The Digital Down Low

Some critical questions about iPads and 1-1 learning

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Mon, 21 May 2012 02:33:00 +0000

Note: I’ve been sitting on this post for roughly three months now, but was inspired by this weekend’s Maker Faire here in the San Francisco Bay Area to hit the publish button. As I walked about Maker Faire I became re-energized by the amazing things people are creating with computer technology. Most, if not all, of the computing related objects that these extraordinary inventors, artists, creators, and DIYers shared were not created with iPads or mobile technologies of any form. They used Linux, Windows, and OS X.

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Ever since leading a 16 person iPad study group during the 2011-2012 school year at my previous site, I’ve grown more skeptical of iPad 1-1 learning models (eg, giving every student in a school/district an iPad). Over the past 18 months I’ve visited ‘iPad’ schools, attended a range of iPads in schools workshops, and participated in online conversations of all forms regarding this platform. Conversations tend to center around apps, how the devices are going to be insured, the ‘best’ apps for for _________ purpose, etc. Most of what I’ve seen and heard described are learning experiences that could easily be done with less expensive technologies, including a piece of paper and a pencil. The focus of these conversations leaves me feeling a bit empty and filled with questions about whether or not this approach is doing right by the kids we serve.

Here are some questions I have for anyone in the edtech community that has taken their school down the path of 1-1 learning with iPads:

Does giving every student an iPad mitigate or exacerbate issues of equity in our school communities?
Many school communities, by virtue of assigning every student a school owned laptop, would submit that this model addresses issues of equity. I’m not convinced. For some students attending an ‘iPad 1-1 school,’ the iPad will be their only computer. If the iPad is a student’s sole computer, what sort of opportunities are they missing out on? A huge learning opportunity they are missing out on is coding and controlling peripherals of all forms. These students will be unable to write and create executable code or run multimedia programming applications like Alice, Scratch, and Visual Python. Alternately, kids who have a primary laptop/desktop computer at home will be able to engage in these powerful learning activities. Is this promoting the kind of equity we aim to address with 1-1 learning?

iPads are often times promoted as being really ‘easy’ to use. Is this true? And is ‘easy’ what we really want?
I find myself constantly setting my iPad aside in favor of my laptop to do a wide range of simple tasks that I find cumbersome on the iPad. Even a simple task like multi-tabbed browsing on my iPad1 is clumsy at best. How about collaborating in small teams and loading raw source video, audio, and even photos that are not created on the iPad itself? I’ve found this process to be much more difficult than it needs to be. Finally, is ‘easy’ what we are really after? Some of the most complex and sophisticated tasks that we can do with computers are really hard. Working with scientific probeware peripherals, programming physical microprocessors (eg arduino and gogo boards), building robots (lego nxt), controlling 3D printers, crunching complex heaps of data, etc. are all complex tasks for the classroom. Many of these incredibly rich and rewarding learning experiences aren’t accessible on the iPad. Do we shy away from difficult experiences like these because they aren’t ‘easy’? I hope not.

What are the learning dispositions we aim to foster in our students and school community and is going all-in with iPads going to help us build these dispositions?
I want to help empower our learning community to design, hack, build, collaborate, remix, share and explore in all sorts of ways. In essence, I strive to contribute toward building a learning community that is open-source, accessible and inspired by principles of DIY. Is the iPad the best platform for cultivating such an ideal?

Are iPads the best use of our precious school funds?
Because owning an iPad is like owning a highly mobile vending machine, it is difficult to quantify the total cost of ownership. Many schools that are heading in this direction are purchasing the 64 gig models ($699) along with keyboards, apps, insurance, and other accessories. This amounts to a significant financial investment. It is even more significant when you consider that many schools are looking at upgrading every 2-3 years. A laptop will last four years. What are the opportunities costs of such an investment?

How are iPads helping your students participate in the long tail of invention, creation and manufacturing (the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’ as some have called it)?
Shopbots, laser cutters, 3D printers, etc are bringing tools that were once only available to a few corporations to the creative class. iPads don’t interface with these devices. Have you given this some thought?

And a question for the adults in your community who were involved in making this decision: Are you making the iPad your primary computer? If so, kudos for eating the same dog food that you are serving up. If not, why not? Why is the iPad good enough to be used by youth as their primary computer but not good enough to be used for your primary computer? If the device that is revolutionizing the world before our very eyes isn’t good enough to be used as your primary/sole computer, why is it good enough for kids who want to hack, remix, code, print to 3D, and create amazing representations of their learning?

Did you ask the students about their preferences?
I have and as one might expect, students are all over the map in terms of their preferences for mobile computers. While a good number of students certainly are Apple fans, many are already comfortable using other computing platforms in creative ways. Ask the students and you might be surprised with the thoughts they share with you.

I hope this doesn’t come off like I’m anti-iPad or a technology curmudgeon. I’m not. I love my iPad for niche uses and feel like it could be a useful devices for *some* students. I also realize things change quickly in technology and we all may be using touch interface tablets at some point in the future. But we aren’t there yet. I’m legitimately interested in any answers to these questions. I’m also interested in other critical questions that we should be asking about going 1-1 with the iPad platform.

