Tag Archives: School

Apr 26 2013

ENSURING SCHOOL IPAD SUCCESS

PRIORITY NO.1 : LEADERSHIP FROM THE TOP.

LeadershipDucks

The initial goal is to ready a school for the quick iPadding of all daily school tasks carried out by Teachers, Admin and students. The first emphasis must be to get staff and students to move their daily routines onto the iPad and not look back. This realignment will only be quick & successful if staff and particularly members of the leadership team understand iPad best practice.

BIG DECIDER: ONE COMPETENT SENIOR LEADER (AT LEAST)

In the beginning, at least one senior leader must become fully fluent in how the iPad deals with the daily school tasks. My experience to date tells me that this will be the key decider on iPad success. I find that most school technicians charged with readying school systems for iPads only ‘fully respond’ to senior leaders. Here’s a check list of good iPad practice the senior leaders must understand:

5 EVERYDAY iPAD ESSENTIALS THAT LEADERS MUST UNDERSTAND AND PROMOTE:

PDFexpertA) DOCUMENTS: How to convert and ensure all documents (forms/worksheets) are shared in PDF format. This includes on the Website, LMS and in shared folders on the servers. We all use apps like Word to create documents but once finished, Word/Pages/Powerpoint should not be the file formats that are shared publicly or internally. Don’t continue to think that because a form or worksheet must be filled in, it needs to be shared in Microsoft Word format. Most PDF apps (both Free and Bought) will allow the staff and students to view, complete, sign or annotate the forms & worksheets and will really start to make the school paperless (a serious ‘Green’ issue). One problem area will be uploading PDFs to the existing school websites / LMS directly from iPad. Some of the LMSs are creating iPad apps and this can help but without clever design, the website might need to continue with desktop updates.

iMessageAppB) COMMUNICATION: Email is dead! Students certainly don’t regularly check emails. New communication tools must be considered. Internally, it’s best using messaging tools like iMessage, your LMS’s messaging service, if its iPad app runs such a service or even Twitter. I find adults like ‘texting’ messages as much as the kids do, you only have to look at Facebook to know that. Externally, the school should also run a Facebook Page for people to follow for community announcements and this too can be run by the senior leader directly from the iPad. It might be with the best intentions that every school aims to run a good website, but for communication, parents rarely check school websites and it’s not the way 21st Century communication takes place. This is one reason iPads have never needed the facility to update website HTML.

PhotosAppC) IMAGES: The leadership must decide on how staff iPads will upload, store and organise photos. This is good for teachers as they can share pictures with students directly from the iPad and good for all staff to share images of student work and activity. Using online services like Flickr or Google’s Picasa, there are ways to ensure images can be uploaded and organised by staff iPads to appear embedded on the school websites etc, without the need for separate login. (See my previous posts)

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YoutubeD) VIDEO: This is quickly becoming the new ‘paper’. Young people are experiencing online video as a first step to understanding anything. They also create multiple videos using devices like phones on a weekly basis. If harnessed, this can make any school a lively exciting place where students really show-off their understanding and even start to learn and leach each other through video. The school must have an official system for staff to organise the videos for the courses and where the school can showcase student video work. The one system that the iPad and all the available apps work seamlessly with is a Youtube account. The school should setup a Google account from which it can organise its Youtube channel with playlists for different courses, classes or general school activities. Students and staff can now login or be logged-in to upload video content to the channel. This channel can be embedded in school websites etc, and will automatically update as the content arrives.

wordpressE) LEADERSHIP BLOG & ADVICE: This is a great idea to ensure genuine engagement from all staff and students. A senior leader blogs the schools experiences and advice on using iPads from day 1. This blog is linked to on the school website and can be used by the whole community to find out the latest news in how the school is operating with iPads, including any problems that have arisen. A school “How-to” page is also setup to cover all the basics.

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If you can get your school performing the daily basics on iPads, the creative stuff will follow naturally. The more they stick to their old ways, the harder the transition will be. Success and collaboration between members of the iPadding community rely on full understanding and engagement from all parties. And this starts with the basics and from the top!

[Update] Other Considerations:

1. Don’t waste time looking through the App Store. Focus on tasks. Start with only considering all the daily tasks within the school for students, teachers and admin and focus on collaborative systems like Google Accounts and Twitter to bring the new iPadders together.

