iPad Trial: Day 4

iPad Trial: Day 4

My school is currently running a trial 1:1 iPad program by rotating a set of iPads among different groups of students every six weeks. It is now my turn, with my AP Latin class. The students are allowed to use their iPad 24/7 for the duration of the trial.

The students have had the iPads since last Wednesday, but because of various timing snafus and absences for various retreats, today was really the first day trying to learn Latin with the iPads. Some thoughts from the first few days:

• To project my iPad onto the board, I plug my computer into the projector and use AirPlay via Reflection. It works fine for both me and the students (once I made sure my computer was on the same wireless network as the students access), but I am still hoping to find a way to use an Apple TV instead. Unfortunately, I think our network’s HTML login page might make that impossible, which is a shame.
• Unsurprisingly, the wireless network has been flaky. Several students were connected to the network but unable to access the Internet. A restart of the iPad solved the problem, but was a bit frustrating. I’ve experienced this quite often with my own devices, but still haven’t figured out the problem.
• The first thing the students wanted to do last week was get their email working. This actually surprised me, since that does not seems like their primary mode of communication. Still, just going through that process helped those who had never used an iPad before get more comfortable with the basics of operation.
• Next, I had them go into the App Store and download the iTunes U. app. Again, most of them were pretty familiar with using the App Store, but a few were hesitant. Fortunately everybody remembered their Apple ID, and there were no issues downloading the app. One student is particularly wary of using the iPad (she has a strong preference for Windows, and named her iPad “Lamey McLamesauce”), but perked up a bit when she saw the free My Little Pony game in the App Store. Whatever, at least she knows how to use the store.
• I told them the enrollment code and got them all signed up for the course in iTunes U. Even young Ms. Lamesauce said, “This is pretty cool, but I’m sure Windows has something similar.”
• I walked them through the set-up of the iTunes U. course. For their next assignment, I had attached a PDF that I want them to mark up in Notability. I showed them how to download the PDF, send it to Notability, and add notes. They seemed pretty pleased with the workflow (if not the assignment itself).
• Then we discovered the first hiccup that I’ll need to investigate. We have been using a Google Doc to keep track of in-class translations. While you can edit Google Docs in Safari on iPad, it seems to require that you be signed in, even if the file is set to be editable by anybody with a link. I’ll have to research if there’s a work-around, or if they will all need Google accounts. For now, some of them have Google Accounts, and the others can simply type a note to themselves and paste it in later.
• One student who is accustomed to bringing a laptop into class has already decided that she prefers it to the iPad. I tried to gently insist that she try using the iPad, just to give it a fair chance, but she refused vehemently enough that I decided not pick that battle. She is pretty tied to her laptop, so it’s not surprising that she is reluctant to give it up. Teenagers do not like change.
• We tried out using Nearpod, simply going through the sample presentation to see how it worked. The students know they will get the chance to do some presentations, and they seem genuinely excited to use this tool. Today they asked if I had created another Nearpod presentation for them, and were disappointed when I hadn’t. We also tried using Socrative, and while it was interesting we had some issues with it not working properly.
• Thanks to a lot of absences and retreats last week, today was our first real day of trying to simply read Latin like we have done all year, but using the iPads as a new tool. We didn’t attempt anything too innovative today, and really substituted iPads for notebooks. Still, I think things went well. I was marking up the Latin text in Notability as we went along, and I noticed that several students were doing the same. I pointed out that I could simply email them the PDF, but they preferred to follow along and do it themselves. I have done essentially the same thing simply using the projector and whiteboard, but this was the first time that they really wanted to follow along this closely. It could certainly just be the novelty of the new tool, so I am eager to see if this lasts or not.

So, just a few days in, have my goals or preconceived notions changed? One thing that has surprised me is the extent to which the students are both quick-learners and also very tentative with new technology. Even in my small class, there is a wide range between students who are eager (and unafraid) to explore and those who are pretty tentative with the new tools. High school students are not that different from the public at large: some are quicker to adapt to new technology than others. The other item that has surpsised me is just how differently they interact with their iPad as opposed to a laptop. Virtually every student in the class had brought a laptop at various points in the semester, some more regularly than others, but they are actively looking for ways to use the iPad in ways that I never saw with their laptops. Again, some of that could simply be the novelty of the device, but I really think that the personal aspect of an iPad makes a difference. My primary concern is the same as before I started. The students’ access to an iPad enables entirely different modes of learning, and my pedagogy and curriculum needs to change along with it. But since this is an AP course, I have virtually no control over the curriculum. How do I move from simple “Substitution” to “Redefinition” and “Augmentation” activities?