Things I'm excited about...the Makerbot

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Fri, 20 May 2011 20:28:00 +0000

This is the kind of stuff that I'm excited about in the area of educational technology lately. One of my professional goals is to increase opportuntiies for kids to create and make objects that have personal meaning to them. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I am going to give kids the chance to create stuff with the maker bot at my new school.

What is your school community doing to give learners the chance to make cool objects??

What project based learning isn't

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:19:00 +0000

I love this image and quote from Darren Kuropatwa over at the Great Quotes about Learning and Change Flickr Photo pool.

It sums up many of the challenges I've grappled with when designing learning experiences with teachers through the years.

I'm a firm believer that knowledge is the direct consequence of our experiences-it's essentially how we learn everything...until we go to school that is.

Videos of Arduino in action

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:28:00 +0000

While I don't own any Arduino components, I'm quickly becoming captivated by the potential of this platform to encourage kids to play, tinker, explore and create cool objects that they dream up. Arduino is a powerful open source hardware programming system that is used by engineers and artists alike. See this article from the New York Times on how artists and museums are using the platform to create interactive, low cost exhibits.

I'm much, much more excited about the potential of Arduino in K12 than any emerging educational technologies, including the iPad. I could see kids making interactive toys, alarms for their rooms/lockers/lunch boxes, interactive displays for their art work, and more. Arduino is interdisciplinary by nature and brings together skills from a wide range of disciplines.

Below you'll find just a few videos that demonstrate the kinds of things that can be built on this platform. I think they'll give you a sense as to why I'm so excited about Arduino!

In the video below, a guy shares his Arduino based system that he used for locating his bike in the herd of bikes at Burning Man. His project description and write-up is posted here.

Interactive Talking Toy:

Interactive Talking Plush Portal Turret from Jonathan M. Guberman on Vimeo.

Arduino controlled 'Wirebot':

"Is Social Media Ruining Students?" and more questions

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Mon, 02 May 2011 00:34:00 +0000

The results of a survey on this topic were published as an info-graphic in the 'Education Database Online Blog' at the end of April.' To be fair, the survey doesn't aim to provide a yes or no answer to such a complicated question, but as an advocate of using social media to improve many different parts of the teaching and learning process, I find myself quite defensive. It seems we're so eager to readily dismiss new opportunities to engage students without scrutinizing some of the questionable practices that have been in our schools for eons.

I'm glad we have a desire to deeply interrogate the intersection of new media and learning. However, I hope we're equally critical and introspective regarding all forms of technology, systems, pedagogy and methods when it comes to learning.

In this light, here are a few questions that I have:

1. Is lecture ruining students?
2. Do standardized tests ruin students?
3. Do solitary, paper and pencil final exams ruin students?
4. Does homework ruin students?
5. Does project based learning ruin students?
6. Does the non-stop reading of books ruin students?
7. Does google ruin students?
8. Does play or a lack of play ruin students?
9. Do school based reward and award incentives ruin students?
10. Does the use of processed, packaged and unhealthy foods in school lunches ruin students?

This list could go on and on. Let's be sure we're asking all of the tough questions as we imagine and create the best learning design possible for youth.

Classroom 2.0 Discussion: "Should teachers and students be "friends" on social networking sites?"

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:40:00 +0000

The discussion topic, "Should teachers and students be 'friends' on social networking sites," was started back in December of 2008 on the Classroom 2.0 ning site. I subscribe to this discussion via email, and it has been interesting to see how it has 'evolved' over the past couple of years (I'd say it hasn't really 'evolved' much at all...most posts are pretty dogmatic in the assertion that students and teachers should never connect via the social web).

Anyway, below you'll see my latest response to this discussion. Stop over to the discussion at Classroom 2.0 if you'd like to view the discussion history and leave some thoughts of your own. (click here to see my personal facebook friending policy that I wrote back in 2009):

It's amazing how this conversation has moved along over the past few years.

All I can say is that I'm really glad I'm connected to a variety of students, past and present, using websites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. On one level it has given me TRUE insight (not insight influenced by sensational media reporting) as to what students are doing in these spaces. Contrary to what the media might report, youth are using these spaces for creative and useful purposes like study and collaboration, commenting on the latest news of the day, mobilizing social justice campaigns (remember the 'wear purple day' in support of LGBTQ youth last fall?), socializing in healthy ways with friends, connecting with family members, playing games, sharing photos, etc.

The experience of connecting with students in a variety of ways and spaces allows me to talk intelligently to other adults about what students are doing with these powerful communication and collaboration platforms.

Switching from FirstClass to Google

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 22:09:00 +0000

It seems to be that time of year again when institutions finalize decisions and make preparations to move to a new collaboration environment. Within the past week, I've been contacted by five different schools around the US that are transitioning away from FirstClass to Google Apps Education Edition. I've written about my organization's journey from two years ago here at my blog...this is more of a resource dump intended for anyone out there who might be moving from FirstClass to Google. This is also useful to me as I now have a single link to all of the documents that we found helpful as we went through our transition.