2. Ensure that all the departments have the basics mentioned above working before you worry about adding extras. The first issue is about building confidence and when staff & students see they can at least do all that they did before but better, the project will really take-off.

3. Get the whole senior leadership team fully immersed by the end of the first year. This will build respect for both the individuals and the project. The school will really come alive if the community see the leaders themselves start moving forward.

4. Build an open approach to web filtering. Like all major businesses, 1000s of schools are now using Social Media and Youtube in the classroom. Other than blocking the ‘obvious’ negative material, it is important that schools are able to teach digital citizenship within school and this requires positive role-modeling in how the internet can be used.

Nov 5 2012

Learning with iPad? Use the News!

Can any day’s world events or featured articles be tied to all learning objectives and make learning more meaningful?

One good use of student iPads is to appreciate that all creative output that comes from the device can feed directly from real-world stories, delivered by the various news apps. There should be one of any day’s events, stories or features that connects to a learning objective in any subject area.

The iPad can be used to produce media products or documents that cover how the story connects with the learning objectives in question. Appropriate news apps for your country or even local area can be used by the students to make learning more real and tangible.

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Connect the learning to the story. It’s just a matter of asking the right question. 

How does the story:

  1. relate to current immigration issues?
  2. prove or disprove the wave equation?
  3. parallel the mindset of Macbeth in act I Scene V?
  4. show that humans need to change their approach to politics?
  5. indicate that health problems are linked to religion in more than one country?

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These are just some examples (from the top of my head) but given that the news apps divide stories and features into categories, teachers should always be able to find something appropriate and design decent projects from it. It doesn’t have to be that exact day. Anything from the last week will still feature in the apps and offer a range of opportunities.  Connecting topics to real-world stories often humanises the context and engages students through an emotive connection. Studying weather patterns is one thing but connecting it to the effects of 8 million people loosing power after hurricane Sandy is quite a lot more powerful, especially if you demand solutions to their problems!

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Fixed content - irrelevant?This approach to learning does go hand-in-hand with project-based learning and does not fit well with the more common approach of one-size-fits-all topic by topic approach (fixed curriculum factory schooling – see right). This is precisely why I encourage it. 21st Century learning, if it is to be engaging and successful (long-term) must appear relevant in today’s world. Separate from what school offers, information is delivered to students too easily and quickly for schools not to connect it to bigger learning objectives and discuss it’s meaning and impact.

Getting Started

Technical issue 1: The news apps don’t often allow for the saving of images or the highlighting of text.

Solution: Use the 2-button (Home+off) screenshot to grab content from the screen and crop using the photos app. These can then be entered into any iMovie project / keynote or in fact any app.

Solution 2: Many allow sharing through email. This will give you the website link and you can grab content using Safari with the normal copy-paste.

Remember copyright and kids should attribute their sources when using the material.

Technical issue 2: Which apps?

To save me a lot of time, here’s a good list but I would add 4 things:

  1. The Guardian Eyewitness app
  2. The Boston Globe Big Picture app (now US only?)
  3. Summly app (quick story summarizing – great for kids)
  4. Look for your local TV news channel, it might have an app that covers more local stories.

Technical / teaching benefit: Safe surfing
Using the News Apps gives you a simple internet filter and is safer for younger students over general internet surfing

Conclusion

Make want to teach relevant to today’s world because it is and always will be. Humans will always be human and so everything you want to teach still has relevance even if it’s to discuss the stark difference between ‘then’ and now. Make the students think and make connections, hopefully while tackling problems that have a real purpose.

Nov 1 2012

Where should School leaders stick their iPhones?

One of the reasons I’m always keen on the idea of leading a school is that it’s never been easier and more fun to document the amazing life of a school and publish it to the world. I have seen a number of examples, both online and in person, of leaders running what seem to be live feeds of the day’s activities. This becomes one of the most powerful forms of feedback for the students, marketing for the school and parents absolutely love it!

It’s school life that leaders should be sticking their iPhones & iPads in to!

Many, if not all Principals these days have a smart phone and many have and iPad too. Unfortunately, due either to a reluctance to ask for help from the staff or worse, a lack of interest in classroom activity, many of these multi-talented devices simply get used for email and calls.

