Triva in the Age of Google and Facebook

For St. Patrick's Day each teacher is wearing a green paper shamrock. To get your shamrock students must answer your trivia question (after class of course). Each shamrock is worth a point in our school's class cup, a year long student council run competition.

My question was, "What is my wife maiden name?"

It was a work day in class, working on our part of Holland's energy week. Soon students were working hard, but on what? Suddenly, as I walked around the room I was hearing my wife's maiden name pronounced wrong all over the room. I reminded them that I would not be taking questions until the bell rang and that the pronunciation had to be correct. At the end of the hour I had a line and the right answer, correctly pronounced. In fact it was correctly pronounced by my own father in law.

The students had facebooked my wife (who was on Facebook right at that moment) to come up with her maiden name. Facebook is blocked on their laptops, but not of course on their phones. She told me she got three messages. To get the pronunciations they typed, "how do I pronounce..." into Google. My father in law is in the State Assembly in Wisconsin. For constituents the Assembly provides an audio link of each representative pronouncing their name.

There are so many lessons to take away from this. What strikes you?

Observation 4: Classroom Management

I loved a lot of things about my last classroom observation but one of the best parts was a little laptop classroom management detail that was awesome. Laptops do create a management problem. Any tech person who tells you differently is selling snake oil. Any teach who says that they cannot make the change is selling themselves short. Tech people around the country have lost all credibility by telling teachers it will be easier. Maybe some day it will be, but it is always hard work to make a change. Valuable, but hard.

In the class I observed there ware two students who were not using their laptops to work on their Spanish. The teacher, who is very observant, ignored them all hour. I kept wondering what she was going to do. Then, one minute before the bell she went over to them and asked how many videos they had commented on. "Two" and "Three and a half" were their responses. She smiled at them and raised her voice so the whole class could hear, "the rest of these are homework." Several students replied that they were done or close to done.

I assume this was all done in a context. These students needed to be allowed to fail. If they have questions the teacher will answer them outside of class. Hopefully they learned a lesson and enjoyed their time in class as much as they would have at home. There was no way that they did not know they had not used their time wisely.

Classroom Observation 4: Revamping a Lesson

I was in a Spanish 3 class to observe technology in action. After class I asked the teacher about the lesson and she described to me the conversion process to the technology enhanced lesson. It was cool to hear what went into her plan. Allow me to share her story.

She is teaching the subjunctive, which is commonly used when giving advice. In the past she wrote in Spanish three "problems" seeking advice. The students then had to write a response back to her giving her advice about any one of the problems.

In the laptop age she designed the assignment this way. Students had to use their MacBook camera and Photo Booth to take a video of themselves talking about a fake problem they are seeking advice on in Spanish. They then emailed this problem to a posterous site where the teacher had made them all contributors. In class that day the students had to comment, in Spanish, on each video. They had to make sure they did not repeat advice which meant they were always looking to post on a video that had the fewest comments and spread out the commenting to everyone's video. It also meant that the students had to read several comments. They also could get extra credit by correcting mistakes other students had made.

This lesson took no more time out of the teacher's allotted class time to teach the subjunctive. It had a speaking writing and reading part instead of just a reading and writing. On top of all that the problems were more diverse and more creative. An awsome example of the laptop difference.

Classroom Observation 4: A Broader Audience

Spanish 3
Originally uploaded by weathertation

I visited another classroom this week. The basics of the activity involved students commenting on other students blog posts. I watched as the teacher answered questions all hour, moving frenetically around the room. She took 30 seconds to say to tell me that because the comments were being read by other students there were dozens more questions than the same less done on paper last year. We have been told as teachers that making our students have a more authentic audience will lead to better learning. The simple and great start is to make them read each others work. Technology, especially the laptops, make that so easy to do.

Classroom Observation 3: Short Clips Keep It Real

Choir
Originally uploaded by weathertation

I visited a choir class and saw a great use of youtube. The teacher told a story about terraced farming, a farming technique some students would have seen south of town. He related that to measures of songs that need to be sung at different volumes. He then showed a two minute clip off youtube of a choir singing the song that he was teaching with the terraced volumes.

This story reminds me of one of my older teachers sho pulled me aside one day and told me that the laptops, moodle and youtube allowed him to stay competitive in the MTV generation. The days of hour long videos are not gone, but their effectiveness has definitely been reduced over the years. Short clips with specific points bring video back into the classroom effectively.

Classroom Observation 3: Laptops for Efficiency

First off, I know I skipped observation 2. I will come back to it. I just finished observation 3 and though I should report one quick use of the laptops. I visited a choir class, and it integrated technology in great ways. One way was to gain efficiency.

The teacher use a free site called cyberbass.com which has hundreds of songs broken out into their parts. Looking at the list it is limited to songs in the public domain. Since they are learning a Vivaldi piece the students took out their laptops and listend each to their own part for two minutes before practicing. They repeated this for longer when they were learning a new part.

Afterwards the teacher explained that this saved time. Before the laptops he would have played each section's part individually, taking four times the class time. This also creats a managment problem with the other three quarters of the choir. Sitting in the back and timing these events I calculated that he could practice an extra song during a class period. That is 176 extra songs a year.

