The Contemporary Educator

I can be kind of a smart alec. My old man has a different term for it. So, last night as I was ready to give Twitter one last glance and then turn off a stinker of an NFL game between the Eagles and Seahawks, something tailor-made for my somewhat innate snarkiness caught my eye.

Twitter allows users to create hashtags. It’s easy. Type the # sign and then put any words you want after it. When multiple users use the same hashtag, Twitter compiles a list of every tweet marked with it.  Companies and organizations are finding they can bring consumers together this way. You may notice a hashtag in the corner of your favorite TV show. Viewers tweeting about what they are seeing can join the same conversation. One university even painted a hashtag in the endzone this fall for fans at the game and those watching at home to use. It can unite TV and football fans….teachers too.

The typical serious #edchat discussion had somehow mutated itself into #pencilchat. Yep, you’ve got it, a chat about pencils (and their perilous nature) in school. A handful of ed-techers were sharing sarcastic tweets that took the criticisms we hear everyday about integrating technology into schools and connected them to the good old pencil. In a word it was brilliant. In another word it was addictive.

Take a look at #PencilChat . This silly idea has drawn a hugely diverse set of educators from around the world into a hilarious and creative conversation that has resonated with thousands of users nonstop for 3/4 of a day now.

I could not pull myself away from the early stream of one-liners coming from @johntspence, @MrsLGrade3, @mramidon, @JohnMikulski, and @billgx among others. I couldn’t stop from firing off one after another of my own as well.

It was humorous, cathartic, and insightful at the same time. We’ve been dealing at our house with some tragic family developments lately and I needed a laugh in a bad way. I needed some inspiration as well.

What I learned is that nearly any excuse anyone has for not embracing technology in education or against a specific device, you could direct the same criticism toward the pencil.

Sixteen hours later, #PencilChat seems to just be getting started. My personal assessment of why it is going viral lies in the fact that so many of us who fight daily to move education forward are being uplifted by the fact that the excuses and arguments we hear constantly are just as absurd as the silly 140 character or less messages we are sending out into the Twitter-sphere.

There are gripes, curriculum promises unfulfilled, and digs of all kind.

At one point when I was firing off #pencilchat post after post I quipped that I will probably be down to 9 followers. What happened is that I picked up a ton of new followers and had never seen so many of my ideas re-tweeted.

Here are some of the quips that got the most traction for the geeky crowd swapping ideas and sarcasm during the #pencilchat experience.

If I take a pencil home in my teacher bag and write my grocery list, do I or the school district own copyright? #pencilchat

Anyone know when the application for Dixon Ticonderoga Certified Educator opens up? #TCE12 #PencilChat

Show me a laptop or iPad case that comes already 3-hole punched like timeless pencil zipper case. #PutThatInYourTrapperKeeper #pencilchat

Few things more disappointing than checking out the roving set of pencils only 2 find last teacher didn’t bother to sharpen them #pencilchat

No embarrassing auto-corrections from pencils. #pencilchat

Is there a bigger robber of student focus in classroom than electric pencil sharpener? #pencilchat

Pencil-Based-Learning just doesnt have the sexiness other curriculum initiatives do. Does it? #pencilchat

There were lots of references to 1:1 pencil initiatives not working, questions about how you support technically #2 pencils and mechanical pencils , as well as how kids might feel if you allowed a Bring Your Own Pencil program and some had nicer pencils than others.

Think about how silly we think  they are when applied to pencils in school…but then think about how as typical technology excuses they really lose a lot of their punch. Educational technology is nothing more than a set of learning tools…just like the pencil. If the excuse is silly for the pencil, it is pretty silly for the laptop, the iPad, or other digital device.

Conversations like these are what make Twitter such a great educational tool. It’s fun. It’s timely. It brings together people from all over the world, and it makes you think.

If you have been to this blog before, you know that innovation is a passion of mine. The concept of “think different” can be hard to explain sometimes though. I tell my students I want them to create and be innovative however I struggle at times at telling them how.

Edheads.org is helping in a big way. The website has been on my list of Infotech Links for years at Infotech with Mr. Losik but has never been more relevant.

The “Design a Cell Phone” activity really has very little to do with cellular technology but is all about understanding the steps engineers follow when designing a product for a client. In other words, it is a step-by-step lesson in innovation.

