Author Archives: kschaefer

Posted on by

Is it a Toy? Is it a Bird? No it is a iPad

superipad-1.png

‘Superman’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/12426416@N00/142079357

I have been part of a group of teachers who are looking at the iPad to investigate how our students could learn with them. I love it and see benefits, but think I agree more with these two blog posts. I am guilty of promoting cool tools without working as hard to adjust the teaching styles or the learning environments. Does a SMARTBoard on the wall make the learning different by itself? Is it transformational or just easier to control the computer?

I shared these links with our crew as I have yet to answer the deeper question of how will my students learn differently with this device? Is the iPad the best tool to put in the hands of students? While I like my iPad a lot, I have wondered how I would teach my class if each student only had that device. I think this is an important question to answer before or if we take a leap. I could teach some of what I do now but not the “heavier” lifting topics. For instance, no VoiceThread due to lack of Flash support. Creation is limited or at best restricted and I believe learners need to be creating more and consuming less.

Cathy Davidson has a great post about the iPad and how it alone will not change anything if there is not also a change in learning and teaching style.  How would our students learn in new ways with this device? Could they learn more if they either had a laptop or a desktop?

Without the right pedagogy, without a significant change in learning goals and practices, the iPad’s potential is as limited (and limitless) as the child’s imagination.†† That’s great on one level–but it misses the real point of education as well as the full potential of the device.† What iPad and all forms of digital learning should do is help prepare kids for this moment of interactive, complex, changing communication that is our Information Age.† This is the historical moment† that these kids have inherited and will help to shape.† Are we preparing them for the challenges we all face together simply by spending our tax dollars on iPads?

Read all of her post at http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/pointed-response-nyt-article-ipads-schools

I am not sure where we will go with iPads as there are still some hurdles to overcome with content creation. Would it be the best tool for all students or are there grade levels where it makes more sense and some grades where it makes less sense. I agree with Mark Belinsky.

“But the iPad will leave students between a computer and a hard place. Indeed, it is a third device. And one that I’m quite fond of. But it’s a poor substitute for computer learning”…. It’s not that I want to deprive young students of these experiences, but when I think of the potential for interactive curriculum, there is so much more than what the iPad can offer. And it can be delivered faster. While the lack of proper mutli-tasking might be good for focus, it certainly slows things down. When I’m researching for an article or a report, I have the virtual equivalent of having books and articles scattered across my desk. When I have several devices, I often do, relegating a content type to each device. Kids who are in the process of learning what the world has to offer don’t need to be doing so with the brakes on.

Read all of his post at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-belinsky/horrified-by-schools-that_b_804750.html

 

 

 

Posted on by

What is My Sentence? and Am I Better Today Than Yesterday?

Driving.jpg

I have confessions to make regarding the iPad, iBooks, and Daniel Pink’s Book Drive. I have owned all of them since April 8, 2010. Drive was the first and only book I purchased to test the iBook app on the iPad. I started to read it but never felt compelled to continue as there were so many other things to do each time I opened up the iPad. Goodreader and Instapaper get a lot of attention as does Angry Birds and Doodle Jump. I still prefer to listen to audiobooks as I have a 25 minute commute to work each day. That leaves me 50 minutes of listening time each day. Between audiobooks and podcasts, I can learn a lot each week on a variety of topics related to ed-tech and how advances or news about technology. I subscribe to MacBreak Weekly, This Week in Tech, iPad Today, This Week in Google which are all from the TWiT Network. The Ed Tech Talk Network keeps me plugged into what is happening in the Ed Tech world.

After reading the blog post by George Couros, I have picked up the book again and am reading it as well as annotating like crazy. I have been thinking about my sentence and have yet to focus in on what it is as it changes depending on what I am doing or thinking. A couple I have come up with are: He was willing to try new things with his students or He was willing to help his colleagues.  These sentences both relate to  my teaching and not the other parts of my life. Those areas would produce a different sentence. He loved his tractor and farm, or He loved to play with his grandchildren. Can a person really be one sentence? One big problem I have is that my sentence is in the past tense! Yikes, Am I already a past tense? I think this means I have not found my sentence but rather am still looking for it since I will know it when I hear or think it. Maybe my sentence is not one that I know but is defined by others? I will sit with this some to see what comes of it. I have created a project for my class to create a video of their sentence. Maybe 5th graders will not over think it like I am.

