Teaching With Technology

Re-thinking Professional Development

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Tue, 21 May 2013 02:45:37 PDT

How do you train a teaching staff in the use of iPads in teaching? Or better yet, how do you help a staff see how their teaching can be transformed from a traditional model of instruction to one that leverages the power of technology to place the student at the center of the learning? We've begun investigating the move to a 1:1 iPad program at Divine Child High School. For those in our community who may have found this post we're looking at starting with only the freshmen in 2014. So, we won't be fully 1:1 for a number of years yet. I've been asked to head up the whole program. My immediate goal is to make sure we have everything in place to ensure things go smoothly when the first class of iPads arrive in 2014.

Why wait so long? Why not start this fall? Inertia, it takes time to change practice. I want to get the staff development piece right. Step one, all of our teachers will have an iPad in their hands before they go home for the summer. Familiarity will go a long way I know, but where do I go from there? My assistant principal keeps asking me how many PD days I need next year. I really don't want to try working with a room full of 60 people at a time. That's a recipe for disaster.

My current plan, assuming I can get our administration on board, is to flip our PD and faculty meetings. I saw an awesome talk at MACUL this year by +Fred Sitkins and +Rebecca Wildman. They outlined how they've transformed professional development in their school. I'm planning on stealing all their ideas. You can find out all about what they've done on their site or in their iTunes U Course. I highly recommend checking them both out! You should also follow Fred (@fsitkins) and Rebecca (@rebeccawildman) on twitter.

In a nut shell they've gotten rid of traditional faculty meetings. Staff are expected to replace that time commitment with time spent working with their PLNs. Stuff that would be in a normal faculty meeting is delivered via video and teachers watch when they have time. PLNs find times to meet that are convenient and may be face to face or online in the evening. One member of each PLN reports out each month to the school improvement committee on the progress of the PLN. This is self directed professional development that is fully differentiated to meet the learner (i.e. the teachers) where they are!

The best part of this whole model is it is exactly what we keep saying our classrooms should look like. Not only could this be a more effective way of doing PD, it also models good teaching strategies to use with our students. The other thing I like about this model is it is rooted in professionalism and trust. It will only work if the teachers involved act like professionals and the administration trusts teachers to do their jobs. In the traditional model we try to ensure participation by requiring seat time in meetings. The problem with this is seat time does not equal participation. Compliance is not the same thing as engagement. It often looks professional, but that doesn't mean it is.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be sketching out my plan on how to implement this form of PD. I'll try to share my thoughts here as I move forward.

iBooks Presentations from #MACUL13

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 05:06:50 PDT

I think I may have finally recovered from the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning annual conference. As usual I was pretty busy. I ended up being involved in two different presentations, which always take a lot out of me.

Both of the presentations I was involved in were focused on the use of iBooks Author to create textbook replacements. Yes, I understand this limits me to the iPad only, but really, I don't care. I thought I'd post a quick summary including links from both talks.

Innovating with iBooks Author and Pages

This was a talk I gave with my very good friend Serge Danielson-Francois (Library Ninja). Serge and I complement each other perfectly. I tend to be frenetic and get going on an idea with a focus that can sometimes get me way off agenda. Serge on the other hand always has the long view and can help keep things moving in the right direction.

Anyway, I typically don't use PowerPoint or an alternative. I tend to present from an outline and jump between webpages and applications. You can find our complete outline and all of our links on the Google Site I set up for the presentation. When we both started the year we had a vision of how we'd use iBooks Author and what our "textbooks" would look like. This really became an exercise in reflection on our teaching. We shared our original vision and then how this has changed over the course of the year. If you'd like to see the original vision you can check out an article we wrote for the MACUL Journal, look on page 26.

Serge's vision changed the most. He originally envisioned having his journalism 2 and 3 students create a textbook for his first year students. Awesome idea! However, he's learned that journalism today is a moving target and those things that don't change rapidly are things his students would have difficulty teaching. Things like avoiding the easy headline and digging deeper to the real story. In short how to think like a journalist. He now sees his students creating a portfolio of how stories were covered this year. It will be more of a resource for the future editors of the school's online paper.

Join the iBooks Author Collaborative

I was a co-presenter with Tony DiLaura, a great guy from Zeeland Public Schools. This was the kickoff session for the upcoming iBooks Hackathon! In June we will be inviting teachers to come and learn iBooks Author and hopefully partner up with other educators to create high quality resources for use by students around the state (and beyond). We will be running basically the same session on both sides of the state. On the west side of the state we will be hosted by Kent ISD and on the east side by Wayne State University.

What we really want to do is get teachers working together collaboratively to create pieces of iBooks. This could be good text, graphics, interactive widgets, videos or other cool stuff I haven't thought of. All of these pieces could be then archived in a way that other people could take them and create custom books for their own students. However, we're running this as more of an edcamp like idea, so if our participants have a different vison then we'll go in a different direction. The big ideas are:

Create resource to support the way individual teachers teach
Collaboration: "Many hands make light work"
Collaboration: Lets learn from each other. I would love to find someone who could teach me new skills or offer me better ways to reach my students.
Share what we've made: If what I do will help other educators that would be great. I know I have skills that others don't. If I make my stuff available then they don't have to have those skills.

Interested? Wondering how you can get involved?

Goto our Hackathon Website for more information and to register. We are charging $30 because the number of people we can accomodate is limited and we want to help ensure those that register actually show up. (plus we're providing lunch)
Join our Google+ Community. We currently have people from around the state and as well as other people who've found us.

Papert's Gears

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 03:30:09 PST

Week two of Learning Creative Learning is all about formal vs. informal learning. We started with a reading of Seymour Papert's essay, "Gears of my Childhood". It focused on his fascination with gears that started very early in his life (when he was two) with gears and how this fascination played out through his formal education. We were tasked with writing about on object from our own childhood that interested us.