So, here is a list of ideas regarding how leaders can use their devices more effectively to lead and promote the good work of both staff and students.

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  1. In-School Photo feed
    “Document the Day.”
    One school I visited in California had TV screens scattered throughout the school to display information and daily routines etc. But I saw something else appearing. The Principal made it his duty to take at least 10 photos a day of student activity and post them as a running slideshow on the screens. Students were spurred on by the recognition “from the top” and it looked impressive from my point of view as a visitor. It took up 30 minutes of the Principal’s day, which for the payback was cheap indeed. If you are careful you can also publicly broadcast daily activities online, giving parents immediate access and the school a great marketing opportunity.
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  2. Twitter
    “Principals chat principles”
    If you’re lucky, your school leaders are already on Twitter, but most are not. The best professional development is often provided by peers and on Twitter there are 100s of school leaders discussing amazing projects and developments. This keeps school fresh and challenges principals to push their organisation forward. Twitter provides 100s of case studies to help in decision making and is free and on call at any time. Leaders like to network and this is simply the best example of networking ever conceived.
    Here’s 6 world-class tweeting educational leaders to get you started:
    @NMHS_Principal
    @21stPrincipal
    @bjnichols
    @TomWhitby
    @PrincipalDiff
    @PatrickmLarkin
    Check out who they follow and also use the account @ConPrin (Connected Principals)
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  3. Video performances
    “The Principal’s view”
    Quite often for student cultural performances, the leaders have the best seat in the house. Why not record the performance and post it on the schools LMS for everyone to watch. The students will appreciate it greatly and it indicates genuine interest in the creative talents of the students.
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  4. Dictation
    “Who needs a typist when you’ve got an iPhone”
    The latest iPhone update to iOS6 improved the iPhone and iPad’s ability to receive dictation. It is only available in some countries but will save much time and reduce the need for 2 people to compose a letter. Maybe a leader can dictate to the device and hand to a typist just to clean up?
    Here’s an introductory video:

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  5. Be Humble in your leadership
    Please ask the teachers and students for advice
    Around the world, teachers and students are being immensely inventive with their use of their smart, mobile devices and many leaders are missing out on opportunities for fear of looking weak. Asking for help connects leaders to staff and students, immediately improves working relationships and in fact, can increase the level of respect people have for a leader. Everyone in an organisation benefits from a leader who can learn and develop new skills and understandings on a weekly basis, regardless of where they come from.
Oct 21 2012

Science needs Art – Kids need iPads

IDEAS NEED VISUALISING – WHY STUDENTS NEED IPADS!

What does this mean for iPads in Schools?

In this second video, Ruben Puentedura explains his research into why particular technologies are successful (even over 200,000 years). In it, he shows that any technology will be successful long term, if it allows:

A) Socialising
B) Mobility
C) Visualising ideas
D) Story Telling and
E) Gaming!

Are you thinking, what I’m thinking? Yes, that’s exactly what the iPad brings to learning and why it will be successful in schools. The last 3 of those 5 are all about visualising ideas and immersing oneself in a concept using multiple senses. This is not only where extra engagement comes from but also true understanding (never forgetting).

Where to start?

It’s important that students visualise their understandings, both for their own development but to also aide their peers and gain a sense that what they are doing is for the better of others. It is this that develops real drive to learn, it does not just add ‘play’ to the learning environment.

Many Apps to choose from but here’s two:

2D

ANIMATION CREATOR HD ($4) : This app offers a great new way for students to prove understanding in an entertaining way that other students will in-turn learn from. Easy frame by frame animation that some student really like to beaver away at at the back of a classroom. I’ve see some stunning examples!

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3D

iMotionHD Stop-Frame animation Filming with “Auto-wait” shoot setting.
This is the most instant fun I’ve had with my iPad in 2 years! It’s a free app and really simple to use. You set the number of seconds gap between photos and then make slight movements of the objects in front of the iPad’s camera to create instant animations. It also has a manual mode for taking the frame shots one-at-a-time. It is simply brilliant! It could be used to comically or otherwise cover any topic and show you understand the process (great for Science) or story so you should be able to use this in any subject!
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EXAMPLE

Here is an excellent example from the TED Ed site, where a normal teacher’s lesson is given to a professional Animator. The result is stunning. This professional connection might change education but your own classroom versions will be of equal importance.

