The new paradigm

Access to the digital realm in schools has gone through an evolution. Although the stages are not clearly bounded, a simple overview might look like this:

• Computer Lab school (the school maintains a lab environment with devices standardized by model and installed software)
• Laptop Carts (in order to bring technology into the classroom, laptop computers, standardized by model and software, are available for check out)
• 1:1 (schools provide each student with a standardized model and software image)
• BYOM (schools allow students to bring their own Mac, but provide minimum standards for software and hardware)
• BYOD (schools release students from the obligation of computer make/model, but still maintain standards for software and hardware)

The most recent variant of this evolution has been called "1 to n", where 'n' represents that students will have an array of technology devices; Smart Phones, Tablets, laptops, workstations, etc. The implication is that each type of technology has its own affordances, so teachers can design tasks that are best suited for each device.

I propose that there is yet another evolutionary phase that is more important and better represents the future of tech in schools. I call this "1 to x".

In mathematics, n represents a variable, while x represents an unknown. As a variable, n implies that there are many possible values...a student might have one device (a laptop, perhaps), two devices (a laptop and a Smart Phone), etc. The actual value of n is....variable.

x, however, represents an unknown; a specific value, but one which is unique to the situation. For example, we know there is a solution, but we don't know exactly what it is.

In the realm of technology, this means we know a student has a device that they will choose to use, but we don't know (or particularly care) which one it is.

This implies that the user is now empowered enough that we can allow them to choose the proper tool for a task, and we neither have to prepare the tool in advance (as with 1:1 environments), nor do we have to design the task to match different tools (as with 1:n).

For example, in a 1:x environment, a teacher would tell students to read the first chapter of Moby Dick. He or she would assume that all students have devices and connectivity, and are savvy enough to find a copy online and read it. For some, it might take the form of a Kindle and a kindle account, others might stream it online with their SmartPhone, others might fileshare through Dropbox and read it on their laptop. As far as the teacher is concerned, and for the purposes of the class, it doesn't matter where they get the copy, as long as they read the first chapter. The days of having to order a class set and hand them out (which originated because there was not a resource with enough reliable copies for an entire class) is over.

In another case, the teacher might tell the kids to represent their research thoughts on some sort of digital framework that is most effective. Some students might make a webpage or blog, using their laptop. Others might make a movie using their tablet camera, and others might write a short story and deliver it in ePub format for a Kindle. Again, choice of the digital tool and platform is part of the students responsibility, and frees them up to find the best way to achieve their goal. In fact, their choice of medium and device is a rich area for discussion which is lost if the teacher mandates that they do it on a Google Site using their laptops.

There is an old adage; if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. By assuming that every student has the same assemblage of tech tools, we run the risk of over-standardizing our tasks, robbing students of opportunities for creativity and collaboration, and adding to the management tasks of teachers and schools.

With the developing savvy of students and technology use, the need for teachers or institutions to provide the device (either the device itself, or a minimum set of specs for student-owned devices) is rapidly passing. The need to design lessons that fit within those constraints is also passing, as is the need to provide instruction on how to use the digital tools. As we reach this new paradigm of 1:x, technology truly becomes a tool of expression rather than another obstacle to learning.

The journey into 1:x can take many forms, and in many ways we have already made it. Many math programs no longer specify what type of calculator kids need, I know of no school anywhere that dictates what kind of paper notebook, pens or pencils kids must have. We often allow kids to read books from other sources than the school supply closet (online, the school library, etc). Other than to provide for the need of standardized grading (which should be avoided) or for instruction (which is becoming less necessary), we should move away from providing too much of a framework for tech expectations.

It's a tiny step, but I recently handed out Kindle devices to a classroom of students, and made a conscious choice not to include the micro-USB charging cable. These cables are easy to find, abundant, and managing them would have been just another task to interfere with productivity. Although access to a cable is crucial for use of the devices, for the most part, students took this in stride ("Oh, I have this cable at home anyway") and I realized that we needlessly take on too many responsibilities.

In the future, I expect to see teachers and schools free themselves from the yoke and constraints of digital maintenance. The 1:x model assumes that students have digital tools, know how to use them, can choose the best tool mindfully, and can focus their creativity on the tools and skills they have rather than have to develop new tangential skills or acquire new devices to meet class expectations. This paradigm best represents true integrated learning and creative productivity.

Flexible Learning Space: the Experimental Classroom

When I first started as Tech Facilitator at HKIS, the High School was doing some renovations which released a room that had been a computer lab. When I saw this space that had rows of electrical outlets on the floor, no fixed cabinetry and great lighting, I figured it could serve as an experimental classroom space, where I could try out different technologies before they were scaled up for the entire school.

The philosophy driving the space was that I wanted a room that was imminently flexible: with a mobile teaching space, movable desks and chairs, and extremely versatile surfaces.

My rationale was: if there was a defined 'front of the room', then the teacher would be there. Which means the students would naturally align themselves in front of the teacher, creating that "Sage on the Stage" arrangement. So the first thing I did was remove any evidence of a "front", by taking down the projector and board, and by making all the walls writable surfaces.

We looked at different products, but ended up using formica countertop material glued to plywood backing. There is also a spacer behind each board, leaving a little 'breather space' between the board and the wall. In the steamy season, the walls sweat and we felt that having the board mounted against the plaster walls would have been too fragile.

I installed folding tables and chairs, all mobile, in the room. My first intent was to make the policy that after each class, the room had to be returned to a 'neutral state' so incoming classes had no implied set-up, but teachers found that it was easier to rearrange the room if the tables and chairs were deployed, so the policy was suspended.