The object of the activity for students is to create a cell phone that will appeal to senior citizens. To be successful they must study all of the information provided in the research section. Here is where higher order thinking skill #1, Analysis comes into play. They read interviews and look at charts of consumer preferences.

Students learn the needs of their customers

Once the research is complete, it is on to the design lab. I love that in the introduction to the lab, Elena the helpful guide states, “Design without purpose is art. Although I love art, we don’t get paid for that.” Once in the lab the kids apply, #2 higher order thinking skill, what they learned in research. They do this by selecting the cell phone components that will produce what the senior citizen customers need.

Students select necessary components.

After the phone has been designed, the evaluation and higher order thinking skill #3 begins with a test group of senior citizens. This part can be a riot as the old timers pull no punches in their feedback. If the kids feel they have satisfied their test group they may move on to sales, but if the seniors don’t like the phone it is back to the lab.

Students get feedback from their test group

The final step is to meet with the client. Here they are shown the sales figures. A successful creation is met with a company owner who has dollar bills sticking out of his pockets and other parts of his suit. If the kids create a dud of a cell phone, the owner lets his disappointment be known.

Time to see how successful the sales are

This is a great activity. It’s fun and taps into higher order thinking. The overall message though that I end up stressing to my students is to understand that the path they followed. Research, Design, and Testing are the key essentials steps to solving almost any problem and for creating something new. This is the path of innovation. They must identify and understand a need. They have to design a solution and then test that solution to determine its effectiveness and whether or not tweaks need to be made.

As we move forward this year in my Infotech classes with different challenge based learning units, I plan on referring back to this activity as a blue print for how to innovate. No matter what challenge we tackle, we will follow the same path.

Thanks EdHeads!

It’s the Thursday before the first week of school and I am one of the very few Michigan teachers not contractually in a building at 7:51 AM. Most Michigan kids will start Tuesday. Kids in Hamilton where I teach will start Wednesday.

For a number of years the Hamilton contract agreed upon by the staff and school board has kept this week officially part of summer vacation. Of course very little of this week actually ends up being about relaxation as teachers scramble to put all of the final touches on their classrooms. There are open houses and if a teacher let himself or herself, he or she could spend every waking minute preparing for the new year. The beauty of the way we do things in Hamilton is that it allows teachers to focus on preparing for the kids…without a lot of distractions. Typically I am advocating for as much professional development as possible but I want people to think deeply about the effectiveness of delivering it in this time frame.

Why do so many schools insist on it? There are obvious benefits. We don’t interrupt student learning in order to set aside teacher learning days and there are no substitute costs to have teachers leaving to attend conferences. Many administrators will argue that new initiatives can be implemented and refreshers can be offered. For many schools though, I believe they do professional development at this time of year because…well…that is just what you are supposed to do. Everybody does it that way. It’s how education works.

It may be how education works, but does it work? We have to think about the mindset of those professionals that are being developed. Where are there minds? Chances are they are a million miles from where most administrators want their focus during these learning opportunities. They are thinking about all that needs to still be accomplished and getting stressed by the minute. This is where I see attempting to implement something big and new to be completely ineffective. Change is hard for educators, at least sudden change and when people are tense about all of the work it is going to take to make it through the upcoming year already, piling new and more on top of it can be a mental killer and auto-tune-out for many.

“New” needs to be gradually phased into a system with full implementation being down the line. There is nothing wrong with laying out a vision but expecting a staff to focus and learn something big and new for the immediate future has little chance of succeeding.

Refresher PD has a lot better chance of succeeding but it too has some critical elements needed for it to be successful. I am doing about 20 minutes worth of refresher instruction at our first staff meeting on Tuesday. I will be very mindful of the minds with which I am trying to connect. I know already the size of the task when offering something that can engage and be immediately useful and relevant, hopefully something that eases tensions and not fuels tensions. It’s going to be brief, fun, and full of “oh yeah, that’s how you do that”. Even refreshers in the back-to-school PD model can have their hurdles so design is critical.

Personally I really like how Hamilton has set up this time of year for us. We can all professionally accomplish what needs to happen in our rooms for the kids and then get together on the Tuesday after Labor Day for the district kickoff and building meetings to get the logistical stuff rolling. Professional Development days are scattered throughout the year often giving kids 3 day weekends. Initiatives like formative assessment are being phased in piece by piece. This past June featured a two-day Apple led workshop on Challenge Based Learning. Because it was in June, it gave us a lot of time to digest it and think about how it can be included into our instruction. When we hosted our Day of Innovation on August 18th we specifically planned it so it would not interfere with teachers trying to get rooms ready.