I really struggled with this. I don't know that I had a similar object/experience when I was very young. In fact I find it very difficult to remember much from that time. This probably points to the fact that I didn't have any really powerful experiences like Papert's when I was very young.

The closest experience I have with an object from my childhood was the Franklin Ace 1000 computer we got in 1982, when I was 11. The Franklin Ace was a clone of the Apple II+. My brothers and I had been begging for a computer. When ever we went to K-Mart we would immediately go to the computer section of the store. Yes, K-Mart really did sell personal computers. We would play with them and write simple programs to fill the screen with things like, "Steve is COOL" or "My Brother SUCKS!" on infinite loops and then walk away. I later learned that my parents made a decision not to take the family to Florida that summer and instead to buy us a computer. From that point on I've always had a computer in my house and computers (or similar devices) have been at the center of how I work and play.

This was an incredible thing to own. We could run cool games, but more importantly I could use it to write computer programs. Now, I never really ever wrote any really complicated programs on this computer. I think I never had the sort of persistence required to do that. Maybe if I'd had badges ;). Just having it there being able to type in programs from computer magazines and see them run really gave me a sense of accomplishment. I wrote, or copied, a program and I cause something to happen on the screen. It really was kind of awesome.

It was obvious, even in the 80s that computers were going to be very important in the future. In retrospect I'm very glad that my parents chose the computer over the vacation. They were really investing in the futures of their three children. Today my older brother is an engineer, my younger brother is the Director of Technology at a high school, and I'm a physics teacher who relies on computers and the Internet as an integral part of my teaching and learning.

Learning with Technology?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 07:46:25 PST

So, my blog is ostensibly about Teaching with Technology, but I think I will depart from that a little and use this as I document my participation in a MOOC I'm taking being offered by the MIT Media Lab on Creative Learning.

Right now I'm watching the lecture for the first week being delivered by Mitchel Resnik. He's offering the background and justification for what he calls "Lifelong Kindergarten". In kindergarten students get to play and explore as the primary way to learn. He contends we should do this at all levels and get away from the model of education that is focused on knowledge delivery.

With new technologies that are being developed all the time we can move closer and closer to lifelong kindergarten. The main thing Resnik is talking about seems to be focused on the design and building of devices or computer programs. This reminds me to some degree of a workshop Gary Abud ran for the DMAPT on Design Thinking. It will get the students to think creatively and do some good problem solving, but unless the design challenges are very carefully crafted I'm not sure how much content a student could learn with this model.

While content is only one of the things I try to teach to my students, it is an important thing. Without the content you wouldn't be able to call my class Physics. I'm hoping this course will give me more insights on how to allow students to play and explore while still teaching the content.

I try to get my students playing and exploring quite often. One of the ways I do with is with building projects. We just finished our marshmallow catapults. I gave students a list of allowable materials and told them to build a catapult that would hurl a marshmallow into a bucket 5 meters away (Thanks @mr_pata for the idea). They had to play, discover, and build. I know they learned some important things along the way. However, they probably didn't need to rely on the physics concepts we've been learning in class nor did they develop new concepts we haven't covered yet. How do I do projects like this that teach not only the critical thinking and experimentation, but also teach physics?

I'm hoping that Learning Creative Learning will give me some insights to help answer that question.

iBooks Hackathon

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 03:59:58 PST

I've already written a bit about iBooks Author and how awesome it is for creating resources to share with your students. I know some of you are probably rolling your eyes about now and thinking something along the lines of, "More iPads in education... When will this fad die?" Whether or not iPads in the classroom are a fad or not is really immaterial at this point. Like it or not, many schools are already or will be going one to one with them. So we should probably find the best way to use this technology to support our students.

Last year Dan Spencer put me in contact with Tony DiLaura. Tony is an educator from Zeeland Michigan. He is also excited about the potential impact of teacher created textbooks using iBooks Author. His goal is to bring educators together to collaboratively create resources that can be used to make the creation of these books easier. After some discussion the idea of the iBooks Hackathon was born.

We will officially kickoff the Hackathon at this year's MACUL conference. Then in June we will have two workshops, one on the east side of Michigan and the other on the west side. At these workshops we hope to bring educators together into groups and begin working on cool resources. Throughout the summer these groups will continue to work and in August we will take what has been created to that point and have the official launch of what will hopefully be a large collection of resources for other educators to use.

if you are interested in participating you can check out our Google+ Community as well as our page in the MI-Learning section of MACUL's website.

GeoGebra and iBooks?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 07:11:26 PDT

If you follow my blog you know I'm a big fan of the new iBooks and iBooks Author. What I wanted to mention today is a cool tool called GeoGebra.

"GeoGebra is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that joins geometry, algebra, tables, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. It has received several educational software awards in Europe and the USA."

It's pretty cool. After playing with it a little I see some real potential here not only for math, but also science. Below is an interactive I made after playing for only a few minutes. It models a position time graph for an object moving with a constant velocity. You can change the Velocity or the Starting Position (xo).

It literally took me no more than ten minutes to make this having never worked with GeoGebra before. Anyway I was looking at GeoGebra as a way of creating interactive content for iBooks. Anthony DiLaura (@anthonydilaura) has been doing this already. He uses Tumult Hype to take GeoGebra output and get it into a widget for embedding in iBooks. I've come up with a slightly different way and easier way, but Anthony's way is better in some ways.

In order to put your GeoGebra Content into iBooks Author you must:

Download a Beta Version of GeoGebra (4.2 or 5.0) and create your interactive
File->Export as "Dynamic Worksheet as Webpage (html)"
Click on the "Export as Webpage" Button
Click on Advanced (near the center of the window)
Set width to 820 and height to 520
Place a checkmark in the Export to HTML5 box
Then Export. Save as index.html somewhere you can find it
Download my sample widget and unzip.
Replace my index.html with your index.html
Rename the sample folder to: your name.wdgt (Adding the wdgt will turn the folder into a widget file. You can access the individual files again by right clicking on the widget file and selecting "Show Package Contents")
Embed your widget in iBooks!

