Removing the 'e' from 'e-learning'

Integrating important new technologies more seamlessly into our teaching.

The day I removed an Interactive Whiteboard for the first time

November 11th, 2011 by · 5 Comments · Uncategorized

In the last few weeks I have begun removing Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) from classrooms in my school. That’s right. You read correctly. And I don’t mean removing to put another board up.

I had planned this for a while. But when the crunch came I had a little moment. Am I really going to do this? I reflected on the excitement we all felt when they first went up such a short time ago. And I wondered to myself, in a time when surrounding schools were still getting excited and still aspiring to put these up in every room, am I the first Assistant Principal or ICT coordinator to actually take one of these things down?!?

I’ve been lucky enough to work at two different schools over the last 3 years that have been ahead of the curve in adopting IWBs. Both schools were among the first to have boards in every classroom, and this has meant that it has been at least 3 years since I’ve taught without one, and 6 years since I’ve taught without at least a fixed data projector and screen. So IWBs are not special or new at our school. They are ‘normal’, and I’ve watched as our teaching practice has grown and changed with them and around them.

In the Junior school (Prep – Grade 2) they are a hit. Teachers in these grades spend a lot more time modeling things to a whole class. Students in those class groups are thrilled when they get the chance to come up and manipulate something on the screen and the teacher taps into this engagement to help make their point. During Literacy and Numeracy times, small groups of students work together on a game or puzzle of some sort on the big screen which still genuinely thrills their socks off.

In the Senior school (grades 3 – 6) its a different story. This year we have been able to flood the Senior School with iPads and Macbooks. Devices in the students hands when they need them has been absolutely pedagogy changing. Finally we are fully moving away from teacher at the front of the room. Students have access to everything in the palm of their hands and this has been reflected in how their learning is being structured.

And that is why it has become more and more ridiculous to have a giant touch screen sitting at the front of the room. I noticed that our Level 4 teachers (grades 5 and 6) were using the touch screen element of the boards less and less this year. It has got to the stage where I can’t remember the last time I saw a student actually using an IWB in these classrooms. But then I thought, is that really a bad thing? The more I thought about it, the more I realised I could barely think of a single situation in this fantastic, dynamic learning environment where the technology an IWB provides makes any sense at all.

So the answer is no, their lack of use was not a bad thing. It’s actually a great thing. The teacher is no longer controlling the technology, and we are no longer operating within a ‘knowledge given from the front of the room’ modality.

So here’s what I did. We are lucky enough to be a growing school. We have 2 new classes in our Junior area that needed two new IWBs. I knew I didn’t want to buy more of these things. Especially considering the insane amount of money they cost. So instead of buying new ones, I removed 2 IWBs from the Grade 5/6 area and put those into the Junior School rooms. I then bought 2 interactive LCD screens for our 5/6 area. I wasn’t ready to drop the interactive screen idea just yet, but I had got rid of the expensive IWB and projector double act, and replaced each one with one beautiful, thin LCD screen. With the money I saved I had the trolleys custom built to house a Mac Mini on the back of the screens. I connected the Mac Mini to the screens via HDMI and the result was a potable Mac with a 46″ interactive screen!!

Now here’s where the learning curve comes in. Whenever you enter a new frontier there are going to be things you discover that work better than others. The feedback from teachers was that the portability of the screens and the fact they came with their own PC attached was fantastic. The size however was not. While the picture was crisp and sharp and easily beat the quality of the projectors, when text needed to be shown there just wasn’t enough screen real estate to make it big enough for all students to see. And yes, the interactive component of the screens still wasn’t being used!

Here’s where we copped a lucky break. One of the screens was damaged in a break in, and we got a replacement screen on insurance. The replacement screen was a new model that had dual touch capabilities. The problem was, there was no driver for the screen that would make it work with a Mac. After a bit of back and forth with Samsung, we ended up getting our money back. First I considered other touch screen models. But then I realised, if we were willing to make a break from interactive screens, we could get a 60″ LED screen and a 55″ LCD screen for the price of one interactive LCD screen.

Here’s how the figures are currently:

- a 46″ Samsung interactive LCD screen is between $3500 – $5500
- An interactive whiteboard with ultra short throw wide screen projector costs between $7000 and $9000.

…A Sony 55″ LCD screen is just $1300.

Stacking up how much interactive boards were being used in our classrooms and their lack of appropriateness to our current pedagogical practices against the price differential, the decision seemed like a no brainer. Two bigger screens for the price of a smaller one. And with change left over! And the change left over meant the screens would now no long just have a Mac Mini, but an Apple TV as well!

With iPads in the student’s hands and an Apple TV to mirror them live onto the LCD screen, why on earth would you want a child to come up and actually have to touch the screen at the front of the room to move things around on it!?