I am not saying effective professional development can’t take place on the first couple of days before kids arrive. It had better be motivating like where the Mason, MI schools just brought in Kevin Honeycutt or top of the line like Mattawan, MI’s Apple training it offered this past week. I just want schools to consider how much their teachers really benefit and all of the hurdles that have to be cleared in order for a district to get a solid return on its investment.

An idea that had been kicked around by Hamilton Infotech teacher Wendy Baker, superintendent Dave Tebo, and me for a while finally came to fruition on Thursday. Over 40 educators gathered for the innaugural Hamilton Day of Innovation. We wanted it to be different than just a tech day. Sure, all of the sessions ended up being educational technology tool centered but we wanted the big picture to be on big ideas like how we can build a culture of innovation and how we can make school work for all kids.

Here is the keynote address I delivered in order to get the day rolling.

I surveyed my 5th graders to find out what their all-time favorite activities have been since beginning Infotech in Kindergarten with me.

We used a Google Form and then various classes took turns sorting all of the data returned.

The landslide runaway winner was Google Apps. The interesting thing about this is that they have only had access since this Fall. As a district staff we were wondering if this would make an impact. It’s pretty safe to say that it has.

Here is the full list.

1. Google Apps
2. Kerpoof.com
3. Falling Sand Game
4. Google Sketchup
5. Scratch
6. KidPix Deluxe 3x
7. Fantastic Contraptions
8. Tumble Town Tales
9. UEN 3-6 Student Interactives
10. Sifteo Cubes

Today at my kitchen sink, while cleaning up some breakfast dishes, I had one of those “ah ha” moments. It was as if it was sent from above.

Here is the idea. Think about what educational technology and the “contemporary” Christian church service have in common. Whether you are a believer or not, it is hard to deny the similarities.

Over the course of the last twenty years, many churches have seen big changes to the typical Sunday morning worship formats they offer. For years, churches were seeing a decline in numbers and an apathy amongst its congregation. When asked why, many members…and especially young ones…said they just weren’t getting a personal connection with the traditional singing of hymns and congregational responses. Sound familiar? What are educators hearing when they ask today’s student who seems disinterested in school and apathetic? It’s pretty much the same thing. These students are struggling to make the personal connection with the traditional way schools operate and present content.

What did churches do? They listened to those they aim to serve and they tailored their offerings….well, some did. For many of those who did, they saw a return of parishioners and renewed interest. According to a Crosswalk.com article, a 2009  study found 64% of churches that updated their services or created contemporary offerings saw their numbers grow.

Education should be paying attention and following some of the same principles when it comes to integrating technology.

Principle #1: If we don’t meet their needs, we will lose students. If these churches hadn’t gotten creative and realized the legitimacy of the desires, church goers would do just that…go, and take their tithes and offerings with them. With the increase of “schools of choice” laws and the pushing of vouchers by some politicians, it is just as easy for families who don’t feel the personalized connection to take their state foundation grants down the road with them to a different district. The proper use of educational technology can tailor that education and create that personalized connection. We in education need to listen.

Principle #2: Meet those we aim to serve on their schedules. Churches began to meet members more on members’ schedules and not just on the church’s schedule. Many of the “mega churches” offer Saturday night services or Sunday evening services for those that just can’t roll out of bed or have mid-Sunday morning conflicts. They are also using technology to stream church via the Internet or they create podcasts of their services. Educational technology has amazing abilities to break down the same dependencies schools have on rigid scheduling and limited course offerings. Content, courses, and lectures can all go online and on portable devices. It can be streamed over the Internet and classes can meet in the virtual spaces of wikis and classroom management systems like Moodle. Schools can be creative and unlock learning time from the 8 to 3 mold, just as churches are unlocking worship from 11:oo to noon on Sunday morning.

