Tech Tips for Teachers

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During its last big event event in New York, Apple made an announcement that it would be getting into the textbook industry and has partnered up with some of the largest textbook publishers in North America. Along with that announcement, Apple also announced a new app that would allow others to create their own etextbooks called iBooks Author.

So what's the big deal? Tablets have been making their presence felt in classrooms all across North America. Students interact easily with this technology and most prefer this type of interface when consuming information. iBooks Author allows anyone who wants to, to create an interactive text for school, or for business. If they want they may even wish to take their material and sell it on the iBooks store.

How easy is the app to work with? Well in a word, very easy. Like most products that Apple has created Pages, and Keynote notably, it comes with a few templates to get a person started with creating their book.

Like Pages (their word processing application) you can add text and insert images. The text flows neatly around graphics giving the look of your book a professional feel. The templates also allow you to keep a consistent design throughout your book as well. What sets the application apart is the ability to add interactive elements to your text such as picture galleries, video, audio, interactive maps, Keynote slide shows and three dimensional objects. Apple calls these elements Widgets.

Now from a teacher perspective what does this mean? It means that I can create my own texts or units using this tool or from a project based learning standpoint have my students develop a textbook that could be used to evaluate their understanding of course materials. 

Now like any new technology what are the downsides to using this? 

1. You are locked into one device.

2. You are locked into one platform.

3. If you publish your work to the Itunes store, Apple will take its thirty percent cut for distribution.

4. You are locked into Apple.

Its a nice neat little loop that Apple has created for itself in terms of driving up demand for its products and services. Naturally this has made some people upset in Education who would rather see a more open approach to curating materials for learning. I would encourage you to read these differing viewpoints.

In my opinion it is an exciting tool to work with, and to be honest I ended upgrading to Lion so that I could try my hand at creating an etext. 

• Apple Announces iBooks Author (techie-buzz.com)
• iBooks Author (elearningstuff.net)
• What's the buzz on all this Apple publishing stuff? (lulu.com)
• Why All the Anti-Apple Sentiment Over iBooks Author? (q-ontech.blogspot.com)

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Today I attended a session hosted by a friend of mine on broadcast news.Every day his school produces a news segment which is viewed by the school. It has been one of my goals to do the same for our school because of the great opportunities for learning that can be had by participating in a project like this.

We started off the day learning about how this newscast has evolved over the years to what it is today. It takes quite a bit of organization and work. However it is quite evident that Jared's students have taken ownership of this project. Not just for school marks or for credits but because it will be seen by their classmates. The teachers in the school utilize this program to make announcements to the students.

Well the best way to learn I guess is to be thrown into the process of creating and producing the news program. Jared had us produce "streeters" which are just short segments where reporters film people and ask their opinion on a specific issue. This is a great activity in of itself because the students have to develop good questions to ask to the people they interview.

Before it all begins though, there is a preplanning requirement in which they have to pitch the story to the Producer aka the teacher before they can go ahead and the film the piece. Since ours was a relatively simple project it wasn't hard to develop a question and come up with a way we could film the segment. 

I learned about B roll footage today and that we had to film or source images/video we could use to help contextualize the footage we were filming. For instance, today our poll was about whether or not the Apple Iphone 4s was worth the extra money right now. We had to shoot people using their iPhones as well as giving us their opinion about the product. The B roll footage added visual interest as well. Of course these segments could not be longer than two minutes.

Additionally, I learned how to do some basic editing in Final Cut. This is one thing I have been putting off learning to do because it isn't available to my school yet. We have been using iMovie for our video edit

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ing and will probably continue to use this but learning final cut skills is an added bonus.

We created about 4 "streeters" or news packages to prepare for broadcast. These segments were then tweaked by adding graphics and fixing the sound levels before sending off to the news studio for the final production. Everyone in the workshop had a job. We had a tech director, anchors, teleprompt operators, and we were all responsible for the script. At this point the anchors read the news, had a break between the different segments, said their parts again, and this process continued until we finished airing the segments. I was working a video camera which was being monitored by someone in the booth to make sure that everything looked and sounded okay.

At the end of the day, we were able to see the final product. From start to finish the entire broadcast took us about three hours to produce. The end product for the show was about ten minutes in length.

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All in all, it was a great experience and I would like to thank Jared Nichol and all the other participants for making it such an enjoyable day of learning. I'd also like to thank the two students from Mr. Nichol's class who helped out with their technical expertise and experience. 

Conclusion

• iMovie Tricks (flatchat.wordpress.com)
• Using Film in Any Class (speedofcreativity.org)

Image via CrunchBase

Now being a technology enthusiast, I do on occasion like to play video games. I'll admit it, i'm part of that generation where video gaming at home just started to take hold. Instead of heading down to your local arcade (some of you will remember this) and emptying your pockets full of quarters, you may have powered up your television and started to play your Nintendo, Atari, Intellivision, Sega, or the like. 

• Infographic on Video Games in Education (connectwithyourteens.net)
• Know What's in the Video Game (education.com)
• Video game rentals move online as GameFly follows Netflix (venturebeat.com)

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Sometimes you just wish there was a faster way you could enter data you need in a more efficient way. Sometimes you would like to have your students collect data and see the results change in real time. Sometimes you just need a time saving form you could send out and say "HERE!" tell me what you need. Well, if you are familiar with Google Docs then you should really check out the Google Forms section of the service.