So here we are in what feels like a brave new frontier. What do you think. Am I a crazy man?

Update on Victorian Teacher Notebook Scandal

September 7th, 2011 by · 11 Comments · Uncategorized

It’s been a bit over a week since my original blog post and it certainly has been a wild ride. The post generated 2 front page articles in The Age newspaper in Victoria, news coverage on ABC radio, Macworld magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald and Herald-Sun websites, and even an education news site from the UK. I also received literally hundreds of very supportive tweets, emails, and comments on my blog from teachers all over Victoria. This issue is clearly one that many feel passionate about.

More importantly, after my post was written, the Department put a hold on their order of white Macbooks for the teacher lease program and called Apple in to renegotiate. Unfortunately, it seems the negotiations quickly descended into somewhat of a farce. My understanding is that the Department insisted that Apple upgrade the RAM on all the Macbooks to 4GB before they were shipped for no extra cost. This was seen by Apple as highly unreasonable, especially considering the RAM on the white Macbooks comes in the form of two 1GB chips, meaning each computer would need two new chips to upgrade it to 4GB – a costly exercise.

Instead, as was reported in the Age today, Apple once again offered the Department the Macbook Pro for only $2.30 extra a fortnight. They also had a tech on-hand to confirm what I argued in my original post: the Mac Pros would could run the exact same image as the white Macbooks. Therefore the original excuse not to offer them to teachers (it would take too long to create a new image for them) was not valid.

The offer was again rejected. Why? Well, I thought it pertinent here to post a comment on The Age website from a worker ‘within the Education Department’ that refused to release his/her name as a bit of an indication of what we are dealing with:

“Working within the education department i really don’t see the issue here once you know ALL the facts.
Teachers can still choose the cheaper and better lenovo machine, teachers get this a ridiculously cheap price and 90% of teachers i’ve worked with use their laptops for family things and pass them off too kids. These laptops are also covered for ANY damage (including dropping them out a window…).
The majority of schools i have been in also provide teachers with access to staff desktop computers that they can also use, hence why alot of them do not even bring their “work” laptop to the workplace.
I wish that this program was extended to all education staff and not just the teachers as i’d jump at the chance for a cheap notebook with full support it’s entire duration!
Can some news sites please INVESTIGATE the full story before jumping on one assistant principals whiny rant?”

Personally, the most disappointing part is the assertion that alot of ‘them’ “do not even bring their work laptop to the workplace”. (closely followed by the bit where he/she calls my blog post a whiny rant). Insulting and condescending.

This sort of comment displays an attitude that perhaps sheds light on why we have this predicament in the first place.

Read the article and more comments here: http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/computers/apples-dunked-for-just-115-20110906-1jvzs.html?comments=156#comments

Victorian Teacher Notebook Scandal

August 26th, 2011 by · 65 Comments · Uncategorized

Australian teachers are respected around the world as high quality innovative educators. That is perhaps no more true than in Victoria, where education has benefitted from a forward thinking, inovation encouraging government and Department of Education (named DEECD in Victoria) over the last 5 – 10 years.

But after a change to a conservative government that has a very poor track record when it comes to supporting public education, Victorian teachers are slowly awakening to a very different landscape. Perhaps the most rude awakening has occurred by way of the latest notebook lease offer from DEECD.

Victorian teachers have enjoyed a fantastic notebook lease program since the mid-90s. It has run on a 3 year cycle, and offered a choice of the latest Mac or PC notebooks for a very minimal payment per fortnight. That has all changed this week.

Teachers on the latest leasing round were offered a very lop-sided looking choice. They could lease a new Lenovo laptop with great specs: 4 GB of RAM etc (you know the ones, those black beasts that somehow get bigger and heavier with each new model as every other laptop gets thinner and lighter) OR a white MacBook for $11.50 a fortnight.

Before you get angry about this fact alone, the real kicker for both Mac and PC users is in the fine print that no teachers read and hardly anyone seemed aware of: the new lease terms are for a period of 4 years. Yes, that’s right. The same laptop for 4 years. PC users may want to consider that as they conduct the regular ritual of making a coffee while waiting for their 3 year old Lenovo laptop to boot up, which is constantly plugged in because the battery only lasts 10 minutes before it needs a charge.

But, for Mac users in particular, these are the questions that come to mind:

-How is it that the same model Mac that is being offered in this round for $11.50 is being offered to teachers currently at $7 a fortnight? Especially seeing it has dropped $300 in price since the time of the last rollout.

-How does the department consider it ok to offer teachers an outdated computer that doesn’t even have the specs to run Apple’s current OS, for a lease period of 4 years? (imagine still using the current white Mac in 2016!)