State of Perpetual Sunday

You know that feeling that sets in every Sunday evening? That anxiety/sadness that settles like a lump of poorly-digested Chipotle in your stomach at the knowledge that your weekend is over?

Well as a teacher, I get nine weeks of vacation. So now that my final week of “freedom” has arrived, I have that same Sunday Night feeling, except it will last all week and is magnified by a factor of nine. Happens every year around this time.

It’s not that I dread going back, exactly. I like my job–most of the time. It’s more an anxiety borne from not having completed the myriad things I had hoped to achieve this summer, both for business and pleasure. Books unread, planning unfinished, video games unbeaten.

Once August hits and the meetings resume and the students return, the feeling fades away. I will resolve that next summer will be more productive and more relaxing at the same time. So it goes.

Backward Design

On episode 76 of Back to Work, Merlin talked a bit about the idea of backward design. Of course, he wasn’t talking about education, but it was the same principles that all teachers learn in their first education class. I was thinking about this today when I saw The Dark Knight Rises. I haven’t read all of the reviews I’ve saved in my Instapaper queue, but the consensus seems to be that it’s a good film, though not as strong as the first two in the trilogy, and a fitting end to the series.

I’m not sure precisely how this film stacks up against the others, but viewed as a trilogy it’s hard not to be awed by Christopher Nolan’s achievement. Watching them all, it seems clear that Nolan had a clear idea of where he wanted the story to go from the very beginning, his own version of “backward design.” It is of course entirely possible that I’m wrong, but I think it’s difficult to fake this level of completeness in a story. Breaking Bad is another prime example of this. While the details of the story have evolved over the seasons, the basic premise of Walter White turning from Mr. Chips to Scarface has driven the show successfully. I haven’t read enough interviews with Christopher Nolan to know the arc he had in mind for his Dark Knight triogy, but I can give it no higher praise than to say it compares favorably with Breaking Bad.

It’s that time of summer where I am beginning to think about my classes for the upcoming year. I’m no Vince Gilligan or Christopher Nolan, but I’d really like to be able to have just as strong a vision for what I want to happen from August to May. What is my ultimate goal for this course? In the AP course in particular, which I am teaching for the first time, that’s not an easy question to answer. Possibilities include:

• High participation rate on the AP Latin test in May
• High average scores on the AP Latin test in May
• For the students to have an appreciation of the literature of Classical Rome
• For the students to be experts on Latin grammar and syntax
• For the students to be able to translate Classical Latin fluently

Of course, I do not have to choose just one of those goals, but the order in which I prioritize them will have an impact on the day-to-day planning of the class. Since this is my first time with this particular course, I’m not really hoping for Gilligan or Nolan level of execution (sorry, students), but at least the first season of Heroes would be nice.

Surreal

Pure Loyalty, a service in NYC for high school students who are not allowed to have their electronic devices in school. They park a truck outside the school, lock up the phones and iPods, and then return them at the end of the day.

Is there a better example of the problem with the way schools look at technology? Now BYOD doesn't really work, and a kid texting from a "dumb phone" is probably better off leaving the phone at home.

But isn't there something vaguely Brazil about schools telling students: "You have very powerful, pocket-sized computers. DO NOT bring them to school!"

If you had told me in 1997 about the capabilities of an iPod Touch, I would have been amazed. If you then told me that I would have to pay money to keep from bringing it into school, I would've been confused.

(Via Kottke)

Steve Jobs: "Technology Cannot Fix Education"

Steve Jobs, in 1996:

"I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent."

Digital textbooks are shiny and new, but not a panacea.

Textbooks are dead. Long live textbooks.

Predictably, the non-education tech press is focusing on iBooks 2.0 and iBooks Author. I still think that iTunes U is the bigger deal for education in the long-term, but somebody outside of the classroom may not recognize that. Interactive textbooks, while certainly an improvement, are still mostly presuming the same model of education that's persisted for 100 years. The importance of iBooks Author is that teachers now have the same tools (for free) that the textbook publishers have. It will be interesting to see what tech-savvy teachers do with that. I would imagine we will soon see content that is a "textbook" in name only.

