If you have enjoyed the content of CatTech over these past four years, I urge you to subscribe to the two following blogs:

The Restless Pedagogue — http://restlesspedagogue.blogspot.com/
This blog is written by Dr Paul Molinelli and myself, Eric Castro, and its focus is on modern teaching and learning. Part of that is an appropriate use of technology, of course, but there is so much more than just that — the content will cover wider ground than CatTech has.

Wildcat Technology — http://wildcattechnology.blogspot.com/
The blog is written by various members of the Tech Department with the assistance of students. The focus is on student uses of technology to facilitate their learning — with students as the primary audience.

For more real-time updates on technology, tips, tricks, and recommendations, there is a Twitter account for Technology at SI: @SI_Technology.

Personally, I’d like to thank my readers for four years of conversation here at CatTech. This was my first foray into writing for a (sometimes) global audience — and there’s more to come at The Restless Pedagogue!

PREPARATION

The EdTech Committee assisted in the creation of a curriculum, which would guide the actual distribution. Created as a Google Doc, after I put in a basic outline of what minimum skills and information we wanted students to know before they walked out of the orientation class, members of the EdTech Committee added, deleted, fixed, and improved the curriculum.

When we got to the first Distribution Day, I downloaded the Google Doc as a PDF and emailed it out to the folks who would actually teach the orientation class – again, members of the EdTech Committee. Teachers opened this email on their own iPad, and then opened the PDF (available here) in whatever pen-based notation app (like Notability, UPAD, Penultimate, etc) that they were most familiar with. This allowed the teacher to highlight and draw on the curriculum, which everyone projected to the screen in the front of class using the iPad-to-VGA adapter and the ceiling-mounted LCD projector.

We parsed the students out to different sessions, trying to limit the number of students in a class to 15, by using Eventbrite (example). Each class was a separate event for which students could reserve a space. (One challenge was that it wasn’t clear/easy for students/parents to change their reservation. Another challenge early on was in the phrasing of things; students could schedule a pick up, for example, 9-11, and they thought that was a window for pick-up. They thought that they could simply walk in anytime between 9 and 11, rather than it being a class that started at 9 and ended at 11. After a few students came in with this expectation, I rephrased sections on the website to clarify the Orientation Class element.)

In addition to all of this, 145 boxes of iPads, each box with 10 iPads in it, had to be processed. We created a Google Doc Spreadsheet for each box (each box was numbered, and each spreadsheet was named according (eg “Box 001″ and “Box 002″)). In each spreadsheet, column A listed the serial numbers for the ten iPads in that box, column B was for the student ID number, and column C was for the student’s name. The student ID number is the key for an eventual import into PowerSchool, logging what iPad serial number the student has. One challenge, of course, is that incoming freshmen do not yet have student ID numbers, so those imports will have to be parsed by student name instead.

DISTRIBUTION

These details, we published to a dedicated webpage, Picking Up Your iPad.

When

We divided our 1,437 students into a few categories: students taking Summer School classes, incoming freshmen, and others. For Summer School students, who would need their devices two-months before any other student would need it, we started passing out their iPads during Finals Week. Incoming freshmen had sessions just for themselves (because they did not have their usernames & passwords, and likely didn’t have the same level of in-class experience with an iPad), which were actually four-hours of total instruction spread out over two consecutive days; these frosh-only classes were offered in late-June to account for the varying graduation dates of our feeder schools. The remaining, existing students were able to pick their iPads up during the first three weeks of June. For anyone who could not pick up their iPad at the beginning of Summer, we will also offer pick-up dates in late-August, the week before school restarts.

Again, these Orientation Classes were taught by members of the EdTech Committee.

Where

Each morning, I printed a list of students who had signed up for that day, and I posted these lists for the morning, midday, and afternoon sessions outside one particular classroom. All students would first report to that room to see the lists posted to the wall; those lists then directed students to a particular classroom. All incoming freshmen had their class/ iPad pick-up in the Library.

What To Bring

All students were expected to bring certain materials with them to pick up their iPad. Namely,

• photo ID
• signed Lease Contract
• $100 insurance premium payment
• login and password for an AppleID/ iTunes account

FOLLOW-UP

We haven’t gotten to this point yet, it only being the end of June right now, and distribution still going on, but I have plans. First, I’ll send out an email to all students with various instructions. One will suggest that they install the Dropbox application on their laptops/ desktops at home; another will walk them through subscribing to the Daily Events Calendar in Google Calendar, and insuring that it shows up on their iPad’s Calendar app. Second, just as we’ve done iPad Socials with the Faculty wherein teachers could share interesting uses of the iPad in their classes, we’ll host similar after school events for the students – with pizza and soda, instead of wine and cheese.