-The Lenovo is only  $100 cheaper than the Macbook, so how does that work out to a price discrepancy of $7.50 per fortnight over 4 years!?

As you can imagine, conspiracy theories abound. The department lost its previous Mac loving secretary with the change of government, and many worry that the department techs, who have always tried to pretend Macs just don’t exist, are now having their way and trying to push them out of the system altogether.

TWO SIDES TO THE STORY

Today I have been on the phone to both the head of education at Apple and the head of the notebook leasing program at DEECD. Apple is furious at DEECD’s handling of their product. They would like to know the mysterious formula that shoots out a $799 PC at $4 a fortnight and a $899 Mac at $11.50 a fortnight. They were also hopeful that the department would take on their offer of giving teachers the option of a Macbook Pro for only a few dollars extra. (Apple had originally offered the Macbook Air but this was rejected by the department). From their perspective their product is getting shot in the foot. 22% of teachers signed up for the Mac option, but this dropped to 18% when full information about the cost and the particular model became more widely known. Indeed it is a testament to the quality of Apple products compared to Lenovo that Apple still commands 18% of the market at such an uncompetitive price.

For DEECD’s part, they are arguing that the price rise for the Mac is due to all the extras that come with it. It needs a VGA adapter (quoted on the phone as being ‘about $70′. ‘Um, try $30′ I said), a crystal case and a replacement battery factored into the cost. Why a replacement battery? Because Apple has been upfront with the fact that their battery only lasts 1000 cycles, or approximately 3 years. If you do a 4 year lease, you’ll need to factor in the cost of a new battery for every machine.

Why are we being offered an out of date white Macbook? DEECD say they rejected the Air because the screen size was too small (11″), there was no optical drive and no ethernet cable. They say they rejected the 13″ Pro offer because Apple offered it too late, and it would mean they would have to create a whole new image for those machines. (I’m no tech, but why would you need a new image when it runs exactly the same OS??)

Why has the cost gone up so high for the exact same model machine as teachers are already leasing for $7? My friend at DEECD tried to tell me its not the exact same model. Its a new model that has a larger hard drive and better graphics card. I told him he was being deceptive pushing that line, as the cold hard fact is that, commercially, it is a $300 cheaper machine than the one that was leased out in the last round. He then went on to inform me that the government has more heavily subsidised the Macs in the past to bring their price closer to that of the PCs. That is no longer going to happen, and that is why the price has shot up. Hmmm. Very mysterious indeed. If this is true, why were the Macs originally more heavily subsidised, and why are they now not?? I was assured by him over and over again that there is no conspiracy!

What do you think?

 

NAPLAN: the teacher’s latest excuse against innovation?

March 25th, 2011 by · 10 Comments · Teaching

I’ve just had a fantastic day at a PLP Connect conference listening to the very inspiring Will Richardson among others. PLP stands for ‘Powerful Learning Practice’, the idea being that in the new Web 2.0 world, how you teach is far less important than how you model learning for your students.

In the middle section of the day we broke into smaller groups and discussed some topics together. This leads me to the topic of this blog, because what annoyed me somewhat was the repeated bringing up of NAPLAN as something that prevented us as teachers bringing in truly innovative practice.

If you’re reading this from outside Australia, NAPLAN is our version of standardized testing that all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit. Each school’s results are published on a website for all to see, and they also have a large say in the funding of schools. Needless to say, these tests cause their fair share of angst. That is understandable. But it has gotten to the point that every discussion about teaching method, innovation and changing the way schools operate is getting railroaded by a large group of teachers that say they want to do these things but can’t…because of NAPLAN.

“We have to teach to the test, otherwise our students won’t get good results”. How crazy! The NAPLAN tests are written to test basic literacy and numeracy skills in students. Skills that, by and large, should be present in the majority of students by the time they have reached that particular stage of schooling. I don’t care what excuses you come up with, at the end of the day, if the students at your school are doing badly on these tests compared to other students at similar schools to yours then you rightfully have questions to answer. It would be wrong not to ask questions of these schools. It may well be due to exceptional circumstances and be no fault of the school, but in most cases it has exposed schools that simply need to do better for their kids. (Whether results should be published is a separate issue that would need another post of its own).

Now, why is it as teachers that we’re so keen to ‘innovate’, but as soon as someone suggests testing our students’ literacy and numeracy skills we immediately feel it means we have to fall back to rote learning in order for our students to do well?

If we have really got things right with whatever new and innovative styles of teaching and learning we are using, then what are we afraid of? Its as if we’re admitting defeat to rote learning right from the start. We assume students that get pure rote learning are going to out-perform those that aren’t, and then in the same breath we’re saying that our new methods are better. It makes no sense.