Classroom Observation 1: Without the Laptop

One of the questions that I am going to ask as I look into classrooms is how would the lesson have been different without the laptops.

• The use of first sources was excellent. This could have been done in a regular classroom with a lot of photocopying ahead of time. It could have been better if the students had had to do more than look over one site of first sources. Given the limited timefram of the less I think it was a lesson where the laptops enhanced the lesson but were not the sole factor in getting the lesson done.
• The less was far more enhanced by the teacher's laptop. I think teachers are far more likely to use a variety of engaging relevant resources when those resources are at their fingertips. Starting with a picture, telling a story based from another place, then handing out the notes digitally all spring from the availability of the computer both in the room and when planning.
• Student themselves seemed (although I did not ask) like their computers were a good place to keep organized notes. I am not sure you can under estimate the power of a searchable notebook to keep several students in the game.

Score: Lesson: 0.5, Teacher 1, Student 0.

Skitch

I love Skitch.

I use it in class all the time. It really helps my teaching to flow. It is a simple drawing program with all the features that you need and none that you do not.

I use it mainly to present information in a flexible and interactive way. It would be a ton less valuable if I did not have my Bluetooth tablet. Since I do I can use the tablet to write on any thing I clip from the web.

I will admit that presentations are not perfect in Skitch. However, its always available nature make is a perfect companion to the teacher wandering around the room and writing on the projector.

I Love Moodle

I love moodle for hundreds of reasons. But the top reason always comes back to when we have needed a solution it has offered one. Let me take you through our history with moodle.

Six years ago grades were about to go online. This came with all the required scary thought that teachers have about it. For a year before we put the grades online we installed moodle. Each teacher had a course and would post the homework for the week. This gave adminitrators the online openness that they wanted for parents. It also allowed teachers to get their feet wet before going with a full gradebook open and online.

A year later we were starting to encourage more technology use. Moodle was perfect. It was easy to use and teachers could try things without too much risk. Several stepped out and tried new educational ideas, and it cost us nothing because moodle was just there and easy to use.

Four years ago we piloted a one to one laptop program. Moodle is the glue that holds this program together. Teachers and students needed a common launching point for their experinces. Moodle provided that answer. It also allowed teachers to make the transition in a way that made sense to them. It uses language that teachers could understand for new and more modern teaching techniques. It allows them to move from the old to the new at their own pace. Each year I hold that transition document up in front teachers and ask them where they are and where they are going. .

Now that we have laptops grades six through twelve moodle is a content delivery system essential to our school district. Every student goes through the day starting many of the classes that they take in moodle for the lesson opener. I am in the process of visiting classes using technology and one of the two started in moodle.

I think the future holds much for moodle. We are going to move to a different kind of schedule, one that allows for night and online classes. Moodle will allow us to make those radical changes without changing radically the environment our teachers work in.

Moodle it always a step ahead of where we need it to be. I love moodle.

Moodle Test Board

If the last post seemed out of place it was because part of my job is to manage our moodle server. As we finally have moved to all students having a laptop this year, one of the goals was to have the test board online. The idea behind the test board is that the a single student should not have more than two tests on a given day. We are going to use our graduating class moodle courses for these test boards. If you want instuctions on how we are doing it look at the post.

Laptops with Webcams

I have mentioned before that our ninth graders have a mix of iBooks and MacBooks. This has made me notice that the webcam is an essential part of any one to one hardware.

I have talked with several districts in the last two years about a one to one. I would personally not go into a one to one without Apple computers. That being said, I think it can be done without them. What I think you need is a built in web cam. Good teachers use the compelling resources around them in spite of themselves. Believe it or not, some teachers do not see either their own laptops or their students with laptops a compelling tool. I am not saying they do not use it at all, just they do not see it as changing what they do. They still type and print papers, they just use their laptop. They still assign papers, just they do not have to check out the computer lap to do research or type.

The webcam though is a game changer. Always available is the power. Teachers and students alike go nuts when they discover the camera and its power. Teachers use it simply to add graphics easily to a document. No more scanning software required for simple papers, just hold it up to the cam and take a shot. Need to add a little video to a document, record yourself. Need your students to practice their vocab, have the student shoot video and upload it to the class website. Need to show off a small item to the class, turn on the camera and project the laptop screen. There are limitless ideas and applications, and like I said before a good teacher uses all the resources available to them to teach the students that have landed in front of them.

Observation 1: Original Sources

20070731-DSCF2400
Originally uploaded by Francesco Federico

My first classroom observation was a ton of fun. I have several thoughts on it. I want to make sure that I note what teachers are doing with a laptop that they cannot do in a traditional classroom. One of the more powerful possibilities was on display in the US History class that I observed. The teacher started with a picture, not unlike the one at the right, of Ellis Island. The new unit is on immigration. The teacher then directed the students to a website on the history of many different immigrant groups coming to the United States. The potential here is for students to read the actual experiences. Laptops empower a teacher to ask all the student read a different story about who it is they think might be interesting. Then in conversation with each other and the teacher learn what is the common experience of immigrants.

This kind of analysis in a community mimics the greater work of a historian. It asks for the higher level thinking skills that our laptop program is all about.