Edtechkit Weekend Report - 2/17/13 "We don't glue pencils onto our students' hands, right?"

Links of the week

I love student created content especially when I learn from it too. Check out the Tech Sherpas blog (students from Central Maine at Nokomis Regional High) for informative student created video webcasts covering all number of education technology topics. The kids are Smart with a capital "S". This week they covered the sharing features in Google Drive. This could be a great jumping off point for having your own students creating meaningful content for the world to see.

I'm a big fan of graphic organizers to help students visualize their learning and organize their thinking. I like this article by Ryan Knoblauch that unpacks how he is using graphic organizers to support his students. He has tons of resources for templates you can use plus a great glimpse into the methods he is using in his classroom.

And here is one from my "Bartleby" collection. Patrick Larkin is an Assisting Superintendent in Massachusetts that is bravely writing against the continued push for increased testing in our schools.

News and Upcoming Events in Michigan

MASSP iPad Summit March 26 (MSU Henry Center) - Only 50 seats left for the Michigan Association of Secondary Schools Prinicipals iPad Summit conference. If your district is implementing or planning to implement iPads at the Secondary level then you won't want to miss this opportunity to learn how schools  in Michigan are transforming student learning using iPads. I'm honored to have been asked to keynote this exciting event and look forward to setting the stage for the day with what I think will be a very fun theme: "iPad Magic - How to Wrangle the Unicorns"

Save the date. April 20, 2013 Jackson ISD will be hosting an innovative conference that plans to be half edcamp half brain trust (bringing in the REMC Connected Educators from around the state). It's sure to be a can't miss. Details to follow.

Another date worth saving will be Thursday August 22, 2013. That's the tentative date for this year's 21st Century Learning Symposium hosted by St. Clair County RESA. This annual event has been host to some of  education's leading thinkers including Yong Zhao, Will Richardson, Mark Prensky, and Stephen Heppell. This year we are excited to have Kevin Honeycutt join this impressive list along with 600+ of Michigan's best.

Last call for MACUL - Michigan's premier education technology conference is just around the corner March 20-22. This statewide event is an awesome opportunity to learn and network with some of the most innovative educators in our state. This year's MACUL conference is hosted in Detroit at the Cobo center. I'm facilitating two sessions this year - The Appcessible iPad (UDL strategies for the iPad) and co-presenting with Laura Chambless - Cooperative Learning and the iPad.

New Apps to check out

Wow! This was a good week for apps.

First. Michigan's very own Brad Wilson has released his first iPad app called "Write about this". The app uses high quality and thought provoking imagery combined with writing prompts that are tied to different levels of Bloom's taxonomy to inspire students to write more. The app is very intuitive, includes a writer's notepad area, and voice narration of the writing prompts to assist emerging and struggling readers. The app is really an embodiment of the Universal Design for Learning principals because it clearly provides "multiple means of  Representation, Expression, and Engagement." Read more about Brad's journey creating this app here.

Science teachers - Take a look at Color Uncovered and Sound Uncovered to provide inquiry based resources that are sure to pique your students' curiosity. The interactive, hands-on manipulatives and informative accompanying articles are incredibly well done and very interesting. I'd keep my eye out for more apps from the Exploritorium Museum in San Francisco that developed these apps to accompany their brick and mortar exhibits.

I'm taking a second look at the Davinci Note app after coming across another interesting web app called tackk.com. Both iPad friendly programs provide a beautiful templates for mashing up pictures and text to create high impact informative writing. I'm drawn to the simple user interface of the Davinci Note app for the potential to create attractive research reports, quick writes, and other blog like reflections with students. Tackk is similar but is web based, giving it the advantage of working on multiple devices and has the distinct advantage of not requiring a student login for creating and sharing. One key piece is that e-mail sharing feature does NOT use the iPad's native e-mail to send and therefor let's students e-mail their work to the teacher without needing their own e-mail. 

Roll your own professional development

First, here's a great resource for teachers using Google Apps with iPads in the classroom Google Drive for iPad by richardbyrne

I also have a couple of new screencasts to help those wanting to get more organized using their iPads.

Thought for the week

This week someone tweeted out something along the lines of "we don't send kids to the pencil lab". On Wednesday I was challenged to model some lessons across a K-5 building that put technology into the students' hands the entire time. To be honest it felt a bit forced, and had I not felt the pressure to model in this manner I might have dropped the tech from certain parts of some of the lessons. At the heart of my lessons was a very non-techy modified think, pair, share strategy for keeping all students accountable and engaged. Had I left this out I think my lessons would have been a disaster. What if I had left out the technology? The answer is that the delivery of content to each child's device via Nearpod personalized the information and helped hold their attention. The formative classroom response tools helped me gauge mastery of the concepts, increased accountability, and made the lesson fun. But these tools could have been less front and center and been just as effective. It didn't need to be a tech lesson. It merely needed to be an opportunity for everyone to learn. The technology went a long way in supporting this goal of reaching "everyone". Until it didn't. Until the technology became the focus. We don't glue pencils onto our students' hands, right?

Houston we have a problem - Help crowd source our Professional Development

I'm preparing to help facilitate a Summer professional development institute focussed on helping high school teachers integrate technology to foster 21st century learning.  And I think we have a problem.  The problem isn't the brand new laptop, iPod touch, flip cam, microphone headsets and software we are giving teachers who participate.  The problem I think is reflected this anecdote from Will Richardson's blog:

At a collection of school leaders and IT people, one of the participants told the group that his school had bought a number of iPads for teachers and that they had scheduled a chunk of training on how to use them. Unfortunately for him, I had just read an exchange on Twitter where Gary Stager had made the point that I quickly made to the group: “You know, something like 1.3 million people have bought an iPad and I doubt any of them have gotten any “training” on how to use it.” The people in the room half chuckled, but one woman said “Our teachers won’t do anything with technology unless we give them training.”

After reading this my first thought was, hey, we're giving out the same consumer level devices which are sold without training by such high minded institutions as Walmart, yet we've slotted significant chunks of our training time to how you connect the device to the computer and how to download an app.  Are they really that hard to use? 

It does get a little more complicated when we look at the applications and software.  Our plans call for training on Moodle, Google Apps, social media, and screen casting (multi day trainings in and of themselves in a traditional model).  But aren't we really just saying make your teaching and learning environment accessible, authentic, interconnected, and multi-sensory.  

So I'm throwing out a few smaller brainstrorms in the hopes of pulling in some big guns from the interwebs. *yes, that  means you all,  in the hope that our little problem will demonstrate a bigger picture solution.  Or just tell me that I'm wrong.  It's how I learn.  

I call this Challenges not Training:

1.  "Use your iPod touch to share with a friend the fact that you just got an iPod touch"  Skills needed - Turn it on, connect to internet, set up e-mail or go to web based e-mail, compose a message, send. Variations: Set up facebook app, set up twitter app, record a voice memo and e-mail it, etc.

2.  "Use your flip camera to share a video or a picture with a friend the fact that you just got a flip cam"  Skills needed- Turn it on, record video or take still shot, export to computer, share via e-mail, facebook, twitter, upload to youtube, etc.

Make it a race, make it a cooperative activity (first group to get all to accomplish task), give prizes.

3. As for the applications:  "You have several students who are failing your course. They are disengaged during lectures, they consistently misplace their work, they seem more interested in texting notes to their friends than taking notes, and your worst fear is that they are recording your classroom using the camera on their cell phone.  What strategies and resources could you integrate into your lessons to engage your learners, make the material multi sensory, personally accessible, authentic and interconnected?"

I hope that at least few folks will take a moment to reply.  I and my group thank you in advance.  

TI3 – Inquiry, Innovation, and Individualization

Sorry again for the unedited notes from MACUL

Working with a disruptive unmotivated population

Blended classroom

Using moodle – computerized everything he has.

Choosing to teach in the most effective manor regardless of the failed state outcomes

Teaching inquiry based requires some level of intrinsic motivation. His experience is it only works with motivated students.

Today's teacher has to be incredible. Normal won't cut it. Teachers last less than five years

Using a split class environment – computers for half and inquiry for half.

Has 16 computers for his room using a 10,000 dollar grant.

Project goals:

• Every kid 100% engaged. They don't always finish, but they do work.
  
• Inquire, Innovation (split the classs – essentially teaching 2 courses at once), individualization
  
• Using 4 stations of 4 desktop computers
  
• Does a physics demo using a nail bed but it doesn't work to engage.
  
• Enrollement key moodle is course name small letters
  
• Online Moodle assessments
  
• Grade by assessment or portfolio – Demonstrate 70% satisfactory work
  
• Late work is overlooked if it is completed