Digital Natives - no not really #edcMOOC

In  my continuing quest to keep up with change, I have signed up for the  Coursera E-Learning and Digital Courses MOOC, #edcMOOC,  with over 40,000 other students.  This class is even larger than a freshman entry-level seminar at Berkeley!

This week we started out with readings and films providing a historical perspective on digital progress as creating either utopias or dystopias.  One reading that really caught my attention, as an educator, was Mark Prensky's now fairly dated article, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants."

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Mark Prensky would argue that in a district such as ours, with many “well-seasoned” teachers, it is likely that we are doing our students a disservice and should dramatically change their teaching methods because with the ensuing age-difference between teachers and students and the fact that our teachers were born pre-internet, probably our teachers and students don’t speak the same "language."  Our students have grown up with digital technologies.  They have never known a world without the internet, and they intuitively use cell phones and iPads, practically from birth.  Our students speak tech, they are Digital Natives.  Our teachers, on the other hand, remember the Dewey decimal system.  They learn about smart phones and iPads as they make the decisions to buy them.   They have to learn the new language of technology.  They are Digital Immigrants.  The languages these two groups, who meet in the classroom, speak are different.  In Mr. Prensky's words, “today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.”

As a teacher who usually jumps on the bandwagon of those arguing for more technology in the classroom, I find myself in the odd position of disagreeing with Mr. Prensky about much of his article.  While I agree that today’s students have been exposed to more technology than ever before and that they spend more hours on their phones, pods, tablets, computers and gaming devices than ever before, I disagree that this is sufficient to make them Digitally Literate.  I also disagree that our teachers are ill-prepared to teach them.  We are well-prepared as teachers and can learn about today's ever-changing technologies hand-in-hand with our students.

First, I don't believe today's student's are Digital Literates.  Just because students today are exposed to digital technology does not mean that they have the skills to use it well.  Today’s students may have some social language that they use with their digital devices, but they don’t necessarily know how to use that language well.  Moreover, students aren’t coming to school ready to use digital media to communicate with academic or professional language.  

As an example, a child with a smart phone can quickly learn how to get a Facebook account, but that child doesn’t automatically have the knowledge to use it safely.  He or she needs to be affirmatively taught the basics: what you post on-line is never private, you shouldn’t say anything on-line you wouldn’t say in front of your grandmother, you can’t trust people just because they are “friends,” and it’s not wise to give out private information to strangers.   On a more academic level, that same child with the smart phone may be able to easily access Google, but that child may not be able to fashion a well-crafted Boolean search for a research project, or have any way to assess whether a source is reliable, or to attribute an image taken from the internet.  These skills must be taught.  Yes, the student can use a smart phone, but that child is by no means Digitally Literate.

Second, I don't think teachers have to overhaul their teaching methods.  Prensky argues that teachers must learn to teach in the language and style of their students, seeming to say that the old way of teaching is no good anymore.  He goes as far as to suggest adapting the curriculum to video games.  I hardly think that he is seriously suggesting that the entire curriculum be overhauled, but I think his comment bears consideration.  As important as it is for us to introduce technology into our classrooms and teach our students to be real Digital Literates, it is important to maintain our sanity.  Yes, we need to "Just Do It," as the Nike slogan suggests.  We need to pilot iPads: try new cooperative projects, investigate teaching with apps, learn the technology, make the mistakes, but the new technology needs to be integrated into what we are teaching now.  Students cannot learn by video game alone.

There are times when it is most appropriate for students to interact with technology to learn and there are times when students need to learn the old-fashioned way.  Prensky argues that Digital Natives like to "parallel process and multi-task" and that they "thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards."  I would  argue that this is not the way all work is going to be done in the real world.  Today's students also need to learn how to slow down and spend time reading the old-fashioned way.  They need to go through text to find support for their answers. They need to take the time to do a comparative analysis of different author's or scientist's opinions about a subject.  There are researchers who spend years on projects.  We need to train our students to spend time working and studying.

