Creating Lifelong Learners

Is There a Place for “Drill and Kill” on the iPad?

Mathew — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:00:02 +0000

Last week, I posted on Twitter when a highly engaging math app went on sale for 60% off. I didn’t oversell it by any means:

It’s just drill and kill simple math facts with fancy graphics and music but it’s fun.

I’m torn on whether to mention the name of the app here (I will list all the apps we use in a future post). However, imagine an app with a first class movie soundtrack, mission impossible-like graphics, and an excitement that is not present in many other apps. Yes, I do consider it “drill and kill” but as an app of this kind, it’s best in class.

I received this self-righteous response from a twitterer I don’t know and won’t mention:

How can anyone consider drill and kill fun? Lets move onward & stop promoting these kind of apps!

I don’t consider this particular app fun. My math intervention students do.

The twitterer went on to tell me that what I was doing was “immoral” and suggested I have students make an iMovie or Doodlecast about how they found their answers instead.

Let me back up and explain a little bit how I used the app. With our single iPad hooked up to a projector at the beginning of class while my intervention students trickled in from recess, students shouted out answers to questions as they came up. I sometimes guided students to count backward 9-2 or count up 9-5. We discussed adding and subtracting doubles (3+3, 8-4) and near-doubles (3+4, 8-5). Then as a treat, small groups of students used the iPad individually to complete some of the games.

If we bought the iPads just to do games like these I would say that we’ve wasted a lot of money. The first PD I lead for teachers on using the iPads (after the one about how to turn the device on) is how to use iMovie. I begin the PDs discussing both Bloom’s Taxonomy and Needleman’s Technology Taxonomy:

However, to say that we should not use any apps that encourage the memorizing of facts stinks to me of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I wrote a post Are You Smarter Than a Google Search? suggesting that how you collect, synthesize, and apply knowledge is more important than having it memorized. However, the idea that you don’t need to have any knowledge at all is ridiculous. While I encourage kindergarten teachers to teach the meaning of numbers (e.g. 3 is 2 and 1 more) in addition to teaching students to count. However, I also see that students who do not know basic math facts struggle when doing anything else related to math.

“Drill and Kill” is just one of the many things you can do on an iPad. If it’s the only thing you’re doing then you might as well invest in a good set of flashcards. I don’t want it to be the toolbox but I do think it has a place in the toolbox.

If you think I’m doing it all wrong. Let me know in the comments.

Also worth reading is Diane Darrow’s mapping of iOS apps to Bloom’s Taxonomy.

My Current Thoughts on Teacher Evaluation

Mathew — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:00:03 +0000

I was asked by someone in the press for my thoughts on teacher evaluation, probably because of my previous posts on Merit Pay (I’m not for it) and the Value that Teachers Add to the Classroom (hint, it’s more than just test scores).

I haven’t written about the subject in some time and my views are constantly changing. My idea of having teachers gather around a campfire and write down the name of one teacher they’d like to vote of the island hasn’t been picking up any steam so here are my other thoughts.

1. What do you think of the recent national push to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores?

The national push to tie teacher evaluations to test scores is largely a successful attempt by both political parties to draw attention away from vast income disparities among populations and place the burden of poverty on the backs of teachers. In the 70′s and early 80′s the achievement gap had been closing because of national anti-poverty efforts. Now we accept poverty and a shrinking middle class as a given and expect teachers to pick up the slack.

That said, currently test scores currently play no part in evaluation and I believe they could be used as a small piece of the complex evaluation puzzle.

2. How does your school currently evaluate teachers?

Teacher evaluations in California are governed by the Stull Act which demands at least one teacher observation a pass/fail write up of the lesson, and both a pre and post teacher conference. For a negative Stull, the teacher must be observed multiple times and has to be given warning of their negative rating.

3. As an experienced educator, how often would you like to be evaluated, and what do you think the assessment should consist of?

I believe that teachers are the best evaluator of other teachers. Contrary to public opinion, there aren’t that many bad teachers out there…but there are a few. Teachers know who those bad teachers are. If teachers had the power to identify those bad teachers I think they would do a very good job of it. Their definition of “bad” would not simply involve test scores but would also include such things as collegiality and collaboration and take into account a teacher’s rapport with their students.

