Teaching 24/7

Confirmation Bias as a form of Lying

2012-11-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

Dear KC,

We lie to each other all the time. I do not mean conscious untruths, which I am sure happens more than we would care to admit, or white lies that we say to make others feel comfortable. I am not sure anyone else would define it as lying, but it bears the same relationship to lying as involuntary manslaughter does to murder. It is not the intent, but the ability to know better that's the problem.

It's interesting watching or participating in those idea exercises that all seem to come from the same manual in business school. You know what I mean. A facilitator or teacher asks some questions or has some prompts presented on flip charts or poster board. Everyone is then asked to write down their thoughts on sticky notes or posters, and then group and analyze the results. Which is fine, and is often useful enough in class to generate ideas. It's not something I've managed to use yet to teach stoichiometry, for example, but perhaps it's just a sign of my own lack of creativity.

What I am not sure of is how useful the process is in identifying problems or giving non-obvious feedback. I've seen the process now a few times, and each time it generates a list of ideas or solutions, and it clearly identifies which ideas are in the majority. I'm not sure how different it is from a poll, which is a lot quicker, or how identifying what everyone already knows is useful when everybody already knows it. I presume it's useful if you have management or administration that's completely out of touch with its employees, which likely means you have bigger problems with regards to communication. It is kind of a problem in the same vein as XKCD's heat map; determining the obvious and making it seem like new information.

At some point confirmation bias and cherry picking have to take over. In any data gathering exercise the majority of people are going to state the obvious. The obvious will then confirm what everyone expected; there will be great rejoicing. Any new datum, something unusual that might be important, or runs counter to everyone's expectations, stands a chance of being drowned in the sea of familiar or comfortable ideas.

The attitude previous to the Great Recession seems a clear example of this. In The Signal and the Noise Nate Silver suggests that the signs of the coming recession were not hidden or inaccessible - what was missing was the desire and will to evaluate the evidence without a bias for what we wish to be true. The failure was not failing to see the recession coming. The failure was in only paying attention to data that confirmed that everything was fine and would continue to be fine. I wonder if a group of financial professionals had gotten together before 2008 and did the 'poster/stickynote' exercise if they would have managed to see the evidence without bias, or if it would reinforce their already held biases. I suspect reinforcement. (And if you haven't read Nate Silver's book - do so if you have any interest in the topic. It's a well-written explanation of a complex issue that at least seems like it didn't dumb down any of the important concepts.)

More prosaic examples would be protective parents that only pay attention to anti-vaccination information, or the creationist who can read a hundred articles on evolutionary theory and only see contradictions. To see beyond what you want to see requires that we remind ourselves that our bias is larger than we believe, and that the bias in others is probably smaller than we think.

This not a critique of the process, or a damning of flip-chart idea generation. Predicting developing problems or opportunities is difficult. It may be this is the best method and all methods have their problems. Where the lying comes in is in how often we seem to deliberately pretend that confirmation bias happens to other people. In today's world, with its ubiquitous access to information, ignorance can no longer be an excuse. If a group is generating ideas, then not mentioning such pitfalls amounts to tacitly allowing it to occur.

I'm not sure this type of lying has a word, but it needs one. We have white lies and (presumably) black lies, lies of omission, and bluffing. Lying by allowing our natural human tendency to engage in self-delusion needs its own label. Accusing someone of lying sounds far to strong for what this is. In our culture accusing someone of lying can derail a discussion on the nature of truth rather forcefully as egos and insulted feelings take over, but calling it something would allow us to highlight it when it occurs.

Sadly, I will not be the one to name it. Like Leonard of Quirm, if I was to name something it would be "the-lie-that-results-from-inadequately-accounting-for-psychological-processes-common-to-all-humans-in-a-world-where-such-processes-are-easily-knownable". Not very catchy. Psych-lie? Probably not.

It did get me thinking though. What do I currently hold to be true, that is clearly false? What confirmation bias' have been at play in my own teaching career, what scientific 'facts' have I never questioned? I'm most happy criticizing anti-vaxxers or holocaust deniers - areas where we know that the other side is wrong through ample evidence. In what must be a fairly obvious beam in my own eye, I have never really looked at teaching in the same way.

So I started investigating.

Regards,

Ron

Online Safety Primers

2010-09-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

Hi,

A reminder as we practice fire alarms, coach safe practices and (in my case) use the blast shield that a variety of resources exist to teach and learn about online safety for children. Google has begun its "Family Safety Centre" (http://www.google.com/familysafety/), and Microsoft has both its Windows Live Family Safety (http://explore.live.com/windows-live-family-safety) and its Virus, Spyware & Malware Protection (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/). Whether or not you use any of the services, reading and learning about online safety is another facet of keeping our kids safe. Many of the educational videos do focus and use examples of younger children, but the ideas and concept discussed are appropriate to any age.

I probably should get back to work.

Regards,

Ron Neufeld

Canada's Best Boarding School

Nagasaki, iMovie, and others

2010-08-08T00:36:00.000-07:00

Hi,

More stuff. You'll notice that I often link to www.freetech4teachers.com - I read a fair number of blogs, but that particular one gives a number of practical useful tools. I recommend following it.

First off, the Nagasaki Archive, which uses the Google Earth plugin to preserve the history and stories of the survivors of August 9th, 1945. Only a few of the stories are in English (even in the English preview), but I found that using Google Translate I could copy and paste the text and get a passable translation into English anyway.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/08/nagasaki-archive-preserving-history-of.html

Next is an iMovie quickstart guide for those with a Mac...or merely students with one!

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/08/imovie-quickstart-guide-from-story.html

The next is a beta site called "Text the Mob". It's a polling service that would allow posing a question and allowing students to use their cell phones to text in their answer, essentially acting like the 'clicker' systems. There is a free version (with ads and limited in the questions). I don't exactly see students being allowed to pull out their cell phones in the near future, and I think a clicker system would end up being simpler and more useful (especially if embedded within the Smart board lecture itself). Cell phones are quickly becoming the mobile computer of choice, and I see this more of a harbinger of even more tools to come. You can get a TI-83 emulator for the iPhone (although the reviews aren't great), soon I expect you'll be able to add...everything.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/08/text-mob-poll-your-audience.html

Have students who do a double take, or feel like teaching is the blind leading the blind? The "Idiom Dictionary" may be just the ticket. In SciTech I will use contemporary examples of issues and reactions. More than once an ESL student has questioned the meaning of a common idiom - the Idiom Dictionary means they can at least check for the meaning while working on their homework during prep.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/08/idiom-dictionary-5000-idioms-explained.html

The next one is from "Bad Astronomy", an excellent science blog. This particular article summarized the 'State of the Climate' report, with some key diagrams to make it obvious why and how we know that the Earth is warming. It's directly applicable to Science 10, but in general I find it useful to have such resources on hand, whether it's global warming, 911 conspiracy, moon landing, vaccines, creationism,etc - it's often an opportunity to talk about the nature of logic, evidence, and critical evaluation of sources.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/03/new-study-clinches-it-the-earth-is-warming-up/

This is just an 'oohhh, cool...' series of pictures taken using computational re-photography. Using a program to adjust a camera position to take a picture exactly where a historical picture was taken, some amazing amalgams of historical and modern scenes. I assumed it would be of interest to history teachers, but I thought they just looked amazingly cool. There is some indication that the future idea is that this program would be released as an iPhone app, allowing anyone to create such photos.

Computational re-photography - http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/the-ghosts-of-world-war-iis & http://sergey-larenkov.livejournal.com/

Lastly, science in progress. It's a dinosaur dig in progress (you can use google translate to have it appear in English).
http://www.forskning.no/svalbard/

Regards,

Ron Neufeld

Canada's Best Boarding School

Pirates, Textbooks, and Drugs

2010-08-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Bloom's Taxonomy according to Pirates of the Caribbean : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjhKmhKjzsQ .

I've been told that, in order to progress in learning a new programming language, I have to memorize an exact sequence of commands even though I don't understand it. My brain hurts, so it started to wander around on its own and found some more stuff. Now I know what my students in Chem12 must feel like.

This series has a bit of a theme going. First is a New York Times article : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/technology/01ping.html?_r=1&th&emc=th. The article is on textbooks, and comparing purchasing textbooks, or using readily available Internet resources and essentially make your own free textbooks. The 'Curriki' (free website) is here: http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome. The article makes the point that "2+2=4" for quite awhile, and writing and re-writing textbooks for the sake of purchasing new ones doesn't make much sense. In Chemistry (11 & 12) we have two textbooks - one's essentially a workbook, and another for background material in case the lecture doesn't quite cut it for explanations. I could easily see online materials taking up the roles of the latter - reaction kinetics is unlikely to change, and if it does I rather suspect online resources will change faster than the textbooks. The workbook on the other hand isn't possible to duplicate, but only as it's full of practice problems + answers that just isn't available anywhere else. Someday that might change, or perhaps I just haven't found it.

Continuing that theme is a blog from "Cool Cat Teacher" on comparing textbooks to buggy whips and railroads: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2010/07/buggy-whips-railroads-and-paper.html .

Other sources for digital textbooks are http://about.ck12.org/ , an initiative to create "Flexbooks", which are freely available. When I last looked at Flexbooks the offerings were poor, but glancing at the chemistry text available it has improved substantially. Bookboon (http://bookboon.com/int) creates its own free textbooks, although they do put ads in them as well. WikiEducator has a link to these and a lot more ( http://wikieducator.org/Free_textbooks ).

Lastly, and completely unrelated, change.org has an article on the latest study from the U.S. Dept of Education : http://education.change.org/blog/view/why_peeing_in_a_cup_wont_win_the_drug_war. Apparently the last U.S. administration instituted funding for randomized drug testing in schools, and somebody decided to study it to see if it work. Science ruins everything.

Regards,

Ron Neufeld

Canada's Best Boarding School

Stuff and Things

2010-07-31T09:50:00.000-07:00

Hi,

First, a picture that will change your life as you know it:

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/07/chewbacca-on-a-squirrel-fighting-nazis/

That's right - it's Chewbacca, on a squirrel, fighting Nazis. I think the world just ended.

Secondly, if RSS feeds, blogs, and wikis make you want to find an English-TechnoBabble dictionary, may I recommend Common Craft : http://commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english
& http://www.youtube.com/user/commoncraft?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/9/muVUA-sKcc4 . The first link is to an explanation of RSS feeds, the second an introduction to Google Docs. Common Craft uses paper cut-outs and 'plain English'. To use yourself, they're free, although the films are not technically 'free' - if you wished to use them professionally (i.e. in a presentation or a lecture) they're for sale. But as an individual you can watch the whole version online.

A similarly useful site is 'animated explanations' that (naturally enough) uses animations to quickly explain a concept. Here's one on twitter - http://www.animatedexplanations.com/Animation.aspx?animation=391 - and one diagramming how the heart functions - http://www.animatedexplanations.com/Animation.aspx?animation=342 .

I linked above to the YouTube Common Craft video explaining Google Docs. You can not only create regular Word/text/spreadsheet/presentation documents on Google docs, but also 'forms', for creating things like free online surveys. http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2010/07/30/create-a-free-online-survey-with-google-forms/

This is a wonderful video linking math to rock climbing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnoL8hiN65A

My Wonderful World is created by National Geographic to celebrate geography and encourage its study in students. It seems a bit geared towards the younger set, but I thought it may be useful to some : http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/index.html .

And lastly, you can now see weather on Google Earth. In real time! That's amazingly cool. (Lisa: Or you could just look out the window.) Whatever, I'm not leaving my bat-cave just to look at the weather. That's what computers are for : http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/07/rain-or-snow-now-you-can-see-weather-in.html .