I should note one thing. This method will only work if you have an internet connection to the iPad when you're using it. I have been a bit daunted when it comes to making offline widgets. Check out this discussion forum if you want to try to create widgets for offline use.

There is a lot of potential in GeoGebra. Not just for me as an educator to make interactive elements for my students, but for my students to create them as well. I really wish I discovered this at the beginning of summer rather than the end...

Playing with Digital Storytelling

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 10:08:18 PDT

So I've been watching Ben Rimes' posts for DS106 go by and I keep thinking I should give that a try. I was inspired by the Return to the Silent Era assignment, so after watching a couple other people's submissions I figured I'd jump in. One of the things keeping from trying any ds106 assignment before was a lack of expensive software. Ben always uses high end programs like Adobe Premier and Photoshop that I don't have. How could I possibly do any of the cool stuff he does.

Well, I decided to see if I could do the whole thing using only my iPad. It also gave me an excuse to buy Avid Studio, an app I've been looking at since it came out. Apps I used:

Avid Studio $4.99 - For video editing
Blux Movie (free right now) - I shot the movie with Blux.
PhotoShop Express and SketchBook Express (free) - To create the placards. I added the text in Avid Studio
iSuper8 (free) - Final aging effects added.

The only real problem I encountered while doing this entirely on my iPad was the audio track. There seems to be no way to share audio files between most apps. So in the end I had to download music and then sync it to the iPad using iTunes.

My Workflow:

I sat in front of my TV and recorded the screen using the Hitchcock filter in Blux Movie on my iPad. Seemed like the best way to get the clip I wanted, plus the potential for bad camera work added to the effect. Blux is pretty cool. It applies the filters while recording, no rendering time!
I found a silent movie placard online and saved it to my camera roll. Note, I probably broke copyright here.
I took a picture of the DVD menu (everyone has this on DVD, right?) into SketchBook Express and then traced the Skull. Not my best work, but I wanted to finish the whole project before the end of the movie.
I took the traced skull into PhotoShop Elements and cropped it down.
Then back into SketchBook Express to put it on the placard (I downloaded earlier) and saved the resulting image to the camera roll.
Then into Avid Studio to edit the movie. I used screen credits to put text on the placards, but this limited me a bit. It would have been better to create each placard in SketchBook and then bring them in, but I was being lazy and I still hoped to get it done before the Prok-Chop Express rolled on.
Downloaded some royalty free music from Incompetech by Kevin MacLeod on my computer and plugged my iPad in to sync it over.
Added the music into my movie in Avid and then saved the movie to my camera roll.
Brought the movie into iSuper8 to dirty it up a bit and voila I was done. It made my black and white go sepia. I could have bought another filter to keep it black and white, but I think it looks fine this way.

Unfortunately I didn't finish by the end of the movie. I spent too much time trying to figure out how to get music from an app into my music library on my iPad. As near as I could discover, you can't. Which is really stupid. I mean you can't even create a song in Garage Band and then save it to your music library on your iPad without plugging into a computer first.

The other issue I ran into was the need to save all pictures in progress to the camera roll. If I'd used a computer it would have been far easier. I could just have copied and pasted parts of pictures between documents and/or applications.

This was the first really creative process I've done using only my iPad. Overall I think it turned out well. It could have been better, after going through iSuper8 the edges of my wide screen video were cropped off making the framing a bit off on a couple of shots. I almost decided to try and redo it all on my computer when I remembered, I have grading to do.

But I think I may have just fallen down a rabbit hole. I may end up spending more time looking at ds106 and maybe I'll even try to join a class.

Thinking about PD part 1 - Evolution not Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 04:22:41 PDT

Is it really a problem to repackage old ideas in a new way? I suppose it depends on what I mean by this. Technology Integration is the big buzz word that just won’t die. Most teachers think it can mean simply turning old overheads into PowerPoint presentations or replacing the overhead projector with an Elmo. I suppose they’d be correct to a degree, in both cases they’ve updated the technology. However, many people would contend that both of these “changes” would have little impact on learning. If the technology use stopped there these nay-sayers would be correct. For some teachers both of these would constitute a bit of a leap. In both cases they have a new piece of technology to learn about. They know what to do when the overhead isn’t quite working right, but what do you do when the Elmo isn’t showing up on the screen?

It seems like a small step to many, but for some it’s kind of a big step. But it’s a step and it’s a step in the right direction. When it comes to changing the practices of teachers who’ve been at this for awhile we need to stop thinking revolutionary and start thinking evolutionary. Big change is very scary. So scary in many cases we won’t even make the smallest step along the path. Small changes can still be scary, but we are more willing to take a step and see what happens. It’s really about degree of risk. Smaller risk means smaller reward, but it’s still a reward.

Evolution vs. revolution? How do we get there. With revolutionary change we start with the end point and then try to design professional development to get us there. There’s kind of a big problem with this. We want our students to own their education, but then we don’t seem to expect the same thing from our teachers. Shouldn't we let our teachers to "own the process". If so, should we tell them what the endpoint is? If we think evolution we don’t need to know the end point. In fact, every teacher may have their own distinctly different end point.

The other benefit of evolution vs. revolution is it can easily adapt to changing technologies and technology availability. When you have an end point and a plan to get there you lock yourself in. As new tools become available you either have to figure out how to shoehorn them into your plan or you have to ignore them. Not very satisfying in either case.

So how do we build PD that is evolutionary? First, remember we don’t need to know the end point before we start. It might be nice to have some ideas of where you’re going, but the environment is always changing. Work on picking up new skills that can be used to “increase fitness”.