Principle #3 Remain true to your core content. Even though there may now be a five piece rock and roll band up by the altar, the music is still about the same God that “What a friend we have in Jesus” is. The service may look vastly different from the outside but it’s the same truths that are being pursued. It’s the same Scriptures being studied. Philosophically for me, educational technology is a way to pursue academic truths and develop deeper understanding of the content to be learned. I am a firm believer that the liberal arts must be cherished and that classical studies teaches the contemporary human to inquire and think on a higher level. Now harness those pursuits to the tools we have technology wise and the discovery is ramped up 100 fold. Bringing the classics into the context of today makes it personal to kids.  GoogleLitTrips.com is a perfect example of taking great literature and exploring it through Google Earth…relating sometime ancient locales to our contemporary world. Even Steve Jobs during the launch of the iPad2 heralded this pursuit. “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields the results that makes our hearts sing.”

What neither education nor the rock and roll church can lose sight of is the human relationship factor. Isn’t that mission of both really? Technology can do a lot of things for both, but if we are not fostering respectful inter-personal relationships in either space then we are missing the boat and no matter how slickly produced, the messages will never find their targets. Computers can never replace great teachers and podcasts can’t replace exceptional preachers.

The Framers and Founders of America called for a separation of Church and State. It doesn’t mean the two can’t learn from one another though.

Shortly after my new iPad 2 arrived, I installed iMovie and got it into the hands of my students. My biggest curiosity about this new generation of the iPad has been to discover how much the new  camera and apps like iMovie and Garage Band make the device more of a production tool.

Here a group of third graders are given a tiny bit of assistance as they use the iPad to shoot and edit a science report on the whitetail deer.

A week ago, I engaged in an hour long discussion with my principal Tim Lyman at Blue Star Elementary. Now I know that sentence alone could lead one’s imagination into all kinds of possibilities, but this was probably one of the deepest and most productive talks I have ever had with a colleague at school.

Tim stopped by the library to pick my brain about tweaks he could make to a Google form he was creating. He and some of the other principals were exploring ways to make the process for requesting personal and professional days easier. As someone who travels between two schools and has a different principal as an official supervisor (who also splits time between different schools), I was all for helping that process. After we monkeyed with the form a little our conversation took a philosophical twist.

Tim asked me what I thought about IXL.com, a site our teachers have been using in their elementary math instruction. “Is that integrating technology?”

“It’s all drill and kill,” I initially blurted out, but then jumped on the brakes.

I had to catch myself before I went “ed-tech elite” and began to ramble on theoretically how instead of just doing “expensive worksheets” kids should be producing story problems in podcast form and 100 other “better uses”. Instead I took a second and reflected deeper on the question.

Yes, sites like IXL are mainly populated with rote math facts. Guess what though. Kids have to learn math facts. Period. Without computational literacy, any higher ordered math thinking is impossible. The greater gain though from using the site has come from our teachers’ ability and real desire to differentiate instruction for individual needs. Doing that for 27 first graders can be extremely taxing but a tool like this gives educators all kinds of options for the broad spectrum of ability levels in any classroom.

So, to answer the big question, “Yes, that is integrating technology and it does two things. It’s gives students access to more tailored practice materials and it saves the teacher’s insanity because he or she doesn’t have to beg, borrow, or steal all of the varied worksheets and manipulatives that would otherwise be necessary.”

Tim’s next question was, “Where do we go from here? A year ago we had a few classes use the library laptops on days you weren’t here. Now we have two extra mobile labs and people are clamoring for more.”

“Boy, it sure would be nice to have more.” or something like that was my response, but as I was saying that I couldn’t help but feel the satisfaction in how far our staff had moved in just one school year. “Really,” I said, “we just have to keep this movement going and do all we can to support the innovation and sharing that is beginning to take root.”

We talked more about the shift that has been occurring not only this year, but the last few years. Our teachers have been bringing in more technology, ever since a fever spread through the building over projectors and document cameras. Initially, staff had to show principals how they would use the devices in instruction before the school would purchase and install them. There was great collaboration as teachers shared with one another instructional ideas, tips, and tricks. This was change and progress, but essentially it was just replacing overheads and VCRs with Elmos and Discovery Streaming.

It may have been simple digital substitution, but without that important step we would have never gotten to where we are today. Some may knock that progress. Without it though we wouldn’t have everyone’s brains percolating new ideas that will take us to the next step. The only thing we can’t do now is stop.

Don’t knock progress.