At some point in the near future I'll write a little update reflection on how things have gone over the past 2 years of using Google apps, but for now I'll just provide links to relevant transition support documents.

Best of luck moving to Google Apps!
~Matt

Links, resources and documents:

Our organization's transition support site - a collection of documents, tutorials, videos, etc that documented our migration process.

Rating our transition - what went well - a blog post summary of the things we did well in this process.
Rating our transition - what didn't go so well - we didn't make many mistakes, but this post highlights those areas where we'd like a 'do over.'

General Google Apps security and privacy questions - answers to privacy and data ownership questions can be found in this document. I'll save you a little time here...yes, the data is secure and private. Regarding data ownership-yes, the organization owns the data. Regarding data mining-No, google does not mine and harvest information from Google Apps domains.

Google Apps for Education common questions - SUPER helpful and useful doc

Top 10 Reasons to Switch to Google Apps

Six step deployment plan

Testimonials from other schools who are using Google Apps Education Edition

Year-in-review through photos

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 01:18:00 +0000

Mostly a personal look back at 2010 via my Flickr PhotoStream...

Wishing you and your family a wonderful holiday season!!!

Peace
Matt

January 2010: We started out the year on a sad note as we said good by to our cat, 'Mr. Kitty,' who owned me for the better part of 14 years. He meant a great deal to us and we were sad to see him go. A special thanks to Dr. Marissa Cruz at the Hawley Vet Clinic for her treatment and care near the end of his life.

February 2010: Erin and I visited the beautiful country of Costa Rica and had the adventure of a lifetime! Erin was nearly three months pregnant at this point and it was wonderful to have such a great experience together prior to welcoming our new baby in August.

March 2010: Our good friends also had babies this year...as a matter of fact, Karissa (pictured to the left) had her baby in June, Brynn (middle) in July and Erin in August. It was so much fun to experience the process with them throughout the first six months of 2010. This is a picture of the three of them at Karissa and Greg's place.

April 2010: Erin's mom visited us and we went down to Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninusula to meet up with her brother and nephew....'twas great fun. We also had great fun visiting with my buddy Dave and his wife Sherrie who were in town for the Big Sur Marathon near the end of April.

May 2010: Bucky took every opportunity he could find to sit on Erin's lap during her pregnancy. Erin was roughly 6 months pregnant at the time of this photo.

June 2010: My family visited the Bay Area...Brother Mike and nephews Tucker and Trey visited us for over a week in June...we had a total blast hitting all of the great sights in the area. We mapped out our experience as well...

July 2010: Visit to Michigan to see the family. We had a fantastic time visiting with friends and family in Michigan. Pictured alongside Erin are nephews Quinn, Jack and Patrick at a shower that our family threw for us in Lundington!

August 2010: Weighing in at a very nimble 6 pounds, 3 ounces, little Morgan Kathleen Montagne was born on August 6 at 1:00 am!! This photo was taken minutes after her birth.

September 2010: Baby Morgan's birth announcement photo:

October 2010: Morgan's Aunt Mickey visited us for 5 days!

November 2010: Nana visits Baby Morgan...my mom visited us in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving week. It was so fun having her see Baby Morgan for the first time in person!

December 2010: Baby Morgan in the Christmas tree hat that her Nana made for her...this also happens to be the photo used in our Christmas card this year.

On Being Resourceful...

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:50:00 +0000

Teachers have always been a resourceful lot. Whether it is the student who shows up to class without their book, limited class access to resources, or only one Internet connected computer in the classroom, we just find a way to make it work. This has always been the case and its no different with digital learning tools. Have the need for photos? Have the students who own a cell phone with a camera take the photos. Need a quick website for a project your class is working on? Create a wiki in wikispaces or a blog in posterous.

Yesterday in our French IV class we had the unanticipated need for a small team of students to do a quick recording and post it online for use within a google site that they were working on. The solution? One of the students had an iPhone so I asked her to install iPadio, do their recording, and then publish it online. After this was done, she embedded it on her team's site (I'm also embedding it below-its in french, which means I have no idea what the students are saying). All told, this process probably took 15 minutes-contrast that with the typical process of tracking down a school owned audio recorder/mic, doing the recording into garageband/audacity, editing, and then posting online.

I can imagine a bazillion other ways to use student owned iOS devices in our classes. Teaching music theory and don't have enough guitars/pianos to go around? Ask students who own an iOS device to install a guitar or piano app. Have a need for students to do some sketching, painting or drawing? Have interested students use a drawing program for their cellphone to try creating in the digital medium (see this piece from the NYTimes titled, "Subway Sketches").

As some of our students return from winter break in January outfitted with new digital devices, I wonder how we can ready ourselves to be resourceful and to make use of student owned technologies in positive ways in our schools.

What are some ways that you've been resourceful in your classroom with digital tools?

2010 Edublogs Award Nominations

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 20:35:00 +0000

I'm happy to submit my nominations for the 2010 Edublogs awards via this post. While I'm often not a fan of these types of extrinsic awards, I believe the spirit of the Edublogs Awards is more growth oriented than anything else-and quite honestly, blogging (and most any online work, quite frankly) is still in its infancy and needs systems these this to provide much needed incubation.