We all know there will be times when there is no internet.  Sometimes there is no power.  The real hero will be the person who can still do math then.  If we all rely on our computers to do our thinking for us, who will be thinking outside of the box?

 We also need to realize that there are always going to be different types of students in the classroom. There are going to be some students for whom digital technologies are not the answer.  There are some students who are going to prefer reading from a book and writing with pencil and paper.  These options should be available for them.   

Fortunately, teachers are pros at being teachers.  We can arrange times for both short and long-term projects, individual and collaborative work.  We can help students learn to live in the new world with digital technology without losing the other academic skills that will continue to be useful to them. What is unique in the digital arena perhaps, because students have grown up using digital technology,  is that in this case, teachers do not have to learn the technology in advance to teach it to the students, they can focus on the pedagogy, the uses of the technology.  

Teachers are not then Digital Immigrants to be disparaged, but taking the Nike analogy a bit further, as long as they are willing to "Just Do It" and learn with their students, they are actually Digital Coaches or Mentors.  Students and teachers are not adversaries across a language divide, but collaborators who can work together towards excellence in the 22nd Century.

The importance of play

Please watch this video of John Seely Brown's keynote "Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Learner in the 21st Century," which he presented at the 2012 Digital Media and Learning Conference.  Brown says so many things, but one thing he articulates that I have been trying to find words for is the importance of giving students the time to tinker with or play with technology.

This importance of tinkering is something that our computer teacher and I were just talking about this week in the context of content creation.  Our students need to be willing to try clicking a few buttons on their own in computer lab to see what happens.  This is the way they will remember what happens and learn how to fix mistakes on their own.  If they are working in the Paint program, there is very little harm they can do; they need to be experimenting and playing with how things work.   If they are creating a new file to put their documents in, they can click around to see if they can figure out how to do it before asking for help.  If our students can learn to safely experiment, they will be in a much better position to learn new technologies, than say, our parents, who are in some cases stymied by their new cell phones and are afraid to try to use them.

Similarly, one of the goals of the iPad pilot program is to give students time to play -- to create content in different ways with the iPads -- Popplets, digital stories, videos, podcasts.  They will be creating academic content, but they will also be tinkering with technology.  They will make mistakes, they will have some "redos," some projects will be better than others, and that is all part of the plan.  Our students need to be prepared to live and work in an increasingly technological world. That means we must help work through the process of making technology work for them in a safe atmosphere.

In our pilot program, we will be using iPad2s, which for some purposes are already outdated.  Our iPads aren't 3G and don't have the fabulous retina display.   Our school will not be able to keep up with technology as it changes.  Money is really tight.  This doesn't affect our purpose, however, because at the rate technology is changing, there will always be something better out there. 

The rate of technological change emphasizes that our students need to learn how to adapt the skills they learn on one platform to another platform they will use later.  They should expect to tinker and they should expect to make "mistakes."   If we are lucky, they will also expect to figure out how the new platform and the next one after that work.

Thank you John Seely Brown so explaining this so very eloquently.

Day 1 - From Cellophane to Satisfied - Apple Configurator

Day 1

As things happen, we weren't ready with iPads in the classroom on the first day of school because we decided to order a MacBook Air for our pilot to enable us to use Apple Configurator to manage the iPads.  The Mac arrived on Friday, so my principal (Mrs. Cole, pictured above) and I met at school this foggy Saturday morning to configure our 15 students iPads.  We had heard mixed reviews on Apple Configurator, but the general message seemed to be "it's great -- once you figure it out," and I have to agree.

We started at about 9:30 getting the new Mac set up with an iTunes account.  As had been suggested, we did have to specifically go the iTunes store and make the new Mac an authorized computer.  Once we had the iTunes account set up, we went to the Mac App Store, downloaded Apple Configurator, and we were on our way.

Configuration went much as described in any of the articles about it, but we did have a few things to learn.  Suffice it to say that the first 5 iPads took much longer to configure than the last 5 iPads.  In fact, the last 5 iPads took less than 5 minutes each, probably about 2 minutes per iPad.