The second question that Pink asks is “Was I better today than yesterday?”. This is somewhat easier, as I try to be more present each day which, I believe, can lead to being better. I struggle with being better each day as I can often get on a tangent and become critical or arrogant with what I think is the correct answers to questions or issues. This can lead to mistakes in judgement and certainly days when I am not better then I was the day before. Of course we could also debate what “better” means I suppose. I do know that I want my actions with my students and colleagues to be based on helping us all be better tomorrow then we are today as it applies to educational technology. For that, is my sentence now.

Daniel Pink’s Two Questions

Daniel Pink’s What’s Your Sentence? A collection of people telling us their sentence.

Daniel Pink’s Speech from RSA Animate

Image: ‘from the driver’s seat‘ 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124472651@N01/523653908

Posted on by

Learning Without Limitations

FC Limit

I had thought about writing this post yesterday since I had two teachers come ask me why they could not send attachments with our FirstClass system. We impose a 200 MB limit on teachers and a 70MB limit on students. There are of course practical reasons for these limits since we host these services on campus. Our Moodle setup allows for an upload of 150MB per object as we increased it each year to accommodate larger files as more teachers were uploading video files and other learning resources. Our new Google Apps Accounts allow for 2 GB of space for teachers and students with Google formatted documents counting for almost nothing against this quota. Most of our students live in a world outside of school without quotas. We can debate whether this is a good thing or a bad thing as quotas to live are important. I think a balanced approach to life is a good thing.

I wrote about Nathaniel just the other day as he had sent his homework from New Zealand. Seems like he has sent to much.

Hi Mr. Schaefer and Mr. Sheard,

I have been sending pictures of homework that I have done to my teachers since I am in New Zealand.

Today I tried to attach a picture and Firstclass complained that I had used too much disk space and I didn’t have enough space to upload this picture.  It told me to delete some files to make room.  Since I had copied all my email into my Saved Email directory, I deleted everything that I had a copy of, and freed up 21MB.  My picture still would not attach.  I tried to clear my trash can but it said that I couldn’t do that, that the trash can cleared after a certain time set by the administrator.

What should I do to be able to send my teachers my homework?

Thanks,

Nathaniel B

Sheard Advisory

8th grade

DA>DS

 

My response to him relate to teachable moments of sorts with how FirstClass handles the quota and how he might adjust his camera to take lower resolution images or edit the image to a smaller size prior to sending via FirstClass. The last option was for him to use his Google Account and share the images or documents with his teacher which would eliminate the entire quota issue, at least until he gets to 2GB.

Update 2:07 PM on 1/7/2010:

Thank you for all, the advice Mr. Schaefer!

After dinner, when I went back online, my trash had cleared and I sent my teachers the homework.

I have been sending teachers pictures, but I think I know what program to use to shrink them.

Thank you for your google docs idea, it will be helpful if my Firstclass fills again.

Thanks,

Nathaniel B.

Sheard Advisory

8th grade

DA>DS

 

 

Posted on by

Stop Me if You’ve Seen This

By now many folks have seen this video of the Google Presentation Demo Slam. I saw it on Twitter and today came across it in Page Lennig’s Blog: The TechKnow. Her post got me thinking about how our roll out of Google Apps for the Middle School has gone. I believe we have given the best tool we could have given our students and echo much of what Page talks about in her post, except for all of the teachers who came to my training brought their laptop:). I am very grateful that we have the tools for our students as we have removed many obstacles that used to prevent the fluid learning process.

Posted on by

Homework Delivered from New Zealand

nathanielbhomework.JPG

This student has been mentioned in my blog before for some of the things he does with the tools he uses in his learning. I got this message and image today from his Geometry teacher, Mr. McGivney and thought I would share it. I of course do not know if the solutions are correct, but I do know that learning is not stopped just because a student is not on campus or even in America.

Karl:

Thought you would enjoy the attached.  Nathaniel B’s geometry homework from New Zealand!!!

Jim

—– Original Message —–

Hi, Mr. McGivney,

Attached is a photo of my homework from last night.

Thanks,

Nathaniel B………

Sheard Advisory

8th grade

DA>DS

 

 

 

Posted on by

What a simple Flag Counter can do to promote writing and reading

The Cav Visitors

The Durham Academy Middle School blog, The Cav is now hosted on Edublogs. I wrote about this in October, 2010 when we made the change from using our FirstClass setup. I have been very pleased by the switch as it affirms what I believe our students need to do more of which is writing for an authentic audience. Below is a message that Sam K. sent to the students at our school on December 24, 2010 at 4:35 PM while on break.