The fact of the matter is that any new look ‘classroom 2.0′ school of the future worth its salt will still have elements of rote learning, just as it will still have times when a teacher is up the front, and times when students work quietly and individually. But it will have a lot more besides. And that is the point. We would be mistaken to throw out everything old for some sort of hippy utopian view of students on bean bags working independently with Macbook laptops and iPads all day everyday with no way of measuring the basic foundation skills they need to know. In education as with everything in life, we need a bit of everything in moderation.

NAPLAN is not an excuse not to innovate. Instead, if your new ways of teaching (or ‘facilitating learning’) are not developing the basic core literacy and numeracy skills in your students then you need to have a good hard look at what it is you are doing and whether it is really working.


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1:1 computing – should it really be what we’re aiming for?

October 8th, 2010 by · 8 Comments · Teaching

The time has come at our school to renew the computer lease for half of the machines in our school. I have felt the huge burden of responsibility to make the right decision in terms of the equipment that we lease that will best facilitate the learning of our students over the next 2 -3 years.

It is a very difficult time to make such a decision. Up until recently most schools have just rolled leases of desktop computers over into leases of newer desktop computers. But now there are so many options: desktops, laptops, netbooks and tablets. Complicating things further is the real push to be moving towards 1:1 computing in Primary and Secondary schools.

But is 1:1 computing really all that its stacked up to be? Is an ideal world really one where every student has a laptop or netbook or iPad? (well, I can at least say I can’t imagine anyone’s ideal world is a classroom full of netbooks!!)

Let me first say that there are a lot of fantastic learning activities that are made so much easier when every student has instant and immediate access to a device of some sort. It instantly solves so many of the traditional organisational  issues of being restricted to 5 or 6 computers to a room.

What got me questioning the whole thing firstly was hearing about the now famous ‘hole in the wall’ experiment  conducted by Dr. Sugata Mitra (if you haven’t heard about it, it’s quite amazing. Read about it here). When he came to Melbourne to talk recently, he spoke about how he believes having a few children together around one device is preferable to one child to each device. A shared device breeds real collaboration between students. Not only that, his research has show that if each student is appropriately engaged, the learning is the same for each of the 3 or 4 students huddled around the computer, whether they directly have their hands on it or not.

Contrast the image of 3 or 4 excited students collaborating on one device with the image shared with me by one of our region’s technology specialists recently. She spoke to me about walking into schools that had 1:1 computing programs and consistently seeing students consumed in their own world on their own machine, not interacting in the real world with their classmates. She related it as a very unsettling site, and one that really concerned her in terms of where we are heading with all this.

The way she described it I couldn’t help being reminded of an old fashioned classroom. Each student at their own desk, silently working away and often only looking up to refer to the board up the front! The board is now an ‘Interactive Whiteboard’ not a blackboard, but it might as well be a blackboard in terms of how it’s often used.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know there are some fantastic schools out there doing wonderful things with 1:1 programs, but the real exciting and vibrant learning spaces I’ve seen are not 1:1. Technology is still thoroughly present and integrated into the learning activities, but there is a lot going on besides. Students are interacting and cooperating and learning to work together in a team or small group.

So it got me thinking. What is the best ratio of computers to students? At our school we’ve had many deep discussions about this, and about just what those devices would be.

We’ve definitely ruled out desktops. We believe the technology should be flexible enough to come to the kids at their point of learning, not the kids having to go to the technology. Portable devices free up classroom spaces so much – the room feels so much bigger with those old desktops gone! We’ve also ruled out netbooks. They’re just so uninspiring. Slow, small, fragile, prone to problems and burdened by Microsoft software which feels more and more archaic every day to people that spend most of their lives in Web 2.0 land.

That leaves laptops and tablets, clearly the best of which for education is the iPad. My feeling is if we don’t go for all tablet devices this time, we certainly will in a couple of years.

And how many is the right number? We made a decision that 1:1 was not what we were looking for. We’ve settled on 1:3 being the optimum number for us to work towards at this time. Three students around a device is probably a premium number in terms of collaborative work, and there are enough devices that students can rotate through having independent access very regularly. Not only that, the portability of the devices means that devices can be easily shared between classes, so that a class set can be booked if really needed.

I’d love to hear some feedback from other people with their experiences in this area. The world is changing so quickly that locking in a computer lease for 2 – 3 years is a scary thing no matter what you choose!

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Update to iPhone: the teacher’s best friend

September 19th, 2010 by · 1 Comment · Teaching

the new iPod Touch

the new iPod Touch

Now we can say iPod Touch: the teacher’s best friend! In my last post I wrote about all the ways I use my iPhone in the class room. It has certainly become a tool I would struggle to teach without.

At the school I was teaching in at the time we even altered policy documents and put notices in the newsletter to the effect that teachers would be seen regularly using their phones in class and meetings and this was ok – it was for professional purposes – they’re not text messaging or checking Facebook (hopefully!!).