In order or provide for projection, I tried two different setups. The first was for a self-contained mobile projection platform. I started with an Ergotron Teachwell adjustable lecturn, mounted a flat surface and strapped a projector to it, added a USB document camera, and mounted an amp and speakers to the base. There were some issues in cabling: it would have been nice if some sort of docking station was available for the computers, but in the end each device had its own plug that had to be plugged in (projector, audio, document camera, power). The resulting product could be moved around the room, plugged into any floor outlet, adjusted for height, and projected onto the walls.

Overall, this experiment was not quite successful; the projector was far too sensitive to any motion on the stand (even typing on the computer), and the focal length meant that the user had to endlessly mess with keystone settings. Also, the reflected glare from the projector was hard to manage. After some time, this station was abandoned and disassembled.

The next (and eminently more successful) projection system was a portable SMART board with a short throw projector. I found a big screen TV mount (also made by Ergotron), and working with some engineers we built a mounting bracket that could hold a SMART board and also a projector while maintaining stability.

The signal was sent to the projector wirelessly from the computer using an Imation LINK device. This worked very well (better than Apple TV, in terms of signal stability) except that there was some small visible 'chop' while watching videos. The best feature was that kids could project their computer screens merely by passing around the USB dongle.

Connection to the SMART board was via a proprietary bluetooth link (since discontinued by SMART). The board had some issues with maintaining connectivity, but with practice, all users were able to troubleshoot when necessary, or else bypass with a Thunderbolt-VGA cable.

For audio, we mounted an amplifier and speaker system to the legs of the mobile board, which also added to the stability of the board. It took the audio feed from the Imation LINK device. If teachers chose to use the VGA cable, then they could either connect to the audio with a bluetooth device, or else use an audio cable backup.

When we switched to Macbook Airs (with no DVD drive), we also mounted a DVD/CD player on the legs of the portable board, and wired the audio to the speakers via a separate channel, so the amplifier could receive feed from the computer or the DVD player.

The teacher's workstation was also wireless. I used an Ergotron adjustable lectern and mounted a USB expansion hub. In the hub I plugged in a USB Document Camera, the dongle for the SMARTboard, and the dongle for the Imation LINK. Teachers connected to the audio track via a bluetooth audio hookup...the result was a truly wireless portable teaching station with only one USB plug to attach. If their computers were charged, the teachers did not even need to plug in the power cable, and could roll the workstation anywhere in the room and still maintain audio, video, projection and SMART connectivity.

Together, the portable SMART board and Mobile Teaching Station only needed one power plug on the SMART board to run the projector and amplifier. Other than that, they are a very versatile and mobile presentation platform pair...although in truth, most teachers tend to use the cable connection to the projector rather than the Imation LINK.

The classroom space took some time for teachers to start to want to use. The math department eventually became the prime users, being very excited about the multiple whiteboard spaces and as they are some of our most prolific SMART users, they found the SMARTboard very useful. Other classes used it and made extensive use of the mobile project surface...the board could be moved anywhere in the room and seating arrangements could be adjusted as needed.

All in all, a lot was learned about this space. I found that teachers were not as creative about manipulating the workspace as I hoped they would be, and eventually the board ended up residing at one end of the room with the teacher workdesk occupying the traditional 'front of the room' setting. However, the room does get used almost every period now, mostly by math teachers, but also for meetings with Admin and student groups. Maybe one of the best outcomes was that people who wanted to use the space had to learn to manage some basic troubleshooting, and this skill ended up spreading around the departments. 

One notable thing happened: when the school had to absorb the Language Department space for the SW Admin as we built our new campus, extensive renovations occurred to the entire wing. However, the Admin universally agreed to preserve the Experimental Classroom, as it served as such a versatile, useful and important learning space in the HS.

Broken image links

Apologies to all my millions of followers. The images in this blog were hosted on the servers of my old employer, HKIS. Since I no longer work there, all the image links were broken. I've been moving the photos over time, but some links may still be broken. If you find a broken one, just post a message and I'll track it down and fix it.

Or just check out my other blogs, and follow me there, if you wish: 

Professional blog with useful tech tips for teachers: https://bytesizedtech.wordpress.com
Personal blog with random thoughts of a more random mind: http://myronbuck.wordpress.com

Thinking about Design

As my friend Ania Zielinska has said...when you 'integrate' something, you may be 'disintegrating' it: in this case, meaning....infusing tech into the curriculum might lead to big pieces of it being owned by no one, and getting lost by the wayside.

That's what has happened with some components of tech learning at our school: in the mechanics and pedagogy of integrating 1:1 into the classrooms, we've lost programming, game design, etc. Courses we once taught, but now we don't have a department that 'owns' them so they (and the skills they endorse) aren't being reinforced or taught.

But now that everyone has a laptop and the teachers are settling into their groove, students are starting to look for these offerings again. So a month or so ago, I started making movements in the HS about creating a Tech Curriculum.

I wrote a plan for a range of Technology courses. I say "range" because it felt to me that things like Programming fell into one end of some sort of spectrum, while things like Robotics fell at the other end, and I wanted to offer a selection that would appeal to a wide variety of students.

I've recently grown to understand my instincts: Sylvia Martinez, who is a Maker proseletyzer, mentioned that Programming is the 'Rosetta Stone' for all other forms of technology use, while more applied technology use (like robotics and game design) are in the arena of "Physical Computing"... a form of 'design tech' where technology plays a crucial, but non-central, role in the process of designing something. So thanks to her for validating my instincts and giving me some terms to define those endpoints. But most important to me was that term "design tech" as referring to a project where technology was necessary for success, and also the term "design cycle" which is a crucial part of the process...where you create, test, modify and improve in a cyclical, reiterative cycle.