Regards,

Ron Neufeld

Canada's Best Boarding School

Video Converter for Class Video Projects

2010-07-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Classroom video projects are useful. Rather then the old 'poster' of "cut&paste", it can demonstrate the students explaining/demo'ing/acting a concept or idea themselves. Actually doing a video project, however, can be especially frustrating - students with multiple different video formats, operating systems, video editors, etc. I'm often confronted with a "this editor won't work with this video" because either they have a Mac file on a windows machine, or a windows file on a Mac machine, and currently they're not speaking to each other. If Mac would just buy Windows it would solve everything, but until then (and just today) I ran across a free video converter:

http://videoconverter.hamstersoft.com/

Unfortunately it only works on Windows (Vista, 7), and not on a Mac. Given that in any project there is always a mix that includes a Windows machine, that shouldn't be a problem.

Regards,

Ron Neufeld

Canada's Best Boarding School

Password Security

2010-04-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Colleagues,

A number of people have thanked me for my emails, and made a particular point about how they're saving all of them to a special folder to read 'later'. I know all about 'special folders' where you put things you don't have time to do right now, so I went back to my office and sobbed quietly to myself. The library was full of students, so it was a bit awkward.

Save if you like, but keep in mind that information streams from the inter-tubes much like water gently bubbles from a fire hose. Your email is likely searchable, I keep a slightly altered copy of these emails on a blog (http://teaching24-7.blogspot.com/), so keeping unread items in a folder to not read later isn't necessary - the information will be there (and if it isn't there Google will have 1.3 million hits of equivalent information).

With that in mind, I will endeavor to keep my emails down to only one or at most two items each. Quicker to skim to see if it's useful, and then pressing 'delete' if it isn't.

The first is a method to make keeping secure difficult-to-hack passwords easier to remember. I long ago lost count of the different number of sites I need a different password for. Remembering all this information is a challenge, and many people have come up strategies to meet this challenge. Using the same password on multiple sites, or 'class' of sites is one such method, using easy to remember passwords is another. I've seen passwords written on paper and stuck in drawers, and on the backs of monitors. Easy to remember passwords are also easier to guess (remember that unlike T.V. people don't guess passwords individually, they set up a computer to guess thousands of times per second using dictionaries and other common passwords). The difficulty with one password for all sites is the if one becomes compromised, they all do. It may not matter of someone hacks into your account for leaving comments on a blog, but if they can use that to get into your bank account, Facebook friends, or online email it's quite another. While someone posing as you could be embarrassing, it can also be used to ask your contacts to send you money - claiming to be stuck in a foreign country while traveling. With access to your email, it's trivial for a third party to determine when you might be out of country to make such a ploy possible. This doesn't even touch the severe and ongoing problems true identity theft can create. As a teacher, imagine if someone used your account to email all of your students inappropriate comments - I'd think I'd prefer my bank account being hacked instead.

It often seems, however, that I'm stuck in a catch-22. If I don't write a password down, I need it to be something I can remember, which means someone might be able to crack it. If I do make it complicated enough (i.e. minimum 8 characters of a mixture of letters, numbers, and/or symbols), then I need to write it down somewhere so that I can refer to it often - which opens up the possibility that someone would find my note.

The neatest solution I've seen to this problem in awhile is http://passwordcard.org/ . The website will generate a unique set of random numbers and digits that look like so:

And I know you're saying "Thanks Ron, just what I needed - another set of incomprehensible letters and numbers".

The usefulness of the card is that the card itself allows one to meet the duel purpose of having passwords that are hard to crack by people 'out there', and have something that can be taped to your monitor, put in your wallet, etc, to refer to. As an example how it works, let's say you are going to use an 8-digit combination for your online bank password. Rather than memorizing a complex string, I remember "green happy face". Going down from the happy face symbol at the top, and the green line, my new password is "RVffH3y8" which is more than sufficient to meet security requirements, and difficult to hack.

Even better, I can print out this card, have it laminated, and put it in my wallet in case I forget the password. I can tape it to my computer, keep copies in my desk, etc. It doesn't matter if someone sees the card - there are literally thousands of combinations that are possible, running the combinations forwards, backwards,

up, down or any other easy-to-remember pattern:

I can use it and not even worry if someone is reading it over my shoulder, I lose my wallet, etc. I have the convenience of keeping my password written down when I need it, but without the added worry that it could be found and used by someone else. The website also gives the option to include a few rows of only numbers (for things like PINs) and can include symbols (just to take security up that extra notch).

As well, don't have the same security password for different purposes - the password I use for my blogs should be different from the password I use for my bank. The security of some websites varies in quality. I've even had one website directly email me my password when I successfully convinced them that I didn't remember it - if something is sent in a plain email then that password has been compromised, and was never secure to begin with. Websites with proper security and encryption would either reset your password and email you a random temporary one, or a link to reset your own password. If you can read it in your email, then you can assume anybody else between you and the servers could have read it too.

So I use the card to generate multiple passwords:

In this particular example I just remember "Green Happy face down" for RKbUzQL6, and "Red Umbrella Up" for FbtECqL9. Both are difficult to hack, but I can carry both with me at all times.

If this appeals to you, I'd recommend generating a unique version at http://passwordcard.org/ and then copying that picture and printing off several colour copies. Laminate one for your wallet, put another in your safe or file cabinet as a back up.

Passwords are your first, second, and last line of defense for your personal identity - if you spend a little time creating a secure system, you will have much less to worry about later on.

Regards,

Ron Neufeld

Canada's Best Boarding School

Google, Social Studies, & Twitter

2010-04-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

Dear Colleagues,

Given the short supply of that most precious of all resources (time), I will start with a summary of links to tools and discussion items for those that would like to explore without reading through the explanations and context that I've embedded them with.

Searching within a domain such as education (.edu) or government (.gov) - using the "site:" search function.
Using Google for definitions.
Google Scholar
Blog - Free Technology for Teachers
Google Earth
World War Battle sites for Google Earth
CBC Archives
Searching Canadian government sites with site:gc.ca
Demonstrating scale.
Teaching About Web Includes Troublesome Parts
Oh my! Twitter makes history for Google search
Library of Congress archiving Twitter
Google making Twitter searchable
Twitter sign-up

I was recently reminded of the importance of proper searching in Google. As I move through the day with my CDS (Caffeine Delivery System), occasionally a student will make the mistake of trying to claim that aspartame is dangerous, on the basis of some Cquestionable website that informed them that aspartame is a 'chemical' and there exists a vast conspiracy to hide its toxic effects.
The problem is that when students (and of course I) search with something like Google, the most common way to use it is with simple search terms, i.e. "aspartame toxicity". The first page to pop up after such a simple search is one selling a book, and is a well-known contributor to conspiracy theories about aspartame toxicity. When distinguishing between fact and fiction, the most popular sites given by a simple search are often the least reliable.

Alan November mentioned using the "site:" command on Google to help eliminate unreliable search results. For example typing "site:.gov OR site:.edu aspartame" selects only websites that contain the word "aspartame" from either U.S. government sites (such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health) and educational sites from universities and schools (also in the U.S. - Canadian universities don't have a similar URL that can be used as a search criteria). The results give a completely different picture of aspartame. One the first page there is a link to the chemical formula and its history, several sites mentioning, and then debunking, the aspartame conspiracy/toxicity myth. Since using this method removes the .com's, the .net's and the .org's - all of which can be bought by anybody, for any reason. Lots of good sites are removed as well, but using this as a 'first search' for students helps pinpoint the reliable information first, before going to a more general search. Since students are inevitably getting a lot of their information through such searches, teaching such search techniques is essential to help students learn the difference between credible and non-credible information on the world wide web. This search example uses the "OR" command, which means it retrieves resources from either government or education sites - for a narrower search (such as only searching educational site) the "OR" command and the other search criteria can be omitted.

Google has a lot of useful methods to distinguish and refine the information you're looking for. In Biology 12 class some students forgot their textbooks and needed definitions while working on a worksheet. Rather than retrieving their textbook, they used the "define:" command in Google. Typing "define: androgens" returns a list of possible definitions from multiple sources - a quick read reveals to the student that this is a general term referring to male steroid sex hormones. I think I prefer this method over the "The Textbook" - it exposes them to multiple definitions, different nuances, and ensures they know it's the concept, and not the exact sequence of words, that's important.

In the same class a comment arose about sugar intake in children and its positive correlation to hyperactivity - a belief long held by teachers and tired parents everywhere. Rather than using the previously mentioned "site:" command, we checked directly using "Google Scholar". Typing "sugar behavior children" into Google Scholar immediately returns relevant results, with the most recent studies first. The first link is a meta-study debunking the sugar-hyperactivity myth. Of course not all students are trained to know the difference between good studies and bad studies, double-blind and proper controls, but at least with this search they're in the right ballpark for seeking truth, even if they end up in left field somewhere. Compared with a general Google search for "sugar behavior children", which does have both good and bad results on the first page, but the very first result is an author selling a book and a disease model of 'sugar sensitivity' to worried parents. Google Scholar is an excellent resource for any teacher, and a particularly important one to train our students to use in this information dense world.

Free Technology for Teachers is a great blog to follow for useful technology resources for the classroom regardless of your subject area, but one of the latest posts has a lot of resources for Social Studies teachers : 12 Resources All Social Studies Teachers Should Try . One of the suggestions is using Google Earth to explore places and settings for historical settings - I'd seen examples of that before but I didn't know Google Earth has the capability to put an overlay of a battle, building, or historical map. I spent a bit of time following links and ended up exploring Dachau for too long.

I'll let you explore the blog yourself, but if you're just interested in Google Earth you can download and install Google Earth here : http://earth.google.com/intl/en/download-earth-advanced.html , and you can download world war battle sites here : http://www.gearthhacks.com/userfiles.php?user=1698 .

Another resource that makes me think of Social Studies is the CBC archives : http://archives.cbc.ca/ . They have a teacher section ( http://archives.cbc.ca/for_teachers/ ). Keeping with the world war theme, I listened to a radio broadcast from April 7, 1945, a Canadian reporter gives an account of the atrocities from a camp Canadian troops captured the day before.

Pausing before a brick wall splattered with blood and brains, the CBC's Matthew Halton tells Canadians back home about the atrocities committed by the Nazis. A day after Canadian troops capture a Nazi camp near Zutphen, Netherlands, Halton visits the site. He describes a trail of "slime and abominable crime," reporting that the worst thing you've ever read in any account of Nazi atrocities was there: "I saw and I was sick."

Serendipitously four other possible Social Studies sites were tweeted in the past week. The history site for Veterans Affairs Canada (http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=history), the history of federal ridings (http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/HFER/HFER.asp) the Canadian Military History gateway (http://www.cmhg-phmc.gc.ca/html/index-eng.asp) and the Aboriginal Canada Portal (http://www.aboriginalcanada.gc.ca/acp/site.nsf/eng/ao04588.html). All are great resources, but similarly to the first topic I notice that the Canadian government seems to have settled on a site URL: ".gc.ca".
This brings up the possibility of directing students to include searches that specifically search the Canadian government's website for information using the "site:gc.ca" command on Google.

For example, what reliable information does our government provide on the Vietnam war? Google search site:.gc.ca vietnam war . I've found both the Canadian and American government site searches (.gc.ca & .gov respectively) give a lot of excellent scholarly and reliable information for students.

I couldn't leave without at least one technology tool devoted to science: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/. This is a wonderful flash demonstration showing relative sizes from a coffee bean to a carbon atom - scale is hard to grasp and this little tool does a great job of getting it across. Thanks to "A" in Bio12 for bringing it to my attention.

A NYT article titled "Teaching About Web Includes Troublesome Parts", and a blog article "Oh my! Twitter makes history for Google search" commenting on the fact that the Library of Congress is going to archive every public Twitter comment made, right back to its inception in 2006, and Google is also going to make all comments searchable. As an archive for history and posterity, there is a wealth of data.

I remember when it was announced that ice was found on Mars. How was this news first announced? TV, Newspaper, or blog? None of the above - it was tweeted from the Twitter account of the Mars Phoenix Lander directly (sadly, the little guy seems to have died). From breaking news to marriage proposals, our collective Tweets are being saved for posterity. (And if you're not on Twitter why not start now?).
Regards,

Ron Neufeld

Canada's Best Boarding School

JayCut, Margaret Atwood still alive, and some crazy

2010-04-07T21:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Colleagues,

First a new tool for student video projects, Margaret Atwood, science / math video links, and some news stories.