The great news is that teachers no longer have to use their personal phone for classroom use. With the release of the new iPod Touch the game, and its many possibilities, has changed yet again. The great news is that the new iPod Touch does everything my old iPhone 3GS does and more. The more bit is that it is able to make ‘Facetime’ calls to anyone else on a wifi network, which for schools means instant communication with any other teacher that has the device from anywhere in the school. If you add the application ‘Fliq note’ to your iPod Touch, it will mean you can also send text messages to any other teacher as well.

The new iPod Touches are amazing devices, which is why I will most probably purchase one for each of my staff next year. Someone jokingly said to me that if I bought them iPads they’d love me even more. I disagree. The new iPod Touches are more functional than the iPad, in that you are equipping each staff member with a communication device, a camera, a HD video recorder (forget Flip Cams, they’re as good as dead), a portable video editor (they run a mobile version of iMovie), they’re own personal calendar, phone book, organiser etc etc etc. To even have dreamt of such a device 10 years ago would have been far fetched.

Can’t wait to get these into the hands of my staff, load up the Apps, and get the PDs going!

P.S. check them out here: http://www.apple.com/au/ipodtouch/

UPDATE: It’s come to light that Apple hasn’t blessed the iPod touch with the iPhone 4′s fantastic camera. For those wondering, it does not have a flash as the iPhone does, and is certainly not a 5 megapixel lens. In fact, the camera is less than 1 megapixel (basically a HD video camera that takes still shots), which is not as bad as you might think as the lens technology is still good, but it is a major disappointment.

The short of it is the rear camera shoots great HD video, but performs fairly ordinarily as a still camera especially in dimly lit situations. The front facing camera is only VGA quality.

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iPhone: the Teacher’s best friend

April 17th, 2010 by · 4 Comments · Teaching

iPhoneI’ve been mentioning to a few people recently how much I value my iPhone as a teacher’s tool.  Most people these days seem to own one and would even say that they could no longer live without it in their personal lives. But few teachers seem to have thought about how it could be used in a professional capacity.

Here is how I use mine:

EVERNOTE:

EvernoteThis is the main application that gets a workout on my iPhone. It is basically a note taking/filing system that is a gift for teachers. You can record audio, take photos, or make notes on the run, and then save them to a particular folder within the application. That’s not all, because within a few seconds Evernote on you iPhone has transferred those notes onto your PC, and onto another account it makes for you in ‘the cloud’. I make a folder for each different student in my class, as well as a personal folder. Another teacher at our school doesn’t make folders but prefers to ‘tag’ each file with the relevant student name and sort her files that way. Either way is great. Here’s what I do with Evernote:

1. Make short notes when I observe something about a particular student in class, either on my phone or directly onto my laptop.

2. Record students reading and save those recordings to their file.

3. Take photos of student’s writing, annotate it with my observations, and save it to their file.

4. Take all notes from parent teacher interviews on the program and save it to their file.

5. Take notes from each student’s early years Maths and English interviews and keep it in their file.

6. Keep a record of test results in each student’s file.

By report time, for every student, I have copies of  writing, all observational notes, and recordings of them reading from different dates throughout the semester in one easy to access file on my computer, on my iPhone, and in ‘the cloud’.

An additional feature of Evernote is that it makes all text that you take a photo of ‘searchable’. That is, if you take a photo of piece of student work, and they’ve written their name on the top, you can find that piece of work later by typing in their name in the search window.

SCANNER:

Scanner ProI have purchased a scanner app called ‘Scanner Pro’ and the quality of it is quite remarkable. It’s cost was relatively steep ($8) but I’ve been impressed. The application scans an image using the iPhone’s camera, uses advanced ‘algorithms’ to sharpen the image and make it look incredibly sharp, and then converts the image to a PDF. It then automatically sends it to an account of your choice. For example, you can sync it up with your Evernote account, or your email account, or just to save into your iPhone’s hard drive.  How would you use a scanner?  I’ve found it useful for a few things:

1. Those really annoying times when someone emails a form to you that you have to sign and then send back. This use to mean you have to print the form, fill it out and sign it, and then use snail mail or a fax machine to get it back to the sender. Now I simply print it, sign it, iPhone scan it, and have it sent to my email account or directly back to the sender.

2. If I’m flipping through a book and I see a worksheet I like I can just scan it there and then and it is instantly saved to my computer as a PDF file for use later on.