In my musings about the future of technology in schools, it grew on me that there would be a decreasing pool of schools who needed support and guidance in rolling out a 1:1 program, and an increasing pool if teachers who were empowered to find and leverage tech tools in their curricula. So the future role of ICT Facilitators like myself was going to change.

But how?

I'm now thinking that the tech facilitator role is going to become more and more responsible for finding powerful ways to teach those pieces of tech that are not being addressed in the mainstream classrooms....things like Programming, spreadsheet use, data gathering and analysis, etc. Certainly some aspects of that are addressed in some classes (data analysis in science, for example), but not at a very high level and not at the expense of the science curriculum.

And 'design tech' courses like Robotics might be just the type of experience that will do the trick. Courses that put the kids into situations where they need to learn programming or coding to achieve success are powerful motivators, so I want to better understand this 'design cycle' and how it works.

Far Behind

OK, it's time for my annual "Wow, so much has happened since I last posted" post.

My last series of posts were geared towards recovering from Google canceling Reader, and trying to get the designers of Feedly to install some functions that Reader had...specifically the ability to subscribe to a post with a single button, and the ability to bundle a group of feeds together and share them easily.

The results were mixed: they DID create the first function....it's now very simple to subscribe to a blog and put that subscription into a folder with a single button, and I'd like to think that my communication with them had a role in this, but I'm not really sure.

Especially because there seems to have been very little motion in the second arena; there is still no 'bundling' function in Feedly, and that seriously is impacting how I can use Feedly to monitor my student blogs.

HOWEVER, something else happened in the meantime along this front.

In his blog, an associate (I use that term very loosely...he probably doesn't really know me from Adam) Jeff Utecht posted about the upside of Reader going away. I stated in his comments about my hopes that they replicate the bundling functionality, and talked about my conversations with Arthur via this blog. My comment was read by Wes Fryer, a high-profile blogger in Educational Technologies, and he reposted my blog post as a model for what support for blogging in HS should look like,

Suddenly, the number of hits on this blog skyrocketed! Instead of the 20-30 views a month that it usually gets, I started getting 1000+ hits per day! Woo HOO.

However, that generated something unusual. Up until that day, the purpose of this blog was to serve as an historical record for other schools who are moving to a 1:1 environment. I wanted to archive our experiences and learning curve so others could benefit from them. What it was NOT was a soapbox where I could post my ideas on the future trends in Ed Tech, or give my points of view on diverse topics. There are already plenty of blogs like that out there, and I'm not entirely sure what purpose they serve.

As a result, the spike in readership didn't last all that long. After a few months, the number of hits has gone down to a more reasonable level (I really don't think I have enough to say to keep five or six thousand people interested), and the 'performance anxiety' that this created has subsided.

So anyway....that explains why I haven't posted in awhile. Keep watching over the next week or so and I'll catch up on our Year 4 rollover, and my ideas on the Future of Ed Tech (lol....seriously). I also will share some thoughts on my upcoming Gap Year....stay tuned. :-)

Followup with Feedly

Juat had a great chat with Arthur from Feedly, and shared my 'needs list' with him. I am hopeful that they will design something to fill this unique gap that Reader is leaving abandoned.

Here is the gist of what I told him;

WISH LIST:

I need 'bundles' where I can subscribe to a group of blogs, put them in a single folder, then share that folder. Currently, Reader does it this way:

---When you find a blog you want to subscribe to, click on the 'subscribe' button you previously uploaded to your toolbar

--Which then opens the Reader window and asks you if you want to subscribe to the blog:

---After you hit 'Subscribe', it places it in your blog list. From there, you select the dropdown and go to 'rename subscription':

---And then, after THAT, you can go and drag the blog into a pre-existing folder.

Feedly's method is a bit different and simpler. First, you navigate to a blog you want, and copy the URL.  Then open Feedly, and find the 'Add Content' button. It's in different places for different views:

--but in any case, it opens this window, where you paste in the URL and it does a little search:

         

--Then you select the blog and select what category you want to add it to, as well as what title you want to give it.

I gotta admit, I like Feedly's method better, with one exception: it would be perfect if they had a toolbar icon like Reader does, rather than the 'cut and paste' method. Also, instead of having to go through that 'little search' thing, it just accepted your URL and had the option to rename the title and choose the category all at once. 

Now for the BUNDLES...

Switching to Feedly; so far, so good.

OK, the trigger has been pulled.

I emailed my entire HS faculty last week, and I'm emailing my students this week and officially telling them to login to Feedly to switch their Reader content over. If this is done before July 1 (when Reader goes away), then Feedly installs all your Reader subscriptions automatically.

Still unsure of what it will all look like after July 1: will we still login to reader.google.com and the DNS server will redirect us to Feedly? Will be have to login to Feedly.com? Or will we login to reader.google.com and see the old Google interface, but populated with our Feedly subscriptions? I've emailed Arthur (the chief designer/co-founder of Feedly; see my previous post) for clarification, but if any of my millions of readers knows the answer, please pass it along.

I'm still sitting with fingers crossed that Arthur and the folks at Feedly create the ability to share collections online with 'bundles', but I'm overjoyed to see that at least one of my wish list items is already installed.

I told Arthur that a messy part of making folders in Reader was that downloading the RSS link, renaming the subscription, and adding it to a pre-existing folder were three separate steps. Feedly now has the option WHEN you are adding a source, you can rename it and assign it to an existing category (or create a new one) in one step. Wonderful! I'm not sure about that broken image link next to 'must read', but that's not a crucial to me as the simple process for installing new sources.