Natural Selection - Darwinian selection is all about survival of the fittest, right? Well, that's actually an over simplification. What we’re really talking about is less grandiose than that. Traits that increase fitness lead individuals in a population to have more offspring before they die. This means those traits will have a higher frequency in the next generation.

So, what does “fitness” look like in education? That’s a good question. Ideally the “fittest” ideas would be ones that lead to increased learning. That said, there are two other ideas that should also be factored in when judging the “fitness” of a new trait. Any idea that leads to a decrease in workload without impacting student learning should have a selective advantage. In addition, any idea that causes student excitement and engagement without a decrease in learning is also advantageous.

All it takes are small changes accumulating over time to lead to big changes. It is important to remember that in nature most mutations are deleterious and lead to no change. You must try new things, but don't be afraid to cull these deleterious mutations from your practice quickly. This is the scary part. “How much time will I lose if it doesn’t work?” It is important to try, because without new traits evolution can’t happen.

Can you be successful without change? You will always have some crocodiles. Crocodiles haven’t really changed much in tens of millions of years. They inhabit the same ecological niches and they keep on living the way they’ve been living for millions of years. They seem to be getting the job done and they will continue to get the job done as long as their ecosystem doesn’t change. However, things always change.

iBooks Author Teacher Academy

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 03:24:09 PDT

This summer it looks like I will be helping run an iBooks Teacher Academy for teachers in my school. We'll be partnering with a local university (more on this later) so we'll be able to offer SB-CEUs and/or university credit. Our plan is to use this to help leverage the technology we already have in our building. Last summer we bought a cart of iPads and for the most part we've only been using them as a portal to the internet. When we bought the cart we knew this would be the primary way it was utilized, but now we're hoping to move beyond this.

Our secret plan is to get teachers investing in professional development to change the way they think about teaching with technology. Our summer training will only be three four hour days. The focus of the workshop will be split between how to use programs to author interactive iBooks and TPACK (when did this change? I thought it was TPCK). We don't simply want to show teachers how to use the tools. We want to help them think about how to use the tools to teach better.

So how will we accomplish this in 12 hours? The short answer is we won't. We're also planning a series of three to four more 90 minute meetings during the following school year. These will be a chance to get back together and share what we've been working on and get feedback. I'm also planning on pushing for an online collaborative component. I've run some staff training in the past and I've not gotten much traction with any online stuff I've done after the fact, so I'm not dead set on including this. I will be thinking about it through and I'll post details to my blog if anyone is interested on following our progress.

So, why iBooks Author? Because it is really slick. Yes, I know you're locked into the Apple iPad ecosystem. But, at it turns out that's ok at thins point. That said I'll be watching for Inkling Habitat when it becomes available to the public "later this year". Our focus is not only on the specific tool, but how we can use the tool to create pedagogically appropriate content for our students. This last is what I'm excited about.

Below is a my latest iBooks 2.0 demo video. I made it in part to advertise the possibilities to our staff while at the same time testing out the capabilities of Camtasia Mac 2 and Reflection (which lets me mirror my iPad on my computer). I highly recommend both programs!

MACUL 2012 Video Abstract - Simple Game Programming for Android

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:34:13 PST

Below is a video abstract for my Hands on Workshop for MACUL 2012. I will be covering how to create simple games using Processing for Android devices. As a bonus, I'll also cover how use the same content as interactive elements in Apple's new iBooks 2.0. You'll be able to find everything I'll be talking about on a site I'm creating for the workshop. It's a bit spare right now, but that will be changing over the next week or two as we get closer to MACUL. processing.flosscience.com

Use Processing to Create Interactive Widgets for iBooks

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:22:07 PST

Warning, this post is a bit nerdy.

So, I already blogged bout iBooks Author and how I might use it. I was thinking about how I might be able to create my own interactive elements. So I did a bit of research. If I knew html5 and Java Script I'd be all set. Unfortunately I don't. However, I do know some Processing. I use Processing in my electronics class sometimes (it's very similar to Arduino) and the programming club at my school uses Processing.

It turns out there is this great project called Processing.js that will run Processing programs as Java Script. A little more researching on the net and I now have the ability to create my own interactive elements for iBooks 2.0.

This is really cool. Our school has a cart of iPads. With iBooks Author it is possible for our teachers to easily create compelling custom content for our students. More importantly, when they decide they want interactive elements we can have our own students create that content, turning the content creation into a collaboration between the students and the "content exerts".

So, how do you do it? Start with the tutorial and demo files over at the Tulmult Inc blog. Be sure to watch the video and download the demo files. You'll also have to download the latest version of processing.js just drop it into your working folder.

Create a file titled index.html to be something like:

Be sure to edit the plist file so that the size matches your Processing sketch. Your default image also has to have the same dimensions as your sketch. I discovered this the hard way. Just trust me on this. You can check out what I've been working on if your interested. I've put my latest version in my Public Dropbox. It includes a simple color mixing interactive in section 1.3. If you're on an iPad when you click the link to my book the screen goes white while the file is downloading (it's about 80 MB). Just wait and you'll eventually be able to "Open in iBooks".

My file is for the ICCARS project and it's only a partial rough draft, but you're free to download it. Spectrum Guide.ibooks

I for one like iBooks Author

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 04:48:20 PST

If I was a good blogger I'd point you to some specific posts where people talk about all the problems with the end user license and shake their fists saying, "This is Apple at its worst!" I'm late to the game, so I'm sure you've already seen such posts. So, I'll just skip that part.

I think the biggest problem Apple has, as usual, is people's expectations. We really wanted them to fundamentally change the textbook industry, maybe even kill it so we could move into the future. Unfortunately corporate rhetoric and rumors rarely match reality. Ed-tech pundits also seemed to expect Apple to ignore its entire corporate culture and embrace the open source movement. Anyway, enough about that.