Here are some things we discovered:

1.  In the Prepare pane, there are only a few required settings.  This was important to us because we are not currently prepared to enable email on the iPads.  I had been worried that this might keep us from using the Apple Configurator. 

2.  We needed to download the free apps we wanted to put on the iPads from the iTunes store in advance to have them available to put on the iPads.  

3.  There is a much discussed feature that apparently allows you to number iPads sequentially.  This is where we ran into problems.  This may be because we were plugging in one iPad at a time rather than using a syncing station or cart or maybe there was something else we missed.

We checked the option to number iPads sequentially in the Prepare pane.  Our first iPad was named "iPad1" as we had hoped, but when we plugged in the second iPad, it was also named "iPad1".  To avoid confusion, we now needed to rename one of the iPads.  One of our references said this was very easy to do in the Supervise pane.  Well . . .

There was no "rename" option anywhere.  We could not double-click on the iPad name and rename it.  We could not rename the iPad on the iPad itself and get the name changed in Apple Configurator.  The Apple Help people were not able to help, so we were stumped for a little while.  In the end, we were able to rename the second iPad by plugging it into Apple Configurator, unsupervising it, and starting over.  I suspect there is an easier way.

3.  At first, we were charging the iPads first, then configuring them, but as we got faster and didn't want to wait for charging, we realized that we could plug the iPads into the Mac for configuration before we charged them.  This was a real time-saver. 

4. Once each iPad was configured, we did still have to do some basic set up on the iPads (picking a language, a router to use etc.).  This didn't take very long and perhaps there is a short-cut for this too.  I don't know.

All told, we were able to configure the 15 iPads by 12:30 and are confident that we could do the next 15 from start to finish in 45 minutes or less.  As noted in the krypted article below, "Apple Configurator is a tool that [with patience] can either Prepare or Supervise an iOS deployment and do so in a manner that is easy enough that you don't need a firm background in IT to manage devices on a day-to-day basis."

Here are some resources on the Apple Configurator:

First Look at Apple Configurator + Resources

Supervising Devices with Apple Configurator

A Friendly Guide to Deploying iPads at Your School

Cult of Mac, Use Configurator to roll out iOS Devices to Your Users - the Right Way

Krypted,com Managing iOS Devices with Apple Configurator

Apple Configurator Walk-through

 Apple Configurator Help Guide.

Why iPads?

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I have been asked recently both why I think an iPad pilot project is important and how I will know if the pilot was a success.  These are the central questions, aren’t they?  They should direct the entire project.  In this post, I’ll start with the “why?”
The reason why to use iPads in school will differ from school to school and district to district.  As one example, PS10 in New York, one of the first districts to roll out teacher iPads, adopted teacher iPads to save paper (the pilot showed that the district did indeed save paper, but also showed other important benefits). 
For me, the reason to have iPads is to teach digital literacy, a skill it is imperative for our students to develop to live well in the 21^st Century.  Today’s 5^th graders will be living and working in a world of digital text.  In fact, many -- maybe most -- of them already are, as they text, watch youtube videos, interact with Facebook, and surf the internet.  Our students must know how to intelligently read digital text, write digital text, and manipulate it.
Not surprisingly, the importance of digital media shows up clearly in the newly adopted Common Core standards for the English Language Arts.  As most know, the standards were developed top-down.  The writers first looked at what skills students need to be career-ready, then worked backwards through the grades to see how these skills should be developed year-by-year through a student’s educational career.   One of the specific portraits of career readiness revolves around the use of technology and digital media:

Students employ technology thoughtfully to enhance their reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language use. They tailor their searches online to acquire useful information efficiently, and they integrate what they learn using technology with what they learn offline. They are familiar with the strengths and limitations of various technological tools and mediums and can select and use those best suited to their communication goals.