For those who are new at Feedly, here is a great Intro tutorial: http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/tips-for-google-reader-users-migrating-to-feedly/

The Heir Apparent...

Since the announcement of the dissolution of Google.Reader, there has been a ton of social chat about what to replace it with. Most posts and sites I have seen have identified Feedly as the most seamless heir; transferring your Reader subscriptions into Feedly is literally a one-button process, and although I don't understand the back end technology very well, apparently the two programs are highly compatible.

That being said, I did notice immediately that Feedly was missing a couple of features of Reader that I find absolutely essential for my use, so I took the bold step of sending a tweet to the CEO of Feedly, Edwin Khodabakchian:

Much to my pleasant surprise, the next day I noticed that he started following me on Twitter, then a day after that I got a tweet back from him:

So to shorten this lead-in....I contacted him and Edwin got me in touch with the co-founder and lead designer of Feedly, Arthur Bodolec, and wants me to give details of how we use Reader here at HKIS. With the sudden surge of users (3 million new users in the past few weeks), Feedly is rapidly modifying their site. But in reality, aggregators are aggregators, and a fancy skin or new coat of paint is not going to distinguish one from another; to really stand out, Feedly has to offer some functionality that no one else does. 

So this post today is for Arthur, but others who use it similarly (or who want to add to my post) are welcome to chime in.

So Hello, Arthur :-)

While the market is saturated with lots of aggregators, what Reader offers (and what no one else does) is two things; the ability to bundle blogs for organizing and sharing, and the ability to subscribe to a website, RSS feed, or whatnot, with one click.

Here is how I have our system set up:

Our school has about 800 students (200 per grade) and we are requiring all our freshmen to start a blog about their school experience, and maintain it over their 4 years here. Regardless of what program they choose to create their blog, they have to be organized in a manner that allows different populations to find and read them.  And this system has to be robust enough to support 200 additional blogs each year, organized by homeroom and accessible to users with all sorts of ability levels (ranging from highly skilled to terrified, and who are universally too busy to go far out of their way to troubleshoot). 

I have come up with a beautiful way to manage this, however, although it sounds pretty straightforward, the back end design work to set it up has taken a lot of troubleshooting and is completely reliant on some features of Reader.

What I have done is to create a space in each student's user profile in our Learning Management System (LMS) where they can put in their blog URL. Then, when the teachers go to their class list in their Homeroom page (or any class page, for that matter), they see the link that takes them to each student's blog, like this:

Clicking 'link' on the right opens the student's blog in its home URL. 

If the teacher isn't already subscribed to the student blog (maybe the student joined the school late), google has this great little goodie feature called the 'subscribe button'; it puts a button on your taskbar that you click when you are at a website, and the computer automatically opens your Reader account, and asks if you want to subscribe to that URL. 

The beauty of this button is twofold:

1. It changes the experience of following feeds from one where you have to deliberately navigate to your aggregator, mentally changing gears from whatever you were doing before, into one where you just add feeds 'on the fly' as you do what you were doing.
2. Since Reader is already activated in our Google Apps Suite, it takes people there who may not have known that they had a Reader page. That introduces them to RSS aggregators in an authentic manner.

Now, here is the most important feature of reader that no one else offers and I dearly hope Feedly replicates: Bundles.

To make it as easy as possible for teachers to subscribe to and follow their student's blogs, I have created bundles using Reader and posted them on our LMS, like this: 

A teacher could then subscribe to all of their homeroom blogs with one click: when they hit 'subscribe' at the bottom of their own bundle, it automatically imported the entire folder into google.reader, with the proper URLs, student names and sorted into a folder.

Without this 'bundling' feature, I cannot figure out a manageable way to get 64 homeroom teachers to create folders that allow them to follow their student blogs. The 'long way' is cumbersome; open the Class page, navigate to the class list where the kids' blogs are linked to their profiles, click on each blog one at a time, open it in a different window, copy the URL and and paste it into their own aggregator, then go back afterwards and put all the blogs into a single folder, renaming each one after the student who created it.

The beauty of google's 'subscribe' and 'bundle' function is that *I* can do all the heavy lifting: I open each kid's blog site and put them into a folder in my own Reader, rename the blog after the student, then I merely make a bundle and paste it into the LMS site. The teachers can subscribe to the kids' blogs with one click.

So, to summarize:

What I truly hope Feedly creates is a system where a user can do the following:

1) Subscribe to any type of URL without having to cut and paste into Feedly, but do it while navigating the web,

2) Put the subscriptions into a folder where the user has easy control over the name of the folder and renaming the subscription,

3) Create a single link to that folder that can be pasted elsewhere, which allows a DIFFERENT user to download the subscriptions with the same names and folder name into their OWN Feedly account.

There are, of course, some other features that would be nice, but these three (especially the last two) are so essential to how I manage these 800 blogs that without them, I don't have any idea how to do it.  Of course, I could just create a regular folder with all the links in it, but that loses the functionality of showing when there are new posts...since the kids post updates at their own pace, it's not reasonable for the teacher or other users to regularly navigate through all 15-20 blogs hoping to see a new post, hence all this has to be embedded in an aggregator site. 

Feedly; this is your opportunity to offer something that no one else does. And generate a huge audience of thankful teachers and tech facilitators  :-)

The problem with Ed Tech

The news that google is discontinuing Google.Reader has got me thinking. My reaction was not unlike that of many other users: anger, frustration, shock, dismay, etc. Some folks made viral videos that do an excellent job of capturing the emotion, others have even started a petition to get google to reconsider their decision... something that I signed, but with no misconceptions that it's going to do anything.