Why do I like iBooks Author? I've been playing around a bit with it and it is really pretty slick. I was able to quickly put together some material I'd had into a really nice looking ebook complete with a couple video clips and gallery widgets. Do I think this sort of book will make students suddenly embrace the textbook? No, I do not. However, I'll probably never write a textbook myself, so that's ok with me. In fact none of the classes I currently teach (physics, honors physics, and electronics) uses a textbook.

We have a cart of iPads in our school for student use. I could envision using iBook Author to put together interactive assignments for my students to work through. All of the content could be in one place which would make it usable even when the internet goes down (how many lessons have you lost to the net?). This could work great for sub plans. Do a little reading, watch a little video, do a little work and repeat.

I also envision using iBooks Author to create guides for educators. Right now I'm in the process of creating a set of lessons to go with a kit of materials that can be checked out as a part of the ICCARS Program (in association with Wayne RESA and NASA). I'll be putting all the material I create on the web via Google Sites, but I think I'll also put the material into an iBook. All the participants in the program were given iPads, so this makes perfect sense. I'll put the material on the web as well so people who do not have iOS devices can access it.

It really is not that hard to put the material in two different places with different formatting after its created. The writing and photography are the most time consuming parts of this whole process. After that it's just cutting and pasting.

I've included a page from the guide I'm working on. Now that I know what I'm doing I could easily put together a chapter of a really nice looking ebook in 10-15 minutes assuming the material has already been created. Once the whole book was together I'd probably spend some more time tweaking.

As I think about it I may also create a manual for the teachers in my building. When we got our iPad cart we also got a number of iPads for teacher use. The teachers who got them are required to be a member of our iPad Cohort, we do short monthly PD. I've noticed that many of the teachers I work with like to read to learn. This could be another platform I use to reach out to those teachers while I try to pull them along to try new teaching strategies.

Finally, I could see using iBook Author with students for student created content. I'll probably have students write in something like Google Docs so it can be collaborative. This will also let me watch the writing process and save a complete revision history. The writing is the hardest part of the whole process and wouldn't need to be done in iBooks Author. iBooks is just the final step. It would be nice if iBooks Author allowed students to be able to collaborate on the final layout as well, but I don't think it is that necessary.

Will iBooks 2.0 fundamentally change education as we know it? Really, does anyone expect that one tool created by a profit driven corporation has that kind of power? I know I don't, but the free iBooks Author app will undoubtedly be used to create some really compelling content. Additionally it may prompt other companies to create similar products that may end up being more open.

21st Century Learning Symposium

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 03:29:39 PDT

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of attending the 21st Century Learning Symposium hosted by Saint Clair RESA at Marysville High School. I had a great time and I got to talk with a lot of great people. The week before was grueling as I was preparing both for school and the two sessions I ran. So, I'm finally recovered enough to get to posting the links to my presentations.

Before getting to my links I wanted to mention the Be Very Afraid Extra that was going on during the conference. Stephen Heppell has been running Be Very Afraid events in England for the last ten years. The original intent of these was to show how all of the money that has been spent on educational technology has paid off. Students showcase what they do and what they've learned with technology. One of the main ideas about these events is what they've done for themselves rather than what their teachers have done for them. The Be Very Afraid Extra on Thursday was the first of these to be run outside of the UK. There are already other such events scheduled for around the world later this year.

Unfortunately I didn't get to meet all the students, but I did get to meet many of them. Among my favorites were a group of middle school students who have become evangelists for Prezi. They're seeking to teach their own teachers how to use this cool tool while highlighting the advantages it has over PowerPoint. Another group consisted of an artist, a composer and a programmer, who together are creating a game for the new Windows Phone operating system. Leveraging the strengths of each to get the job done.

This sort of event highlights the possibilities technology offers our students and how those possibilities can be leveraged into learning and the beginnings of a career. The, "Be Very Afraid," is there as a message. Students often learn all of this stuff without the input of their teachers or the standard educational system. Most of the students presenting taught themselves the bulk of what they needed to know. Learning more from online forums then their teachers. Personally I think this is awesome!

Now, lets talk about me. I led two sessions. One on the creation and use of video and the other on pseudoteaching. My talk on videos and all of my links can be found at video.flosscience.com. There you will be able to find my collected wisdom on how to create videos and how to use videos to enhance what you do in the classroom.

My second presentation was on Pseudoteaching with Technology. My main goal in this talk was to get teachers thinking more about how they teach while focusing less on what tools they're using. Conferences like this one all to often focus on the "T" in "TPCK". I wanted to shift the focus more towards "PCK". You can find my presentation below. I have the feeling that my Prezi without me talking won't make much sense, but you can at least find all the links I gave out in my session. I may try to record a quick summary screen cast of the high points this afternoon. If I do, I'll post it to my blog.

Pseudoteaching with Technology on Prezi

Cross-posted from FLOSScience.

GoAnimate4Schools is cool

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 03:14:41 PDT

I mentioned GoAnimate the other day and now I've gotten a chance to play with GoAnimate4Schools. GoAnimate4Schools offers both more and less than the free version of GoAnimate. So, what's the difference?

First and foremost I can create student accounts and give them access to stuff I create or upload. With GoAnimate4Schools, I get a lot of the features of GoAnimate Plus. I can upload my own backgrounds or Flash objects. I can even upload videos (up to 10MB) that can be incorporated into my animations. However, I have no way to get my animations out of GoAnimate4Schools.

With GoAnimate Plus you can export animations to YouTube or even buy a downloadable HD video version. In GoAnimate4Schools I seem to have neither option. Right now if I want to save my animations in another form I have to do a screen capture video.

I can create as many characters as I want. In GoAnimate the first character was free, but after that I needed points for the various pieces and parts I'd need for another new character. Points cost money, but you get a bunch of "free" points when you pay for a GoPlus subscription. While I can create lots of characters for free, I have less options for costumes/props. That said, any characters I do create should be available to my students (I haven't confirmed this yet).