 

So far on The Cav, we got:

 

417 Americans (obviously), four British people, two guys from Philippines, and 1 from Russia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and Pakistan who have visited The Cav.

 

Check out The Cav every now and then!

 

Thanks,

 

Sam K.

 

 

 

 

Posted on by

To Share or Not To Share is Not the Question – We Need to Teach Sharing and Collaborating

By Ryan Gallagher

Photo: on 12-15-2010 http://www.flickr.com/photos/clickykbd/2710697870/

I have been thinking about this post since reading Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano’s blog post on what do you have to lose on her Langwitches Blog. The post came to my attention after I clicked on a link that one of the people I follow on Twitter shared. I am grateful to the person in my PLN who shared it although the fact that it was shared is exactly the proof of this post. I used Instapaper to read it later on my iPad, found myself thinking about it while I mucked the barn in the cold dawn of the morning, and each day at school when I watched my students practice learning how to find their voice with VoiceThread and Google Apps for Edu. There is so much good information in this post and links, that I plan to show it to my faculty and anyone else who happens to read this post. I may even create a workshop around the core ideas on sharing and tools to do it effectively. It summarizes what I have been advocating for our students to do more of for about four years. My role may be the advocator in chief for many of these technological tools as I feel strongly that our teachers and students must embrace the skills outlined in the ISTE NETS for Students and ISTE NETS for Teachers. Students in my Digital Learning class are working on their portfolios with VoiceThread and many are on the third or fourth attempt either to perfect it or because there were issues. This is not a waste of time as the learning gets deeper each time they practice. I think it is important for all of us to find our voice and frankly, get over how we sound. I helped a Spanish teacher record a brief piece for the exam that is being administered. It took four takes to get it just the way we wanted it. Truth be told, the second one was golden but I lost it somehow. Again, learning is messy. She remarked how she had trouble listening to herself. I assured her she needed to get past that and the only way to do that is to do more, not less.

Alan November

In her article, Silvia has this image and quote in her post which I think is the heart of the matter. We need to teach our students how to share and collaborate as a skill and not as something to be avoided or prevented. I love it when we have club and the students exclaim that we now have readers from South Africa or other countries because we made our school “newspaper” a blog this year. The Cav is one attempt at sharing done by our students. They write the posts and the two teachers serve as editors to make sure it meets the standards of a journalistic paper before it goes live. We had a FirstClass blog for the last three years but never knew if anyone was reading it. Our new Google Apps for Education accounts are allowing students and teachers to share work with each other.

Read the blog by Silivia and lets get to work teaching our students how to find their voice and how to share their learning with other learners.

Sharing helps me everyday via my Twitter stream, the Diigo bookmarks that are shared by other teachers from around the world, Google Reader where articles are brought to me around interest areas. How can we not help our students to harness the power of these curated streams of information. To not is to do them and ourselves a great disservice. Dean Shareski also did a post on how to make better teachers where he suggests we get all teachers blogging to reflect on their teaching. Another great idea for me to weave into the workshop that is starting to take shape in my head.

As I was finish this post, I want to share a message I received from a teacher and a picture of a tweet from Melissa Trendenick that she sent while at a conference where Pat Bassett was speaking. Both affirm my points in this post. Without the tools and sharing, learning is diminished.

 

Hi Karl,

I have a student who is in Korea and is missing a week and a half of school due to the death of her grandfather. She is currently completing assignments for our short story unit using google docs and Moodle. She is able to read the short stories from Moodle and is writing (and having teacher and peer edits) via google docs. Thank you for these wonderful tools. Otherwise, She would miss two weeks of work.

 

Just wanted you to know, these tools have a powerful impact and daily extend my course beyond the wall of my classroom.

 

 

Melissa Tredenick Change.png

Posted on by

The Backchannel students use to get ready for exams

Class of 2016 Spanish Prep

 

The Class of 2016 is buzzing as students get ready for exams next week. This backchannel happens all of the time and many teachers are now able to collect and use it by including a Moodle Discussion Forum for these posts as well. Knowledge to the people!

12/7/10 6:37 PM

Hello Spanish takers! We have made a Spanish Exam Prep for Spanish 7 1/2 set on Quizlet! It has 283 terms on it. Come join my Quizlet group for access! Email me if you’re interested.