P.S Why does the title mention Scientists?

I feel a major part of the Scientific process is the final depiction of the process / concept / new understanding and this requires an understanding of how people think visually. The use of colour & shape, the position of key objects within a frame at any one moment, the direction of cameras & direction of film sequence determine whether a scientific idea is ever understood and passed around the world. This makes learning the visual arts as important for science students as for any. It is a commonly neglected part of the scientific industry and certainly in Science Education. iPads in the classroom can start to readdress this imbalance.

Oct 16 2012

iPads in schools! They just play games!

20th Century pedagogy + iPads = Gaming

So, you’re in your classroom and annoyed that the kids are playing games on the iPads. You have devised a strategy and at random intervals, you ask them to double-click the ‘Home’ button to see the last apps used. Great! Well done on controlling the situation so they can get on with:

  1. writing their notes;
  2. Reading their e-textbook;
  3. completing their essay or
  4. ‘Researching’ on the Internet.

The only step forward you’ve really seen is the ability to use that Shakespeare app or Dissecting Frog app. You are also worried that the iPad’s ‘distracting’ tools and games are removing rigour from your teaching process.

The parents too, have complained that all they seem to see is game playing and maybe your school is considering limiting the apps allowed on the devices.

Well done on introducing iPads. But it’s teacher-centred pedagogy that encourages gaming, not their maturity level.

Now you have introduced a radically new and powerful learning device, you need to update your pedagogy to match it. The iPad is revolutionising education, not because it is replacing paper & textbooks or offering new gadget-style apps, but because it:

  1. returns power to the student to personalise the process;
  2. offers tools to collaborate quickly and smartly;
  3. allows for mobile, continuous learning;
  4. can bring about faster feedback;
  5. widens the possibilities with how to approach any task;
  6. Is a productive and creative device and;
  7. is unobtrusive to any learning space.

Why are these issues the most important?

Like the iPad, learning is personal

As I have previously mentioned, you can’t encourage the idea that learning is a lifetime occupation, if you centre your education delivery around the teachers. If you need to have a teacher to learn, then your learning must stop at the end of the school day. I have witnessed a number of classrooms and teachers having problems with iPads. In every case the classroom was teacher centred and generally students were reading issued text, making notes from lecturing and definitely all working at the same task in the same way. In these teacher-centred environments, any iPadding at home will consist of mainly gaming as only a teacher-issued piece of structured homework could possibly indicate that home was a place to be productive with an iPad.

This is not what the iPad was designed for. Even outside the realm of education, the iPad was only designed to be personal and this should be the only approach when considering how one learns with or even without an iPad. Any approach where the iPad is a paper or textbook replacement, within these traditional teaching methods, wastes 98% of the iPad’s power to reinvigorate education for a new century.

Solution: Stop asking the class to do the same thing and you’ll (nearly) remove all gaming.

I’ll cover the potential for gaming itself to advance learning in a future post, but for now, you need to

  1. Only consider the specifics of what you want your students to understand;
  2. Pose questions that demand the students link aspects together;
  3. Set challenging work that asks for all the required detail but;
  4. Offer almost complete freedom in how they prove their understanding; (see Student apps)
  5. Encourage creativity & fun in all student output. This will result in genuine rather than imposed engagement.
  6. Often encourage the production of a “learning product” that their classmates  might utilise in the future.
  7. Issue the learning objectives to engage and inform peer assessment. This makes assessment against the original objectives more meaningful.

When students are working on a creative project of their own design that will prove to the teacher just how powerful the iPad can be, then genuine engagement in learning not only takes place in the classroom but returns home with the iPad and will often continue. Tactics like these, readdress how the student views the iPad’s capabilities and in doing so, reduces the desire and time for gaming.

Oct 12 2012

A 21C Teacher in a 20C School

I teach to the exam. There, I’ve said it!  After all, doesn’t everyone smile when the student gets an A grade? Isn’t graduating what’s life’s all about?
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But what does A mean?
It means that when given:

  1. An exam date;
  2. A fixed list of topics and themes;
  3. Last minute, panicked revision;
  4. A table and paper in a large silent hall;  ..the student can perform! Wow!