So, what will I use it for? I'm not sure yet. I'll probably give students a way to show what they've learned in class in some sort of creative way. But I'll also use it myself. I plan on investigating the ideas presented by Derek Muller in his critique of the Kahn Academy videos. It seems like this may give me a way to make mistaktes in my videos in a more authentic way. So, hopefully students will get a chance to see the sort of missteps they are likely to make.

GoAnimate4Schools.com: Elevator Math by Steve Dickie

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate4Schools. It's free and fun!

Create your Own Educational Cartoons?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 03:10:03 PDT

The other day I discovered another new animation tool on the net. GoAnimate is sort of free. You can create your own custom characters. The first one's free but others will cost a small amount, probably a buck or two.

I made a couple animations so far and it's pretty easy to do. For free you get a small number of characters you can add to your videos. You can have them talk in a number of different voices using the text-to-speech engine, or you can use your own voice. Each character has a number of "actions" they can perform as they move about to tell your story. There are a number of backgrounds to choose from, you can put your characters in a number of different settings as well.

If you want to pay $18 for 3 months or $58/year you get more options of things to do, like upload your own background images and post your animations to YouTube. GoAnimate offers an educational version as well. I applied, but apparently the response has been huge so they're a little back-logged on that front. It appears that this will give me some of the paid features for free.

Anyway, how will I use this tool? My first thought was to use it in a similar manner to how I've used BitStrips. I've used BitStrips to create little comic strips that I've used with my colleagues, but I've not used it with my students. The ones I've created are a bit of commentary on life as a teacher. But I digress. I really like the question-dialog idea presented by Derek Muller over at Veritasium. In his videos he starts by asking questions designed to elicit the common misconceptions held by most people before explaining the concept to be covered. His Ph.D. research shows this to be more effective than simply explaining the relavent ideas.

I wasn't sure how I could incorporate this sort of dialog into my own videos. Going out and interviewing random people (or students) would add an extra level of complexity that I'm not sure I want to do. OK, I would like to do it, but it adds a lot of extra stuff to deal with. Including a camera operator, some sort of hand held or wireless microphone with audio recorder, and more time editing all the extra footage to get just the bits I need.

Could an animated dialog give me the same results? I think it could. Is GoAnimate the tool I should use? This I'm less sure of. It certainly could be, I'll know more when they get back to me from GoAnimate4Schools. Below is my first attempt at a dialog with myself. I created a version of me as close to me as I could. The voice is my voice recorded with the microphone built into my laptop. This, or something like it, may serve as the introduction to a video on the force of gravity and or objects in free fall. This is why I ask a question at the end with no resolution.

GoAnimate.com: Investigating Misconceptions by falconphysics

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
Cross-posted from my science education blog FLOSScience.com

I Really Hate Hidden Pricing!

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 05:09:22 PDT

OK, I just want to rant a little. A few people from our school are at ASCD right now. One of them sent me an email saying I should check out Bubble Score. So I went to the site a clicked around. The only thing I can do is get a video demo.

From there I went to Mastery Connect, their real product. I have to say, after the video demo of Bubble Score I was ready to whip out my credit card. However, there's no way for me to buy it. In fact There is no pricing information anywhere on either website. Why do companies do this? I just want to know if it is something I can even consider or not and I don't want to have to deal with email or phone tag!

It makes me feel that the program will only look good in the hands of a salesperson. Why not give me a way to really see the whole thing and tell me the price? The fact that it's hidden and only a sales representative can show it to me makes me think it must be not that easy to use or not nearly as cool as they make it out to be. Otherwise why not let the product shine on its own merits.

The other annoying part is that this appears to be a service with lots of parts (unfortunately not everything we need) and I just want to have one piece of it. From the site it looks like an all or nothing thing and it seems they only want to sell to entire schools or districts. Oh well, I guess they don't want my money.

OK, I'm done ranting.

YouTube Lifting Limits - Implications for Education

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 04:39:15 PDT

Yesterday I inadvertently uploaded a video that was just over 16 minutes long to YouTube. Once I realized what I'd done I was surprised to see my video on my YouTube Channel. So I tried another and it worked to! Last year the limit was raised from 10 to 15 minutes. So, being a nerd I searched for an answer.

The help files on YouTube still list the 15 minute limit so I had to go to Google. This turned up a New York Times article. Apparently, last December YouTube began lifting the time limit from some users accounts. Now, I ask, why didn't YouTube tell me I now have no limit? I found out completely by accident. Beyond that, what does this mean?

Well, now I don't have to stress too much about cutting up ideas to keep my videos short. I'll still shoot for 10-15 minutes, but I don't have to worry if it goes to 16 minutes. Additionally, I can now upload full lectures if I choose. This could be huge for education. I try not to lecture anymore, but sometimes I really need to. Now I can record my lectures and easily make them available to my students. Or, we can record presentations at in-services and drop them on YouTube for future staff development. I've used Blip.tv previously and will probably continue to do so. However, now I can have all of my videos on both Blip and YouTube! Redundancy is a good thing.

As an aside. If your school or district currently blocks YouTube you should ask if you can have your channel unblocked. Often times YouTube is blocked due to bandwidth concerns. If only teacher channels are being used the bandwidth requirements should be much lower. And, if teacher videos are so popular that they cause a bandwidth problem then I say that is totally Awesome and that fact should be celebrated!

Anyway, here's the video that let me make this discovery.

Teacher Created Textbooks!

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:38:56 PST

First I need to say I'm not really a big fan of most textbooks. I think most of them spend too much time and add more and more pages to make sure they have more checkboxes checked than their competition. The other thing I don't like is the price tag they have. One reason for the outrageous price tag is the overhead inherent in the publishing and distribution models of the past. What can we do about it?

