't really given it a lot of thought.  I was going to give it a week or two and see what people had to say, then I was going to update my stuff and test it out.  After I was satisfied, I would arrange to update the student iPads.  Of course, I never relayed this intention to the students or their families since I wasn't ready.  It never dawned on my that the students would take the initiative to update their iPads on their own.  oops...

If the students had all of the apps under their own apple ID, I wouldn't care so much, but although the students could update their OS, they could not update the apps that were under the schools account, and of course some of our more important apps quit working.  (thank you Murphy's law)  Suddenly I am getting emails and phone calls from educators, students and parents making it sound like the sky was falling.  Seriously.....I had to look up to make sure the sky was still in it's proper place.

Ultimately the solution was simple....update the apps on any iPad where students updated the iOS and tell the other students to hold off on an update.  We used Apple Configurator to create the iPad images, but learned that we could also manually update apps without Configurator, so I was able to walk around and offer a "quick fix" for anyone who needed it.  Whew!....problem solved...for now.

Obviously I need to deal with two issues.  1 - communicating with families, teachers and students about what NOT to update and 2 - how to schedule updates.  I need to do this in a way that will have the least impact on the classroom and is sustainable for a very small technology department.  Reviewing the student schedule I believe this can be done during PE and lunch times.  We can update small groups of iPads during these times throughout the week and this way no students would have to go without their iPad during class.  A bit of a stretch for the tech department, but it's doable and most importantly does not adversely affect student learning.

If we had a help desk, these issues would be much smaller than they are, or if I were willing to take the iPads away from students during a time when they would usually use them.  A help desk is never going to happen (we don't have the personnel or the space for one) and telling students and teachers that iPads are not available because I need a more convenient way to update, simply isn't a solution I am willing to entertain.

Schools support technology in a variety of ways and each school has a different philosophy of technology in education.  Some schools/districts struggle to find the balance between the needs of technology (servers and services) and the need to maintain a modern classroom.  Some schools focus on infrastructure as a way to provide services to teachers, administrators and students.  What happens (or can happen) in the classroom is based on what the infrastructure can handle.  In many of these situations, infrastructure concerns are paramount.  Some schools take a different approach.  My school reverses the process and we start from what we want to do in the classroom and build our technology infrastructure around that.  Students MUST be the primary focus, and although the intentions are great, if the technology infrastructure is dictating what is possible in the classroom, we will loose site of what is important...the kids.  

I would be interested to hear what you have to say about your technology department.  How does education technology and information technology merge together?  Who is in charge?  How are classrooms supported?  Feel free to leave a comment on this post or send me an email at randy@technologyskills.net

The Time Factor: Helping Educators Find the Time They Need

Implementing anything new in the classroom can be tricky.  One of the first concerns I hear from an educator is "I don't have the time".  Educators are pushed to (and often past) their limits and the thought of adding yet one more thing is simply overwhelming to many.  This is completely understandable, and those of us who support and/or lead educators should always be aware of this time factor and be prepared to alleviate it in any way we can.  Here's what I have done to help the educators I work with.  Note: this does not apply to only my iPad educators, it applies to ALL of my educators.

Duties - In my school educators have supervisory duties outside of their classroom.  I have offered to cover duties for people if they would like to take that time to record for a flip lesson, make examples for students or they need time to experiment with an app.  I can stand and supervise recess or lunch just as well as the next guy.

Digital copies - Our copy machines can also turn a paper copy into a pdf file and can email it to you.  These copies are distributed to students via our digital classroom or are incorporated into apps such as DocAS or Explain Everything.  I'm pretty good at pressing buttons, so I have offered to take any paper document(s) educators want in pdf format and run the copy machine for them.  (this doesn't take long and it seems to relieve a lot of pressure on educators)

Subbing - Just like covering duties I have offered to sub for classes for subjects I am comfortable with.  I have also offered to proctor tests, cover advisories and study halls if necessary.  This gives the educator a longer period of time to work on a video or example.  They are even allowed to use my desk if they need a space to work.  (I'm messy so they would have to clean my desk first!)

I have noticed that every time I offer this service, teachers are taken aback.  I get responses like "Really!  You would do that?!".  I wonder if it's not the offer more than the act that they appreciate and need to hear.  I know educators are extremely busy people (I used to be a classroom teacher) and it's the responsibility of those of us who aren't in the classroom regularly to help the educators achieve the schools mission and in the grand scheme of things, the above examples don't actually take that much time.  I encourage any and all support staff and administrators to consider taking similar small steps to help their educators reach their potential.

Here's my question to you (yes, you....the reader).  If you are a classroom educator, how could administration help you find the time to work on a modern classroom environment?  If you are an administrator, what else could I do?  Please feel free to reply via comment or via an email to randy@technologyskills.net

The Philosophy of an iPad Program

I received a really good question the other day about my blog and this roll out of the 1 to 1 iPad program at my school.  The question was..."what educational philosophy are you following?".  What a good question!  Personally, I generally follow a constructivist approach to education, but I also believe that there is no single "right way" to do anything.  When I first decided to push my school to implement an iPad 1 to 1 program, I based my arguments and reasonings on constructivism, but I also used my belief in the Universal Design for Learning, although I didn't know that term at the time.

I have always believed that students should be given information in a variety of ways and allowed to experience learning in a variety of ways and of course, express their learning in a variety of ways.  Since everyone is different, it seems silly to force people to follow a single way of teaching and learning.  (You can imagine my opinion on standardized tests)  From this perspective, supplying each educator and each student with a device that has a variety of capabilities just makes sense.  Using the iPad, students can handwrite to fill out papers, type documents, create a variety of presentations, write stories, create videos, collaborate with each other and the list goes on.  No single device can do everything, but as much as possible we should provide tools that are as multi-faceted as we can.