With that said, my 2010 nominations follow:

Best Individual Blog: Steve Taffee's 'Blog-Ed Indetermination'
Steve is clever, witty, and a damn good writer-be sure to add this feed to your reader--great blog that often times talks about technology infused pedagogy and methodology (disclosure-I work with Steve).

Best Teacher Blog: Katie Sauvain's 'Keep Asking' - smart, thoughtful and reflective teaching blog written by a middle school english teacher (disclosure-I work with Katie)

Best library blog: Castilleja School Library (full disclosure-I work at Castilleja School)

Best Use of Video: Dan Rezac's 'Mathedemics' YouTube Channel

Best Use of a Social Network: Paul Allison and Company's "Voices on the Gulf" project--an incredible community that has sprouted up to build solidarity with the residents of the Gulf of Mexico region who have been impacted by the BP Oilspill

Best Educational Tech Support Blog: Richard Kassissieh's 'Kassblog'
--I'm not nominating Richard because he is one of the few people to leave a comment on my blog...his work is much, much broader than 'Tech Support" and really is more focused on learning, but its a blog that I like reading and one that I feel is deserving of an Edublog award for sure.

Best School Administrator Blog: Jonathan Martin's 21K12 blog

Best Group Blog: Connected Principals

Best Individual Tweeter: Kevin Hodgson, aka, @dogtrax

Lifetime Achievement: Wes Fryer's 'Speed of Creativity'

Gator Radio set to return on Nov 19th!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 19:43:00 +0000

I'm pleased to say that our student run, student operated live Internet radio project known as the Gator Radio Experience, is set to return on Friday, November 19th at 2:50 PM Pacific time. As many of you know, this project has been the highlight of my recent professional existence and I was sad to see it fall victim to the busy schedules of our students last year. The show is redesigned this time around to be much shorter (30 mins this year vs 60 mins previously) - this should help with the overall sustainability of the project. The students still plan on including an interview segment, a music spot, and then some type of op/ed review piece. At this point we're going to aim for 2 live broadcasts per month and if things go well, we'll try to ramp up the project so we're doing weekly broadcasts.

This year we'll be conducting our shows here at school using this new setup that I put together with the guidance of one of our parents, Steve Fields, who is an audio engineer (a HUGE thank you is in order to Steve for his time and help!) We'll try to have him on one of our first few shows to talk a bit about the setup and how it works. For project updates be sure to follow our Twitter page, join our Facebook group, subscribe to email updates at our website.

To satisfy your inner-nerd, here is the equipment and software that we're using to produce our shows:

Behringer Xenys 1204USB Mixer

ART Five Channel Headphone Mixer/Amp

Sennheiser HD202 Headsets

Electro-Voice Model 664 Mics (purchased on eBay and refurbished by Steve)

Garageband for recording high quality audio for the podcast - click here to subscribe to our shows in iTunes

Ustream for the live audio broadcast - click here to access our channel

Madsen Cycles Link Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:25:00 +0000

My apologies about the non-standard theme of this post, but I can't turn down the opportunity to win a bike as cool as the one below from Madsen. If I win, my wife will kill me for bringing another bike in the house...if you'd like the chance to win a sweet Madsen cargo, follow this link to learn more. I believe they announce a winner on Nov 17th.

And in the event that I do win, here is my email address for the folks from Madsen: mjmontagne at geemail dot com.

Hat tip to Rob Rowe for posting this on his blog recently.

Forget merit pay - fund innovation instead

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 23:25:00 +0000

The notion of tying teacher pay to student performance of any type makes me sick all the way out to my fingers and toes. People do irrational things all the time for money-merit pay is destined to create a culture of unethical behavior in schools that fall for this. However, I think money can be used to directly fund and support teacher innovation in all sorts of interesting and meaningful ways.

Instead of merit pay to teachers in exchange for student performance on standardized tests, what if we were to do the following types of things:

1. Fund teachers to write open source texts for the CK12 Flexbook project.

2. Fund teachers to participate in professional learning communities on topics of interest.

3. Fund teachers to go to conferences. Fund teachers to create conference learning opportunities for their own school or district.

4. Fund teachers to participate in free online learning opportunities.

5. Fund teachers to take online courses. And then fund them to create their own online courses with the explicit understanding that the materials would be fully licensed in the Creative Commons as open educational resources available to all.

6. Fund teachers to travel to a place where they can have an experience that will help them become better teachers.

7. Fund teachers to work on special projects with students after school and on the weekends.

8. Fund teachers to engage in regular professional growth and learning.

9. Fund teachers for developing their own professional portfolios online. And then fund teachers who are interested in building portfolio assessment experiences for students.

10. Fund teachers for integrating play based learning into the curriculum.

11. Fund teachers who are interested in connecting their classes with the local community and the world

12. Double the funding for teachers who do any of the above in collaborative teams.

New blogs are born & thoughts on our student blogging workship

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:39:00 +0000

Last week I co-facilitated a Wednesday morning professional development session on the topic of, "Student blogging." Click here to access the resource document that we created for our attendees. This was a part of a periodic series of workshops known as "Learning Exhanges" - this is something new that we're trying as a way to promote sharing of all forms in our school community. Our session was very well attended and we set out to answer the following great, big question:

How can we use blogging and other online writing opportunities to provide opportunities for students to reflect on their learning, publish for a large audience, break the myth of perfectionism, and as a tool for formative assessment?