If you have been reading my previous posts, you see that I rely on google.reader to manage my student blogs; the 'bundle' function is essential for passing around folders of blogs, and the 'subscribe' button makes it manageable for teachers to use. Losing these functions will make me have to figure out how to restructure our entire blogging initiative.

But what really gets me frustrated is how this exposes a serious flaw with Educational Technology, and something that we must address clearly in order to truly leverage technology tools in education.

Teachers don't like too much change. I commented on this in a previous post, and my thesis was not because they are lazy or resistant....quite the opposite. Teachers have to manage such an overwhelming amount of things that they NEED consistency and they need to adopt change at THEIR pace. In my experience, most would prefer to stay with an outdated tool that works, and embellish the lessons around it, rather than update to the most modern version and have to rebuild their activities and support documents. This is entirely reasonable.

However, this is the exact opposite of the technology landscape. In their efforts to capture market shares, and to continually enhance their offerings, developers and providers like Google are constantly revamping their products: tools such as Instagram are changing their usage protocols or merging with social media that have prohibitions on underage use, useful things like google.reader go away, google.sites gets wonky, google changes their platform to 'google plus' with a whole host of new skills to learn (see the pattern evolving here, google?), youtube decides to restrict access to videos from outside the US, or change their codec so download programs like keepvid no longer work, links in blogs become broken, java stops working on Mac, Ning stops being free, Cisco kills FlipCam, etc.

Teachers do not live to learn new tech, and even those who don't mind troubleshooting find that, over time, the constraints of having to continually rebuild lesson plans because of obsolete technology tools are too burdensome. The result is that Rule #1 gets broken: The Tech Has To Work. Having to continually revisit old ground, patch problems, redevelop lesson plans for new tools, and reinvent the wheel does nothing to facilitate using technology in teaching....unless the lesson is in how to use technology (which it rarely ever is).

So what's the future for this? Will Educational Technology become a flash-in-the-pan event...like the surge of use of Video Laser Disks in the 70s, only to fade into history as tried and true methods continue to reign? Or will these program and software developers stop chasing new markets and refuse leveraged buyouts from big companies so they continue to provide stable services for users?

Since educational use is such a small part of the tech market, my expectation is not that they will provide stable services. What that means for the future of Ed Tech remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure....nothing is for certain except change itself. And that is not always a good thing.

Weird post settings

OK, this post is both a request for help, and a test of my twitter network as a resource mine. Please post responses as a comment.

I have all my 9th graders set up with Blogger blogs, and last week we changed the 'Post and Comments' settings so that anyone with a google account can make a (moderated) comment. However, one teacher mentioned that she was unable to comment on 6 different kids' posts, so we went into their blogs and saw that they had the right UNIVERSAL settings (Settings/Posts and Comments),

but the INDIVIDUAL POST comments for some posts were set wrong. These are found when you edit an individual post, and select Options on the right side:

Here's the funny parts that I don't understand

1) The individual post settings were only wrong for posts that had been labeled (tagged)

2) The kids are not friends, so they had not collaborated

3) One kid, in particular, does not show the "Reader comments" selection under 'options'. 

My best guess is that, since they were in the same spot to adjust their options when they were tagging, that the six of them made the same mistake. But I'm wondering if there is any way to universally override individual post settings, and I'm especially wondering whats up with that third issue.

Ideas?

The Value of Anonymity

I'm sitting in a workshop run by Alan November, and he is bringing up a fascinating point. He shared the story of his daughter's participation in Fanfiction, a site where kids have posted their personally-authored stories based on characters of popular books. The driving force is the desire of the audience of fans to have continued interactions with their favorite characters, but what is fascinating is that the kids all post under pseudonyms. When asked why they do this, one particularly eloquent girl pointed out that when her work gets reviewed (especially negatively), she knows that that criticism is directed at the work, and not at her personally. As a result, she takes the criticism seriously (she is truly motivated to improve her writing for her audience), and works hard at it.

His excellent point: if we let kids submit work anonymously, and graded it accordingly, the kids would feel that the feedback was more accurate. But more importantly....they would be greater risk-takers with their work. They would know that feedback is honest and unbiased.

How could this be exported to the classroom? Why not have kids create pseudonyms for their digital writing, and the grade does not get 'averaged in' until the end of the semester? What are people's thoughts about this?

Additionally, he shared the story of a girl who was writing extremely popular fanfiction stories of 20,000 or more words, but was failing her English class. The girl was making a choice between 'write for the teacher' or 'write for the world'. But that's material for a different post.

Math Reform (or: An Essay in Mathpoetry)

In the spirit of Harry Hess' revolutionary 1962 paper (An Essay in Geopoetry) that set the basis for Plate Tectonic theory and shook the foundations of Geology to its roots but provided no firm evidence or research to support its points, I am titling this blog post "An Essay in Mathpoetry." I doubt it will shake the foundations of teaching mathematics to its roots, but having been a HS math teacher for 15 years prior to becoming a tech facilitator, I have observed lots of changes in math curriculum, and witnessed (and participated) in lots of facets of the 'math wars' over curriculum, technology, calculators and pedagogy, and I have an idea...but I have no research or firm evidence other than my own experience to back my opinion. But then again, that's the perk of having your own blog. :-)