Here are some excerpts from the 5^th grade standards to show how this portrait is developed in 5^th grade:

Writing (Production and Distribution of Writing)

·       W.5.6. With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of two pages in a single sitting.

Writing (Research to Build & Present Knowledge)

·       W.5.8. Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; summarize or paraphrase information in notes and finished work, and provide a list of sources.

Reading Informational Text (Integration of Knowledge and Ideas)

·       Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.

Reading Literature (Integration of Knowledge & Ideas)

·       RL 5.7. Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).

Speaking and Listening (Comprehension & Collaboration)

·       SL.5.2. Summarize a written text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

Speaking and Listening (Presentation of Knowledge & Ideas)

·       SL5.5. Include multimedia components (e.g., graphics, sound) and visual displays in presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.

We are now required to teach our students to read, write and use digital media.  We need to teach these three skills at school, not only because it is our job to teach our students to read, write and present well, but also because, in the case of digital text, our students’ parents may not know these skills themselves. Some of our students’ parents consider themselves digital dinosaurs, some don’t have access to digital media at home, and some don’t know how much time their child is involved with digital media.  

At the moment, our students get one hour a week in the computer lab, and many students miss half of that period attending instrumental music lessons.  Having iPads in the classroom will give students much more time to read, write and present digital media.   A few simple examples of ways of reading, writing and presenting by iPad are listed here, but the possibilities are only limited by a teacher’s ingenuity.

Reading:

Students can use the iPads as e-readers to read any of the many books available for iPad, including those in Amazon’s Kindle store.  Most of these books are less expensive in digital form than in book form.  In addition, thousands of books are available to download for free.  Project Gutenberg alone has 40,000 free books available, including Grimms Fairy Tales and Anne of Green Gables. 

Increasingly, even text materials are being made available for free, including some appropriate for 5^th grade.  K-12 Handhelds has a growing elementary library.  Titles for language arts include Types of Poetry, Types of Poetry 2, Poetry Anthology, Writers’ Style Guide for Students, and Writing a Research Paper.  Titles for math include Exponents, Decimals, and Distributive Property.  These digital texts include interactive elements; for example, in Ratios, students can solve ratio problems, then click to check their work.  All of these books could be used to supplement and expand our adopted texts.  Perhaps even more important is the move by major textbook companies to produce interactive textbooks, which will include rich digital media.

Students can also use the iPads in class to conduct research, much as they would in computer lab.  They can learn how to interact with the internet safely and efficiently.  They will also need to learn about plagiarism and compliance with copyright laws as the ease with which they can cut and paste items from the internet increases.  Although there is a doctrine of educational fair use, which may protect students from copyright violations when they are doing a project for school, many of our students are creating digital media outside the school grounds.

Writing

Using iPads and the Pages app ($10), students will be able to generate essays and journal entries much as they could with pencil and paper, but using iPads will also allow students to add digital content to their writing, if appropriate.  For example, students can use a simple app like Popplet Lite (free), to brainstorm and pre-write.  When they make a mind-map digitally with an app such as Popplet, they can also insert images to expand upon their thinking.  For example, when learning the word “contemplation,” they can take a photo of a friend in contemplation to illustrate the meaning of the word. 

As students write using iPad apps, they will create digital text for an increasingly digital audience.  The Scribble Press app is another free app which students can use to write a book, using typed text, drawings, imported images and stamps.   Their work can then be published as an e-book or emailed to share.

Presenting

With their iPads, students can create traditional presentations, such as slide presentations using Keynote ($10), or posters using Pages ($10), but another use of iPads is for students to present their work in class or to an internet audience.  IPads can be mirrored so that a student’s iPad screen can be shown at the front of the classroom.  A free app, such as Educreations Interactive Whiteboard, can be used for a student to show her process for solving a math problem on the whiteboard at the front of the class while she works at their desk.  The same app can be used for students to create short screencasts of their work that can be posted to a class blog, used as an assessment, or shared with another student who might have missed class.  Using Board Cam Pro ($2.99), teachers can use their iPads as roving cameras to share student work, for example to show different groups’ results when working on a science experiment.  The teacher is no longer tethered to the front of the class, but can move freely around the room.