Apple's Education Announcement

Apple's NYC event just ended, and it covered essentially what was predicted. To wit:

Textbooks

Interactive textbooks are cool, but not new. Inkling has had a great app for a while now, but lacked publisher support. If the major textbook publishers are really behind Apple's initiative, that's huge. It could definitely help tilt schools currently on the fence about a 1:1 iPad deployment. The pricing of those textbooks ($14.99) is also pretty significant. For a private school like mine, asking students to buy an iPad and some $14.99 textbooks would end up saving parents a lot of money. The iBook authoring tool looks great too, and anything that makes it easier for teachers to create custom lessons is a positive.

iTunes U

As Fraser Spiers has said repeatedly, you need technology, pedagogy, and curriculum. Longterm, iTunes U could be a huge step toward integrating those three. The interactive textbooks don't mean much by themselves, but combined with the iTunes U app, teachers can really move to a curriculum and pedagogy that are entirely new. Even at the high school level, it is now possible to easily offer a course that is entirely digital, without expensive expensive hardware or software. All that's needed is a student with an iPad (and a teacher with a Mac to create the content).

What now?

There is often a very conflicted response to these types of announcements. The tech bloggers have never been a teacher, and are quick to praise any new technology as "saving" the broken education system. As evidenced by the lack of change over the last 100 years, that is rarely how it works out.

Among education technology people, most either rush to proclaim, "All our problems have been fixed!" or list the reasons why nothing will change. Of course the reality is probably somewhere in the middle. Any teacher who has been waiting for Apple to "save" or "fix" education is part of the problem. The tools are there, and have been for a while. Today's announcements just made those tools even better.

The challenge for me? I can think of 100 ways I could use these new tools. But my administration has 101 reasons why it won't work. Guess who will win?

Urban Nostalgia

I recently returned from a four-day trip to my hometown, St. Louis, Missouri. Most of my family has moved away, but it's always nice to visit my grandmother and to eat some St. Louis-specific meals. Having lived in Denver for three years now, the differences between the two cities felt even more striking than when I last visited two years ago.

The architecture of the homes in the two cities is a very visible point of distinction, and one that speaks to some of the underlying differences. Obviously, St. Louis is a much older city, and like in many other old river cities (Cincinnati, for example), there are a lot of old brick buildings. Driving through St. Louis and it's near suburbs (within I-270, at least), even the newest housing developments are often at least 30 years old. In the city itself, of course, many homes were built a hundred years ago. Driving down a residential block, you see small ranch homes, tall row houses, and towering estates, often on the same block. While the older neighborhoods of Denver have similar aesthetics, you see a lot less brick and lot more communities of cookie-cutter houses–two-story homes with three-car garages and small yards. Of course, having grown up in a house built in 1957, and then also lived in a home built in 1920, some of the "charm" of an older house is overwhelmed by the quotidian reality of old wiring and older plumbing. Still, driving down a street in the Tower Grove neighborhood of St. Louis or Old Town Florissant is very different from Highlands Ranch or even southeast Denver.

Another feature (bug?) of cities like St. Louis or Cincinnati is the diversity of neighborhoods. Not just the traditional ethnic enclaves like "The Hill" in St. Louis, but the distinctions between Clayton, Tower Grove, and University City. Growing up in St. Louis pre-GPS, I could usually tell in what direction I was driving based on the changes in neighborhood. Not just going from "nice" neighborhoods to poorer ones, but the way the businesses and homes would change from north to south, or from east to west. I realize that I probably have not lived in Denver long enough to see some of these same variations, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that this phenomenon is more obvious in the Midwest than in Denver.

Walking and driving through the St. Louis area last month, even parts that I wasn't really familiar with growing up, it all felt like St. Louis. There was no time when I could have convinced myself that I was actually in Denver. Maybe it was the humidity. Maybe it was the architecture. But I felt the same way living in Cincinnati or western Massachusetts. Maybe it's all just a factor of Denver's relatively young status as a major city. Or perhaps it's the itinerant nature of Denver's population through the years, that it's difficult to have a Denver-specific culture when so much of the population is new to the area.