 

[Hopefully this pos doesn't look too wonky; I'm on the road and away from my laptop.]

David Allen, father of the Getting Things Done movement, recently wrote a piece for the New York Times, When Office Technology Overwhelms, Get Organized, discussing the same phenomenon in the business world — and the way to solve the problem. The short version is: concentrate on the next Action, if possible, do it, and not, file the item.

My version involves a lot of merciless deletion of emails, archiving (often without foldering), and very short emails. When I was learning how to actually be more productive, I used a wallpaper by Stefanos Karagos. Since, he’s released others, and I like this one.

Another expert in email productivity is Merlin Mann. In one of his most popular posts, he shared five simple email productivity rules.

Studying the results of any number of productivity studies quickly reveals a few common threads worth highlighting:

• Don’t try to multitask; you can’t.
  The best you can do is slip into a state of constant partial attention in which your divided attention is less than the sum of its parts — so don’t even try to multitask.
• Concentrate on the task at hand.
  Since you can’t multitask, focus on just one thing — and since we can’t focus for very long, do it in small bits. The Pomodoro Technique recommends concentrating on a single task for 25-minutes, and then taking a 5-minute break before switching tasks.
• Minimize distractions.
  Schedule when you check email; close your door for a deep-dive every once in a while; delete/ archive/ ignore what isn’t important.
• Focus on completion.
  Get to done, as David Allen would say. Start with what’s quickly solved (if < 2-minutes, do it now), and then move on to the next step in a larger project.
• Use the right tool for the job.
  Your Inbox is not a filing cabinet, and it’s not a To Do list. Do you know what is? A To Do list. Get one, and use it. Do you know what else isn’t a To Do list? A calendar. Get a To Do list — and based it on verbs.

There is no quick path to productivity; it takes some research, reflection, planning — and recommitment when you fall off the wagon. Like anything worthwhile, it’s hard work, working hard.

The article is a fun read, made all the more entertaining and enticing when one considers the many ways in which our students will continue to add to the world. Of course, it all begs the question: what skills, attitudes, and beliefs will our students need to innovate and invent?

To see the catalog of courses, see the Summer 2012 page.

More tips and tricks to follow — some from us, in-house, and others from, well, others.

Here are two additional pieces in a similar vein. The first is a study funded by the US Army and conducted by UC Irvine, examining the effects of constant partial attention that results from an email- and interruption-based workflow:

People who read email changed screens twice as often and were in a steady “high alert” state, with more constant heart rates. Those removed from email for five days experienced more natural, variable heart rates.

“We found that when you remove email from workers’ lives, they multitask less and experience less stress,” said UCI informatics professor Gloria Mark.

The second is a reflection piece in the Harvard Business Review on coping with email overview. The author, Peter Bregman, bulk-processes his email, and refuses to check it during unplanned times.

In fact, it’s the opposite. I gain presence throughout my day. I am focused on what’s around me in the moment, without distraction. I listen more attentively, notice people’s subtle reactions I would otherwise overlook, and come up with more ideas as my mind wanders. I’m more productive, more sensitive, more creative, and happier.

That’s the workplace mentality that I want.

One of the hottest topics was pen-based notation apps. There are a few favorites around campus, and no clear winner yet. Part of me really like Penultimate, but without a zoom feature, it’s a non-starter. One favorite, particularly amongst our Math Department, is UPAD. Recently, I’ve been doing quite a bit of work in Notability — I have concerns about the voice-recording feature though.

Here is a good post offering other reviews and suggestions: iPad/iPhone Note Taking Apps by AppAdvice.

The net result of these five forces is an education system that has the characteristics of a high-performing organization: relentless focus, interactive pressure and support, a preoccupation with results and how to improve them, a culture of mutual commitment, and what we call collaborative competition, where there is no limit to what is being attempted. The fact that this strategy develops leaders at all levels — leaders who focus on results, as they help develop other leaders — means that sustainability is built into the whole enterprise. Ontario isn’t perfect. But it proves that large-scale reform can be accomplished in school systems in fairly short periods of time.

[via Jason Beyer]

In the wake of the evaluation, Rothberg is considering canceling his fall sabbatical to the University of Geneva, where he is slated to serve as a Henri Bynum-Derridas Visiting Scholar. Instead, Rothberg may take a rudimentary public speaking course as well as offer his services to students like Berner, should they desire personal tutoring.

“The needs of my first-year students come well before any prestigious personal awards offered to me by international academic assemblies,” Rothberg said. “After all, I have dedicated my life to the pursuit of knowledge, and to imparting it to those who are coming after me. I know that’s why these students are here, so I owe it to them.”

Oh, Onion, you crack me up.

[via the Onion]