Personally, I plan on writing my own textbook. I'll attempt to avoid the trap of throwing everything in and just focus on what is pedagogically important. I can always toss in the kitchen sink on the web so it'll be available to those teachers who want it. Anyway, I've just launched a project at Kickstarter to fund my idea. I'll spend this summer writing it and working with folks to get it into publishable shape.

My current plan is to distribute my text in some sort of electronic format and have print versions available though a print-on-demand service. So, I won't really need money for maintaing stock or delivering books. What then do I need money for? I'll need to hire an editor, pay for artwork, pay someone to do design and layout, and have some copies to give away to reviewers and such. If I make my project goal I should have just enough to get all that done, I hope. Ideally I'll hire people I already work with to do a lot of the work. Most schools have an over educated workforce, why not tap into the expertise all around me. Maybe this could be the beginning of a model where teachers are paid what they're worth by monetizing their own ideas?

How come I'm not approaching a publisher with my proposal? There are multiple reasons, but the main one is that I want to own what I create. I want to be able to post pieces (or maybe all of it) on my website for free without having to get permission. Anyway, if any of this interests you please check out my Kickstarter project.

Totally Awesome Video Abstracts!

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 04:16:51 PST

This morning I sat down to reed Google Reader and I stumbled across a blog post by John Burk referencing a tweet by Andy Rundquist listing another blog post (I love social media). Anyway the gist of all that social cross-linking is the New Journal of Physics has just launched video abstracts for its articles! It does not look like authors are required to submit videos, but are strongly encouraged to.

So, why am I so excited by this? Well, two reasons really. The first is it gives me lots of ideas for what I can have students do to demonstrate mastery of concepts. Whether it's in my physics or electronics classes. Sure, people have been having students create video summaries/presentations of projects for years. But here are some real world scientists doing it. The ones I've watched are awesome. They can easily serve as a model for students to emulate.

The second reason for my excitement over this relates to the difficulty inherent in reading and understanding real research. I'm a physics teacher and I often have no idea what authors are saying in scholarly articles. So, how can I expect my students to really read and understand the primary literature? These videos offer a window of accessibility for non-physicists. There's a good chance that students will be able to get more out of the actual article when combined with the video. I'll definitely be trying this with my students.

One final thought. What if educational conferences had the expectation that presenters create short 3-5 min video abstract for their talks. How great would that be? I never know which sessions I want to catch. Often just 5 minutes in I realize I'm in the wrong room. It's not that the presenter is bad, it's just the 50 word abstract in the program was too short to really tell me what I needed to know. I think I'll propose the idea for the MACUL conference and create my abstract this afternoon (how come I can't just relax on a snow day?).

Cross-posted to FLOSScience.com

Science Only Studies One Thing at a Time! (re: Digital Natives)

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:09:03 PST

I just got done watching a story on the impact of digital life on the teenaged brain that was on PBS News Hour on January 5th, 2011 (if you're watching the entire episode it's about 27 min in). Anyway, I was not overly impressed (*). The bottom line seemed to be that there is definitive evidence that teenagers' brains are being wired differently because of their use of technology and their reliance on multitasking. However, if you actually listen to what the researchers say, the story is not as clear cut. This is a story that is being presented too early based on research that is still on-going. Additionally, findings from one narrow area are being used to paint broad pictures to fill in gaps where research has not been completed.

I get really tired of this sort of reporting of science. This is almost as bad as the shows on aliens or cryptozoology that present 45 minutes of anecdotal incomplete evidence as proof and then 5 minuties with a scientist destroying the so called evidence.

Anyway, back to News Hour. At one point they see that it takes more of your brain answer two questions posed simultaneously than to answer one. The conclusion, since it requires more of your brain to answer two questions you can't be as good at multi-tasking. To me I say, wait... Now, I'm no neuroscientist, but the questions I'd like to ask one are:

Why does it follow that if I use more of my brain that I must not be as good? It seems like if I was only using the same amount that you could say that as I'd have to split the same "brain power" between two tasks. But if I use more of my brain does that mean I won't be as good? or does it mean I'll be able to get more done?

They also pointed to a study done on "video games" that showed that playing "video games" actually improves eyesight. Yes, as in the sort of eyesight corrected by glasses! It also improves things like attention and multi-tasking. But, the study in question relates to First Person Shooters (and probably one very specific game) and not all video games, but was presented as if it did. Now, there's research here, but then changes related to playing this sort of video game are being used to paint a broad picture related to all technology use by teens. This is not done explicitly, buy is very strongly implied.

Now, I'm not trying to say technology doesn't change our brains. I'm just saying we need to be very careful in how we use scientific evidence. We're told teenagers are better multi-taskers but I've never seen the research to prove this. There are mountains of anecdotal evidence, but this doesn't mean much. There are also mountains of anecdotal evidence that says sugar makes kid hyper even though every scientific study done shows this is not the case (**). We tend to see exactly what we expect to see.

* Disclaimer: I don't really believe in Digital Natives, so I may have brought my own biases with me when I watched this.

** “When parents think their children have been given a drink containing sugar (even if it is really sugar-free), they rate their children’s behaviour as more hyperactive.” Source: British Medical Journal 2008;337:a2769

How much do Credentials Matter?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 06:20:30 PST

So, I guess I've been sleeping or something, but apparently Jon Stewart has been shaking the tree again. This time calling out the Republicans on their filibustering of a bill to help 9/11 first responders. Now, I don't want to ge all political here. What I want to address is a passing quote I heard on the the news.

Stewart has been called a journalist by some, but on the news report that I heard only in passing a professor (not sure who, or from where) said Stewart is not a journalist. When asked what it took to be a journalist, he responded that journalistic training was required. He did not talk about what a journalist does, only how they are trained. So in a sense, you can only be a journalist if you went to school to become one. I wasn't aware that there was any sort of journalist certification.

How many jobs today are ones that our students could do in the future without any formal training. There is this great wealth of material available on the net totally for free. I could take computer programming classes from universities such as Stanford or MIT just by downloading them. I could get 90% of the benefit of those courses without leaving my house. So, what do credentials really tell us today?