As much as St. Louis will always be my "hometown," even though my parents moved away six years ago, there is also a certain sadness that the city evokes when I return. Those gorgeous brick buildings are often in areas hit hard by crime and poverty. The decline of North St. Louis and North County is also the story of much of the Midwest, the story of urban decay, of "white flight." The story of St. Louis is also the story of the auto industry, of McDonnell-Douglas and Anheuser-Busch, Boeing and In-Bev. It is the story of Catholic immigrants, of assimilation and segregation.

When you talk to a native Midwesterner about their hometown, whether it be Cincinnati, Memphis, or St. Louis, invariably it turns to the past. Statistics about when St. Louis was the third-largest city in the country, or when Cincinnati was the hub for trade in the Midwest. In those descriptions of past greatness, there is certainly nostalgia, that "pain from an old wound" so eloquently described by Don Draper. There's also a feeling that we do not want our cities, our hometowns to be mortal. We want them to be preserved exactly as we remember them, because as these great American cities decay, they take with them a piece of us, those who lived there, and also a piece of American history.

The "Education bubble", Business Majors, and the Failures of Higher Education

There's an article from TechCrunch that's been going around for a while now on Peter Theil's description of a "Higher Education Bubble." it's been all over the Internet, and so you may have read it by now, but if not, go take a moment to peruse it. His premise–which I am very much simplifying, so please go read the article–is essentially that a college education has become overvalued, and that it is taboo to even question its value. From the article:

Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

Thei's solution to this problem has also been getting a lot of press.

The idea was simple: Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead.

It's an interesting idea, to be sure. What intrigues me though is this implication that having a degree may be seen as useful to society, but that nothing valuable actually happens at a college or university. When I was in graduate school at a large public university in New England, I was walking to class with a professor for whom I was a TA, and we were gently mocking the writing capabilities of our students, in the way that educators do, to maintain their sanity. One comment of his has remained with me: "I swear, within 10 years, somebody is going to graduate from this institution and then promptly sue us, because they are functionally illiterate, completely unemployable, and tens of thousands of dollars in debt." Granting him some leeway for hyperbole, his point stands. Depending on one's major, it is entirely possible to survive on a diet of giant lecture classes, piecing together barely-legible assignments, and graduate.

Of course, as a proud proponent of a liberal arts education, I knew that could never happen within my field of study. Every hIstory or classics professor I knew had at least a modicum of integrity and rigor in their courses. I knew that my professor was really talking about those business majors, the vocational students of the 21st century.

And I was right.

David Glenn, in The Chronicle of Higher Education (via The Quick and the Ed), writes that business majors work less than their peers in other fields.

Business majors spend less time preparing for class than do students in any other broad field, according to the most recent National Survey of Student Engagement: Nearly half of seniors majoring in business say they spend fewer than 11 hours a week studying outside class. In their new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, the sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that on a national test of writing and reasoning skills, business majors had the weakest gains during the first two years of college. And when business students take the GMAT, the entry examination for M.B.A. programs, they score lower than do students in every other major.

Granted, these studies are certainly challenged by others, but I think you would be hard-pressed to talk to anybody in college right now who couldn't provide at least anecdotal evidence to back that up. The one business course I took as an undergraduate contained by far the least amount of professor engagement and interaction, particularly as compared to my history and classics courses.

Considering that business is by far the most popular major in America, it is fair to highlight them as symptomatic of these larger problems. If, as the article states, the benefits of a business major are the internships and the networking that is facilitated, how is $50,00/year to attend college possibly justified?

But again, I'm one of those annoying people that won't shut up about the value of a liberal arts education, so what do I know? I am in debt from six total years spent studying dead people and dead languages.

Fraser Speirs: "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dematerialisation of Educational Technology"

The entire post is worth a read, as most of Speirs' posts are, but here's the money quote:

Put simply, if you're in the business of making discrete hardware for the classroom you are in very serious trouble. Your business is about to be replaced by a $5 download from the App Store and the rest of your company's existence will be about trying to sell a refresh to your existing installed base.

I also love this bit:

Interactive Whiteboards are the next great Zombie Technology. The installed base is now so massive in schools that, like Internet Explorer 6, they will have a long, slow, lingering death.