Students can use their iPads to work with audio as well.  For example, using a free computer application Cinch and the Cinch app for the iPad, students can record themselves practicing their poems for oral presentation, then review these recordings with peers or their teacher to see how they can improve before making a final presentation in front of the class.

Of course, these are only a few examples of how iPads can be used to read, write and present digitally.  There are whole websites dedicated to subsets of these skills, for example, David Jakes' resources for digital presentation.  If a teacher is willing to dive in and learn with her students, I think learning with iPads can be an engaging way to teach and learn these vitally important 21st Century Skills.

Mini-podcasts are a Cinch, maybe

One of the things on my digital literacy checklist for this year is to make audio recordings of our students as they do their three oral poetry recitals.  The more I consider doing mini-podcasts, the more excited I get about it.

Audio recordings will help teach students speaking skills.  Last year students practiced their poems at home, then did a single presentation to the class.  This was an opportunity for students to speak in front of the class, but didn't allow for much teaching.  I want a way to let students hear themselves, get some teacher recommendations for improvement, practice for a day or two, then (hopefully improve and) recite for a grade. I especially hope that this will help those students who are reluctant to get up in front of the class because they will be able to hear their improvement.

Teaching students to do some mini-podcasts will also expose them to a type of digital media they may not know about.  They may well listen to and create podcasts in their future lives outside of school; recording and listening to their poetry recitals now will be a quick and easy introduction to podcasting.

Also, audio recordings will be a nice souvenir of 5th grade for families.  There is a reason we teach Family Life in 5th grade.  Our students really change over the year!  This may be the last year some of them sound like young children.  It might be very nice for families to have recordings of those young voices to remember when their 5th graders head off to college.  I know I cherish the audio recordings I made for my husband's travels when our children were toddlers.

Until today, I had the idea of the recordings in mind, but had only gotten as far as wishing there were an app for that.  Now, I know there is one.

Today, as I was reading the e-book Playing with Media, by Wesley Fryer, I came across a solution that I want to try.  He recommends opening a Cinch account at Cinch.fm, then using the Cinch app to make audio recordings.  Sam Gliksman, also recommends Cinch and has helpful recommendations in his article, Give Your Students A Voice With Micro-Podcasts.  Notably, Sam Gliksman warns that the default public setting should be reset (by clicking the lock icon next to the folder) and the geotagging turned off (if you are using an iPad or iPhone).  Both comments are very good advice for elementary school.

This evening, while working on my computer, I quickly opened a Cinch account.  Before I even got an email confirmation, I had a Cinch follower.  Neat.  I discovered that it is easy to set up additional accounts, so I can quickly create account "folders" for each student.  I'm not sure yet, but it may be best to make each account private when it is created.  I made a Cinch to file in my main folder and have not been able to make that one folder private.

It was easy to make a Cinch recording.  I think I did everything correctly, but my recording remains pending.  I'm guessing that isn't supposed to happen.  I have emailed Customer Service . . . and am reminded that I am learning along with my students!

The next morning, there was an email from Amy from Customer Service.  She said that when there is a pending note, the Cinch recording hasn't finished uploading yet, and she recommended rebooting.  I did that to no avail.  Looks like there's a glitch somewhere.

There's good news too, though.  Since I plan to do the Cinches on our class iPads, I downloaded the app, did a quick recording and it worked.  Time spent, less than 2 minutes, including getting the app from the App store.  Score one for the iPad! 

I'll revise the poetry lessons to let the students and families know that we will be using Cinch on the iPads and we're ready to go.  

Maybe I should warn my family that I'll be using them at Cinch guinea pigs for the rest of the break.