The neat new tool is JayCut, a free online video editor that offers the ability to export the videos to YouTube or download directly in different formats. I have found video projects, particularly screencasting, to be a useful addition to the regular types of projects I assign. Not only are students picking up some valuable secondary technology skills, but I often find that students who have have to show that they understand a topic via video understand it better than those that just write about it. The difficulties with plagiarism and students copying the work of other students is also discouraged quite naturally - if you're forced to explain a concept with your own voice and in your own words it doesn't really matter if you got the information from your textbook or another student - you still have to learn it.

How does something like JayCut help? One of the significant difficulties I have with projects that are based on a technology is my own ignorance when facing the multiple different editors and laptops that students bring to class. Windows comes with its own video editing software, and so do Macs. I could force the students all to use Windows Movie Maker, software that's installed on the school computers, but that would punish those students with Macs as their ability to work on the project during prep would be limited. Something like JayCut gives everyone, from teacher to student, a common platform to work and edit their projects. Students could even share an account to collaborate during prep or otherwise separated by time and space. For trouble-shooting it also gives the teacher a common platform to become familiar with. Now if a student has problems using a unique video editing program, I tell them to put it into JayCut and I'll help them from there. There are some limitations, such as a maximum video length of 30minutes. Oh, and speaking of Macs, here's a completely unrelated vid on how to make an iPad float. Now, I need to convince my dept. head that an iPad is essential for my classroom and charge it to the science department....

In terms of building a PLN, I noticed that Margaret Atwood has become One Of Us; she's on Twitter. There's a recent article "How I learned to love Twitter" which helps explain how being part of Twitter is about being part of and developing a community. I remember reading Margaret Atwood when I was in school. At the time I thought she was one of those dead Canadian authors. Apparently I was wrong. The ability to observe (and possibly interact with) the authors of books under discussion seems an intriguing development, completely aside from Twitter's value as pro-d resource.

For those in Math or Science I would recommend checking out Khan Academy; a comprehensive set of YouTube videos on Math, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, arranged by topic. (The vision of the author is to provide high quality educational instruction anywhere in the world, for free.)

Lastly, some newsyish items that are related to education and to technology. (By technology, I mean I read about it online and it caught my outrage long enough to pay attention. That's a significant selection bias.)

A student in Mississippi (Constance McMillen of Itawamba Agricultural High School) wished to take her date to the prom, but there was a little snag. Her date was of the same gender, which was against school policy. This request was denied, and Constance was also told that if they arrived separately but danced together they'd be thrown out. Oh, and girls aren't allowed to wear tuxedo's either. You can check out the story here, and a Facebook fan page here. But wait! It doesn't end there. Apparently, feeling pressure afterwards, the school did decide to hold the prom. Except that it is looking like it was a decoy prom, that only Constance and a few other (presumably also less popular) students were invited to, while the 'real prom' was held somewhere else. It's not confirmed that the school officials were involved in the deception...but knowing what's involved in planning any event with students it would be difficult to defend the position that they did not. And the historical parallels alone...

Secondly item - I made the mistake of going to Fox News 'health' section (in my defense I found that the health section of USA Today was blocked by our proxy, and I wanted to check if it was all news sites, or just some), and I found this: Sex Education Could Mean Charges for Teachers. The logic is thus: teaching about contraception encourages sex, minors are not allowed to have sex, therefore teachers who teach about contraception are guilty of sexual assault. This is the opinion of a district attorney. Really really.

Regards,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Spying, Did You Know, Blogging, TED and PLN

2010-04-07T08:38:00.001-07:00

Dear Colleagues,

You've probably already heard about the school that's facing some criticism for spying on its students while they were in the privacy of their own home. If you hadn't, apparently they embedded the ability into the students' laptop to turn the webcam on and off remotely - http://education.change.org/blog/view/school_uses_laptops_to_peer_into_students_bedrooms.

A new "Did You Know 4.0" for Sept 2009 (numbers and references are to the U.S.) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8, as well there is "An Open Letter to Educators" from YouTube - A rant about institutionalized education that's been pinging around the blogosphere - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2PGGeTOA4 .

For those of you with an iPhone or iPod Touch - Top educational apps for iPhone / iPod Touch - http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2010/03/01/top-10-education-apps-for-ipod-touch-and-iphone/ .

An article on why teachers should blog - http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-teachers-should-blog.html. I would add that it indirectly presents an excellent case of why students should blog as well, and the last article is "Is Internet access a civil right" - http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2010/02/yes-internet-access-is-civil-right.html.

For a 'last resource', a video from TED. If you have not, as a teacher, investigated TED, you should. TED is a small nonprofit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading", and invites interesting speakers to conferences and makes these speeches available online. The topics and ideas may be controversial, but always thought provoking and interesting. My latest favorite directly addresses the interplay of science and ethics and defends the idea of objective moral standards - http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html - worth the 23min.

If your classes include any kind of philosophy or discussion component, check out TED if you haven't already.

Of course, I suspect the indirect conclusion at least some people will take from this email is "Ron either has far too much time or should probably should stop wasting his time on the Internet". That's probably true, but then this email wouldn't have a point, so I'll ignore it. The key point I would like to make is that I did not spend any time 'hunting' for the TED video on ethics, or any time searching for interesting blog articles to post in this email. Each of these emails is a demonstration of the power of a PLN, or Personal Learning Network. Rather than using a search engine such as Google to find resources, a good PLN brings filtered resources to you directly. There is so much content produced every hour, let alone every day, that despite Google's best efforts often good resources slip by, but at the same time actually spending time searching for these resources would be a relatively inefficient expenditure of time.

If it wasn't for a PLN I wouldn't have known to search for "Sam Harris Morality Ethics" on Google to even find his talk, and there's no guarantee that even if I did that it would be within the first few search pages.

Although searching, and knowing how to search, is still a useful skill for seeking specific resources, a PLN leverages serendipity. There are a lot of people spending a small amount of time talking about their passions, whether that's on their blog, or Twitter, or YouTube channel. Once you do find someone that knows what they are talking about (for me that tends to be teachers, scientists, and authors) there are a variety of ways to add them to your PLN. In many cases this can be subscribing to their blog, Twitter feed, or equivalent, and getting an email when they post something new. Since you already have determined they provide quality content, this provides a resource that's often more efficient than searching through the mounds of irrelevancy present in a search engine. As a system, since pushes sources you've selected directly, it can be used, saved, or ignored.

Even email, however, can become unwieldy. I follow 75 separate blogs, 53 people on Twitter, and 80 video uploaders on YouTube. Even with email notifications, this quickly becomes unworkable - there's no way I can keep up with every post, nor do I want to. I want the PLN to work for me, and not against me in terms of my (usually insufficient) time.

To make sense of it all, many of these sources incorporate an "RSS feed". Rather than waiting for someone to load the website, the RSS feed allows people to pull the content to them, using a program or secondary website. The end result is that I don't read 75 separate blogs. I scan my feed reader (Google Reader in this case) for the current selection of new articles since the last time I scanned. Most I skip as either uninteresting, not useful to me personally, and only check out the few that apply to me. If I see a useful resource for next year I can bookmark it (Chem 11, Gas Laws, Funny), if I notice something for someone else I paste it into a draft email for staff. It provides new ideas and resources every day, tailored to my interests, but incorporates the possibility I'll encounter something I'd never have thought of. The best part is that beyond discovering the resources in the first place, I don't actually have to do anything. I have it set up to load as my homepage when I start Fire Fox, so if there is anything interesting, I'll see it eventually. A little bit of useful Pro-D every day, rather than a few days at a conference once a year where I don't have a chance to preview the content, has been the most efficient Pro-D I've ever experienced.

I won't get into the specifics of setting up a feed reader, creating a PLN, or the details of RSS feeds (although I will in the future). If you're interested, there is loads of information online for the self-starters. If you'd like to have a look at setting up a simple PLN, or just following a few blogs, please come and have a chat. It's quite easy to do, and can be made to be very unobtrusive. I'm in the library again this week :)

Regards,

Ron

Bullying, online instruction, and The Virtual Revolution

2010-02-24T16:49:00.000-08:00

Lest someone accuse me of using the extra time to do something unproductive, like writing reports, I've committed to re-starting my Pro-D emails while I'm sitting in Lisa's office. Lonely. Waiting for someone to ask me a question (although thanks to Paul & Harold for at least pretending to need help). Either I'll introduce enough ideas that people will start creating problems, or someone will come and see me just to reduce the clutter in their Inbox. Either way; win/win. (Does anybody actually ever try for a win/lose? "Most Obvious Concept of the Decade" goes to....)

First up is a blog article titled "Facebook, Privacy and Cyber bullying" on the social pressures that exist with social media. I found it interesting in and of itself, but more importantly introduced me to a book "Letters to a Bullied Girl", which seems a fascinating collection of letters of letters by both the bully and the bullied. I've asked Eileen to get it for the library - excerpts can be read in the Amazon link above.

Secondly, in the area of research this study found that classes with an online learning component (whether completely online, or blended with a regular classroom) on average produced stronger results than classes with face-to-face instruction as the sole instructional type. My first thought imagined a classroom of children, learning without teachers; a future where a teacher was as necessary as the liftman.

Second and third thoughts seemed to suggest otherwise. Reading more closely suggested that blended classes, that used both online and face-to-face interaction, performed the same as purely online courses, but both are taught by professional teachers. The study makes the point that essentially the instructor made more of a difference as a variable when comparing these two scenarios. I view this positively; when choosing between online or blended courses it's the teacher that still makes the real difference. (Of course, I couldn't find any comparison's to boarding schools, which would be yet another relevant detail for us.) Nor were these online or blended classrooms static environments of delivered content - in each case there is a teacher providing resources, teaching, creating and guiding. For all those tirelessly putting in the time and effort necessary to create those Moodle sites, and provide online interaction for your students, your time is being well spent. That's always nice to know.

It's a big report, and I've only skimmed/scratched the surface. Share what you think here or here.

And in other news - strong traditional literacy skills has been correlated positively with phone texting. Even my students had a hard time believing that one. Maybe I should be buying Ciara her first phone?

Thirdly, the comment was made today about how well our students were connected digitally; to their home, to each other, and other extended networks during their recent trip. While some schools are banning social media, and other modern tools in the classroom, the correlation between online study and improved results suggests this is not only the future of education, but perhaps also its foundation. Once we had static textbooks. Although some students did choose to interact, the writing scrawled inside and on the edge was never terribly unique or educational. Now we have textbooks - with accompanying online problems and text, videos, sound, and accompanying forums where students can discuss with other students some of the problems and difficulties with the subject. Where these are absent, students expect similar teacher-created resources, whether on Moodle, WebCT, or just a class in Facebook.

It's going to be an interesting decade.

The BBC has recently broadcast a new documentary called "The Virtual Revolution" - billed as an open and collaborative documentary. They've made available their own media for re-use through a permissive license, and overall it appears interesting and comprehensive. I've only seen some sections, and my main critique is it assumes that its audience hasn't heard of the internet; the "gee whiz" factor can be overdone. It's worth a look though, and they have provided a lot of the content online.

I hope there was something here that piqued your interest. If not, this last tidbit that floated past my email. Forget the issue about dress - parents creating and/or participating in a Facebook protest about a school? Extrapolate that to the next generation, once our connected students become even more connected parents.

And finally, just for a laugh, a Professor that absolutely does not want anyone bringing laptops or cell phones to class.

Regards,

Ron

The Back Channel - Power shift

2009-10-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

A somewhat disturbing report on the growing power of the audience.

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/10/09/how-speakers-should-integrate-social-into-presentations/

We have less to worry about than those at educational conferences (our school bans cell phones from the classroom - although I'm sure surreptitious texting still occurs), but the ability of students to communicate with each other is going to grow - and it's becoming less and less intrusive every year.

I'm thinking of encouraging a back channel now, perhaps through a classroom Ning, that I can observe and students can post comments to as a form of feedback. Encourage it as a positive tool before it grows into a virtual heckling device.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Activated Complex - Demonstration

2009-10-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

Chemistry video for Reaction Kinetics: activated complex.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Technology Training - What's the point?

2009-08-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

If excellent teacher's can teach without technology, what's the point of technology training?

Newspapers didn't appear to see it coming - who really could imagine people writing for free, and then attracting enough readers to hurt newspapers? Blogs offered a way that anyone could voice their opinion, and while the criticism that 'everyone' means that the bulk of blogs are inadequate, self-indulgent or unprofessional may be true, it misses the point entirely. People don't read all blogs, they read a limited number. As an almost evolutionary process, the good (or at least the readable) are sorted from the bad, and the critique now looks a bit weak - the blogs people read frequently exceed the quality of newspaper articles in knowledge, depth, understanding or entertainment. Unlike newspapers, blogs also allow the readership to comment, inform, correct and even chastise the author. This is not arguing that blogs are "better" either. Blogs simply out-compete newspapers in many traditional newspaper niches where it matters - readers.

This has a lot to do with education. When I started teaching schools still required many traditional teaching supplies: textbooks, pens, paper, chalkboard, desks, etc. The generational difference between teachers seemed one of form rather than function - I kept my grades, lesson plans, lessons and notes on a computer, other teachers used planners, agendas, and binders. We were still, however, doing the 'same thing' in many respects. The new environment, however, is new in function as well as form. Seven million (full text) books are available through Google Books. Wikipedia is the world's largest, and most current, encyclopedia. iTunes has iTunes U and YouTube has YouTube Edu, both of which offer lectures by professors. In many cases textbooks no longer need to be purchased for class. Films, examples, and demos can be viewed without a video or DVD, and for free. The quality can be equal to (or superior) to purchased items in many areas. Alternative lectures of the topics I'm covering in class are widely and freely available. Facebook, Myspace, and now Twitter have changed how we share, communicate and collaborate.

Experimenting with videos and digitizing class notes creating some video's of class topics has made for some interesting insights.

For example, some YouTube author has created a video entitled Parts of the Brain. It's not great, and is mostly just a dry re-statement of the parts with a diagram to show where the parts are located. Despite that, they've received a modest number of views (2000+), and some favorable comments. The conclusion to this anecdote is not that we should be providing/creating YouTube videos to our students. The conclusion is that soon, if not already, there will be available to our students resources that specifically engage them, as a unique individual, to learn a particular topic. One student commented "Thank you so much for being the kind of instructor that I'm paying for and NOT RECEIVING!!!", which highlights the issue directly. Although the videos may not be good, they did meet the needs of specific individual students. Given the ever-expanding amount of resources available, at some point resources that cater to an individual's learning style will be easily available. Using generalized teaching methods geared to a 'class' seem inadequate. As the encounter between blogs and newspapers demonstrated, people prefer to choose what works for them, rather than accepting what works for most.

So what, exactly, am I providing in the classroom that's not available elsewhere for free?

Many students walk into school with an impressive amount of computing power. When helping a student after class we had a disagreement about what I had taught. She consulted her iPhone, had the class notes downloaded and double-checked. She also had the review website I had suggested bookmarked, as well as several educational videos. Yet, with this impressive demonstration of resources, she was sitting on a couch in the common room, working over chemistry problems with her teacher, in her free time. No amount of Twitter, email, or virtual resources is enough to replace the basic need for a teacher/student mentor relationship.

While blogs may be causing problems for the New York Times, some magazines that have embraced the new technology (Discover, Seed) are flourishing. It appears to me that the NYT used the web as an extension of their newspaper, but Discover and Seed used blogs themselves to offer something different from their magazine. I don't know if it will work in the long run, but in the short run it has been much more successful.

New technology doesn't replace teachers, but it does shift how we might think about teaching. It seems that many of the teaching methods I still use, and was taught, were invented in a time when the student environment was resource poor. Much like the NYT, simply shifting what we do on paper to doing the same thing with technology is only one evolutionary step. Of more pressing importance is how to change the nature of teaching itself so that it keeps what still works, and adapts what does not to the new environment. For example, one twitter user pointed me to an article in which a college professor no longer gives lectures (no link, sorry). All of the class time is devoted to giving extra help and tutorial help, going over common mistakes, or hands-on learning opportunities. Rather than assigned homework, lectures are assigned, so that students are expected to show up having listened and made notes on the next days topic. As an adaptation to a resource rich environment, this seems intriguing. Unfortunately, as with all adaptations, whether or not it will be ultimately successful is uncertain.

An online poll asked "Can a teacher be a good teacher without using technology?". I think it unsurprising that the majority answered "Yes". The purest form of university I've ever heard defined is as a log, with a teacher at one end, and a student at the other. The follow-up question, “Is a teacher, who is not using technology (computer, internet, etc.) doing his or her job?” resulted in a rather emphatic "No".

If I am not providing my students with resources they can easily access, and if I'm not providing a learning environment where individualized resources from outside are encouraged and utilized, I am not serving the needs of my students. By today's standards, I risk becoming the New York Times - not quite good enough. The environment has changed enough, particularly in today's economic climate, that what schools and teachers evolution will eliminate is not entirely clear. It is never enough to be the best, as what's 'best' depends on the environment, a variable that appears to change more quickly with each passing year.

We have started a technology initiative, and I was compared (favorably I think) to a Bulldog in terms of herding it along. I thought a bit of explanation might be in order. The purpose of the initiative is not to learn a 'thing', like a tablet, a specific set of programs that can improve what we do in the classroom, or even new teaching methods. Its purpose is to take excellent teachers, and help create more familiarity with the environment, and provide more opportunities to learn technology. If this means that no new technology 'things' are used in the classroom, then that's fine. Being able to critically assess and experiment with new technology - adjust to the changing environment, as it were - will be more important in the long run than simply learning a new 'thing'.

Two quotes from Tom Whitby from Twitter:

"I have tunnel vision when I do tech training. I apprch it with 1 Ques: How can this help kids learn? If I can't use it I don't learn it."

"If teachers employ the technology to teach there would be less of a need to teach technology. "

While there are a great many resources out there and a great many excellent teachers with tips on how to use those resources, I do not see a consensus or agreement on what approaches are necessarily 'good'. I certainly can't claim that I've discovered any amazing way to help students learn more, or faster. The more of us there are looking, collaborating, testing and experimenting, however, the better the chance the environment can be harnessed rather than just waiting to see what evolution does. As is common with a changing environment, there seems to be a great many ideas about how to best capitalize the new resources, and it's certain that a great many of them will turn out to be wrong in addition to a great many of the traditional resources and methods. If there's one thing biologists know about evolution, it's that it's not very kind to the individual species participating. Unlike organisms, however, we have the advantage of being a bit more Lamarkian about this process, borrowing, adapting, and changing on the fly as successful strategies are proven. If you're not, however, learning the technology you don't have that advantage - and are subject to a more Darwinian form of elimination.

And that's the reason I think technology training is a serious issue.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Just 13 things - Tablet specific

2009-07-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

Five things to try on your HP 2730p tablet. (Rather specific I know, but there are reasons.)

9.) Play games.

The best way to get used to the pen is to do something fun. The games section has “Inkball”, which is mildly amusing (I ended up playing it for a ½ hour, but I’m also easily amused).

10.) Check out the Microsoft Experience Pack for Tablet PC (located in “All Programs” after you hit the Start button). There’s Ink Art, Ink Crossword, and the “Snipping Tool”. The snipping tool actually quite useful, I use it to take ‘clips’ of articles or pictures I’m reading and stick them into OneNote 2007 if I’m doing research.

11.) Download your own “Experience Pack”. As an operating system, XP is fairly old. As a result, there is a whole whack of resources that have been created for it, that you can download and install. Remember, to install anything, you will need to be logged in as the Admin user on your tablet.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/tabletpc.mspx and take a look at what’s available. There’s art tools, a drawing animator, a physics illustrator, a bunch of games, a Music Composition tool, and a bunch more. My personal favourite is the “My Font Tool”, which allows you to make your own font – in your own handwriting! I managed to fool my Bio12 class for a week that I finally learned how to write in a straight line by preparing some notes in “Neufeld Font” on the Smartboard.

12.) Explore all the buttons and settings.

When I got my first laptop, I noticed that whenever I was typing, occasionally the mouse would ‘jump’ around and I’d end up typing in the middle of a previous sentence without realizing it. This was frustrating, and I thought my laptop was defective until I finally found the culprit – my large thumbs. While typing my thumbs would hit the Touchpad.

If this happens to you, there is a way to shut off the touch pad when you’re not using it. Press the Function key located on the bottom left:

And then press the F5 key at the same time, located at the very top leftish:

The light above the F5 key should turn on, and be amber in colour. This is to remind you that the Touchpad is off. Since you have a pen, you essentially already have a mouse, and don’t need a Touchpad unless you prefer it. I hate the touchpad with a passion usually displayed by two year olds towards their vegetables. To turn it back on again, hit the same key combination (fn + F5) again, and the amber indicator light should shut off.

13.) Turn on the light.

Lastly, I don’t know if you noticed, but your laptop comes with a light to illuminate your keyboard at night. I think it’s kind of unnecessary and gimmicky (and therefore kind of cool), but in case you haven’t noticed it, press the little square button at the top of your screen as indicated. The light should pop out, and illuminate your keyboard. Just push the light back in to shut it off (I have no idea how quickly this drains the battery – I assume relatively quickly).

I thought that might be of use to some of you – it took me awhile to figure it out. I still haven’t found the off control for the nub (labelled “Pointstick” in the diagram), so if anyone knows how to shut it off, let me know.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Just 8 Things

2009-07-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

5.) Develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN)

One of terms bandied about with respect to professional development and teachers is the concept of the PLN, or Personal Learning Network. Although it includes your traditional learning network of friends, collegues, and acquantances with whom you share ideas, a PLN also incorporates web media and especially social networking with things such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, wikis etc. What makes it so powerful is now you can be connected not only locally, but globally with colleagues who share with you common interests and ideas, but also in diverse settings and with different challenges. The breadth of specialized knowledge, relevant to you, available is what makes a PLN so special. Developing a PLN can take many forms. The first, if you've started reading blogs, you're already familiar with. Seeking a collection of relevant and interesting blogs that offer useful advice is a good first step in developing a PLN. Creating your own blog, and then keeping it regularly updated, takes time and patience, but can be part of the process as well. When writing your thoughts and ideas you change the participatory pathway so that you are contributing, as well as taking, from the flow of ideas. Whether or not someone reads your blog is almost beside the point: putting your ideas and thoughts in a public forum for critique carries many of the same benefits of recording a journal. If writing a blog seems like too much, the vast majority of blogs also offer the ability to comment and give feedback to the author. Use this feature.

Blogs themselves, as previously mentioned, are not the entire story when it comes to PLN's. When it comes to social networking, I'm going to start with Twitter.

6.) Join Twitter - http://twitter.com/, Sign up for an account, Follow me at http://www.twitter.com/neufeld by clicking the Follow button on my page, go to Twitter4Teachers and look for some other helpful people to add to your PLN. That's really all there is to it, if you'd rather stop reading.

When it comes to PLN, it's hard to explain why, exactly, twitter is so useful. When collecting useful blogs for advice, it was like dipping into a stream of knowledge. When I first tried twitter, I 'followed' a few people, but didn't see much benefit or point. People 'tweeted' about what they were having for dinner or other irrelevant bits of personal material. Then I found a couple of sites that listed teachers who tweet. Rather than a gentle stream of knowledge, it was akin to looking down the end of a fire hose and wondering where the water was, and then having it blast into your face. The person I have to credit for this introduction is Grant Potter who taught a pro-d course on Twitter I attended.

Frankly, if you do nothing else, join Twitter. It's relatively new, and given that I don't know if something newer and better will come along, but I do know I've accumulated more useful resources in a few months of Twitter than I accumulated in years of searching and using things like Google. Twitter is ultimately a very simple tool for cooperation. I must also say, for awhile, you will believe that it's the stupidest and most useless thing on the Internet. That's normal and common. Just keep at it, and you will be assimilated.

First, some links to give an overview: Nine Reasons to Twitter in School, an article trying to explain why it's not a waste of time, Can we use Twitter for Educational Activities, 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the College Classroom, Twitter in Plain English, The Twitter Song, and even primary schools in England are considering teaching twitter and wikipedia as essential new tools.

So, what exactly is Twitter? It's a form of microblogging ("micro" = small, "blogging" = we already covered). Even if you haven't text-messaged anyone yourself, you are probably vaguely aware that your students do that. Twitter is simply a method by which you can send text messages (140 characters max). The difference between regular text messaging and Twitter, is that you're not text messaging any particular person, and you can message not only from your phone, but also your computer, and a record of your messages (called "tweets") are kept in your Twitter profile online (making twitter a searchable database as well as a texting service). If anyone "follows" your Twitter profile, they will automatically be messaged when ever you send a new tweet, and vice verse. As well, you're not limited to text, but can send links, photos, audio clips.

Although it sounds much more restrictive than regular blogging, the restrictive nature usually makes microblogging more topical, and more useful. I mean really, how many people are still reading this email/blog? I've gone on and on, and in a typical busy school year who really has the time to read all of that, let alone write it? Twitter forces people to be succint, and communicate only the most critical bits.

This is, of course, if you are following what I consider 'good tweeters'. Twitter itself doesn't seem to really help this, as the question it offers at the top of the entry box is "What are you doing?". As an example of such, I did find a twitter user who tweeted he was excited about having prawns for dinner, then he tweeted about how many prawns he ate, and how good they tasted, and lastly he tweeted about how sick he felt, and how he shouldn't have eaten those prawns. Unless you're his Mom, I rather suspect this isn't all that interesting to anybody. If you're not finding interesting stuff on Twitter, stop following The Prawn People.

There are a few people I follow who do offer tidbits of their life, like Adam Savage and Grant Imahara from the Mythbusters. Their life sometimes seems a tad more interesting than mine, and they often tweet pictures from the set and updates on what new episode they're working on.

Beyond those, however, I follow a number of people. Here are some of those that I've found most valuable.

http://www.twitter.com/grantpotter - Useful Web 2.0 resources, commentary
http://twitter.com/sanmccarron - Science teaching resources
http://twitter.com/ChemEdLinks - Chemistry and Web 2.0 resources
http://twitter.com/MySMARTSpaces - SmartBoard resources, UK based

Which brings me to:

7.) Find some Twitter friends to follow!

Best place to start is Twitter4Teachers, which lists teachers that tweet by subject area. As well, I have found 515 Scientific Twitter Friends useful too. Once you begin, you will find there is a rapidly expanding kit of resources for the tweeting teacher, particularly as we ‘follow’ each other. As a group of colleagues, when I find a useful link, tool, or idea, the only real method I currently have to share it is to email the entire faculty. This clutters up your inboxes, and is probably considered spam by many. If, however, my colleagues and I were all part of a Twitter group, I could tweet the link, tool or idea, where it’s easily ignored by those that aren’t interested, but picked up by those that are, cutting across barriers such as time, space, and (most formidable of all), department.

8.) Develop your tweeting skills

If you've started using Twitter, and want more to explore, work your way through the Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher.

There is a lot I haven't covered, how to personalize your page, useful Twitter tools, etc, but if you've started you'll find a plethora of links to help you.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Just 4 Things

2009-07-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

Part two of a theoretically infinite series, a couple more things you can do before classes start in September. Pick and choose or ignore. If you're wondering about the numbering, read the previous article.

3.) Listen to Podcasts.

If actually reading seems like too much work, then a perfect alternative is podcasting. A podcast is equivalent to a radio show that you can download onto your computer, and many portable devices such as iPods, and listen whenever and wherever you like. With the right equipment (i.e. a computer and a microphone and/or video camera) anyone can become a podcaster, and as a result there are many podcasts and multiple topics to choose from.

For a quick overview, try Podcasting in Plain English. Actually, going through the "Plain English" video series would make its own complete pro-d course.

So, download iTunes and install it (if you don't have it already), and click on "Podcasts". There are podcasts for keeping up with subject areas (aka Chemistry , and The Introduction to English Learning Podcasts has a good introduction to podcasts, and links to several podcasts for English teachers and students) and educational pro-d, but of particular use can be podcasts for students. A ridiculous amount of our students have an iPod and seem to enjoy using them - much to our chagrin sometimes. Rather than fighting this very expensive and versatile piece of equipment, finding ways to use may be more productive. Supplementary or assignment material for class as a podcast can then be downloaded and listened to in the same way as their favorite music. I was first introduced to this by a student who had found a series of biology lectures as a podcast (I didn't get the link, sorry), that corresponded to the anatomy lectures for Biology 12. Whether or not the school network allows students to connect to the iTunes store to receive podcasts, many teachers have their own private Internet connections, from which they can download content and then make it available at school, whether through Moodle or another medium. A reasonable 'first list' is at the Podcast Awards, and it includes a section devoted to education.

Podcasting essentially democratized audio content, with all the benefits and drawbacks that this implies. The popularity of blogging, which turned anyone into an online news commentator, caught the media establishment sleeping at the wheel (heard of any newspapers going out of business lately?), and the industry is trying not to make the same mistake with podcasting, which lets nearly anyone "broadcast" on the Internet. Traditional media have embraced podcasting, and have been quick to adopt it as well. CBC has a large number of podcasts, as does Scientific American, plus there's some great comedy as well. Most 'formal' news and entertainment organizations now have some kind of free content available through podcasts.

Of particular use is podcasts for second-language learners, whether that's ESL, French, Spanish, Mandarin or German. In addition to regular programs in other languages (i.e. the CBC has numerous French podcasts), simply typing "Learn French by Podcast" into a web search engine or the iTunes store, and numerous free programs pop up. The BBC has, for example, a 'learn Spanish' section that includes a series of podcasts (actually the BBC has a similar series for several languages).

Much like creating your own blog, you can create your own podcast. Far from being simply a mode of entertainment, podcasts now present a wealth of educational material, and can be structured to meet an individual students' learning style and desires. The ability to repeat a concept or a lesson, critical for those IEP students, allows significant opportunities for repeated reinforcement and review. Instructors are podcasting specific ideas and constructs, broken into manageable chunks and (like all electronic media) are potentially available year after year, everywhere your students are.

4.) Create your own podcast.

If you need something done right, and specific to your needs, you sometimes have to do it yourself. Whether it's podcasting lectures, or specific items for learning or discussion, or even a guest lecturers talk, podcasting can be as easy as blogging.

When podcasting, it is essential to have good material. Don't worry overmuch about your style or delivery - presenting quality material is more important than production values. There is a problem with copyright if (for example) you wish to podcast a guest lecturer or speaker. A copyright waiver form would be an essential part of doing so. Our school doesn't have an official one yet, but I use a printed version from the Creative Commons when necessary. If you are going to publish someone else's work, you will need their permission, in some form.

There are some specific technical requirements. Although blogging just requires a computer and internet connection, podcasting needs audio equipment. There is the Audacity software (free and open source) which can record podcasts and convert them into mp3 files. Even if your laptop comes with a microphone, buy a separate one. A USB microphone is usually pretty cheap, and the increase in sound quality is substantial - I've found wireless ones for under a hundred dollars on sale, which gives the added ability to record without wires and allows you to move about a classroom. After that it needs to be uploaded online. If it's not possible to host it at your school site, type "Free Podcast hosting" into Google and numerous resources will appear.

Lastly, an RSS feed (more on those in a later article) is needed to stream the podcast. This is what makes a podcast different from simply hosting an audio file - the RSS feed updates potential listeners that a new podcast is ready. This can be as simple as creating a blog, and then linking to the podcast in the blog, as blogs often have their own RSS feeds.

At that point you have a podcast. Getting it into iTunes is another step (if you so desire), but not one I am in any way an expert. Check out Apple itself on how to do it generally, or this article on how to use Google's free blogging service to set up the podcast feed for iTunes.

So, essentially thus far, pro-d this summer is reading blogs on material you already like, and listening to content via podcasts you already enjoy. The next article will introduce the personal learning network.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Just 2 Things - Part I

2009-07-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

A major project kept me away from blogging for a long time - luckily that's slowly winding down. Part of that project involves a focus-year for professional development for our school on technology. If it seems odd that I'm blogging about the importance of reading blogs...this was also emailed to my colleagues. Hopefully I don't end up in somebody's permenant blacklist for spam.

This is for those teachers that would like a head start on their pro-d, before classes, marking, and the usual marathon starter gun goes off. Funnily, most of the things you can do as 'pro-d' also qualify as an enjoyable summer's afternoon, so in this series of blog posts I will very roughly outline a few suggestions. Pick and choose or ignore.

1.) Start Reading blogs.

Whether it's in education, or your own interests, simply becoming more familiar with the ever increasing blogosphere would be a great investment in time. There are is a blog for every interest, some of my personal favorites are Bad Astronomy, Pharyngula, Skepchick, and Skepticblog, all of which keep me loosely up to date on science and critical thinking and any Internet memes that happen to be flying about. And if a student asks me an off-the-wall question about the Moon Hoax, I might have a chance of answering it.

Educationally, the following is my current list of education-based blogs that I'm reading:

Of course, I haven't been doing this long enough for my list to necessarily be a good guide, but there are many other places for recommendations. Sylvia, from the Generation Yes blog published a list (Bookmark This!), and for science and critical thinking www.resurch.org is a wonderful list from the author of the SkepDad blog, and of course as previously mentioned Discover Magazine and Seed Media Group both host many quality science blogs.

I also have my own blog, which is either linked in this email, or you're reading this article in it. It contains such amazing advice I find I often have to hid it amid poor grammar, spelling and logic just to ensure Blogger isn't overrun with readers.

You may have noticed a particular theme running through my recommendations, vaguely along the lines of science-based resources. On the Internet, however, if you can think of a resource, somebody else has either invented it, or written about it. From the Blog "Making Teachers Nerdy", I found a much better list than my own: "Educational Blogs You Should Be Investigating", covering a wide variety of interests, plus 50 Must-Read Up and Coming Blogs by Teachers, and focusing on educational technology, check out 20+ Must-Read Education Technology Blogs. Beyond that, it would be useful if, having found some great blogs in your own subject area, share their recommendations here in the comments section for everyone else.

So, when your significant other mentions that some chore needs to be done, or certain relatives need visiting, you can slump your shoulders slightly and claim that you've already got some critical work to do for next year. And then snuggle up with your laptop/desktop and some good reads. My wife is probably far too busy to actually read my posts, so I should be able to still get away with this for some time yet.

2.) Write your own blog.

You didn't think blogs created themselves did you? And you don't think your own thoughts are important enough to publish? Nonsense. If everyone had that kind of attitude, the Web wouldn't be the kind of place it is today!

Seriously, even if you never intend to blog, investigating how it's done is useful in and of itself. I know of two people that write private blogs, viewable only by themselves, as it can never be 'found' in the house, and is accessible for writing anywhere there is an internet connection. I write a family blog with family photos that's only my immediate family can see. Whether you write for an audience of one or one million, or are even just exploring the process, set up an account and start.

There are many free alternatives for blogging, obviously I'm most familiar with Blogger, but there's also Live Journal and WordPress as two others that immediately come to my uninformed mind. Like always, somebody else has already created a great list of 40+ Free Blog Hosts.

Of course, I can't quite leave it at that without a word of warning. As will be true of anything that involves people putting content on the web, rather than just receiving content, use good judgement. As a rough guideline, if you wouldn't want to see it attributed to you on a public billboard, don't put it on the web.

Remember, nothing suggested is mandatory. If you find one blog with one article that was useful, you're good.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Laptop Survey

2009-07-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

This presentation was given to faculty by myself as part of a year-long exploration of technology and its future at our school. It does tend to focus on tablet computers heavily at one point, as it is the only type of laptop most teachers were unfamiliar with.

For the record.

This laptop presentation is not intended to outline a particular plan or point of view. It is intended to help give "informed consent" to what a future plan would involve. I will be happy with anything, but different choices will have a different impact on our school, and our technological environment.

The first point is that we are, practically speaking, already a laptop school. In Privett the vast majority of students already have laptops. Our students and their parents have already made the financial investment to provide this technology.

This means, if a teacher asked the class to bring their laptops, we would (at a minimum) have $20,000 worth of technology available. In one classroom.

Under our current system, however, we have little input and influence on what technology could be brought to the classroom, and therefore we are limited in our response to the technology.

Looking at laptops is not looking at new or cutting-edge technology. There have been multiple studies and examples of schools using laptops, and there is both research and a history. The results are fairly clear.

Many school and districts have given up on their laptops initiatives. The laptops prove to be too costly, underutilized, and even an impediment to learning. There are clear dangers in adopting a laptop policy.

There are, however, schools that have successfully adopted laptops. These students can demonstrate higher test scores, improved engagement in the material, more collaborative and experiential learning opportunities, as well as an improved emphasis on creativity. For some schools, these initiatives have clearly been worth the investment in both time and money.

So, what does this have to do with us, if we're talking about student learning? The #1 factor in whether a laptop program/policy is a success is teacher training. Any school that just hands laptops to students and teachers and expects 'the magic' to happen has guaranteed failure. Our focus must be on improving the students' learning, we want to plan ahead, and take this in small steps, but the first step we make has to include ensuring teachers are trained and comfortable with the technology first.

A key point is to understand that all laptops are essentially the same. They do the same things, but it is important to understand the differences. We are already a Windows PC school, but we could convert to Macs, or even introduce Tablet PCs. The prices you see are given to show a relative sense of proportion, and not necessarily the cost of an actual laptop we would introduce. Our criteria may be different. It does, however, give a sense. Macs are much more expensive than PCs, but are more durable. Windows PCs would require less training, and have more access to software and hardware. These are points to consider when you know what we want to get, but both types can do exactly the same things. The only option that actually fundamentally different is the Tablets. Tablets allow students and teachers to simply write, as we always have, but in conjunction with all the advantages of going digital. Tablets support current as well as future pedagogy.

To summarize, we are focusing on the teachers, as it is the teachers that will need to respond and lead the technology in the classroom. This does not mean that we must know more than the students, but it does mean that for such an initiative to be successful the teachers require the skills to respond to the technology brought to class. Currently we have a "Tower of Babel", which makes our response limited, and difficult to train for. Laptops are like languages. It doesn't matter if we decide to speak French or Spanish, but it will matter further down the road when we're trained to use a common language in our teaching.

Once you do have a common platform, there are some really neat things you can do. Laptop management software can allow a teacher to observe what each student is doing on his or her laptop. There are obvious classroom management abilities (such as returning to task students on Facebook), but that's only a small part of what's possible. A shy student, who does not want to admit to the class that he or she doesn't understand, can text message the teacher. The teacher can respond by message, or by drawing on the student's screen to show them what to do, to ultimately taking control of their computer and showing them directly. The teacher's screen can be broadcast to the entire class, or (if the majority of the class isn't confused about a problem) can broadcast another student's screen who is doing the work successfully. If there is an class test, specific applications and web sites can be blocked. If you want your students to write without a dictionary, you can force a standard text editor, or if they're writing an online test, you can block either key websites, or all websites except for the ones you wish access to. It can also become a collaborative space. In a "Think, Pair, Share" exercise, students can put their own thoughts onto a page. Then they can be put into groups (randomly and automatically if wished), and share a collaborative writing page. What one students types/writes on their Tablet is shared with the other members of the group, but not yet with the entire class. Then it can be broadened to the entire class. This does not replace discussion, but enhances the collaborative nature of a discussion. When the students walk away, they all have a duplicated set of all of their notes, and had a part in creating the groups common page. The need for a group 'secretary', who writes but does not participate, or for the students using time simply copying the secretary's work, is eliminated.

The potential here is enormous.

This section is just a few ideas that I've observed online, and either I have done, I want to try, or I have seen it done very well. The focus here is on the students participating in these task, this presentation doesn't even address the potentials in teachers participating (collaborative group teacher wiki on Pro-D anyone?).

Students blogging, as a concept, seems to have taken off in the past few years. Teachers are finding that when students are writing for an audience, whether that is a few of their classmates, their class, the school, or the entire world, they tend to become more engaged in the writing process. There is a difference in quality between an essay written to get a mark, and an essay that was written to be read.

We are all familiar with the most famous Wiki of all, Wikipedia, a place where strangers have collaborated to create the world's encyclopedia. Having students create a Wiki, whether to create a class web-page, textbook, or other class project, can track collaborative progress within a class, and allow collaboration across time as students contribute each year.

This example shows something I found quite interesting. These students are required to provide a major contribution, defined as providing a solution to a math question, including step-by-step instructions as to how the answer was arrived at. Not only does this demonstrate understanding, it provides a growing resource to other students.

More creative and collaborative assignments are not only possible, but increasingly necessary. The above picture is a screenshot of a protein synthesis screencast that was assigned in my biology class. The screencast contains unique drawings, is narrated in the students' voices, and is an expression of their creativity as well as their knowledge. Which students actually understand the material, and which do not, is readily apparently. As a bonus, future students will have a resource to help review protein synthesis explained in the words of other students. Compare that to a traditional poster assignment, where copied text and plagiarism is difficult to detect.

Immediate access to the Internet allows preparations outside of class, access to virtual environments, and better preparation for the future.

One of my previous students returned and complained about how much of his university prep involved online systems. Assignments, quizzes, and tests for many courses are all online, with no offline alternatives offered. While the argument that we should "do what universities do" is a poor one (our primary goal is to teach, which may or may not be the same as the university), we should ensure that our students are prepared for both online and offline learning environments. The first time a student writes an online test should not be on either a standardized government exam, or at university.

This screen serves as a stand-in for the multitude of websites that essentially offer high quality field trips. This particular site offers very detailed scans of the "Iceman". Particularly fascinating are the tattoos visible, which immediately piques student interest. What do they mean? Who was he? Traditional museums are putting many of their resources online as well, putting relevant and interesting material right at their fingertips.

This was a particular project I thought was interesting, and I included it as an idea of what you can do once you are comfortable with the tools and methods of the collaborative virtual environment. This teacher has the students creating a wiki about the Crusades, and are combining this project with Google Earth to provide a three dimensional feel for the subject. Wiki's can be created free if your school doesn't already allow a method to host one, and Google Earth is (of course), free as well, and it's providing an "experience" of the crusades that would be impossible with traditional teaching methods.

An online class management tool, such as Moodle, has been very useful. Ultimately it's a quick way to make a class webpage, but it comes with a variety of tools, such as creating wikis, uploading files, allowing students to submit assignments electronically (and hand them back electronically!), as well as just organising the links.

In terms of supporting IEPs, the text book is not only uploaded, it's also uploaded in a second format that can read the text aloud to students who require that service, and to any undiagnosed IEP students who find they simply learn more when they have that option. As well, I love that it puts the responsibility for missed classes squarely on the students. If a worksheet is missed, or notes are missing (or they forgot to take their textbook with them while they were gone), it's all there on Moodle.

There are so many applications online now, that I have started operating on the assumption that if I can think it, somebody out there has already made it, and has probably already made a free version (although sometimes you get what you pay for). The above app is a flash file that mimics a titration lab. While I would much prefer that a student actually get to use the glassware, sometimes that's impossible. Further, the student who would like to "re-do" the titration for review before a quiz or test can have the option of working through the procedure virtually, rather than just copying data out of the textbook as a practice problem.

Recalling what I mentioned previously about getting our students used to online testing, it also offers further advantages to the teacher. Certain responses (multiple choice, matching, short answer, etc) are machine marked, and tracked. Even for short and essay answer-type questions it's useful, as common mistakes can have detailed teacher responses copied and pasted to each student that made the same mistake. As well, once marked, the exam is available for study purposes (with feedback), and cannot be lost. There are some limitations with this type of testing, but there are some definite advantages as well.

While everyone is familiar with laptops in general, I often find that tablets are not commonly known, even within education. A tablet is essentially still 95% laptop, and everything you can do on a laptop, you can do on a tablet. The tablet functionality is that you can write on the screen, with a stylus (aka pen) or (on some of the newer models) your finger. In XP, Vista, and Windows 7 the ability to write directly within programs has been integrated into the operating system, as well as programs such as Microsoft Office. For a teacher, more than any other user, this is a critical improvement as it gives the computer almost all the advantages of paper, in addition to that of the laptop. Unfortunately Mac does not have a tablet edition, although rumors appear every year. I won't go into details of what tablets are and the different types, other than you can fold down the screen so that you can write on it directly with a special pen.

Using a tablet can be just like using any piece of paper. If your students hand in their essay's electronically, you can mark them just as you would actual paper documents. This feature is within MS word, although if you don't have a tablet the functionality is not present. The picture above is of MS OneNote, which is essentially a binder for collecting notes. I have found being able to draw diagrams and mind-mapping in meetings to be very useful - I used to take a piece of paper with me along with my laptop. Now I just open up my tablet, and type and write interchangeably. The handwriting recognition is getting quite good, and better in Windows 7. As well, even if all your notes are in your handwriting, you can still electronically search all your notes, as it will search both your handwritten and typewritten notes. I used to have 20 binders for school. I still have them, but after 2 years with my tablet, all of the needed info is on my computer, and the binders are gathering dust as my backups. Microsoft OneNote would make the perfect student binder.

Every notice that the introduction of computers increased the use of paper, rather than decreasing it? With the ability to write, actually reducing paper use become possible if that is a goal you wish to achieve. As a teacher I have assigned some "electronic only" assignments this year, in an attempt to reduce total paper consumption by marking them directly on the tablet. This takes some getting used to, and like all things gets smoother with practice. The amount of paper consumed by our school every year makes this feature particularly appealing.

The above is Microsoft Word 2007, and how it can be used to mark up a document. As you can see, the editing is very similar to marking up a piece of paper, and about as easy.

This is a rather silly picture, showing unhappy student with all of his binders for school (those really are all of his binders). All of that can be replaced by a single tablet, and a program such as OneNote. Imagine having both textbooks and binders in one place, as well as backed up! Train students to use the network for saving their work, and there are no more excuses. (Realistically, fewer excuses.)

This is just a picture of OneNote when I first started thinking about this presentation. As you can see, the ability to 'just write' allows the same flow of ideas as a piece of paper - you're no longer tied to the linear format of the glorified typewriter which is the laptop.

As collaboration and tablets are becoming more common, functionality in software is starting to catch up. OneNote (above) allows for two authors to write simultaneously. The red writing above is from one user on a tablet, while the typing is from another author on a desktop in another area.

All of these ideas and possibilities are interesting and have the potential to greatly increase efficiency and available resources and techniques, but it wall comes back to the focus on the teachers. Is there time for training? Is the administration behind it? There are many schools that have given up on their laptop programs, or where teachers have felt pressured to teach to teach with technology. There are many excellent teachers are teaching techniques that need nothing more than the student-teacher relationship. Any new technology, whether that's paper, a blackboard, or a tablet, should not replace good teaching practice - it should only enhance it. A key first step in this process is giving teachers the time and the training to fully investigate and learn the technology in order to see where it would be the most useful.

There is a lot of debate, with any laptop discussion, about what is "best". Windows PC? Mac? A tablet only comes as a Windows PC thus far, but even so this debate is largely artificial. All laptops can do whatever other laptops can do. Ultimately it doesn't matter if you go Windows PC or Mac. There are Mac enthusiasts who will talk at length about how a Mac reads your thoughts and does what you wish, and Windows PC users who love the billions of programs available. Truthfully, both are relatively easy to use, you can get programs that do what you wish on both. Rather than listening to your vendors, take a look at the skills of your teachers. What can they use, and what are they used to? Unless you have a faculty that is totally new to computing, building on an already existing foundation will save in the one area that really matters: training time.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Amplification

2009-03-20T09:35:00.001-07:00

Much of my focus lately has been on technology in the classroom, which is likely a result of our current school focus on determining what, and how much, technology the school should consider investing in for the future. We recently spent time discussing the issue as a faculty, and I'm going to use the space to reflect a little.

One major point that struck me, in listening to the reflections of others, is how difficult it is to communicate just how much technology can (and in many cases has) transformed teaching practice. It is not that technology just offers different types of assignments and a greater variety of resources, but that the very nature of interaction between teacher and student can change. A repeating source of concern with technology, which appears to have started with Socrates complaining books would ruin people's ability to memorize, is that technology will decrease human interaction. The new potential of the much touted "Web 2.0" is, however, in the amplification of interaction. Face-to-face, for teaching, is essential, but that interaction in the classroom for a traditional lecture is often unidirectional (teacher to student), with the chance to ask questions (student to teacher). It also tends to happen one student at a time.

Without changing the style of teaching, what would a traditional lecture in which the technology is embedded as a tool look like?

I already use a Smart Board for lectures, and a personal laptop. If the students all had a similar tools and were taking notes on (for example) an equilibrium problem involving ICE tables, it wouldn't look that much different to an outsider, other than the pen and paper being exchanged for pens & screens. (It's my imagination, I'm assuming they're all using tablets.)

In the lecture I'm setting up a particular equilibrium problem on the Smart Board. I have a wireless mic recording my lecture, and the Smart Board is combining the audio with video of the Smart Board for the two students who are away at a regatta (something I already do), and I'm also webcasting the presentation to a student stuck backstage during the musical rehersal. While the teacher workstation is doing this, my laptop is running classroom management software that shows me updated thumbnails of what each student is doing. Running alongside this is a messaging system that records text messages that the students are sending (via moodle or twitter) about the class. I notice after setting up the problem that Ron hasn't managed to get started, and walk over to check what's going on. A few text that they keep getting the wrong answer for the initial concentration, and wonder what they're doing wrong. Denny, who's finished, texts a possible reason (they've forgotten to divide by volume). Scott is consulting the class wiki that was started a few years ago, and is looking up another example with the warnings and caveat's that other students have written. I've finished with Ron, and I reveal two more practice problems on the board, and quickly flick through screens to ensure everyone's on track and notice that Bettyanne's used a completely different method to arrive at the solution. I flash her screen to the Smart Board as an illustration.

To an outsider, it really wouldn't look much different than what I do now. There's a lesson, some practice problems, students working on material, and a teacher wandering around teaching and assisting. The connections, however, have been amplified. Alongside the traditional 'hands-up' question/response, there are students connecting with each other (via messaging), connecting across time (via the wiki and recorded video notes), and across space (via the livecasting). The options available to the teacher have also amplified, from messaging, wikis, broadcasting, to quickly checking on struggling students and recognising and utilising students who've had some initial success. This is without even considering how laptops can transform the traditional lecture into doing anything different. The use of classroom management software gives me a bird's eye view of what everyone is doing, giving me quicker and more accurate feedback on how my lesson is going.

For all of this to work in the previous utopian vision, a lot of things have to already be present. A reliable IT infrastructure, and adequate teaching training for starters, but this vision must be contrasted with the dystopian alternatives. If technology is permitted to evolve, students will continue bringing their own tech to class, using them without teacher management or involvement, surfing the web and playing tetris between taking notes and texting their friends. Of course, we might feel forced to react to the potential for distraction, and ban all student tech from the classroom.

The Red Queen effect is writ large across this issue.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Resource List

Twitter
14 Twitter directories to find new friends
We Follow
Qwitter
Schools that twitter

Smart Board (Interactive Whiteboards)
How can children really benefit from using Interactive Whiteboards
Customized Jeopardy Games
SMART Board Revolution : A Revolution in Education
Blog - Smart Boards in the Classroom
Flash Games for the Classroom
Teachers Love Smart Boards
Starting to 'get' Smart Boards
New Notebook 10 Professional Development at Teacher Online Training
Podcast310: All a Twitter about Twitter: Micro-Blogging as a Professional Networking Tool by Beth Knittle (MASSCUE 2008)

Multimedia
eGames Generator

Subject Resources
Wheatgrass Placebo from Skepticblog
General Chemistry - UC Berkeley Webcast
Alphabet geometry : introduces geometry concepts to your students by relating them to something they're all familiar with, letters
Wiki-teacher - Wiki-Teacher is a forum for teachers to share their collective intelligence through their resources, insights, and practices.
Curriki - Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them.
Undersea eruptions near Tonga / Youtube
Virtual Field Trips
Biology in Motion
Understanding Science : How Science Really Works
Butterfly timelapse videos!
Redefining DNA: Darwin from the atom up
Academic Earth - online lectures

Classroom 2.0
Create Your Own Student-Friendly Search Engine with Google
What is Cloud Computing?
Microsoft DreamSpark : DreamSpark is simple, it's all about giving students Microsoft professional-level developer and design tools at no charge so you can chase your dreams and create the next big breakthrough in technology - or just get a head start on your career.
Blog Resource Apture
Moodle-izing
Using Social Networks Professionally
Please Sir, how do you re-tweet? - Twitter to be taught in UK primary schools

Articles
Dallas ISD records show school held 'cage fights'
Bill would combat 'nature deficit disorder' in school children - Stupid label, nice idea.
Warning over narcissistic pupils
Paying attention is a more important skill than you might think - and new evidence suggests it can be taught
Studies show children can complete treatment for peanut allergies and achieve long-term tolerance
What is the Point of Science Education?
The importance of stupidity in scientific research
Wireless Electricity
Your printer is spying on you
Playlist for grading
Fresh research showing the damage of filtering 'real world' technology
Learning Theories

Why Boarding School?

2009-03-14T15:13:00.000-07:00

I did not intend to teach, or houseparent, at a private boarding school. I fully expected to be teaching in the public school system, I believed (and still do believe) in good, well-funded public education, and honestly was only vaguely aware that private schools existed, let alone boarding schools. What little I did know came from old British novels and short stories, which were not very complimentary. It appeared boarding schools were used to "build character", through some sort of deprivation.

So, to say I took a job as a houseparent without really knowing what I was getting into, is a bit of an understatement.

Sending your child to a boarding school is weird. In this country, you'd have to put up with people wondering why you don't like your own children, and other such misconceptions just to consider it, so why would anyone do it in the first place?

Environment. When comparing private schools to public schools, after adjusting for socio-economic status the difference can be slight. Students don't just learn at school, and a supportive home environment is critical. As I often tell my students, we know where you live. Students not only see their teachers in class, but in their house, are overseen doing homework, while they`re hanging out, or just chatting before bedtime. The key difference is, I think, the sheer number of opportunities for learning. Students can ask questions during prep (their assigned homework time), and different teachers are on duty nearly every night. Their houseparents (those of us that live with the students), are often teachers as well. I have often had one of my students drop by my office late at night for some chemistry help.

Much of the debate over teaching, different methods, depth vs. breadth, or the use of technology, all centre on the student and improving their learning environment. There's a lot that goes on in the classroom, but there's even more that goes on in the evening. Whether it's discussing a movie we've just seen, swapping youtube vids & stories, or just hanging out, learning and educational opportunities are embedded throughout their environment. Even describing it makes it sound odd, because it's not "educational opportunities", it's simply people passionate about what they do, and sharing their interests. Students and teachers share a commonality of experience as well as proximity that goes beyond just being 'neighbours'.

To have the classroom end when the bell rings is restricting. While there are a lot of great ideas about technology and techniques to extend the classroom beyond its four walls, only boarding schools actually start out that way.

The question is not why would anyone want to go to boarding school. It`s once you know about it, why would anyone consider anything else?

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Weekly Resource List

Twitter
Twitter feed for NASA's Kepler.
Nearby Tweets

Smart Board (Interactive Whiteboards)
Billy the Smart board kid
Using the SMARTBoard to Support Science
Cobalt - Edusim
Smart Newsletters

Multimedia
Sumo Paint: Free online painting resource.

Subject Resources
Blogging from space: Waiting for night to come -- in another 45 minutes or so
TRANSCRIBE AND TRANSLATE A GENE
The ecological disaster that is dolphin safe tuna
Slanted Survey's & Statistics : Other than the fact it pushes a product, a neat lesson on how easy it is to get the data you want.
Ten Major Flaws of Evolution - A Refutation
Educational Resources from Science.gc.ca: Science and Technology for Canadians
NFB Cartoons for Kids
Iceman Photo Scan
A dead gene comes back to life in humans
Creative Spaces connects you with nine UK national museums and galleries

Classroom 2.0
Blogging can be a powerful tool when it comes to student performance and motivation.
Breaking the Technology Barrier: Using Technology in Education
Social Networking Workshop for Parents
Sketchcast: a new way to express yourself

Articles
"Cool Girls" show off their work: Club combines science and art; work displayed at Old Firehouse Art Center
Online networking 'harms health'
Late Work?
You don’t fatten pigs by weighing them . . .
Gr8T Quotes from #NAIS09
Student Fights Record of ‘Cyberbullying’
Signs of a Significant Disruption in the Traditional Textbook Model
Shhhh. Don't tell the students.
Sorting out the placebo effect in teen depression studies
Research: Covering Less Means Learning More
Attention Intervention: Digital Natives and the Myth of Multi-Tasking

Technology Integration Part II

2009-02-21T17:10:00.001-08:00

So, what do we want to do with the technology? Even before deciding what technology to pursue, defining some goals is essential. It's more of a restatement of what any teaching tool might do, but it's helpful as a reminder. I would like my technology to improve student engagement with the material, support collaborative learning to increase creativity and ownership of the material, make the process of teaching and learning more efficient, provide improved and diverse resources, give students the resources to take responsibility for their own learning and learning styles, and extend the classroom beyond the four walls and 50 minutes they're in class for the day. Oh, and it'd be nice if the technology could provide me with some personal professional development as well to learn all this new stuff.

Obviously I cheated a little. I only mentioned the goals I knew the technology was already delivering, although I have no idea what it will be capable of delivering tomorrow. Some room has to be made for just experimenting with new things, but what it can do right now is pretty amazing. Whether it's students creating wiki's, reflecting in on-line journals, or taking advantage of numerous resources for review, there exists numerous unique methods for students to engage in the material that would only be practically possible with computers. Right now I am exploring the use of wiki's. The ability to see previous versions of the wiki, and to track how many changes each student contributes is, in itself, enough to make it worth exploring.

Regardless of the process or technology, we should be focused on whether or not the students learn. Ensuring we ease the digital divide, and ensuring all students have a laptop is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

Preparing students for university is of particular concern, as of course I work at a school devoted to ensuring students enter the university of their choice. Many universities have adopted online course management systems (such as moodle or blackboard). In many cases this gives students more access and freedom in terms of course resources and assessment, but it also demands a higher level of responsibility. If your university professor decided to post an assignment online on Friday due Monday, and a student didn't log in all weekend, it's tough luck. The first time any student encounters such a system shouldn't be in first year university. Education has changed radically in the past 5 years, and there are new skills we need to pass onto our students.

Careful allocation of resources, both time and funding, are key. In a boarding school such as ours time especially can be important, as we don't get to have our students stay home in order to plan professional development days. On the other hand, we do have someone on staff who is devoted to training teachers in course software and technology (we're a smart board school, so that's pretty important). It's almost impossible to have too much professional development, and money and time restrictions ensure there is always something important we need to explore but haven't yet.

I've heard the meme, attributed to Jim Harris, that 80% of the technology we use in twenty years hasn't been invented yet. This pairs nicely with the Red Queen Effect, the phenomena in which we have to run as fast as we can just to stay in the same spot.

With the plethora of useful tools, software, collaborative systems, course options, let alone exploring professional online professional development opportunities, there is the danger of casting the net too widely. While encouraging teachers to explore anything that they find useful, it's up to the school to develop policies to create a strong and stable foundation to support their efforts. In some areas this comes naturally, such as course management software. No school would (I assume) install both Blackboard and Moodle, but would use one to create a common grounds Students and staff can learn one system, there is only one system to trouble-shoot, etc. While experience with one will often help when using another, it is fairly clear that the freedom of offering both is clearly overshadowed by the difficulties in allocating enough resources to train and support staff and students on their use.

This is an obvious example. A less obvious example would be the technology the students bring to the classroom. In a school that provides laptops in some fashion this isn't a problem, but a school that allows students to bring their own laptops provides a particular challenge to the teacher. Today in class I had my science class creating a wiki on biomes through moodle, rather than the poster project we might have done a few years ago. It will create a resource for all the students for studying, and in their own words as well, and seems like a perfect example of how technology can enhance ordinary learning opportunities. The students were gathered in their groups, creating and editing, when one student came to me with his Mac. There was obviously a bug in the program such that his Mac and the wiki weren't interacting properly. I made a dedicated attempt to solve the problem, but there was a setting somewhere that was incorrect, and despite my best efforts I couldn't solve it. And now you know my deep dark secret:

I am not familiar with all available technologies, at all times, and in all places.

I'm a pc user. They're cheaper, they do more, there's more software and (completely irrelevantly) smug commercials annoy me. I used to be a Mac guy, but I switched somewhere back in university when choice and money really mattered. The school is almost entirely pc based. I cannot be expected to trouble-shoot both Mac and Windows (heck, I don't even want to troubleshoot both Vista and XP, although given the similarities I probably can). For this reason I am seriously considering banning Macs from my classroom next year.

In this case, unlike the previous example, I am sure there will be disagreement. There is the case for giving students more freedom of choice, and proponents of both Windows and Macs often see this issue in almost religious terms rather than rational ones. Let me be clear. My issue with Macs is not that it's a poor choice of computer (it is, but that's a post for another day), or that Windows is superior (we have all the software, so we win), but that this is purely an issue of resources. Examples such as the previous one occur all the time when I attempt to use the laptops available. Even just letting students have their laptops in class for taking notes, and not using them in any other way, presents problems. A high school is no place to just let students fail; we often have to return them to task when distractions arise. The potential for distractions in laptops is incredibly high, such that classroom management software as an aide is almost de rigour. However, doing this would again require the ability to trouble-shoot and aid students using different operating systems. Buying, using and becoming familiar with both systems increases both the amount of time and money that will have to be invested into professional development, hardware and software.

So, no more Macs for me. (And before you comment about how much Macs are better, if I owned a Mac and our school was Mac centered, I'd be banning Windows boxes. It's the ability to manage the tech that's the issue, not the tech itself.)

What else can schools do to make best use of the resource available? Encourage your teachers to explore social networking to develop a personal learning network. The resources and advice I've found in just one week of using Twitter was phenomenal. Finding ways to release teachers to go into classrooms and collaborate to see what works is very useful. Often my best ideas have been picked by a teacher who's been doing something interesting for ages just down the hall. Lastly, but certainly not leastly, friendly and helpful technical support is a must.

Some guidance for teachers in terms of developing policies that cover as many predictable problems and circumstances as possible will help ensure that problem-solving will be proactive rather than reactive. Course and classroom management software, along with teacher training, will help keep the dark side of technology from decreasing student learning rather than increasing it. It is imperative that the teachers be trained significantly before the students, so that they are comfortable engaging with and utilizing the technology. Other potential problems include power issues, dealing with theft or damage, a loaner pool, and (of course) cost. Addressing these problems ahead of time will certainly ensure more time spent on teaching and learning, and less time spent on reacting to problems.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Weekly Resource List

Twitter
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2286799/Can-we-use-Twitter-for-educational-activities
Using Twitter for educational activities

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/evan_williams_on_listening_to_twitter_users.html
TED Talks - Evan Williams: How Twitter's spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses

Smart Board (Interactive Whiteboards)

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/clf/index.htm
Interactive flash games by subject area. Good for Smart Board.

http://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboard/2009/02/smartboards-sketch-paint-online.html
Sketch and paint online - nice for smart boards.

Subject Resources
http://teachhub.blogspot.com/2009/02/exploring-geography-with-google-maps.html
Exploring geography with Google maps.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2134266654801392897
Brainiac - Alkali metals

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/wire/sns-ap-as-indonesia-funky-fish,1,541996.story
For discussion on species in Bio - Psychedelic fish discovered.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/RP/article.asp?type=CurrentIssue
Journal : Chemistry Education Research and Practice

http://www.inspiredlearningcommunity.com/node/683
Celebrate Pi Day

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/02/a-brief-moment.html
A brief moment in the magnificent history of mankind - A 1 1/2 million year old foot prints.

Classroom 2.0

http://ma21stcenturylearning.wikispaces.com/nais
Presentation and resource wiki from NAIS

Articles

http://www.youthmarketing.com/big-numbers-small-media-and-the-future-of-marketing/
Marketing through mobiles.

http://members.cox.net/pvsciteach/foldinst.pdf
How to create foldables.

Integrating Technology into Education

2009-02-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

This week my main focus has been the school committee that`s looking at how technology can further improve our teaching practice.

The first priority in any process such as this is, I think, the leadership. Whether that`s the formal leadership at the top, or the creative and exploratory work of other teachers leading the way, how technology is introduced is more important than what technology. Technology seems to naturally demonize itself, and a knee-jerk reaction to any new tool is almost always to take the easy road: ban it. There are laptop schools that have decided to revert, and abandon their projects. Whenever I read about such a case, the leadership usually shares some or all the following characteristics: ignorance of computers and virtual learning environments, unaware of potential hazards, directed by IT (rather than teaching) staff, and unenthusiastic. I won't mention the school's name, but one in particular was forced to participate in a laptop initiative over the principal's objections, shoved the project onto the overworked IT staff, who simply handed out laptops to students and teachers on the first day of classes. A colossal waste of time, energy and resources.

The linked NYT article is interesting, but reading between the lines you can find the same process at work. Students knowing more than the teachers, teachers unable to figure out how to use the unique capabilities of computing for their curriculum, and no thought to the professional development of the teachers. No administrator thought of classroom or course management tools.

Computers have revolutionized every aspect of our society that has utilized them. A priori, if a technology plan fails in your school, it is not the fault of the technology. If you hand out a bunch of hammers, it's not the fault of the tools that a house isn't built the next day (or that the local corner store had its windows smashed and robbed). Blaming technology is a result of either lazy planning, lazy thinking, or lazy learning (i.e. unwilling to learn from mistakes).

So, how do we ensure that our teachers thoughtfully implement technology? I think the first lesson learned is that teachers must have training and access to the technology before the students. The 'one laptop per child' idea is a little silly if the only people with the laptops are the children: WOW, tetris, and Facebook are far more entertaining than ICE tables in chemistry class. Give the laptop to the teacher, however, and you increase the potential for professional development, and the collaborative nature of the classroom itself. While many children do not have a laptop, many have access to a computer, even if that's just in the local public library. Once the teacher becomes aware of the possibilities, some use of technology will occur. Even if it's just online course management to assist absent students, with a few activities built around what computer access there is, the teacher has accomplished three things: increased student resources, increased emphasis on student responsibility, and taken advantage of the collaborative opportunities available using technology.

As I hope is becoming increasingly obvious, it's not about the tools, but about increasing engaged teaching and learning. Forcing implementation by simply handing out laptops or even just telling everyone to "use Moodle" would never work. A great teacher using 20th century teaching strategies will teach very well. A reluctant teacher using 21st century teaching strategies will be mediocre if we're lucky. A great teacher using 21st century tools just has access to some brand new opportunities and methods.

Next week: defining goals and policies, and allocating resources.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Weekly Resource List

Twitter
http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/100-scientific-twitter-friends
Science-based twitter friends

Smart Board (Interactive Whiteboards)
http://www.garnetvalleyschools.com/1376103591610650/blank/browse.asp?a=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&c=57394
A large number of Smart Board Links

http://gettingsmarterwithsmartboards.blogspot.com/
Blog : "New and interesting information related to Smart Board use in education."

http://pdtogo.com/smart/
Smart Board lessons podcast

Multimedia
http://www.nch.com.au/switch/
Sound file converter for Windows or Mac.

http://prezi.com/
The zooming editor for stunning presentations.

http://metaatem.net/words/
Spell with Flikr!

http://www.wordle.net/
Generate "word clouds" from text. The picture at the beginning is from here.

Subject Resources
http://hatakappodcast.blogspot.com/ & http://21chatak.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html
AP Chemistry Podcast & Blog

http://www.brainpop.com/
Online flash videos for many different areas. Subscription for most content, but there are some free previews.

http://www.math-kitecture.com/index.htm
Math and architecture

http://www.seedmagazine.com/darwin_200.php
Celebrating Darwin's 200th Birthday, selection of articles

Classroom 2.0
http://grou.ps/m4projects/wiki/54363
Classroom Collaboration 2.0

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
Online task list

PLN
http://www.teachhub.blogspot.com/
Blog "Countdown to Teachhub" - useful classroom ideas, interesting discussions

Articles
http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/2009/02/documenting_ent.html
Interesting article on grade inflation

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08nisbett.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&emc=eta1
"Education is all in your mind" at NYT.

Student Accommodations and Teacher Resource update

2009-02-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

A colleague made a comment about the increasing number of students seeking testing for learning style differences. The issues of over-testing, undiagnosed learning style differences keep coming up, but I don't think we've actually examined the real problem.

These tests are, first of all, quite expensive. A full psychoeducational assessment runs $1500 to $2000, and there's no guarantee that anything useful will learned. Being informed that instructions should be repeated, and that the student would benefit from the use of a computer, (or that when confused they will become anxious) seems like a painfully expensive way to state the obvious. On the other hand, a student may discover that they learn more effectively if they use visual imagery rather than auditory cues. Incredibly hard-working assistants and specialists can then help and guide the student what techniques, tricks, and tools will be the best for them. Adjudications, such as extra-time, to a reader for tests, or being exempt from learning a second language, now fall into place. It's an expensive hoop, to gain access to resources that should be available to everyone.

It's been bothering me a lot this week, but given that our government is more concerned with giving people placebos perhaps I shouldn't be surprised this problem hasn't been seriously tackled yet.

Lastly, the teaching resources I have come across this week.

100 ways to use ICT in the classroom - Interactive whiteboards, google docs, & pocket video camera.

Awesome stories - Stories and biographies that link to primary sources.

Blood typing "game" - Reviews ABO and Rh blood typing.

Science flash animations.

Article on students using interactive white boards.

Online tool for creating graphs and charts.

Smart board revolution - resources of interactive white boards.

Tutorials for smart boards.

Easily created games for practicing vocab or spelling.

Even more Smart Board resources. The link takes you to some math resources, but on the main page there are resources for many areas.

Wordle - create a quick summary of important terms for any piece of work. Paste in any block of text, and a picture of the words, with each word enlarged in proportion to how often it occurs.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Twitter, Teaching and Education

2009-02-08T00:55:00.001-08:00

I just finished some pro-d at knowschools.ca about education and the basics of microblogging (essentially a Twitter tutorial).

I'd just started using Twitter and had gone through the initial "why would anybody bother to use this" phase, and was using it to update students for extra help sessions during exams. There have been a couple of 'aha' moments, and if you're an educator I would highly recommend exploring microblogging.

Twitter itself doesn't do a very good job of suggesting what it's for. Answering the question "What are you doing?" immediately gives the wrong impression. Nobody wants to know what you're having for supper, or what music you're listening too (although many seem to disagree). The key to using twitter as a support for education is connecting to a community of shared interests. On nearly the first day I was directed to a community that listed twitter users by educational specialty. I signed up to follow a few Tweeters that seemed relevant. Within 5 hours I'd received updates on education sites for Smart Board use, moodle advice, and a variety of other useful links. As well, a twitter search comes with its own RSS feed! http://tinyurl.com/be5q8k + http://search.twitter.com/ & rss feed for search = automatic moodle updates for class. Just include the same unique hash tag in each twitter update, and you've got a quick way of updating your course moodle site with relevant web links for your classes.

In short, it's worth exploring. I'd be curious what uses anybody else has found.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School