In February of 2009, MIT grad David Merrill took the stage at Ted and introduced a new computing and gaming platform called at the time “Siftables”. (Watch the video [linked above] of the Ted talk to really understand the beginning of this technology)

The concept Merrill introduced was a set of cubes that can be physically manipulated in order to perform various computing tasks and games. In just under two years, it has evolved from an experimental concept to 2011 big hit at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)  under its refined name of “Sifteos”.

Dubbed the “Future of Play”, Sifteos opened a brief “early access” buying window during January’s CES that lasted less than a day. I fortunately happened to see a tweet about the opportunity and seized the chance to get my hands on the technology I had been following so closely.

Incidentally, just before Christmas, I purchased Scrabble Flash which was the first broad commercial use of the technology. Scrabble Flash is a set of four cubes that each generate a letter. Players scramble and re-scramble the cubes to make as many words as possible. The cubes communicate with one another to determine the validity of the words, which words have already been formed, and each player’s score. Scrabble Flash was a fun introduction but it hardly harnessed all of the power that system Merrill debuted.

Time began to drag the moment I placed my order of $111 to buy 3 cubes, a charging dock, a spiffy Sifteo t-shirt, and 1000 credits to be used toward different applications. Sifteo was aiming for shipping at the end of the first quarter and only missed mine to me by a couple of days.

My set arrived at my house on Monday during the morning. Having seen the tracking report confirm delivery,  I couldn’t wait to get home to use them. I downloaded the Siftrunner program that fosters communication between the cubes and a Mac or PC via a USB radio link and was off an running…or sifting…or whatever.

When you first set up your Sifteos, the Getting Started app is a fun tutorial that teaches users all they need to know about handling and manipulating the gestures needed to play all of the system’s games. You flip cubes to place hats on characters and you neighbor cubes to complete mixed up paths. Once the tutorial is complete, there isn’t an app a user can’t tackle…well, maybe with the exception of Shaper. I still haven’t figured out that one…but since it comes from the Beta testing lab section of the app store, it is free. I will keep trying.

One of my favorite apps, and my students’ favorites too is called Gopher Run. It’s from the free Lab section, but is beautifully simple yet engaging at the same time. In the game, you must connect a gopher’s maze in order to get him to his radish. As the player gets more skilled by finding the radish, the maze gets more elaborate. You can only travel and see 3 cubes worth of maze at a time, so users have to develop the spacial reasoning to understand that parts of the maze that are not visible still exist. Cubes are clickable and when you click the gopher, a map of the discovered maze shows up. The map won’t show the unexplored parts, so users have to predict and imagine where the rest of the maze may lead as they search for the radish. As I have begun to have groups of students explore the Sifteos, I have seen the most collaboration and cooperation amongst the kids while playing this app. There is constant strategizing and bouncing of ideas off of one another as they work to complete the quest.

The most obviously “academic” app that I have used so far is “Mount Brainiac”. It contains 3 easy and 3 hard games that test math and word skills. In the video below, my 5th graders help me try out this app for the first time. Some may think that sorting fraction or doing alphabetical order is “just old school drill and kill”. It’s not with Sifteos. The fact that you have to physically sort and move the pieces of data reaches more learning styles and engages different parts of the brain. Values change frequently and feedback is instant for right and wrong answers as players work against the clock to see how many correct combinations they can make before they run out of time. It sure beats trying to master these necessary skills with worksheets.

Click to view me introducing Mount Brainiac app for Sifteos.

For the Scrabble Flash fans, there is the Sifteo version called “Word Play”. Check it out and video demos of other games posted by Sifteo on IGN.com.

So far, the excitement hasn’t waned in either myself or my students. Each week a different group of kids gets to work with the cubes during my Infotech classes. My biggest daily worry is that I will leave them at home or at the wrong school or in the wrong bag. I would have a hugely disappointed bunch of kids if that were to happen.

If there is one thing I hope to see more than others arrive in the Sifteo app store, that would be more creativity, blank slate type apps. Here is an example of founders David Merrill and Javeen Kalanthi making music with an app during the early days of Siftables. There are endless possibilities and I am very excited to be in on the ground floor…not only playing with the cubes, but also by giving Sifteo feedback that will help to shape the future of this emerging platform.

Sifteo hopes to make its cubes available to the open market by mid to late summer. Sets are slated to retail for $149 with additional cubes available for $39 each. Check out Sifteo.com for more details. Click on the link to the parents and educators page and sign up for mailing updates and surverys.