^^^^^^

Ryan S.

12/8/10 4:45 PM

Now has 420 terms!

^^^^^^

Ryan S.

12/8/10 9:12 PM

Can you send me the link please….I need Sspanish help…

Sydney A.

~~~~~~~~~~

eat……sleep……dance

12/9/10 4:41 PM

Thanks… could you add me…

*********************************

Sincerely, Caroline G.

12/9/10 5:40 PM

Now has 618 terms! We are pretty sure we aren’t expanding it more.

^^^^^^

Ryan S.

Update: Prep Continues

12/12/10 12:53  PM

Same! add me por favor!!

 

🙂 MacKenzi 🙂

12/12/10 5:40  PM

Im interested… add me

*****************

Morgan

B-ball season, probably practicing

12/12/10 6:09  PM

You guys have to add yourselves, I’ll send you both an email on how to do it, I’ve already got the others in. One second..

^^^^^^

Ryan S.

12/12/10 7:47  PM

How do I add myself?

 

@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@

 

-Stephanie 🙂

12/13/10 3:51 PM

NEW GROUP NAME!!!!! IT IS NOW “CAVALIERS”!!

^^^^^^

Ryan S.

12/13/10 4:27 PM

This is a screen shot of my recent responses.

^^^^^^

Ryan S.

Quizlet 2010-12-13 at 4.19.58 PM.png

 

12/13/10 3:59  PM – I asked Ryan for the links so everyone could see it

http://quizlet.com/3703385/spanish-mid-term-prep-flash-cards/

And here’s the link to the group.

http://quizlet.com/group/59895/

12/14/10 10:26  AM – I asked Ryan why he changed the name.

The old name was Platypus. I made the group in like 1 minute during History class last year. I never knew that it would get this big! I wanted it to be more recognizable to DA people.

^^^^^^

Ryan S.

I believe this is a good indicator how students are learning to collaborate and share with tools not sponsored by the school. I plan to blog about this sharing and how we must be doing more of it as it is a skill that should be taught much like any other skill schools teach.

 

Updated on 12_14_2010

Posted on by

Giving Students a Voice on the World Stage

I sent this message to the faculty today as I wanted them to read the ISTE articles. I can not attach them here as you must be a member, although the link below will take you to the articles that are visible. I reccommend that you become a member if you are not one now.

The evidence I see happens each day in the computer labs, in the classrooms with laptops, and sometimes even at lunch break when students do things like play online video games or collaboratively write a story in a Google Doc for “fun”. I also am slowing seeing students making better decisions with how they add to their digital dossier. Slowly….

Dear Faculty,

Durham Academy is a member of ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) through a membership paid for by the technology department. Each month ISTE publishes a magazine called Learning and Leading with Technology. I read it cover to cover and then pass it on to the other members in the department. You can read some selections here: http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading.aspx

I am attaching 2 articles to this message (see above) as I think they are thought provoking and show what is possible when students use their voice with the tools we have available to all of us on campus.

Dreaming Up Ideas discusses Social Media in schools and how it can help students and teachers develop a PLN (Personal Learning Network) This is not without controversy for sure since most schools take great pains to “protect” students from some of these tools. Many are available to our students and are a part of their life outside of school and for some in school when it comes to Google Docs, Blogs (The Cav), VoiceThread, and Skype. I think there is value in protecting but also in teaching students how to use these tools for learning as in the absence of this guidance, they can and often do make errors in judgement.

Lessons from New Zealand discusses how students were encouraged to develop and use their voice in the classroom, community, and across the world. Again, we have the tools are our fingertips and some students are already exploring them. I heard a member of The Cav say the other day that we have a reader from Pakistan and wondered why and if they were a terrorist? I assured them that not all people in Pakistan are a terrorist:(.

I do believe that giving student work “legs” as Matt Scully from Providence Day School called it in one of his NCAIS workshops is powerful in two ways. We all work harder to write it right when we know more people will read it. The use of the tools also helps students develop the digital and critical thinking skills necessary to more successfully manage their digital dossier. One big hurdle is that sometimes our work has mistakes or the learning is messy, but in the end we help the students to learn how to grow and use their voice and that is a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say.

Posted on by

Donnelly Think Board Using Google Doc

Donnelly Think Board - Google Docs.jpg

Students never stop amazing me with how quickly they adopt and put into practice new tools. We have been using Google Apps for Education since late October and each day I see students being successful with this new tool for OLD uses but also now using them for NEW uses. Patti Donnelly’s English class is using a Google Doc as a Thinking Board to discuss how they could collaborate throughout the school using technology. I will share with you some of the writing, understanding this is a LIVE  private document that as I write this post, students are adding their ideas and thoughts. I asked permission to share some of their content and was granted it. The image above was created by the students in the Google Doc.