3. I can scan student work and send it to be stored on their file in Evernote.

DISPLAYING STUDENT WORK: Once again, using the iPhone’s camera, or the scanner application, if I see something that a student has written that can be used to make a teaching point to the class, I can take a photo of it, have it sent to my computer (via Evernote, email, or the good old fashioned way of plugging in and opening iPhoto) and displayed up on the Interactive Whiteboard, all within 1 or 2 minutes. Anything can be captured and displayed this way. Taking video of students working or sorting out a problem can be a great thing to show to the class later on and have a discussion about. A teacher at my school secretly recorded students during their reading groups, and then showed it back to them on the Interactive Whiteboard at the end of the session. They had a fantastic discussion about how effectively the students were (or weren’t) working, and all took away something to improve on for next time.

AIRMOUSE:

Air MouseAirmouse is a cool little application that lets you control your computer remotely using your iPhone. Your iPhone screen becomes a mouse, or, with a little shake, a keyboard. This means you can control your Interactive Whiteboard from anywhere in the classroom. It runs off the WiFi network so distance from your computer isn’t an issue.

POCKET WEATHER:

Pocket WeatherNever again will I go on an excursion or sporting afternoon without the awesome Pocket Weather application. It gives you details of the day’s weather straight from the Bureau of Meteorology, and even better, up to the minute radar images so that you know exactly where any rain is at that point in time and which way it is heading within a 200 km radius of where you are. Fantastic stuff!

PASSWORD KEEPER:

Password KeeperThis is another application that is a life saver for me. I have about 30 different Web 2.0 accounts, most of which demand different passwords and usernames when I sign up. Password keeper keeps all your passwords and usernames in the one place on your iPhone. The one catch? You have to make one more password to keep all the information locked up!

CALENDAR and NOTES:

iCalI encourage staff to bring their iPhone’s to staff meetings, just as I do, so that any important notes or calendar dates can be directly noted onto their phone, which in turn automatically updates on their PC the next time they plug it in. Writing things on paper is not only old fashioned, its an inefficient and relatively disorganised way to maintain all your important information. These days, rather than scribbling everything down quickly on paper and then trying to find where on earth you wrote it later on, you have the option of making notes digitally, tagging them or putting them in a logical spot in an  organised filing system, and even attaching alerts to them if you think you might forget something that needs to be done on a certain date. This is a much smarter way to operate in a profession where there are 100 different things going on at once, and you are saving a heap of paper at the same time!

So there you go. Those are the main ways I use my iPhone as a teacher. There are new applications being added every day, and with them, new opportunities for teachers to enhance and improve the way they do things in the classroom and the staffroom.


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The death of traditional spelling? Woohoo!

January 3rd, 2010 by · 5 Comments · Teaching

Professor Crystal, a pioneer of language theory, has reasoned that the internet may cause the death of traditional spelling rules (http://bit.ly/5AyCC3 from an ariticle in the English ‘Telegraph’, reproduced in Melbourne’s ‘The Age’). His logic is that instant publishing on the web has led to the majority of ‘published’ material being content that is no longer proof read by an editor, and therefore usually containing many spelling mistakes or deliberate shortening of words (eg. 2morrow and thx).

”The vast majority of spelling rules in English are irrelevant,” he said. ”They don’t stop you understanding the word in question. If I spell the word rhubarb without an ‘h’, you have no trouble understanding it. Why do we spell it with an ‘h’? Because some guy in the 16th century said it was good to put an ‘h’ in to remind us of the history of the word.”

Professor Crystal said that before the internet, nobody could write something in print without an editor or a proofreader checking it. But now simplified and phonetically spelt words were likely to enter the vocabulary. ”There’s been a huge movement over hundreds of years to simplify English spelling, because it is complex for historical reasons. What you consider to be atrocious now may be standard in 50 years,” he said.

”There are people around who would treat what I said to be the voice of the devil, but one has to remember that spelling was only standardised in the 18th century. In Shakespeare’s time you could spell more or less as you liked.”

Professor Crystal told the 20th anniversary conference of the International English Language Testing System that the internet would not lead to a complete breakdown in spelling rules. ”All that will happen is that one set of conventions will replace another set of conventions,” he said.

As a teacher I have long been frustrated with the pointless complexity of the English language.  It is ridiculously difficult for students to learn, and equally difficult to teach. I have always believed that language should serve humans, not the other way around. In the last 200 years we have become slaves to a completely illogical and irrational system of spelling that doesn’t serve us well at all.

Many teachers are openly horrified at what they see as the erosion of the English language in the way young people communicate with each other, particularly on the internet. As Professor Crystals mentions, what they are forgetting is that standardised spelling is a relatively recent idea, and many of our greatest and most celebrated writers never used it. In fact I read somewhere that Shakespeare had about 7 different ways to spell his own name. Another great writer was quoted as saying that not being able to think of at least a few different ways to spell each word was a sign of a mind lacking in creativity.