As so often happens in these types of tech-related learning sessions, the questions from our attendees seemed to focus around things like platforms and the 'how to' types. Not that these aren't important-they are-but as far as I'm concerned they're secondary in comparison to the ones posed in the big question. My co-facilitator and language learning teacher extraordinaire, Flaurie Imberman, summed it up well when she talked about the many challenges that we've experienced in using blogging our Latin American and Caribbean History course. She mentioned that our experience has been difficult because most of the work that we do with students in our classes is highly private. Very rarely do we ask them to open up and share their thoughts, processes, and final products with an audience that goes beyond the teacher. Blogging, if approached properly, certainly has the potential to serve as an antidote to the privatization of class work, teaching and learning.

In the context of this session on blogging, I'd like to link to five blogs that have been born over the past 6 weeks at my school.

Middle School online newspaper - this is the first online newspaper at my school, and it comes from our middle school students and teachers. Please leave a comment or two if you have a moment

Philosophy Class Lectures - Teacher Bill Smoot is posting all of his lectures for his semester long course on Philosophy. They are all available in iTunes as well.

Mobile Learning Group Blog - I mentioned this in a recent post. This is a group blog being authored by 16 colleagues at my school who were all given an iPad with the expectation that we'd engage in regular professional development around this topic.

Stories from Advisory - I started this as a tool to keep the parents of my sophomore student advisory (sophomores in USA schools are typically 15-16 years old). Parents can be so valuable in extending the conversations that are often times initiated in school activities like advisory - conversations at the dinner table can be dramatically altered and improved when parents have a little insight into the school day happenings.

Latin American Caribbean History Group Blog - this group blog was a compromise that we made with the students in this class who felt very insecure about blogging - generally speaking, the students didn't feel like they should be writing in a public space about a topic they weren't 'experts' on. So we compromised and they came up with the idea to co-author in a group blog. Posts should start appearing this week. Please comment!!!

Remixing the "Internet and Privacy" Graphic

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:46:00 +0000

I posted about this great graphic from the Flowing Data website that has been making the rounds on Twitter at the end of last week. As I said, it really jibes with my thinking about how I conduct myself online.

Due to the incredible amount of attention that tends to prop up every three months or so about Facebook's privacy policies, I immediately thought of the following remix:

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that ANYTHING attached to the Internet belongs in the orange circle, including organizational email systems AND school networks.

So I revised the above Venn diagram to look like the following:

The bottom line for me?? If I want my information to be totally and completely private, I shouldn't digitize it on any device or platform that is connected to the Internet.

How about you?? How might you remix or revise any of these Venn diagrams or the original from Flow Data?

Mobile Learning Study Group

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:44:00 +0000

Like many other schools, folks in my community are quite interested in learning more about the possibilities of highly portable mobile devices like the iPad, cellphones, iPods, etc as tools to personalize, customize, deepen and amplify learning. As a result, we recently launched a study group that is dedicated to learning more about mobile devices like the iPad. Teacher participation in this group is totally voluntary and I’m pleased to say that we have 16 participants!

In exchange for participation in the group, all members were given a small budget to go out and purchase an iPad model of their choosing, some accessories, and software (we're fortunate to have a GREAT relationship with the Apple Store on University Avenue in Palo Alto). Most participants chose the 16 GB model, but a few upgraded to the 3G capable models (some teachers went over budget and had to go into their own personal budgets to pay the difference). The expectations for the participants are posted over at the ‘About’ section of our blog. We chose this hardware/software distribution model because the iPad is a VERY personal device that is nearly impossible to manage using traditional IT practices. If this goes well, I might recommend that our school scale this distribution model to teacher laptops-eg, instead of the school’s IT department giving each teacher a standard hardware/software configuration every four years, we’d give folks a stipend of a certain amount so they could go out and choose the hardware/software mixture that works best for their needs.

One of the requirements for participation in this group is to submit blog posts to our group blog throughout the year. Stop by our blog and subscribe via email or RSS to keep up with our group’s progress and thinking throughout the year.

*image courtesy of FoxyCroxy on Flickr (Creative Commons License)

"Privacy and the Internet"

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:27:00 +0000

I LOVE the simplicity of this graphic. It is representative of my behavior in any physical and digital public space. Privacy settings at websites create a false sense of security-I behave as though anything I post can be rebroadcast and reposted anywhere on the open web.

Thanks to Diana Laufenberg for posting this on Twitter. Click here to view the image source.