Thank God, life outside schools and every workplace is both silent, organised in straight rows and has no technology beyond the pencil! Thank God working life only means working alone within fixed boundaries. ….Oh that’s right, it’s not. And many of these A grade students prove to be useless when given any creative challenge in a real workplace scenario, something universities and employers complain about. Fortunately most develop many skills outside school that allow them to cope.

Solution: Make the exam the side-project

One joy of working in this crappy system of 20th Century factory education is that now with the Internet and video I can record each of my full-year courses’ exam lessons into about 4 hours! Yes, 4 hours and yes, it’s the full course of teaching! See this for details.

The direct teaching of the exam is now outside the classroom. I can ask them to complete an amount of the course by a certain date and check this with traditional assessment while they spend all the class time working on a related project of their choosing and design. If there’s a practical element to the course then all projects and time can be based on this practical work, within the context of a real-world scenario.

These projects can be long, the whole year for all I care! They can also work in groups if it suits. As long as the project is engaging for the student and they take real ownership over it. They should also set their own check points to monitor their own progress. Ownership, creativity and variety is what the iPad does best. Hopefully the project connects directly with the outside world directly. I like to pitch the possibility of making money in any area using the internet. For example, any student can publish a book for free.

Examples: (Off the top of my head)

  1. Biology: Produce a set of videos covering the relevant experiments to compile in an ebook to sell online.
  2. Geography: Film a documentary on the local geography for the school to use.
  3. Computing: Make $million with your first iPad app!!! (I heard the “Pocket Whip” app was making $30,000 a week and it doesn’t do much!)
  4. Mathematics: Learn how to produce a website of embedded web-based Maths tools that your peers need for the course you’re all doing.
  5. English: Publish a short story on Amazon that contains the same themes as X.

Conclusion

The important thing is that they are engaged in your subject and see the exam as an unfortunate extra rather than the whole reason for school. If they need to learn how to do something during their project, they find it themselves on the internet  (this is what they should do, it’s what we do!) or if the teacher can help then great, as the teacher now has time to work one-to-one!

Oct 2 2012

iPad vs Standardised test

TASK

Student A has an iPad and is asked to show they understand Topic X

Student B is given a textbook and then a written test on Topic X

APPROACH

Student A uses the internet on the iPad to research current views regarding what’s important about Topic X and considers how it might be best illustrated using the numerous tools available on the iPad.

Student B reads the fixed content in the textbook (written 12 years ago) and considers how the questions might be framed in the test within the context of the given text.

OUTPUT

Student A uses the iPad to storyboard a documentary that they will film with friends and edit on the iPad to illustrate their understanding of Topic X.

Student B reads the given text and seeing the Topic now has fixed boundaries asks friends if they’ve had a test on Topic X before and looks on the internet for past exam papers on Topic X.

RESULT

Student A has ownership over the process and is intrinsically motivated to produce the best product and gains a deeper understanding of Topic X.

Student B is motivated by the attainment of a score in the test and as it’s not a goal he decided on, will take any shortcut to achieve this score, including rote learning answers for the test but often leaving revision to the night before. The teacher hopes that being focused on obtaining a good test score, understanding of Topic X will be an obvious by-product.

EVALUATION

Student A has the documentary peer reviewed by other students who enjoy watching the film and explain which elements of Topic X are best illustrated. Student A re-films a sequence to improve the film they have developed and will never forget making.

Student B finishes with 66 out of a 100 in Topic X and moves on to Topic Y.

iPad = Autonomy = Passion

A desire to create Life-long learners can only be achieved if the learning in question is owned by the learner. If students work from the same textbook and sit the same exam, it is the teacher’s education not theirs and a genuine connection to the learning process is never formed. Introduction of iPads in schools should come in conjunction with a move away from the 20th Century idea that students don’t want to learn and external incentives must be applied. Given autonomy over the learning process means that a student with an iPad can find genuine enjoyment in all learning. They can enjoy displaying their talents whilst developing new ones in an environment that understands that humans do enjoy both working and learning. They just need freedom to choose the technique and time at which they will achieve the desired result. The iPad means that no student is restricted to only those tools on offer by the teacher or classroom.