While I don’t support an open slather approach to spelling, which might see internet ‘slang’ being used in formal situations, I think we could all benefit from a more rational approach to our confusing language. It would not be the end of the world if we allowed the phonetic spelling of many common words, for example.

Remember, not only is standardised spelling a recent initiative, but ever since it was instituted our language has been subtly changing in line with our use of it. Words like ‘colour’ have had letters removed to move them in line with a more phonetic spelling. Apostrophes have been dropped form words like ‘to-morrow’, and more recently ‘co-operate’. And different words are spelled differently in different countries. The most obvious is the American spelling of ‘mom’ and their love of throwing in the letter ‘z’ in place of ‘s’ in words that traditionally ended in ‘ise’.

So what could go next? My first request is to drop the different spellings of the word ‘practice’. Why does a word need different spelling depending on whether you are using it as a noun or a verb? A perfect example of a completely unnecessary and frustrating rule.

I know that people are afraid that if we open it up to change then where does it stop? The thing is, it’s not a matter of whether we officially open it to change or not, it IS changing.

The question is, what do about all this as teachers?

I’m sick of the nonsense that goes on in the media about how teachers are failing our children when it comes to teaching them to spell. Are kids today really worse than those in the past? I’m yet to see any evidence to prove it. And if so, is it really that much of a catastrophe that they are? What are the things we are actually valuing here? Why is spelling so important, especially when you compare it to all the fantastic things these kids ARE developing that were never addressed in the past!

Where are the standardised tests for creative thinking? Where the tests for public speaking, problem solving, confidence, working as part of a team, adaptability to change, use of technology to assist thinking? Don’t we all value these things more than a meaninglessly complex, unreasonable and irrational system of spelling?

Lets honestly look at the stupidity of what we are asking kids to do in these spelling tests that the media so love to jump on as proof that teachers are not doing their job properly.  Kids are asked to sit at a desk, with only a pencil and an eraser, and spell a selection of words pretty much out of the blue and with minimum context. How on earth does this relate in any way to any skill that will be required of them in real life?

When would a person in the 21st century need to know the standard spelling of  a word without the aid of technology? This doesn’t mean we don’t teach spelling, it just means there is absolutely no point testing spelling without providing students with the tools that they most certainly would have in a normal, everyday, situation. It might sound stupid now, but I think it’s entirely appropriate that students undertake spelling tests with an iPhone type device. Basically a piece of technology at the ready that contains  a variety of tools that could be used to find out the standard spelling of words in situations where it is necessary to spell ‘properly’.

You might say, ‘but then they’d get all the spelling right’! First I’d say, so what? If the tests reflect a real life situation then that’s great! But next I’d say, would they really? How well do we actually teach kids to use technology to assist their spelling? In how many schools are kids explicitly taught how to use a spell checker? How many kids are taught how to Google a definition of a word that appears as a replace option in a spell checker to ensure it’s the actual word they want?

This style of testing would also led to a more relevant approach to what is tested. For example, I’m imagining a bigger focus on homonyms, so that students would need to select the word that is correct in a situation where a spell checker is not immediately helpful.

The teaching and testing of spelling is stuck in the pre-digital age and we are all suffering for it.  It’s time to get with the times and make some changes, because at the moment our language is changing faster than our methods of teaching and testing it!

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Writing skills improved by Digital Storytelling and Podcasting

September 20th, 2009 by · 2 Comments · Digital Storytelling

My last post discussed some great progress my students have made in their reading this year through making and broadcasting podcasts or short Digital Stories.  Recently I have seen some great things happen with the student’s writing as well.

Last week my class went on camp, the first time most of my students had been away from home without their parents.  It was a really good camp and a great experience for these kids.  On returning from camp every teacher faces the choice of what to do with a groups of tired students in the days that follow.  Traditionally teachers wheeled out the good old ‘let’s write a report/summary/diary entry about camp’.  As a kid I always remembered dreading and hating these sort of activities, it was like we couldn’t do anything fun without teachers needing to spoil it by making us write about it.

Now I’m a teacher I can see why my teachers always used to do this. Writing about a shared experience, such as a camp, presents a great opportunity for teachers to get even reluctant writers producing good work, as they are excited about what they are writing about.  But I still remember hating it and always feel like the kids I teach today would feel the same.  Luckily, now technology gets us around this problem.  You see, there’s no bigger motivator than the kids seeing a point or reason to what they are doing.

These days its so easy to give students a reason for doing something, because its so easy to provide them with a real audience for their work.  Web 2.0 has made it really easy to broadcast student work to a real life audience, and students get excited that the work they are doing will really be viewed and looked at by people out in the real world.