Facetime vs. Facebook in education

I was at first disappointed that my favorite Learning and the Brain conference has as its topic "Educating the Whole Student: Using Brain Science for Smarter, Happier and Healthier Learners." I was hoping for something similar to last year's conference, "iGeneration:  How the Digital Age is Alterting Student Brains, Learning and Technology."  Indeed, it was that last conference that ultimately brought me to the MOOC.  However, the new conference, with its focus on "teaching hearts and minds," "strengthening social-emotional skills," and "encouraging ethics and collaboration" among other topics,  falls neatly into a question others and I  have been pondering: How much does the physical academic environment matter?  Do we need to learn in a "learning space" with physically present teachers and peers? I think in many instances we do.

I come to the MOOC with the perspective of an elementary teacher, which is somewhat different than many of the participants, but I think the social environment may be important at all levels of education.  The one-to-one connections between student and teacher and between student and classmate may well be part of the learning process and I'm not sure how well we can replicate that with e-learning. 

I've run across a few scenarios recently which have emphasized to me the importance of the direct human connection.  In response to a blog post about math homework help, someone recommended a math tutoring website to me.  The first thing I wanted to  know was how the tutoring was conducted.  Could the student and tutor see what the other was doing in real time?  My thought was that on-line tutoring might work for review, for example, taking a quick look at a Mathtrain video might remind a student of a concept, but that the initial teaching must at least be synchronous to keep the learner engaged.  There is research to support this.  In her blog, Joanne Jacobs references a recent study of the Apollo turnaround schools in Houston, Texas.  In that study, it was intensive tutoring with a person, rather than tutoring on a computer that raised math scores.

The importance of the in-person tutoring may have to do with the ability to adapt.  It is time for my principal to observe me teaching.  As part of the process, I need to submit a lesson plan showing how I will introduce the topic, use direct instruction, modeled instruction, guided practice, etc.  I have made the lesson plan, but all the while I recognize that if I stick to the "best laid plan", I may not teach very well.  When I am actually teaching, I need to be able to analyze both verbal and non-verbal clues as my lesson progresses.  I need to assess interest, comprehension, ability to apply the learning, and student involvement.  I need to take advantage of "teachable moments."  It is this application of teaching skills that makes teaching so different when standing in a classroom than it appears in a credentialing class lecture hall, just ask any student teacher.

Moreover, a teacher's impact may occur outside academics.  Thanksforteaching.us is a website that Vicky Davis mentioned in her blog.  Here different people have posted letters to thank teachers for the impact they made on their lives.  I found it both thought-provoking and invigorating to see how much impact a mentoring teacher can have.   Can an on-line teacher sit through lunch with a student who can't understand math because he's having a bad day at home?  Can an on-line teacher encourage a struggling student when she seems him hanging outside the grocery score with his friends?  I don't think e-learning can replicate that connection. 

In the end, I suspect we will need to maintain a balance between the efficiencies of e-learning and a the adaptability and emotional connection available in a face-to-face "learning environment."  As e-learning evolves, it will be interesting to watch the evolution of our classrooms and other learning spaces.

Jing and Mathtrain

Prezi was fun for explaining division, but maybe a little cumbersome for a first foray into having students teach students.  I was looking for another multimedia method, and voila, learned about Jing in my 21st Century Technology Leadership Class.

Jing is a free application that allows you to take simple screenshots of your computer or to make very quick and easy screencasts.  One person who is a master at this is Eric Marcos, who teaches 6th grade at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, California and is a founder of Mathtrain.  We all know that in order to teach math well, you really need to understand it well.  Eric capitalizes on this and has his students explain math concepts for other students, then Eric records them and posts them on his website using Jing.  You can see their story here. These mini-videos are really engaging and you can access them for free here.  There is even a free Mathtrain Ipad app that you can download, available here.

In the interest of jumping in and trying all things ed tech, I tried a similar screencast using Jing and Paintbrush2 on my MacBook.  It was remarkably easy and you can see my very first attempt here.  I anticipate that the students will love doing this in computer lab with our PC Paint program and Jing, and if all goes well, we can have math help available on line, just like Eric Marcos