Now that many global businesses (Google, Apple, Best Buy) are abandoning their 20th Century work structures, schools must follow suit or face becoming irrelevant within five years.

Four things that kill true motivation to learn:

1. Tests

2. Textbooks \ worksheets

3. Chalk & talk

4. Content based Qualifications.

Please start thinking about the chasm opening up between school life and ‘real’ life. Think about how fast the world is changing and developing and how relevant your students’ activities are when under your supervision.

There’s nothing more depressing than seeing 100% on a test. Imagine what that student could have achieved without the ceiling imposed by the fixed content.

Oct 1 2012

“Should my school be using Mac computers?”……YES!

History – Schools adopt Microsoft

During the 1990s, Microsoft setup a brilliant business structure for selling Windows in schools. This had no learning basis behind it, it was simply an excellent money-making exercise. The Microsoft Schools agreement was a dream to all technicians who could stop worrying about licensing the school computers as they were all covered under one agreement, albeit and expensive one. Within 6 years we had Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME and then XP it seemed obvious to keep paying as updates were regular. Then Microsoft stopped releasing updates and schools remained on XP for a decade, while paying millions for simply having simple paperwork. Vista was a disaster and Windows 7 is a good XP replacement but is going to radically change in Windows 8 and most schools will stick with 7 or even XP.

OSX, iLife & iOS change the landscape

But over the last decade Apple have realised they were missing out and in their inevitable style, have produced a beautiful eco-system that is not only easy for schools to delve into but is now specifically designed for education and learning in a way Microsoft never achieved. Microsoft gave us machines that could access the internet and Word and Excel seemed practical. But Apple have given us Machines that immediately:

  1. Create and edit PDFs without needing to research 3rd party apps on the internet; (PDFs are a default file type that Microsoft virtually refuses to recognise)
  2. Organise our email (Windows 7 has no email client);
  3. edit movies; (Far superior to Microsoft’s option)
  4. have a recording studio; (Not available on Windows)
  5. manage our photos and music; (iTunes is the default for all these day and Windows users have had to discover Google’s Picasa for photos)
  6. create eBooks using ‘drag & drop’; (iBooks Author is in a different league to other authoring software)
  7. talk directly to our iPads and sync the info and files automatically; (IPad schools will miss out on so much for not have a Mac infrastructure)
  8. integrate Facebook and Twitter into the machine itself allowing for the sharing of work and discoveries with a click; (This will become a big issue)
  9. Offers us Document/Spreadsheet/Presentation software for 1/3 of the price of MS Office (Apple’s version of Word and Powerpoint are far superior and preferred by my students immediately)
  10. Connects you computer to the content from the top Universities in the world through iTunesU
  11. Offer all apps for all machines on a single account through an easy to use App Store;

In a nutshell:

Microsoft are concerned about the Technicians first, Business people second and are happy if schools find a use for their business tools. As you can see on their website, Office is still their best offering for schools and it’s just not creative or accessible enough for students.

Apple have teams of people who are tasked with only researching school pedagogy and practice (non-technical) and Apple’s educational eco-system strengthens every month because of it.
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Cost?

Are Apple computers more expensive? Out of the box, a Microsoft PC offers so little for schools that time and money must be spent locating 3rd party tools, installing them, hoping they don’t conflict, hoping they’re free or spending extra on software like Office. This is why schools have required so many (expensive) technicians over the last 15 years and why more educational change has happened with iPads than in 15 years of using Office. This has made Microsoft systems indirectly very costly for what they offer from the box. The MS Schools agreement is only worth it for keeping the administration of Microsoft licensing easy but educationally is a huge waste of money.

When removing Mac computers from their boxes, most schools would be ready to go immediately. Even the free and simple Textedit program that comes with a Mac will open and save as DocX (Microsofts Word file format that Windows won’t open without purchasing Word!). There’s no need for buying and researching additional software and so schools save money and have a system that will natively work with their iPads, require less technical assistance (The real money save) and have a lot more fun!

You might spend an extra $200 on a Mac but in teacher and technician time plus software costs, you save $200 before then of your first month.