Creating a form is easy and quick and it can be as complex or as simple as you need it to be. There are specific question types from which you can choose: multiple choice, checkboxes, scale, grid, and choose from a list. There are also options for short and longer text answers if you are looking for that kind of feedback.

Once you have created your form you can send the link out to your students or you can embed it in on your website. People from all over can respond to your form and you will see the results in real time. You can even customize the thank you message for your form when it is completed.

The first time I used this,was for a simple school wide survey. I sent the link to the teachers and the students could choose what reward they wanted for the awards assembly: medals or trophies. It didn't take long to tally the results which appear in real time onto a spreadsheet as they are being entered. You can also add a chart which updates automatically as more data is entered.

There are a ton of uses for this service which can be found on Tom Barrett's Edt.ech blog. He has a number of slide shows of different web tools to enhance teaching. They are created collaboratively by teachers all over the world.

Here is the short introduction from Google to give you an idea of how it works.

Also here is the 70+ Ways to Use Google Forms in the classroom as found on Tom's blog which is full of great ideas.

• New Interface for Google Docs Apps (mt-soft.com.ar)

Considering the fact that educational practices haven't changed all that much in the last 100 years. What is the problem with looking into how we teach students?
It seems to me that there has been a lot of discussion about questioning our practices and methods when it comes to teaching our students. In order for any profession to develop, it must examine what has worked and what has not. We must question conventional wisdom and let's face it, traditions so that we can best adapt to meet the needs of new learners.
Although we hunger for change, it is a frightening proposition for many. Change is not easy. Change is difficult and fraught with many obstacles to overcome.
It tends to divide us into many camps about which method is the best for teaching our children. All those groups believe they are right. Many groups have had varying degrees of success with their students. So whose ideas are best? Which philosophies should we follow? At this point in my career, I don't know. Each teacher i've spoken with or blog I have read has contributed to my teaching. It has made me question the very things I do within my classroom and made me reevaluate how I teach. Some changes I made were difficult because it was out of my comfort zone.
So private vs. Public? Competition vs. Collaboration? Standardized Testing vs. Authentic assessment? Real vs theoretical study? These are just a few of the issues which face us in this time of change. I hope that I am open minded enough to accept this. I know I will be a better teacher for it.

I was inspired to write this post because of what I was listening to on a BBC Radio Program called the Surgery. It seems that about this time that the students in Britain are studying for their exams and for many students this can be a make it or break it situation in terms of the schools that they are allowed into. This show deals with quite a number of different issues but this one discussed "Revision" or studying for us here on this side of the pond. As I listened to the calls, you could sense the panic and stress the students were facing as these exams approached.

Today, I was in a twitter conversation with some colleagues of mine about testing. While it is important to challenge and push our students to meet their potential, can this not be done in some other way then a test? Do these tests serve the purpose of real learning or do they serve the system to prove that students have covered the curriculum? A colleague pointed out and rightly so:

“@GraemeCampbell: @d_martin05 @pjenn86 bc we have a duty to prep students for ALL the challenges they will face, not just the ones we agree with :)”

However, are the tests we are using relevant pieces of assessment? I'm not so sure.

Realistically, are our students going to be tested? Yes. It is a simple fact that once they leave school they will be tested in some other way depending on the profession/career they enter into. Will these tests be a good indicator if they will be successul in said career? Maybe.

The debate of testing really puts one group at risk: our students. It deprives them of the desire to learn or it can crush the motivations of those students who really do care about their education. Ironically,we have created this world where numbers are more important than people. As Sir Ken Robinson put it the "..whole system of public education around the world [is] the protracted process of university entrance...."(TED Talk Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity), and goes on further to say that our children have been educated out of creativity because it wasn't a valued skill in our society.

Does testing do the same thing? Will a student remember the fantastic project they created in school or the relationships they develop or will they be more likely to remember how well or poorly they did in schools according to the tests?

I know that like every other educator out there, we want our kids to be healthy, happy, and live up to their potential. What can we do differently to emphasize that the reward is in the learning and the building of relationships rather than the number we score on the top of the exam?

(Photo courtesy of Katie Harris found on flick at http://www.flickr.com/photos/54333433@N00/4292446726)

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Of course we picked up all the accessories for the majority of our purchases, headsets, memory cards for the camera and video recorders. At this point, we had over $2000 left to spend in the store. We already amassed quite a pile of merchandise at the front counter and now we were being sent back into the store to pick up more. So, we decided on a time capsule for our macbooks so the students had a central place to store their data. We also picked up some dongles so we could hook up the laptops to projectors. At this point we still had hundred dollars to spend. We ended up purchasing a wireless headset which we thought we might use for a newscast project we want to start when we get the macbooks set up in the school. Now our school will be equipped with both macbooks and pc's.We spent about two hours in Best Buy filling our cart. I would like to send a big thank you out to Mark Wahl and the staff of the North End Bestbuy in Edmonton. They were extremely helpful. I should also mention that we are receiving three months of free Geek Squad service. Also, Best Buy is sending some of their techs to our school to help our teachers learn how to operate a Macbook and demonstrate what the laptops can do. As I have mentioned in previous posts, if you haven't applied for the Best in Class Fund, you should.

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• Best Buy Inventory Shot: New MacBook Pros on March 11 (slashgear.com)
• Did Intel Just Leak The New MacBook Pros? (crunchgear.com)
• MacBook or MacBook Pro. Which One is Right for Me? (brighthub.com)
• Tips for Shooting A Winning Video For Your Nonprofit (bethkanter.org)