Yes, I got the students to do the age old thing I use to hate as a kid – write about camp.  But this writing was not a pointless report to be seen by no one but the teacher’s red pen; it was a script.  They would write a script for a Digital Story they would produce about camp.  They would then join with a partner, read and edit each other’s scripts, choose the best bits, match them up with photos taken on camp, and narrate to an audience their experiences on camp.  I say audience, because the kids would then publish this work and embed it on their wiki page, meaning it was up on the internet so that anyone they wanted to show it to, anywhere they went, could see it.

The great thing about writing a script as opposed to a report is that scripts have to be read.  Words need to be spelled correctly or at least close to correct for people to be able to read them easily.  Punctuation needs to be spot on, otherwise your voice over will not be fluent and smooth.

The rule was that your partner had to read your script, and no one could pause or take a breath when reading a script unless there was a a full stop or a comma allowing them to do so.  This made for some very blue faced kids during the editing and rehersal process, but it was great, because the kids were editing their own work  and seeing the purpose behind accuracy in spelling and punctuation.

In terms of content, the students were reminded that they needed to properly explain and describe their experience on camp because their audience isn’t the teacher who was on camp with them, it’s a whole set of people that weren’t there and won’t know what you’re talking about unless you describe it properly.

I didn’t need to correct one piece of writing in the following week.  The students did it all themselves. Occasionally I sat in on a group and facilitated them seeing a few points of need in their writing, but generally once kids got the idea they were away.

The results were just awesome.

The quality of writing and reading blew me away.  The kids were then really excited to embed their ‘Camp Vodcasts’ onto their home page on our class wiki, and to go home and show their parents, and probably anyone else who would watch!

I contrast this with a lot of technology based projects I’m seeing coming out of schools recently that are really not of a high quality at all.  These are generally projects that are approached from the perspective that ‘we need to do something with technology this term’.  This is a chronic problem in schools, and is completely opposed to how our thinking should be.

That is, start at the point of what you are tying to teach, then choose the best tools to do it – technology or otherwise.

Technology should never be ‘the point’ of anything.  It is a tool, a fantastic medium (and only a medium) for the same messages that teachers have been trying to get across since the beginning of time.


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Reading skills improved by digital storytelling & podcasting

August 2nd, 2009 by · 2 Comments · Digital Storytelling, Web 2.0

The other day I had one of those magic feel-good moments in the classroom that makes it all worth while.  We had just finished reading ‘The Witches’ by Roald Dahl as a class novel and I decided to use VoiceThread to allow each class member to give a review of the book for our class wiki page.

For those of you that haven’t yet used VoiceThread, it is something you should definately check out.  It’s a program that allows you to have a central image or video, and to then very simply put multiple voices over the top of it.  The pictures of the people you record appear around that central image.  In the case of ‘The Witches’, I put the book cover as the central picture. Around the book cover are pictures of all my students. When you click on the picture, that particular student tells you what they thought of the book. Fantastic stuff!

Check out VoiceThread here: VoiceThread

Anyway, back to the story.  I have an autistic boy in my class who has always struggled with reading, especially out loud to an audience.  I have now recorded quite a few podcasts with my kids, and he (along with many others) has steadily improved his reading each time.  For this podcast he just nailed it.  His reading was smooth and full of expression. He was confident and happy when recording, and was proud of what he had written and very keen to have it put on public display.

When he finished his recording we played it back to him.  As we were playing it back his integration aid walked into the room.  Her face simply lit up.  “Is that John?” she said in shock.  When she realised it was, she demanded to have it played back again.  On hearing him reading so clearly and with such expression, her eyes welled up and she remarked “I’m going to cry.”

The point of all this is that using technology based activities such as digital storytelling and podcasting is not just about engaging kids with bells and whistles.  The technology we use should be there for an educational purpose.

In this case, the use of podcasting to give writing and reading a real purpose, and to allow kids to hear themselves read, is an incredibly powerful tool for improvement.  I find that the simple act of allowing students to hear themselves read out loud gives them an opportunity to be self reflective of their reading.  They can hear first hand what you may have been telling them they need to improve all year, and in a flash they fix it up.

As a further example, I had another boy that was a very good reader, but when he read out loud he read far too quickly.  It was almost as if he was in a race to finish.  I would tell him to slow down, but invariably the next time he read he would be a speed demon again!  When hearing himself in a podcast for the first time I asked him how he thought he sounded.  He said that he had read too quick and it was hard to understand.  Since that moment I haven’t had to tell him to slow down with his reading even once.

It’s these amazing results at both ends of the class that make podcasting and digital storytelling such a valuable tool.

Podcasting is now being used by reading recovery teachers to great effect.  We are now using VoiceThread with our E.S.L students (English as a Second Language).  We look forward to the results!

Has anyone had similar experiences in their classes?  Post a comment and let me know. Would love to hear grom you.

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