Why Gladwell is Wrong

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:57:00 +0000

I've been sitting on Malcolm Gladwell's article from the New Yorker earlier this month for the past few weeks. In a nutshell, Gladwell makes the case that new media can never replicate the kind of social activism that we saw in the late 50s through early 60s. When I initially read it, a huge part of me agreed with him, but after giving this a good deal of thought over the past few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that Gladwell is dead wrong. Here are three reasons why:

1. Gladwell spends a good deal of time in the article comparing the activism of the 60's to various activist movements in social media. This is a really, really poor comparison. In the 60's, there was a draft. This meant that people from all social and economic backgrounds had the potential to be drafted against their will to fight and die in Vietnam. People protested and gave their lives because of this. Now we have a volunteer force that is made up of a very small percentage of our population. This means that most of us are very disconnected from the various wars being waged by the USA right now. If we had a draft and the sons and daughters of the political elite had the potential to be sent off to war, I guarantee that there would be violent protests all across America.

2. Yesterday's "Spirit Day," in which millions of people across the USA wore purple to show solidarity with those who are oppressed due to their sexuality, was a HUGE success. From what I gather, people of all ages all throughout the country participated. This wasn't possible 25 years ago. I'm not even so sure it was possible 5 years ago. I don't care what Gladwell says, the fact that people of all ages could RSVP to the Spirit Day via facebook is a game changer-the simple act of letting others in the LGBTQ community know that they have allies will not only save lives, but help create pathways for ALL people to realize their full potential.

3. Gladwell must not know about the "It Gets Better" campaign on YouTube. He might not think that having one of the most innovative corporations share employee stories of how it gets better matters, but I do. He might not think that the courageous story of a Forth Worth,, Texas city council member shared on YouTube makes a difference, but many others think it matters. And I guarantee it matters to LGBTQ youth in California, Alabama, Texas, Wyoming, Utah, and all throughout our country.

I could go on and on and even share stories of how innovative teachers and students from around the world are using new media to build cultural competencies and compassion in unprecedented ways, but for the sake of brevity, I'll end it here. And at the end of the day, I agree with Jeff Jarvis' take on Gladwell-he is just another member of the "Young Curmudgeon's Guild," a group that is more interested in protecting the interests of old media than anything else.

Making my office and room a 'Safe and Hate free zone' for LGBTQ youth

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:39:00 +0000

Like so many others, I'm saddened by the recent tragedies centering around LGBTQ in our country. As an adult who works with youth I want to do my best to create an atmosphere of tolerance and respect for all human beings. To that end and in support of "Ally Week," I am taking the action of creating a "Safe and Hate Free Zone" in and around my office. I posted the following sign in my office to let other people in our school know that they are welcome to come talk about issues, challenges, feelings, or anything else that is on their mind (related to LGBTQ issues or not, actually).

I also posted this sign in the space that I meet with my sophomore (students ages 15-16) advisory each Thursday afternoon. See the image below:

I'm proud to say that many of my colleagues will be doing the same by posting these signs in our classrooms and workspaces. In a show of support and solidarity, we want to let everyone know that bullying and hate will not be tolerated.

What are you doing to support LGBTQ and ALL youth in your school and community?

For more resources and to print out this flyer to post in your room, office, etc, visit http://www.glsen.org/. Click here to access the page with the direct link to the flyer that I posted in my office. You may also order an entire kit for your school for minimal cost.

Why I Like Design Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:55:00 +0000

One of the slides I shared from my classroom 2.0 presentation last Saturday...

Laptop Learning Progress Update #1

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 22:27:00 +0000

As many of you know, my school recently forged ahead with a laptop learning paradigm. All students in grades 6-12 are now required to show up to school each day with their own personal laptop computer. We take an OS and software agnostic approach-students and families self select their OS and software mix so long as it meets the minimum specifications outlined in this comprehensive document. Students and families purchase the computer on their own and the school provides a limited amount of technical assistance (we help them connect to the wifi network, manage printers, develop personalized data backup strategies, access network storage, etc).

Our tech support plan for student owned computers is crudely simple...we provide 15 minutes of support for student laptops and a loaner netbook for the times when students need to take their computers in for repair.

I'll be writing a few reflections throughout the year on our progress with laptop learning...here is my first and I'll do it in the form of a list.

1. We had HUGE fears about damage to student computers, theft, loss, accidents, etc. While a few minor things have happened, I'm glad to report that the students take really, really good care of their computers. No surprise here, really. Would you want to lose something that was valuable and contained your important documents, music, video, etc?

2. Having ALL students come onsite for learning sessions for two hours in the three days before the start of the school year was really smart. We used this as an opportunity to show the students how to connect to the network, access server shares, manage printers, etc. I can't imagine if we tried to do this in classrooms in the first few days of school.

3. Having Moodle and Google Apps for Education in place as core academic learning platforms was crucial in allowing us to deploy this OS/software neutral laptop learning model. Our teachers have been using both systems for nearly two full years prior to this year - this has been super helpful.

4. Laptop learning has exposed weaknesses in the area of professional development. While we've offered summer learning institutes for the past three years running, we really don't offer anything systemic or sustained during the school year. As a result, we've started a series of visits to area schools who have been doing this for a while along with some periodic "learning exchanges" where faculty have the opportunity to share some of the things they've been doing in their classrooms. It is my hope that we can increase the opportunities for teachers at ALL levels to engage in regular sharing, reflecting, etc in informal, formal, and vertical/non-departmental/non-grade level groupings.