Student additions:

Student Cyrus: I’m in green (they chose colors to easily identify editors)

Like Mrs. Donnelly was saying during LA, what if we could collaborate throughout the school technologically? We start small, then inspire the city, which leads to the country, then the continent, then the world. DA has almost all the tools necessary, iTouchs, laptops, and now with access to Google Docs, we could easily be socially involved with the upper and lower schools. The problem is will we. Mrs. Donnelly, I think you’re right; if we have the tools, why not try it-the worst that could happen is that it doesn’t work, but who cares, at least we tried. If we start, it can and probably will cause a chain reaction, which means the world will be able to connect wherever and whenever via Internet or maybe a worldwide software. This global change may not happen in our lifetime, but if it works, it could cause a whole planet to connect and communicate with technology. Also, the global connection could be used for not just business or school, but also helping end world hunger, or pollution, or stopping war. Imagine how much better this world would be without that stuff. But you can’t know what’s happening in the world if you can’t communicate. Families could have more time together, because they wouldn’t have to hunt down information about the world. Learning would be upgraded and fun, and the world would be happy. If we want a change in the world, we should start now, and I think it could start at DA.

Student Collin: Guys, what Cyrus says make a lot of sense. This would be the ideal situation but, this may not happen because it is too big. We should try and express our opions here because if we do then people who look at this will look deeper and catch on.

Teacher Donnelly: Cyrus, this is so powerful!  What do others think?  Just brainstorm ideas….what comes to mind?

Student Hunter: Black/Yellow

I agree with Cyrus, It makes a lot of sense but this might be hard to get out to everyone.

Student Cyrus:

I think we should add some stuff about how people learn. I believe there should be 3 separate parts of a school-

1. the section for visual learners

2. the section for audible learners

3. the section for learners who need to move to learn

We can have technology in every room, which means there would be quicker access to information. Kids also get more excited with technology in the room, which means they will be more excited about learning, and like the video said, school is kinda boring right now, which is why more and more people are dropping out. You’d think advancement in technology would be good for schools, but hardly any schools have used it to an immense advantage. Technology also gets students more involved because they’re not jut listening to a teacher talk. Mrs. Donnelly is introducing iTouchs and laptops to us, except we use them for school, not surfing the web. DA can definitely take a huge step towards the world of technology if we try.

Student Collin: This makes sense but we need to really stretch this out. If we want to pull this outside of our classroom we need to build it into a large essay type thing. Then we can pull it outside and place it inside the real world for everyone to see and then press it into this.

Student Cyrus: I think we could make something like the video or maybe an essay and post it on youtube. Mr. Schaefer’s blog is going to help with the publicity, too.

Student John H.: is purpleish-

Think, is it the way you learn or is it or the things you use to learn. The answer is not that technology is the answer, it is how we use it. We have the tools we have all we need, we just need to use it to our liking. We have the goods we just need to use them. If you do not enjoy using the technology you can go to another side of campus. Or if you enjoy working with sound you can go to certain classes or go to a different moodle course or something along those lines.

Student Collin: Guys, What if we build advanced moodle course that recognizes advanced students and give them challenges that the teachers will allow them to do in class. For example. The 6th grade course would have different sections that are password protected so that the teachers could give the password to the best of students. Then when there is review or something that is stupidly simple for that student so they do added work for tons of extra credit and other incentives.

Student Cyrus: People should take a test to see which part of the school they belong in. The moving learners can be interactive and play games or something that helps them learn well. The visual learners can look at diagrams or charts to help them learn, and the auditory learners can listen to the teacher explain about the material.

If this doesn’t work, we could just have different types of schools. I still think technology should be used more in schools, though.

With this sort of discussion taking place in a 6th grade class, I wonder what could happen by 8th or 9th, … In fact check out this link that came across my Twitter feed today where what the students above are discussing is taking place. http://www.prototypedesigncamp.com/

What a great time to be a teacher with the tools we have today.