An ideal evaluation system would involve the input of other teachers, administrators, and parents in a system of checks and balances.

Test scores could be considered in evaluation but should be no more than 10-20% of the consideration. I know teachers with high test scores who do nothing to foster a love of learning; I would not want my own children (once they’re born) in their classroom. I know other teachers with lower test scores who nurture and challenge students but don’t teach to the test; their students are learning but it doesn’t quite translate to a multiple choice test.

I am absolutely not in favor of tying test scores to teacher compensation. The problem in education is that we often don’t know what works. There’s no evidence that poor teachers would teach better if only they were paid more. There is evidence that good teachers under stress aren’t so good. Creating a system whereby teachers don’t know whether or not they’re able to take care of their families in a given year based on their student’s performance would create stress and likely harm teaching. Pay teachers more overall and you could attract and retain better teachers and increase accountability across the board.

Please help me to continue to revise my thinking on the subject. If you have comments, post them below.

My Guide to iPad Deployment in School

Mathew — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:00:56 +0000

Almost two years ago to the day, I wrote a post, “The iPad: Why Teachers Should Care.” Flash forward to today, both of the schools I work at have purchased one iPad for each classroom. Although I’ve already mastered how to manage all the iDevices in my personal household, learning to manage iPads in an institutional environment involved a bit more learning due to the complexities of software licensing and the necessity to keep institutional accounts separate from personal ones.

School Accounts You’ll Need:

1. A generic e-mail address. You can use a school’s generic e-mail address. However, I would not use any employee’s e-mail address since it’s impossible to guarantee that any employee will be at a particular school forever. This is part of the not mixing institution and business accounts. I signed up for a generic e-mail address with gmail.

2. An Apple ID account associated with the generic e-mail address you set up. Create this account without associating a credit card with the account (unless your school uses a credit card to make purchases). This will be your school’s iTunes account for all practical purposes. It will be used for purchasing free apps and redeeming codes purchased using your Volume Purchase Account (see below).

3. A Volume Purchase Account (VPP). This is the account in which you deposit iTunes gift cards and then purchase apps in bulk. If you’re in a large district, your district likely already has a program manager. You need to ask that person to set you up as a program facilitator. If you try to sign up without that person, you’ll get an error through the Apple web site.

To repeat, you deposit gift cards into the VPP account and then redeem the download codes you receive through your school’s Apple ID. Unlike at home, where you can legally install purchased apps on all your devices after buying them just once, at school you need to purchase the app as many times as there are devices. However, they are often offered at a 50% discount when you buy 20 or more.

Although you buy 20 codes, you really only redeem one of the codes. The other 19 codes are saved in case your school is ever audited for legal compliance.

We do not share any of the passwords for these accounts with the teachers at our school. Teachers will receive updates to school apps and new apps we’ve purchased for the school periodically.

Personal Accounts You Should and Shouldn’t Use

Some schools do not allow teachers to install their own apps on the school iPads. Teachers at those restrictive schools may come to feel like the iPad is not their own. I opted to allow teachers at my schools to install apps from their personal accounts on their iPads. I want them to feel like the iPads belong to them and for them to become experts at using the devices.

Individually Purchased Apps

Teachers can simply log out of the school account and log in to their own account to install apps they’ve previously purchased or purchase new apps. It’s less expensive for a teacher to purchase a single app than for the school to buy twenty-four copies of it.

FaceTime and iMessages

Teachers should immediately log out of the school’s FaceTime and iMessages account under their respective tabs in settings. Teachers can either log in using their own accounts or stay logged out. Otherwise, iMessages sent by a single teacher will automatically appear on everyone’s iPad.

iCloud

Teachers may wish to log-in to iCloud and choose which services they wish to use (e-mail, iTunes match, photo stream, contacts, calendar, etc.) They don’t have to enable all of them but will likely want to use some of them.

Find My iPhone

Since we expect each teacher to take responsibility for not losing their iPads, I strongly encourage teachers to install the Find My iPhone app and use it to track the iPad should it ever be lost.

Setting Up the iPads

I purchased approximately 40 free apps and installed them on an iPad (more on what those are later), organizing the apps in folders by subject matter so that teachers feel more comfortable exploring even if they don’t know what the apps are. I then set up each subsequent iPad to restore from the original iPad’s backup. This ensures that each iPad begins with some structure and organization even if future apps will not necessarily end up in the correct folders automatically.

iPad Apps in Folders

What’s in a Name?

At my science magnet, we named the iPads after famous scientists and at the arts magnet we named them after famous painters. Naming the iPads allows us to keep track of them easily. Naming them after teachers or room numbers would be a mistake since both of those things can/will change over time.

I then connected each iPad to the school’s wireless network.

On a sign-out sheet, teachers sign their names next to their iPads name and serial number.

Teachers put their own Smart Covers on their iPads.

Further Reading

I’m very grateful for the following two posts which helped me immensely in the process:

Langwitches: iPad Deployment and Teacher PD

LAUSD iPad Deployment Worksheet (do not e-mail the people linked to from this worksheet unless you’re in LAUSD)

Update

Once teachers have added their own apps to an iPad and you go to sync it with the school computer you will see a notice asking you if you want to authorize the computer for the new apps. Don’t authorize! You will get a scary warning that appears to indicate that the “unauthorized” apps will be removed from the iPad. However, they will not actually be removed. Go ahead and hit continue. Don’t be afraid.

Update #2

Apple has released a white paper on iPad deployment that’s worth reading.

Parent Better and Change the World in 2012

Mathew — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:18:44 +0000

On a recent journey to Costa Rica, I had the opportunity to reflect on good parenting. Due to a brief layover, we had to switch planes mid-way and on each leg of the journey, we found ourselves sitting in front of children (yes, the same people we left our classrooms to get a break from).

I’m not (yet) a parent. However, I believe the principles that I’ve laid out previously about classroom management apply to parenting as well. Specifically, when you can help it, never expose children to a new situation without first letting them know what to expect from that situation and what appropriate behavior is in that situation. Naturally, life presents unexpected situations all the time. However, taking your students to the library, the computer lab, or a performance and taking your sons and daughters on airplanes are not unexpected events.

We teach children about individual upcoming events ahead of time for two reasons:

Once we’re in a situation, it’s too late to teach the special rules (you can’t stop a performance, or halt takeoff and landing to discipline).
Most importantly, misbehavior results from children being anxious. When we explain to them what to expect they are less anxious and less likely to act up.

Classroom

In the classroom, if you’re taking your students to the library, you first discuss what’s going to happen in the library and the special rules there (use a marker to find a book, whisper when you talk, etc.). I do not take my students to the library until I’m confident that they know how to behave there.

Rafe Esquith talks about having his students sit through the entire sound recording of a symphony in his classroom before taking the students to see the real symphony. By listening to a CD beforehand, he taught them when to clap, how to listen, and what to listen for so they were not bored when they got there.

Living Room

At home, if you know you’re going on an airplane, into a toy store, or to the post office, you need to explain the special behaviors expected in each of those places.

How This Plays Out “In the Wild”

On the first leg of our journey, as the plane was taking off, the child screamed at the top of his lungs and yelled out, “I’m scared.” His mom laughed. Perhaps she didn’t care that her child was screaming—but that’s for another blog post. He spent the flight kicking my wife’s seat. When we landed, his mom asked him to be responsible for his own jacket and told him he had to walk. He said no, started crying, and his grandmother ended up carrying him.

During the break, I discussed with my wife how we’re going to parent differently and then on the second leg of our journey, another family provided a perfect example.

On the final flight, another child sat down behind us with his mom. Before the flight took off, she discussed with him the popping he’d feel soon in his ears when the flight took off. She explained that he would need to keep his seatbelt on. She reviewed with him what they were going to be seeing in Costa Rica. That child was a dream to sit in front of. Nothing was a surprise to him and he knew how to behave.

When the flight landed, another passenger asked this dream child what he was looking forward to seeing. ”A volcano,” he said, “I want to see the lava coming out it of it.” As a bonus, talking to your child develops language and verbal ability. I didn’t hear the annoying kid say anything other than screams and grunts on the first flight. It seems obvious, but talk to your child if you want them the learn to talk.

The Future

I’m worried. I’m worried about what I see as a complete breakdown of expected behavior in public. Mild-mannered me has been getting in fights with people at movies and plays about them texting during the show. I’m not sure how we address a growing self-centeredness that puts one’s own needs ahead of anyone else. However, I believe it’s those parents who are not setting behavioral expectations who are contributing to this general breakdown. If you really don’t care about others, then I’m not sure I can help you. However, if you want a better world, I think I’m laying out for you one way we can get there.

It’s a Hoax! Teach Critical Thinking and Analysis Through Online Hoaxes

Mathew — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:00:41 +0000

What follows are three of my favorite hoax links, shared in a Google Workshop for Educators. Use these to teach students that not everything posted on the internet is true.

All About Explorers
An attractive site looking site chock full of information about famous explorers, except all the information is false.

RYT Hospital
Men can now have babies, this high tech web site shows you how.

Museum of Hoaxes
Find tons more in the Museum of Hoaxes.

The iPad as RTI Intervention Toolkit

Mathew — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:00:23 +0000

While waiting for the iPad to arrive in my reading intervention classroom, I’ve had a lot of time to think and plan how I will use the device.

Ground Rules

I don’t want hundreds of apps. I’m looking for a few favorites.

I don’t want more drill and kill. The reading intervention programs I teach do their fair share of drilling and killing (to great success) so I don’t need more of the same.

I want the iPad to help me run my intervention program like a gifted enrichment program, providing the spark that interests students in learning and helps them apply skills that they should not be learning in isolation.

My Favorites and How I Will Use Them

Dragon Dictation

While the iPhone 4S eliminates the need for Dragon Dictation because it integrates dictation whenever the keyboard appears, the iPad becomes magical with the addition of the free Dragon Dictation app. Dragon allows students to compose their writing orally by speaking into the iPad or to type of their writing by reading it aloud. Students can even add punctuation by speaking the name of the proper mark e.g. “Go to the store, exclamation point” will type “Go to the store!”

This is of great use for students for whom the process of writing or typing is too much of a chore to allow for the creative expression of their ideas and those whose spelling gets in the way of their completing sentences.

iMovie

Students can create movies about anything. They can illustrate their writing, tell a personal story, present the results of their research, or create instructional videos reinforcing what you’ve been teaching them in class.

Pages

You need a word processor and Pages surely does the trick. I consistently find it easier to use than Microsoft Word on the desktop and the iPad version works just as well with the added bonus of being able to store documents in the cloud for backup.

Storykit

This is not optimized for the iPad, it’s a phone app but it’s still incredibly simple to use to create books with images (photos or drawings) and captions. For primary grade students, this is a great way to make books that can easily be shared, e-mailed, and printed.

Dropbox

While not instructional, I don’t know how anyone can live without Dropbox which provides Cloud storage for documents meaning anything you put there is backed up and made available on all of your computers and mobile devices.

Need more Apps?

Here are some great places to look:

Apps for all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy by Diane Darrow

Apps to Support Literacy Instruction by Scholastic Magazine

Find and share great lists of apps with Appolicious, the social network for app sharing

iRead Program, Escondido, Kathy Shirley and friends have been at it since before the iPad and iPhone were invented, using the original iPods to increase reading fluency with English Learners.

iEAR Educational Apps Reviews from real teachers.

AppShopper.com, create a wish list of apps and receive notification when prices drop.

Have your own favorites? Leave a comment below.

Creating Your First iPhone App with HTML Flowchart

Mathew — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:52:00 +0000

I led a workshop this past weekend for Computer Using Educators: Los Angeles on how to create your first iPhone app based on my previous post, “How to Create Your First iPhone App.”

In order to further simplify things, here is a flow chart of steps to take in order to begin the process of designing an app using HTML, here is a flow chart to illustrate the process. Please click on the image for a larger, downloadable PDF.

Flow Chart on How to Create Your First iPhone App Using HTML

Please post any questions down below.

The True Case for Independent Work Time

Mathew — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:00:53 +0000

For years, I’ve tried to assist teachers with setting up Independent Work Time in their classrooms. Independent Work Time goes by many names—workshop, universal access time, centers, small-group time. IWT is simply a time of day when teachers allow students to work independently while the teacher has a chance to meet with small groups to preteach, reteach, challenge advanced learners, and otherwise differentiate instruction.

I’ve always operated under the assumption that teachers want to set up some time during their day when they are able to meet with small groups to differentiate instruction. However, lately it’s come to my attention that there are teachers who simply do not believe that working with small groups would improve their teaching.

In truth, I know several excellent teachers who never meet with small groups. These teachers, however, find ways to differentiate instruction by providing different entry points into lessons for students with different needs and by doing hit-and-run style conferences with students on the go. While they might not be providing Tier 2 interventions, their styles do create challenging environments for all learners and allow almost all students to be successful. But I still think they’re missing something.

As someone currently working as a full-time reading intervention teacher, I certainly believe in the importance of providing students with needed interventions in the classroom before they’re pulled out to work in a program like mine. However, these students are a minority in most classrooms. The other travesty of not providing any independent work time is what happens for the majority of students who need a time to apply what they’ve been learning through independent exploration, writing, researching, and working with peers.

I was struck by an article, Where Will the Next Steve Jobs Come From? which argues that typical teacher-centered classrooms will not produce the kind of creative thinking that true visionaries need. While the few super geniuses will probably succeed in spite of what their teachers do, what about the many students who have a spark inside of them they never find even while they’re learning to sit up, face forward, and listen to what their teacher says?

I don’t suggest that simply by providing Independent Work Time we will create a new Steve Jobs. However, we teachers have five and a half hours to lead teacher directed lessons, can’t we just give students thirty minutes to explore on their own and cement their own learning?

New Book: What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies

Mathew — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 04:00:57 +0000

I’m honored to have a chapter I authored on integrating digital video production in the classroom published in the just-released hardcover book, What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media edited by Scott McLeod and Chris Lehman.

The other chapters are written by several of the educational technologists whom I’ve come to admire and respect through their blogs, presentations, and work in the field. The book is arranged in easy to digest chapters on relevant subjects you can read or reread when you’re ready for them. I recommend it for principals, tech committees, and teachers who have an interest in transforming education.

The book is available now in hardcover or for the Kindle and includes the following chapters:

Introduction, Chris Lehmann & Scott McLeod

Foreword, David Warlick

Learning Tools

Blogs, Kristin Hokanson & Christian Long
Wikis, Stephanie Sandifer & Vicki Davis
Podcasts and webinars, Steve Dembo & Wes Fryer
RSS and RSS readers, Will Richardson & Karl Fisch
Digital video, Mathew Needleman
Virtual schooling, Michael Barbour & Rick Ferdig
One-to-one computing, Chris Lehmann & Pamela Livingston
Open source software, Tom Hoffman
Educational gaming, John Rice

Interlude

Social media is changing the way we live and learn, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
See Sally research: Evolving notions of information literacy, Joyce Valenza & Doug Johnson

More Learning Tools

Social bookmarking, Dean Shareski & Mary Beth Hertz
Online mind mapping, Carl Anderson & Richard Byrne
Course management systems, Scott Floyd & Miguel Guhlin
Online office tool suites, Diana Laufenberg & Mark Wagner
Twitter, Alec Couros & Kevin Jarrett
Online images and visual literacy, Kim Cofino & David Jakes
Mobile phones, Liz Kolb & Sharon Tonner
Social networking, Ewan McIntosh & Jeff Utecht
Afterword, Christopher Sessums

TreasuresResources.com, New Web Site for Treasures Reading Program

Mathew — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:40:06 +0000

Many of my blog readers have followed me from my web site Open Court Resources.com (http://www.opencourtresources.com) which compiles resources for teaching the Open Court Reading Program. I developed that site over eight or so years, starting with first grade resources I was sharing with teachers at my school site and expanding to include pre-K through 6th grade resources. Eventually, teachers from across the country were submitting their own resources which I added to my own and made available for free to everyone. The web site receives tens of thousands of visits each day and I am continuing to update it.

However, my school district has adopted the Treasures Reading Program and by popular demand I’m attempting to provide teachers resources for the new series at http://www.treasuresresources.com

The new program has different editions in every state and I’m trying as best as possible to make the site relevant to everyone. Teachers from different states can use resources from other states because there’s usually at least a 40%-50% overlap in materials.

So far I have banners for the big question board, powerpoints, spelling and vocabulary activities, and much more. Resources vary by grade level and I’m adding stuff all the time. As always, everything on the site is free.

If you’re teaching Treasures Reading, I hope you find the site of use and will send in resources you’re creating. Check it out and become a fan on Facebook.