5. Student involvement in the process is still something I'm struggling with. We have a student powered "Genius Bar" that is supposed to be a place for students to help with troubleshooting, tech support, etc, but we don't have a great deal of traction with this. Our students are incredibly busy and often times don't have the time to do this. I'm still not giving up on this concept as this is such a wonderful opportunity for youth involvement and leadership.

6. On the technical side of things, the Cisco NAC device that we are using is overly complicated and buggy. Users have a client application on their computer that they use to authenticate to the WiFi network...sometimes it loads, sometimes it doesn't-when it doesn't load, they can't connect to WiFi. Also, I can't say that we've managed the printing challenge very effectively either.

7. Having ed.Voicethread integrated into our Moodle network has been pretty slick. A few of our language learning teachers love it and I think this is going to grow and increase in use.

8. We don't require teachers to use computers in their classrooms...this approach is genius. As with any classroom tool, teachers make the choice about what will be used on any given day. I believe this has created a calming influence on our folks and prevents TICS (Technology Integration Coercion Syndrome).

9. During morning recess in our Middle School we require students to put their laptops in their lockers so that they can get outside and play. It has been GREAT to see kids playing four square and other outdoor games during this time. I'm glad to know that the presence of laptops has inspired our school community to think more carefully about creating more opportunities for kids to play.

10. We have unfiltered access to the Internet here at Castilleja and I'm quite proud of this. I'm also quite proud of the choices that students make when they use their computers during study halls, lunch, and other discretionary time periods. I often times walk around and ask students what they are up to...nine times out of ten they are working on school business which is evidence that they are doing a nice job of managing their time. Yes, some do use facebook before, during, and after school, but by and large they are using their computers quite responsibly as we would expect.

That is all for now...sort of a mind dump. I hope to have more stories from the classroom in in future "Laptop Learning Progress Updates" here at the blog.

My Classroom 2.0 Live Session Archive on Design Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:20:00 +0000

Last Saturday morning I had the good fortune and privilege to share my story of design thinking with 60+ others who showed up in the elluminate to listen in live and participate in another Classroom 2.0 Live session. I felt a bit awkward sharing about something that I have so little experience with--but I'm also a firm believer in the notion that the best way to learn something is to teach it. This medium isn't the best way to share design thinking methodology, but it certainly was better than nothing.

Near the 3/4 mark of the session I had the participants use a set of brainstorming rules that I just shared to engage in a little group brainstorm about how we can inspire more play in our schools...I was blown away at the contributions that participants made in the very short amount of time they were given (click here to see the ideas of session participants...a few minutes later I asked them to create a prototype-click here to see photos of a few of their prototypes). Design thinking is a fairly amorphous concept and I hope this exercise and the session at large gave all who participated a feel for the possibilities associated with this methodology.

Finally, a special thanks goes to Lorna Costantini, Peggy George, and Kim Caise for their incredible work in sustaining the Classroom 2.0 Live Saturday sessions. I consider myself fortunate to have access to these fantastic and free learning opportunities each Saturday. Be sure to check out their archives and to tune in live on Saturday at noon eastern/9 am pacific in North America (16:00 GMT/UTC) .

The Blip.TV archive is embedded below. Click here to view the archived elluminate session complete with Chat. The show notes and links are posted here.

Design Thinking Lesson with Sophomores

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 03:45:00 +0000

In early September I had the chance to facilitate a session on creative problem solving using 'Design Thinking' for a group of sophomore students. What follows is a little lesson description along with photos and a reflection on the process.

Materials:

"Deep Dive" video of the IDEO creative process in action

d.School Brainstorming Rules video

How Not to Brainstorm video

David Kelly's 'Fireside Chat' video

"Have Paper, Will Prototype Video"

Stuart Brown's TED Talk on Play

A range of brainstorming and design medium such as post it notes, large butcher paper/large post it paper, markers of all colors and sizes, blue painters tape, 8 1/2" x 11" scrap paper, pencils, pens, wood blocks, legos, sidewalk chalk, and any other materials that would be suitable for building prototypes and models.

Quotes from Tim Brown's book, Change by Design, posted on 8 1/2" x 11" paper. These are used as a warm up activity when students come trickling into the room. Click here to view slides of the quotes.

Age Range:

Elementary school all the way up to adults (I did this activity with 15/16 year old sophomore high school students)

Time:

This entire activity took 3 hours.

Lesson Flow:

Warm up: 10 Minutes

As students enter the room, ask them to walk about and look at the 10-14 different quotes from Tim Brown's Change by Design. Encourage them to pick one or two that really resonate. Gather back in the circle and then give students the opportunity to share their favorite quote. Ask that they also share why.

Brainstorming: 20 minutes

Watch the two videos on brainstorming and David Kelly's fireside chat video. After the videos are over, ask the students to generate a list of brainstorming rules. Ask two students to be the scribes and record the rules on a large piece of butcher paper. The essential rules are as follows: Defer judgement, encourage wild ideas, build off the ideas of others, 'Headlines,' record everything, and quantity over quality. Post the brainstorming rules ideas on the wall for everyone to see.