Despite striving to be a modern educator, using collaborative tools and exploring ways for the kids to lead the learning, my math classrooms were very traditional. I often was the 'sage on the stage', guiding instruction with examples and lectures, my teaching notes were meticulous and I carefully scaffolded problems until the kids could see the patterns and could use the underlying mathematical principles in more and more complex situations. The kids were often in rows, isolated with their thoughts and deeply immersed in solving problems, collaborating when necessary, but responsible for their own work. Although I tried, when appropriate, to provide 'real world' examples for the math we were learning, it was always challenging,  limited in scope and a little forced. I always felt a little guilty about this, as the literature and lunch table conversation was about 'using real-world examples' and 'making it authentic', however the mental world my students and I occupied was already rich with ideas and concepts, and I almost never had students who claimed they felt that they missed something by not being given examples of how completing the square would be useful in their lives, or what the role of imaginary numbers would be once they graduated college. I found that, just as a chess player can get immersed in a challenging game with a fair opponent into a state of 'flow' as described by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, my students did not need concrete examples and real life applications to become immersed in the process: increments of success with ever-increasing complexity was enough to draw them in. The beauty was in being able to crack the shell of a complex math problem, use the correct mathematical tools to break it down, and express the solution in the most efficient and standardized form. It didn't matter that the problem was a purely theoretical construct, with numbers and structure rather than apples and pears, and the answer was not expressed in terms of 'how much land should Farmer Brown plant'. The process was as meaningful, and as meaningless, as trying to checkmate your opponents King. And just as challenging and open-ended. And satisfying.

This disconnect between teaching ideology and my pedagogy grew with the release of ever more powerful calculators. As calculators evolved beyond 'number crunching machines' into having more advanced features like a Solver, graphing ability, symbolic notation and CAS operations, more and more, kids could get the 'right' answer by inputting the problem and hitting a button, entirely circumventing the underlying processes. And just as having a cheat code to a game diametrically changes the game experience, having these technical tools drove a change in pedagogy. Math teachers starting using  sensor devices to generate acceleration data, temperature probes to gather data from which to derive logistic curves (using a plotter and solver), and the growing challenge became less about how to scaffold problems of growing complexity, but how to run classroom experiments that had dependable results so students could extract the mathematical concepts, but were authentic enough that they were meaningful. In short, 'good' math classrooms began to look a lot like good science classrooms.

I'm not opposed to this: authenticity is a wonderful thing, and many (even most) students require this to internalize their learning. Many students comment on how they never really understood Calculus until they took Physics and had to use it. Or never understood Geometry until they took a surveying class and had to apply it. Applied concepts are essential, for many. However, science teachers are already quite good at running good science classrooms, and a lot of Theoretical math is being lost in the process, and we may have thrown out a bit of the baby with the bathwater.

Some students actually thrive more on Theoretical Math, rather than Applied math, and many teachers are quite adept at teaching Theoretical Concepts. There is a legitimate debate about what is 'mathematical thought'...I attended a presentation from a renowned math teacher from Philips Exeter Academy who showed us some problems using 'clock arithmetic'. He concluded that the kids were learning to think in a different base and modulo, and that this was a great example of extracting 'mathematical thought' in a physical activity. I challenged him, asking why learning to crack a 5th degree polynomial by hand to find all the precise roots, real and imaginary, by using Descartes' Rule of Signs and the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, was not 'mathematical thought'. His response was that it was no longer necessary or useful to do that, as the calculator could find all roots and express them, even irrational ones. My point was that the kernel of the activity was not the solutions, but in the process involved in figuring out how to find them using purely mental tools.

Our world still needs theoretical mathematicians; people who like to solve incredibly complex abstract mathematical problems and who do not require any basis in the physical world. This is the underpinning of Encryption, Cosmology and a host of other disciplines. As many have said: mathematics is not necessarily applied mathematics. And HS science teachers already have a conceptually rich environment to use applied mathematics; why should math teachers try to compete with or replicate this?

My proposal is that HS math and science curriculums should differ in ideology. Science classes should teach the amount of applied math needed to understand the physical scientific concepts in their courses, and all kids should be required to take an abundance of these classes. This will develop a group of citizens who not only understand basic scientific principles, but also have enough mathematical skill to participate in intelligent debate, and who see math as a useful and important skillset for existing in the modern world. Science/math courses should use calculators, computers and all sorts of technologies to assist with helping kids find actual, practical and usable solutions and to be able to represent and interpret situations and results.

Math departments, on the other hand, would be smaller and focus on Theoretical or Pure math. Those students who enjoy finding solutions to abstract problems, with an early emphasis on solving problems by hand, could take these courses as electives, taught by teachers who prefer to teach this content. The non-calculator based coursework would establish a firm understanding of the concepts underpinning the procedures, and students could be encouraged to delve into deeper theoretical questions about patterns and theories. And being released from having to offer these courses to ALL students would free up the curriculum for those who truly thrive on teaching and learning this material.

Anyway, I'd love to set up a program that did this; put the 'real world' math and the abundant math tech tools (calculators, etc) in the hands of the science teachers, and let those who liked to play with numbers and patterns immerse themselves in Pure math. They could still use technologies, of course; sharing findings online, recording their efforts and sharing ideas and suggestions via blogs, voice thread, youtube, and online programs etc. Calculators and other devices would be available once the students felt that they had a good understanding of the concepts and principles, but the consistent technologies would primarily be about sharing and communicating, rather than generating solutions or data and trying to extract the (sometimes quite sublime) underlying mathematics.

ADE application

So my application is in the eMail for the Apple Distinguished Educator class of 2013. I applied two years ago and was rejected: a major component of the applications process is to submit a 2-minute video about a topic that changes yearly. The topic in 2011 was 'How do I use Apple technologies in my profession" and in truth, it was a crap video. I was seized up with writer's block until the last second, then I threw something together and it showed. It was pretty much just a talking head rambling on about using technology remotely....not impressive at all.

This year, I put much more thought into it, and the question was much more manageable: "How do I use creativity to transform the learning environment?" I mean, that's practically my job description!

I decided to focus on three things: the SDLT, my Experimental Classroom, and StuCon2012. All are innovative, self-created and were effective in supporting the technology mission of the school. I wanted to include some other stuff, like the cool jury-rigged document camera I made once, and to talk about the websites and protocols I have developed here at HKIS for different purposes, but the video can only be two minutes long. As it was, I had to 'layer' the message with images and voiceover, plus a popup window and a scrollbar.

Lots going on; check it out and tell me what you think.

Catching up

It's been awhile since I've blogged and a few things are running through my head. So there are going to be several blog posts in a row; I want to unload some of my thoughts before they fade.

First: An update on the Gr 9 Blogs
OK, so I have been able to troubleshoot the issue of getting every Gr 9 student to create a blog (using blogger), to link their blog to their myDragonNet profile, to set their security settings so that they would not accept comments (for now) and to make their blogs visible to the world to see, but only if they had the URL.

The challenge has recently been to be able to verify that these settings are correct. I had a big meeting with all the HR teachers and gave THEM the task of checking this with their kids, but unfortunately (and not unexpectedly), the HR teacher's skills are all over the map, so they are not really reliable editors. My newest idea is to have the members of my SDLT go to each homeroom and check settings, etc, then bundle the blogs and send the link to me.

For those who do not know what a 'bundle' is, it's a great feature of Google.reader that they finally got fixed a few months ago. After you subscribe to a bunch of blogs and drag them into a shared folder, you can right-click on that folder, select 'create a bundle' and it gives you a link you can send around. The recipient gets the link, clicks on it, and it installs the complete folder into their Google.reader account. It's a tremendous way to share the blogs. Unfortunately, google.reader does not allow you to make subfolders, so you cannot bundle all these HR bundles into one, but at least you don't have to subscribe to 180 Freshmen blogs at once. In the future, I'll see about putting all these bundles on a webpage and uploading that, so people don't even have to get them in an email.

This thing about the teachers' skills being all over the map is huge. Learning to use technology is a huge process; I do it full time, and I feel like I've just scratched the surface. For my colleagues who teach content area full time, the additional (and uninvited) burden of having to infuse tech tools is really a challenge. A tech colleague put it very well: it's the difference between a 'trip' and a 'journey'. People on a trip just want to get to the end destination, and success is measured by merely completing the task. People on a journey are more interested in what happens along the way; success is measured by the different things encountered and the experiences. Using tech in teaching can be either: to those for whom it is a trip...they just want to get the task done the quickest way possible and get back to their other responsibilities. To those for whom it is a journey...each tech-related task is a learning ground for new experiences and tools, and they don't mind the time spent exploring settings, troubleshooting, etc. They actively link new tools with old, modify tasks to accommodate new skills, and are always learning. I think a major component of the job of a Tech Facilitator is to help teachers become more interested in the journey, and less on completing the trip.

Next post: musings on Math curriculum.

Checking and changing security settings

Here is a video that shows you how to:

• Make the blogs hidden from search engines, and
• Block comments until further notice.

(the video may not show on iPads: it uses Flash)

Blog security

This is the second post to parents about the Gr 9 blogs.

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Blogs work best when they have readership, however it is reasonable to be cautious about letting students broadcast ideas out in an unsupervised fashion.  Although they are already prolific users of social media, we do not expect our students to inherently understand the appropriate boundaries for these blogs, as they are very different than their typical informal social online presence; these are ‘professional’ sites and should reflect maturity and presence of mind. This is quite different from their ‘informal’ digital presence that they have in Facebook and other social media sites, where they use informal symbolic notation (phonetic spellings like ‘ur’ instead of ‘your’, etc) and post humorous and quick comments.  It is quite reasonable to assume that they have little, or no, experience maintaining a professional online presence, so these blogs provide a wonderful opportunity to help them develop this skill.

 They have all created profiles in ‘Blogger’, a simple and user-friendly blogging platform that is contained in the suite of tools provided to HKIS by our google.apps account (along with gmail, google calendar, google sites and several others). The shared platform means we can standardize instruction on how to use them and how to change and control settings. Ultimately, however, control over the settings is in the hands of the student, so it is important that adults regularly check to see that they are properly set.

Currently, as the students begin their creative process, we have asked them to make their blog settings such that no one can comment, and the URL address of the blog is hidden from search engines. As a result, the only people who can see their blog is someone to whom the URL is given directly. As of now, their blog address is stored in their user profile in myDragonNet, so only people with access to that password-protected site can find their site. Parents are welcome, and encouraged, to ask their sons or daughters for their blog addresses: these are meant to be showcases of their growth and achievement, and you can give them feedback on their posts and the appearance of their blogs.

Over the first year, once the blog has enough content to have a ‘tone’, we will instruct students on how to open their comment settings so others can provide feedback in a ‘moderated’ fashion. This means the author will still retain full control of what is seen; they can reject and not publish any inappropriate or non-constructive comments; hence the content of their blog is still entirely under their control. Likewise, at any point, if a post or title of a post is deemed inappropriate, the student can edit and change past posts, and even hide posts until they have reworked them into a form that they are proud to publish.

Blogging is a tremendously common social platform with people all over the world participating. As with virtually all school blogs, our own have a specific purpose: to document growth of understanding of the SLRs. At all times, important stakeholders will have the ability to see the growing content, while the student learns appropriate digital behavior. The author retains full control of their content, even posted comments, and can edit and ‘rework’ their content over time and as skills improve. Teachers, counselors, administrators and parents can all watch these products unfold during the students’ time at HKIS, and the author is welcome to share their blog with relatives and friends, as they choose. Parents are welcome and encouraged to subscribe to their child’s blog and discuss them together. Once there is a good record of posts that show the development of the student, they may choose to share them with summer employers, colleges or anyone else to whom they want to have see their development as a student at HKIS.

Next post: Setting up a google reader account so you can subscribe to your child’s blog.

Commmunication

Keeping parents and other stakeholders informed of the process is crucial. This is the text of the first of about 6 parent communications I will be sending home over the next 5-6 weeks.

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This year, all Freshmen students have staked out a blog space where they will be guided through reflecting on their growing understanding of the SLRs during their time at HKIS. With our rich technological environment and 1:1 laptop program, we have all the right tools in our grasp to make this an authentic and valuable digital learning experience where the students can reflect upon and record their own growth over four years, with guidance, oversight and instruction.

A ‘blog’ (contraction of ‘web log’) is merely a digital presence; an online website where an author posts entries in reverse chronological order (newest on top) about some topic. Blogs can host a wealth of digital content; movies, photos, hyperlinks, embedded documents, and serve many purposes.

• Interest blogs, where authors share their hobbies, like fashion, technology, movies or travel;
• Information blogs, with info on family gatherings, concerts, etc or documenting an event;
• Expert blogs, where the author provides guidance and resources for others with a similar interest. Many teachers post ideas for lessons via blogs of this type;
• Collaborative blogs, where groups of individuals collaborate and enhance their communication channels;
• Reflective blogs, where authors post their thoughts on a topic for an intended audience.

The main thing that all these types of blogs have in common is that the posts are done by individuals in a digital space, with the hopes that they will hold the interest of readers.

The student blogs are of the Reflective type. Over the course of this year, the counselors are teaching the students about the SLRs and their relevance to the HKIS learning experience. As these are transcendent ideas that exist across all courses and activities, they are not usually directly taught within a subject area, yet they are important to the HKIS learning experience. The blogs ensure that the students are mindful of their existence and reflective on their growing understanding. As they make reflective posts once or twice a month over the next few years, they will generate an historical record of their own developing understanding of the SLRs, and as a result can see and share evidence of their own growing maturity as thinkers and learners.

As a digital learning tool, blogs offer some tremendous opportunities, and accordingly schools worldwide are leveraging them. Students improve their literacy skills, learn appropriate online behaviors, improve their skills with using technology, develop a learning partnership with their family, school and friends, and generate a record of content and growth that is relevant and important. As students ‘grow’ their blog with more posts and take increasing pride in their production, they can also generate an audience of readers from among their friends and family, who can provide important feedback and validation for the student’s reflections. This is a truly authentic learning experience being developed under the watchful eyes of their counselors, homeroom teachers, peers and parents.

Next week: More on blog security, and how to check your child’s settings to ensure that you are comfortable with who does, and does not, have access.

Going Blog, part 4

So now we have successfully had all 187 Freshmen create blogs. The next step is to start getting the different audiences and mentors involved at a pace that is manageable for them, engenders their support and gives them a role, but also keeps them all in alignment with information, goals and objectives.

Since the HR teachers will be important mentors, I am working with them this week. Their role will be especially important in the realm of helping the kids make good value choices with how they present themselves publicly, how they cultivate their tone, and how they respond to others, I am helping all sixteen HR teachers create google.reader accounts, subscribe to their kids' blogs, and sometime in the next few days, to check that all the blogs have the following:
     -appropriate blog names
     -appropriate post titles
     -correct privacy and security settings (more on this)
     -appropriate URLs
     -the student is posting under an appropriate name.

The great news is that google has finally fixed the bundling problem in Reader! It's been around for years, but now it works: with two clicks, the teachers can share the entire class set of blogs with everyone else's reader page.

The security thing came up from a couple of parents. Some are less comfortable with their child's blog being accessible to the general public, so they found the setting to make the blog only readable to those who are invited. This solution has several problems.

First: by closing down visibility, no one can see the blog! Blogger only allows a single account to be a member of 100 blogs, so there is no way all 800 HS kids can have their blogs closed by default and still list me or the HS Admin as members.

Second: It's a solution to a problem that might not be as extensive as the parents' believe. There is no evidence of stalkers ever finding kids via monitored school blogs. Instead, data shows that overwhelmingly, situations that arise are in connection to a relative or someone who already knows the child. or through unsupervised social network sites. However, we want to help educate the parents as we accommodate their concerns, so it's important that the HR teachers are involved in the discussion.

Our solution is to have the kids of any concerned parents change their blog visibility settings so it is hidden from search engines. The steps are very easy: just go to the settings and look next to "privacy". This is analogous to having a house with the door unlocked, but the house is hidden in the woods. The blogs are 'open' (unlocked), but hidden. This way, parents can send the URL to relatives and friends who can read the blog, but search engines will not find it.

Of course, search spiders are clever, and this method is not 100% foolproof (what is?), but for now it provides an excellent level of control and assurance for anyone concerned.

We have, of course, discovered a new bug. When the teachers subscribe to this blog, they also see an old cached post from a different blog one of the ETS techs and I were working on a few weeks back! It's not even part of this blog...but somehow it is linked when to subscribing to this one. If anyone reading this (from among my hordes of followers) subscribes and sees this, let me know: the top post (Doesn't matter) should not be there. I'll let you know what I discover.