I went to a workshop on Universal Design for Learning during the ISTE 2012 conference in San Diego.  This was one of the best workshops I have gone to in a long time for a couple of reasons.  First, since it's my job to keep up to date and study technology in the classroom, I don't usually get a lot of new information in a single session at a conference. This session, however, was chalk full of wonderful information.  Second, the presenter didn't use a lot of 5 and 6 syllable words, she kept it simple and to the point.  She took the thoughts I have been having and presented them in a succinct and understandable way.

I was told to take a spreadsheet and fill in the first column with the concept goals of the course.  In the second column, place the variety of ways a students can discover the information needed to learn that concept.  i.e. links to videos, informational websites, text books etc....  In the third column list the variety of ways the students can show they have learned the class concepts.  i.e.  discussion with educator, create a movie, write a paper, create a comic, create a VoiceThread etc....  Finally, the fourth column is for educator notes.  How simple...how logical...and how amazing!  I realized right away this is where I was heading and now I had other people that thought the same way and there's even research to back me up!

I used this information as a basis for all of the professional development I provided to my staff over the summer and I will continue to use it as a justification for the expansion of the program.  The educators I have worked with through this process have done a wonderful job and have opened their minds to the possibilities.  I have faith that we are on the right path to creating a true modern learning environment.  Not just in the technology we use, but HOW we use it.  HOW we allow educators to provide vital digital learning experiences for our students and HOW we non classroom staff in order to support this version of education.

More information about the Universal Design for Learning can be found at cast.org and udlcenter.org

If you have stories on how you have implemented iPads in your classroom or how you are creating modern learning environments, I'd love to hear them.  You can email me at randy@technologyskills.net

The Rubber Hit the Road

Anytime a new project is implemented, there will be problems and issues.  The question is....what are the possible problems?  How will we deal with them?  What are we missing?  The problems with this iPad implementation have been so small as to almost go unnoticed.  I believe this is primarily due to all of the time the educators and I spent planning, discussing and practicing.  (see previous posts) Although these issues are small, I will still write about them here and discuss my thoughts on how to resolve them.  If anyone reading this has an idea, I would love for you to comment.

Issue 1 - I work at an independent school where the admissions people are bringing new students into the school right up to the beginning of the school year and through the firs three to four weeks.  A new fifth grade student arrived the third week of school and of course was completely lost as to what she was supposed to do with this iPad since she hadn't gotten any of the training the other students had.

Resolution 1 - Work with admissions to create a new student orientation to technology program were these new students can receive a basic course in using their iPad and Google Apps.

Issue 2 - PDF files are a pain in my neck.  I have downloaded and played with over twenty pdf annotation apps and I never found exactly what I wanted.  Here is the down low on what has been going on.  We chose to use the app Remarks as a pdf annotator.  Educators would provide a pdf in our digital classroom environment (Fronter) and the students would download and manipulate it.  I LOVE this app.  The problem comes into play when the educator wants to view the manipulated pdf.  Remarks can save to Google Drive...great.  But...(dramatic pause) the teacher must view the new pdf on their computer or in Remarks.  The Google Drive app on the iPad will not show the changes Remarks made to the pdf file.  This was not acceptable so I searched for another option.  I landed on DocAS.  Although I don't like it as much as Remarks, it does everything we want....until we implemented.  It is not currently possible to save a pdf from DocAS into a sub folder within Google Docs/Drive.  It will only share to the main file structure.  So if I make a folder called RandySpanish and place a file from DocAS into it, I have to do the following.  Save from DocAS into Google, then move the file around using OfficeHD.  Not an ideal solution, but a solution none the less...(another dramatic pause) until educators need to grade them.  In order for an educator to write on the childs pdf, they have to open it in DocAS (makes sense) and then go through the same save and move process as the kids do.  That is sooooooo not going to work.  Doing it once is bad enough, doing it for thirty kids?  As a current alternative, educators that want to write on the childs pdf will do so in DocAS and email the file to the child with the comments.

Solution 2 - I am completely open to any suggestions people might have on this issue.  I need a pdf annotator that can save the annotations where the iPad can read them AND be able to save into a specific Google Docs/Drive folder. Anyone?  Anyone?  Beuller?

Issue 3 - Flash.  I have to take complete responsibility on this one.  I allowed the idea of getting a flash browser fall through the cracks.  I was sitting in the back of a math class when the educator was attempting to demonstrate the website arcademics.  She quickly realized this website contained flash based math games and accepted this iPad limitation.  I, however, did not.

Solution 3 - There are a fair number of browsers that out there that will allow us to run Flash on an iPad.  I spent some time with them and I liked iSwifter the best, but in order to get the full version I had to do an "In App" purchase.  This is not the way I need to get apps for students, so I emailed iSwifter, explaining my issue and chose my second choice, the ever popular Photon.  Just in time, I received a reply from iSwifter informing me about the free browser they made for schools called Rover.  Perfect!  Decision made and issue resolved!  Thank you iSwifter people!

In the grand scheme of things, there are very small issues.  Since the educators and I (the technology department) are working closely together, we have managed to deal with all of our issues as they arise, so the negative impact to the learning process has been minimized.  I was able to install Flash browsers right away, the Spanish educator and I could meet right after a class and resolve our DocAS issue and I was available to help the new student immediately ensuring that she becomes accustomed to our digital aged classrooms quickly and without too much stress.