They seem to tell us only that the holder of them spent the money required to get them. They also tell us that these people ostensibly took the courses and got the training. Now, if we put them next to a really motivated person who went to all the trouble to learn the material themselves... Personally, if I was running a company I'd rather hire the person who trained themselves to do the job. But, how does someone demonstrate they have the skills?

Well, I suppose you start to do the job you want, but do it for free. The web today really makes this a possibility. Want to be a journalist? Start a blog. Want to be a film maker? Make some films and put them on YouTube. Want to be a musician? Do what JoCo did. Want to be a computer programmer? Write some code and release it on the net. The web today is an amazing platform that can allow the best to rise to the top. All you really need is to be good and be willing to work for free for awhile. What better time to do that then while you're in school living at home.

I mean what will look better on a college/scholarship application? "I know how to program in Objective C," or "Here's the app I created in Objective C"? (Monarch Express, created by two of my students)

Now, how do we teach our students to do this? How do we get them to be the entrepreneurs they can be? All you need today to start your own business is a computer, a connection to the internet, and persistance!

Enough with the iPad Already

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:18:57 PST

OK, seven of my last ten posts have been related to my iPad. It really is awesome! However, this is a technology in education blog, not an iPad blog. To that end I've begun documenting my iPad knowledge on a Google Site. As I learn new stuff I'll add it there. If I make get any huge revelations I'll blog about them here as well. I may also periodically post a list of updates here so they'll show up in your RSS feed.

Anyway, I promise to get back to my ongoing investigation into how technology can be a powerful tool for transforming teaching. You can find my collected ramblings on the iPad at ipad.flosscience.com

iPad as Teaching Tool after two months - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:45:26 PST

So, I've had an iPad in my hands for two months now. I use it daily both for serious and not so serious stuff. It has replaced my laptop for almost all of my at home net surfing and such and is the device I never set down while at work. So, what's the good, the bad, and the ugly?

The Good:

Wireless Display - I've been using AirSketch for this and it works pretty well. I've just learned that AirDisplay may fill the bill and may in fact work better than a VNC solution (more on this in the future). In the past I've used a bluetooth Wacom tablet for this, but I'd underestimated the value of being able to see what I'm writing actually on my tablet.
Portable Data Gathering - When I first got my iPad I used Google Forms for data collection. I've switched over entirely to Numbers. When I'm not using my iPad as a presentation tool I carry it around and collect data on my students' apparent mastery of concepts. I still haven't found my perfect tool, but Numbers is the closest so far.
Personal Learning Network - I now consume almost all my news on my iPad. For Twitter I use Flipboard and the official Twitter client. For RSS I use MobileRSSFree and Pulse. I've also leaned a lot of useless trivia by doing crosswords in the USA Today app. The PBS, NPR, and TED apps also give me something to do when noting else is happening.
File Access - I'd been using DropBox for this, but I just started playing with ZumoCast. ZumoCast is primarily designed to stream audio and video from a computer to the cloud, but you can also share folders full of documents. These documents can be downloaded and then opened in other apps as well. All my important teaching docs are now shared and I can have them on my iPad when I need them without having to take up lots of space when I don't.
It's Fast - It's pretty snappy. Everything works pretty well. I've had programs crash, but it doesn't take down the whole system. This may be part of the justification of the Bad and the Ugly below.

The Bad:

Still no Flash or JAVA - There is lots of good stuff out there that I just can't access. Yes, I know most video sites are now working around this, but I'm talking about some really good simulations that I'd love to be able to use.
No File System - Well, no real accessible file system. I could be wrong, but it seems that if I want to use the same document in different applications that each application has its own copy of that document.

The Ugly:

Google Apps - There's still no way to edit a Google Site from an iPad. You can easily add or remove text from a Google Doc with their mobile editor, but to do any real work you need to use the Desktop editor. While you can do this on an iPad the experience is not great. There are some third party apps that can edit Google Docs, but I haven't tried any yet.
Printing - So if I happen to have one of half a dozen printers then I can print? Really?
Projector Support - Why can't all apps share their screen with the projector attachment? Seems like this should be in the operating system rather than in individual applications. If you plan on projecting you should read app descriptions carefully to see if they support it or not.
The App Store - Both good and bad. There are some great apps there. However, I'd love to see what people would do if Apple loosened up their policies some.

UniBoard is Now Free

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:01:25 PST

In the past I've shown off this great program for working with tablets or with a Wiimote whiteboard called Uniboard. The problem was that Uniboard seemed to be dead. There had been no updates or tweets for months (maybe a year). I figured it was a piece of great software that would just fade into non-existence.

Well, yesterday I went looking for it again. I had observed a colleague of mine teaching yesterday and realized that even though it wasn't being updated that he could definitely use it. Well, apparently last week Uniboard went Open Source. It is now called Sankore and is totally free. Warning, the page is all in French. Here's a direct link to the download page.

The free version used to have a nag-screen on every page, it's gone now. The screen-capture tool had a watermark in the recording which is also now gone. I can whole heartedly recommend this program. Whether you need a tool to help present lessons in class or you want to record lessons for reverse lecture you should check out Sankore.

Teacher TechBites ep 019 - AirSketch for iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dickie) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:27:06 PST

In this episode I show AirSketch a cool whiteboard program that allows you to project what you're doing on your iPad through your classroom projector wirelessly. Basically, what AirSketch does is create a web page that another computer can access. All you need to do is point a web browser at your iPad and then the magic happens. As you write or draw on your iPad the writing appears on the projector. You can be anywhere in your room as long as you have a Wifi connection.

In the free version all you get is a whiteboard with a black pen. In the paid version ($6.99) you can change your pen tool and import pictures or pdf files to write-on/mark up.

Cross posted from TeacherTechBites.com