Actual Brainstorming: 5 minutes

After watching the videos, break the students into teams of two and have them brainstorm as many things as possible around campus that they'd like to re-design. This could include things like the classroom layout, new uniforms for their team, better bike accommodations, better lockers, etc. Encourage them to go for wild ideas, quantity over quality and to practice the established rules for brainstorming. Give students no more than 5 minutes to brainstorm, but encourage them to get 100 ideas (they won't be able to come up with 100, but this really pushes them to look for the non-obvious when brainstorming).

Prototyping Overview: 5 minutes

Show the students the video, "Have Paper, Will Prototype." The point is to show them that the point of prototyping is to bring your thinking alive through some type of object. A prototype can be just about anything-the boy in this video uses a piece of paper to share a design for a video game. Another key aspect of prototyping is that is should be low resolution-eg, we don't want to spend too much time on the prototype-create a down and dirty prototype to expose our thinking to feedback as soon as possible! Read some of the quotes from Tim Brown's book on prototyping directly to the students...this will help them formulate a picture of what prototyping is all about. Show students the different prototyping media that they may use: butcher paper, post its, wood blocks, legoes, blue painters tape, sidewalk chalk, etc are all useful mediums.

After the prototyping video and discussion, tell student pairs that they have to quickly pick one idea from their brainstorm list to turn into a rough prototype.

Student Project Prototyping: 3 minutes

Give students 3 minutes to create a rough prototype of their idea.

Prototype sharing: 5-10 minutes

Give each group of students 30 seconds to share their prototype. After each group shares, allow 1 minute for feedback (groups should record the feedback they receive from their peers, but should not respond to it directly). This phase needs to happen QUICKLY.

Prototyping Version 2.0: 3 minutes

Give students 3 minutes to incorporate feedback into a new iteration of their prototype. If you want to go through another round of feedback and iteration, go for it.

Next steps discussion: 5 minutes

After version 2.0 of their prototypes are completed, ask them what they might do next to receive feedback. Who are some other folks they might want to share their ideas with? Might they want to do some additional observation and research?

Break: 5 minutes

The Power of Play Video: 15-20 minutes

When the students reassemble, show them Stuart Brown's TED Talk on the importance of play. Talk with the students about the importance of a sense of play in the creative process prior to the video starting. Show the first 10-12 minutes of the video. After the video is over, ask volunteers to share their thoughts and take aways on the video. What moved them? What will they remember?

The Deep Dive Video and Discussion: 20-30 minutes

Show the students the "Deep Dive," which is a great glimpse into the creative process used by the design firm, IDEO. If you can get your hands on the entire 20 minute video, use it. Otherwise the 8 minute clip from YouTube will be fine.

Design Challenges:

After the Deep Dive video and discussion, launch the students into teams of 4-5 to work on various different design challenges. I had the students work on the following challenges around our campus: inspiring more play, re-designing our student clubs program, and re-engineering our school's dining room. Students were given design briefs on each one of these challenges. The briefs contained videos, documents, maps, and other materials that would be useful in helping them understand their challenge. Students were given the balance of their time to brainstorm solutions and to build a prototype to share with others for feedback.

A few photos/short videos of my students engaged in brainstorming, prototyping, and sharing of their ideas:

Students engaging in the prototyping of their ideas:

Students getting introduced to their design challenge by interacting with and discussion the brief materials:

Students sharing their prototype for redesigning the club experience at our school:

Prototype of various ideas for inspiring more play:

Students design a prototype for an 'alternate to stairs' so it is easier to get their heavy roller backpacks between the different floors at our school (backpacks are even heavier this year now that each student is carrying a laptop!)

Student designers in action. Just a long shot of several of the groups working on prototypes for their ideas:

One group of students was HIGHLY interested in re-designing our daily schedule. This is a photograph of this group sharing their thinking via a prototype they created:

Video analysis...on my phone

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:55:00 +0000

It wasn't so long ago that video analysis was a hugely complicated task and extremely expensive. This is no longer the case.

Here is a sample video that I analyzed using the Vernier Physics application:

If this is what we can do with mobile devices right now, I can't wait to see what the future holds!

Build it and they will play

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Montagne and friends) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 23:06:00 +0000

I'm a HUGE fan of play. All sorts of good things happen when you give humans the opportunity to play. Stuart Brown talked about the vital nature of play in his TED talk and even wrote a book about it. One of the concerns of our new laptop program has to do with play. Adults were fearful that our students would play less during discretionary time periods once they started bringing computers to school each day. As a result of this concern, our school started putting out all sorts of balls, jump ropes, frisbees and other objects for the students to use during discretionary time blocks like recess and lunch. Guess what is happening? They are playing!

We even took a piece of sidewalk chalk and created a four square court...you should see the kids get in line to play. The line often times will run 5-10 people deep! I've even enjoyed jumping in on a few games (the game is much more difficult than I remember by the way).

I'm sure the laptops will inspire all sorts of interesting learning experiences for our teachers and students in the years to come. At this point, however, I'm quite excited that our laptops have simply inspired us to play more!

Its quite simple...build it and they will play.

Image of our makeshift foursquare court: