Living in the 4th Screen

Exploring the use of mobile technology in education and life

Apple Summer Learning Institute for Principals 2010 - Language Acquisition

The 3rd session I attended dealt with Language Acquisition. Very good presentation. The presenter showed some video clips of school using Apple tools to help ESL students. The iPod Touch apps we used were Pocket English ESL, Sentence Builder, and iTranslate Plus. We also used iTunes U content such as Lit2Go and an ESL Podcast. 

The presenter also showed some built in functions that are available on a MacBook for free that assist with language acquisition.

I again left this session thinking how useful the iPod Touch is in a classroom setting.

Apple Summer Learning Institute 2010

I am in Boston for a few days attending the Apple Summer Institute for Administrators. Apple knows how to put on a good event. Very nice hotel and very good food. They gave us a MacBook, iPod Touch, and an iPad to use for the two days of the conference. The conference centers around how to use Apple products to improve instruction and learning. Being a PC user who owns an iPhone, it has been interesting using their software on the MacBook. I have used Apple products before and I have always liked them. I can't believe how easy it is to use iMovie to create your own movies. My next computer purchase will definitely be an Apple. No surprise that Apple announced today that their MacBook sales are up. Their products are easier to use and more powerful.

Article: 5 Steps to Harnessing the Power of Cells in Education Today

The Innovative Educator wrote a post titled "5 Steps to Harnessing the Power of Cells in Education Today." Below is a copy of the 5 Steps with an explanation. Follow this link to read the complete article. The post lists ways to carry out each on of the 5 suggestions. 

Step One: Teacher Use of Cell Phones for Professional Purposes 
Remember, just because some schools and districts ban students from using cell phones, this does not apply to teachers. Begin harnessing the power of your own cell phone today as an instructional tool. 


Step Two: Teacher Models Appropriate Use for Learning 
Once you're comfortable using your cell phone as an instructional tool, you can begin modeling best practice and instructional use of cell phones to your students. Let them see ways they might consider using their phones to support instruction. 


Step Three: Strengthen the Home-School Connection with Cell Phones 
Cell phones provide a terrific means for connecting with student's parents, family, and guardians. Begin using phones to develop and strengthen those relationships. This provides a foundation and helps develop understanding around the benefits and value of cell phone use in general and later for use with students. The first thing you want to do is get a list of phone numbers from your student's parents, guardians, and/or family members. Once you do that there are many ways to use cells to support the home school connection.


Step Four: Students Use Cell Phones for Homework 
Before using cell phones in your classroom with students, begin giving students the option to use cell phones to complete their homework. This gives the teacher the opportunity to allow students to use cell phones for learning without classroom management concerns. This also gives students experience in using cell phones for learning. In most cases students can do the same work on a cell that they can on a laptop so if they have easier access to one over the other at different times they can choose what works best for them on that particular evening. Especially in families with limited technology resources, providing these sorts of options helps break down the digital divide. Suddenly the amount of technology available to a student for learning has increased dramatically. 


Step Five: Students Use Cell Phones for Classwork
Once you, your students, and their parents/guardians/families have become comfortable using cell phones as instructional tool and if your school or district empowers classroom teachers to make instructional decisions, you are ready to begin allowing students to harness the power of cell phones for learning. The first thing you'll want to do, even if your district or school has a policy is discuss acceptable use with students. Using a tool like Wiffiti or Polleverywhere may be a smart way to capture student ideas on acceptable use. You can have them contribute outside of school and once all students agree to the ideas shared they can sign a contract with a link to the resource containing the policies to which they developed and agreed. In many cases you'll find student rules and consequences are more stringent then those outlined in the school or district policy, but it's written in language everyone can understand. The results can be posted on the classroom or school website as well.

Classroom Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers - Part 2

 
Back in January I wrote two posts titled, "Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers" and "What is More Disruptive - Banning or Embracing Cell Phones in the Classroom? ", both posts essentially talked about how we changed our school cell phone policy and allowed students to use their cell phones during the school day. I reported the number of cell phone violations we had in the first half of the year in 08-09 and how many we had in 09-10. Below is some of what I said then:
What is more disruptive, banning cell phones and requiring teachers to confiscate them, or embracing student cell phones and teaching students how to use them more responsibly. For the 2009-2010 school year we changed our cell phone policy at the school were I serve as an assistant principal. We allow students to use their cell phones in between classes and in the cafeteria during their lunch period. The rest of the school day is instructional time and their cell phones are to be off and out of site unless a teacher is using them as part of the lesson.
 
Additionally, we made another change to our cell phone policy. We no longer require teachers to confiscate a student's cell phone if they violate the policy. We tell the teachers to write up a conduct report and turn it in to the main office and we will handle it from there. Our goal was to eliminate the classroom struggle that ensues between the teacher and a student when there is a cell phone policy violation.
 
The school I work in is a high school with about 1050 students. It is a middle to upper-middle class neighborhood. Almost all of our students carry a cell phone and an iPod of some sort.
For the first half of the year in 08-09 (Sept - Dec) when we did not allow students to use their cell phones during the school day we had over 40 violations. For the same time period in the 09-10 school year when we allowed students to use their cell phones during the school day we had 30 violations. I now have the final number of cell phone violations for the second half of the 09-10 school year (Jan - June). In the second half of the 08-09 school year we had 30 violations and in the same time period in the 09-10 school year we had 25 violations of our cell phone policy.
 
I also wrote this back in January:
Overall we have not had an increase in cell phone policy violations versus the same time last year when we did not allow cell phones to be used during the school day. In all honesty the students treated the change in the policy like it was no big deal. Many students have told me that by allowing them to use their phones it has removed the temptation to take them out at other times when it would be inappropriate. 

In all honesty I expected the violations for this school year (09-10) to be higher. One of the reasons I expected higher numbers was because teachers do not have to confiscate the student's cell phone when the student violates the policy. I thought this change in procedure would result in more discipline reports. Not the case.
In summary, we had 70+ cell phone violations for the 2008-2009 school year when students were not allowed to use their cell phones during the school day and 55 cell phone violations for the 2009-2010 school year when they were allowed to use the cell phones during their lunch periods and in the hallway between classes. I fully expected the number of cell phone violations to increase somewhat during the first year of a new policy. I also thought the fact that teachers did not have to confiscate the student's cell phone in order to write them up for a violation would make it easier for teachers to report violations and hence, expected more conduct reports dealing with cell phone violations. That did not happen.
 
Although pleased that our cell phone violations decreased, I am not exactly sure why. The students tell me that because they had opportunities to use their cell phones throughout the day it diminished the temptation to use them at inappropriate times. I am not naive to the fact that students still used their cell phones at inappropriate times this year and that not all those violations got reported to the office, but year over year we had a decrease in the number of cell phone violations. Overall a positive result. Students are certainly happier with the new policy and some parents have told me they are pleased with the change as it allows them to connect with their children during the day if they need to.
 
I have two final observations. First, the other assistant principal and I agonized in late spring and early summer in 2009 as we pondered a change in the cell phone policy. We didn't know what to expect. We contacted administrators and teachers from others schools who had made similar changes and peppered them with questions about how it turned out for them. We contacted some of our teachers over the summer and asked them what they thought of our idea of a new cell phone policy. Now looking back, we realize how foolish we were. The change in policy was really no big deal.
 
The second observation I made was that I thought a majority of students would be texting or talking on their cell phones during lunch. I expected to walk into our lunch area and see hundreds of students on their cell phones. This never happened. As a matter of fact I rarely saw more than 5 students at any given time on their cell phones, calling or texting. One day I had a colleague here from another school. I told her about our change in policy and we both walked into our lunch area to purposely count the number of students we observed using their cell phones. We saw 3 students texting and one listening to an iPod out of the 250 students who had lunch at that time. I read all the time that today's students do not know how to have face to face conversations because all they do is text. This has not been my experience. They are doing just fine when it comes to conversing with their peers.
 
Over the summer I will finish writing my paper reporting my findings this year with using cell phones as an instructional tool and will post it here when completed.
 
 I borrowed the picture from this website.

Using Pandora as an educational tool

One of my duties as assistant principal is supervising the world languages department. The department members and I are always looking for ways to improve classroom instruction. Below is what one of the world language teachers sent to me in an email today:

I'm excited to use Pandora because it's free and I already had a bunch of Latino stations I can use in the classroom.  I can use this to play during a do now or other "down time" where students are entering or exiting or working quietly.  It does have commercials but it seems like there is no interruption for continuous play.

 

Just thought I would share.  Not sure how many other people use music in the classroom, but this certainly makes it easier.  No need to bring the iPod or buy a ton of songs on ITUNEs which I have done already.
I have Pandora on my iPhone and use it from time to time, but I never thought of using it this way in the classroom. Pandora is free and available as a desktop version as well so you do not need an iPhone or iPod Touch to use it.
 
A constant challenge in a world language classroom is for students to hear native speakers speaking the language. A number of the teachers in the department have used songs as a way to meet this need quite effectively. Using Pandora opens up many more possibilities.
 
 
 

iPod, iListen, iRead, and apparently iLearn

A recent article in Edutopia.org talks about using iPods as voice recording devices to provide feedback to students who are learning to read. According to the article the students can listen to themselves reading and it provides the "missing mirror" in terms of reading instruction. The last thing students with poor reading skills want to do is read aloud in front of their peers. Having students read into an iPod provides a non-threatening outlet for students to listen to themselves read. Apparently this process also improved the students ability to read.

Evidence of Student Outcomes
Escondido and Canby classrooms are seeing large gains in the speed of student reading, one part of reading fluency. In a Canby fourth-grade classroom of sixteen students, from the fall to mid-year assessment of reading fluency, when average increase in word count per minute (WCPM) is 12, the average in the iPod classroom was close to 20. (WCPM measures the pace of reading; accuracy is another component of fluency.) Most students achieved more than double the average expected.

In an Escondido fourth-grade class of ten students, average increase was 48 WCPM in just six weeks. At the start of fourth grade, all of the students lagged behind the 120 WCPM goal for third-grade completion. Within the six-week period, more than half of them had caught up and surpassed the goal for fourth-grade completion, making more than a year's progress in that period.

A pilot study of reading achievement using the Iowa Test of Basic Skills also showed impressive gains. A group of 12 fifth-graders in Escondido using iPod Touches averaged 1.8 years of reading progress in six months, compared with a matched group of students at the same school who averaged .25, a quarter of a year’s increase. Both districts are planning larger-scale studies of reading achievement.

Needless to say those are impressive statistical gains made by the students at Escondido and Canby. Further on in the article it talks about the iPod making a painful process private:

The iPod makes personal a process that has been painfully public. No struggling reader likes to have his or her weaknesses exposed in a group, in front of the entire class or their reading circle. The iPod enables more intimate, 1:1 reading instruction between a student and a teacher listening to each other's voices in audio files.

Not only are the students excited by the iPods but so are the teachers. Below is what some of the teachers had to say:

We have heard teacher after teacher say, 'This has totally transformed my teaching!' 'I'm having more fun and being a better teacher.' 'I'm never gonna retire.'" One teacher told Shirley, '"Using iPods with microphones has engaged students more than anything I've ever experienced! These tools allow even the softest speaker to be heard and motivate even the most reluctant reader." Another said succinctly: "There's less of me talking and more of them doing."

Finally the article mentions that the iRead project at Escondido would not have been a success without the support of the school superintendent Jennifer Walters. In my experience as an educator for any school-wide project to be successful there needs to be buy-in from the entire group of stakeholders i.e. Administration, teachers, parents, and students. Follow the link above to read the entire article. It is well worth your time and there are a number of links provided for further research.

I have stated many times on this blog that I believe the iPod Touch is a very compelling device for schools (Click here to read my post -  Reach out and Touch Someone as I enumerate why I like the iPod Touch for schools). Of all devices currently on the market I believe the iPod Touch provides the best return-on-investment in terms of improving student learning.

Blog Title: Why Smartboards are a Dumb Initiative

On the Innovative Educator Blog there was this recent post titled "Why Smartboards are a Dumb Initiative" written by Michael Staton. Below is a snippet from the post:
 I roll my eyes every time I hear people talk about putting Smartboards in the classroom. Ugh….
Don’t get me wrong, Smartboards are cool. They are just the least cost-effective way to improve learning I’ve ever seen. (Except for building new physical plant, that’s worse.)
  
Follow the link above to read the full article. I have already posted on this blog my feelings about Smartboards. I have the same reaction Michael Staton does when I here schools are purchasing Smartboards.

Chris Lehman: Technology Like Oxygen - Ubiquitous, Necessary, and Invisable

Below is a clip from Chris Lehman's TEDxNYED Talk. The full video is below as well. I really like what Chris had to say about the role of technology in schools. When I was a technology director I use to call it "Technology as Pencils". I used the pencil metaphor because pencils are readily available in schools and teachers never write in their plan books to make sure the pencils are prepared for the lesson. They just expect each student to have one and use it as needed. Additionally, pencils come in different shapes, sizes, colors, and types (mechanical), just like our hardware devices. Pencils need to be sharpened occasionally and technology devices also need to be tweaked now and then. Finally, pencils get too short and stop working and we need to replace them, just like computers. This is where we need to get with technology - available to all and used when and how they want. Check out the video below.

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Understanding the iGeneration and the Way they Learn

A thorough post by Joe Wood about the explosion of Wireless Mobile Devices. He references the book Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way they Learn by Dr. Larry D. Rosen of Cal State Dominguez Hills. He quotes some very interesting statistics from the book. Here are a few snippets from the blog post:

The third chapter of Rewired, “An Explosion of WMDs: Wireless Mobile Devices” discusses the iGeneration and their intertwined existence with mobile technology.

Using these statistics and others (get the book) Rosen talks about the iGeneration as the “connected class” who need to be educated in a different way than previous generations – they “need something more attuned to their daily lifestyles – connected and often virtual.” 

Rosen describes mLearing as being delivered through mobile virtual learning environments (MVLEs) that are centered around two notions – “learning can happen outside of the traditional classroom” and “the center of this learning involves electronic communication tools.”

Follow the link above to read the full post. It is a good read and well worth your time.

Using Technology Students Already Have

Derek Keenan has a great post on his Adventures in Teaching and Learning blog. He lists 5 reasons for using the technology students already have in their pockets. Students are very adapt at using their cell phones or iPod Touches to access information or communicate with others. I like his 5 reasons. This ties in with my last post, Students on their cell phones in the hallway, what was going on in this classroom?, where I talk about a classroom I observed with students using their cell phones as part of the lesson. We should allow students to use the technology they are comfortable with, not the technology we are comfortable with. Follow the link to Derek's post and give it a read.

Students on their cell phones in the hallway, what was going on in this classroom?

I observed a class the other day and I observed students talking on their cell phones in the hallway, other groups of students sitting at their desks and talking, and later on a popular music video was projected onto the large screen in the front of the room. Some administrators might have been bothered by what I saw, but I thought it was one of the best lessons I had seen all year. Why? The students were fully engaged in the learning. Let me explain.
 
The class I observed was a high school Spanish class. The day before the lesson I observed the students began writing a dialogue between two or three people in Spanish using the vocabulary words they were learning as part of the unit. They continued this activity and began practicing speaking the dialogue. When the students felt ready to record their conversation they went into the hallway and using their cell phone they called the teacher's Google Voice number. Each group's dialogue was stored in the teacher's Google Voice inbox. Since she has each student's contact info in her Google Voice account it associates a phone number and the student's email to each student recording. At the beginning of the lesson the teacher went over the rubric she would be using to grade the recordings. She emphasized that she would be listening to their voice and that they should try to sound like a native speaker. When the students completed the recording she played a Spanish music video. She handed out the lyrics in Spanish with some of the words missing. The students had to listen and fill in the blanks. The next time through the video she supplied a word bank to assist students who were having trouble.

After the lesson the teacher said to me she was sorry that I did not get to see her doing that much. I told her it was one of the best lessons I had seen all year. I think she was somewhat surprised by my statement, but I reiterated to her that for almost the entire period the students were either reading, writing, listening to, or speaking Spanish. The NJ Core Curriculum Standard for World Languages emphasizes the ability for students to communicate in the target language. I must add that this particular teacher is excellent at what she does. She works very hard and has developed an excellent rapport with the students in her classroom. There was absolutely no misuse of the student cell phones. The students were very well behaved.

As a side note our Spring Break was to start in a day and the teacher was going away with her family. She has a smartphone running the Android operating system. Google Voice is a native app on her phone. If she wanted, while she was sitting on the beach, she could listen to the student recordings and send an email or text message to each student letting them know how they sounded. She could have even sent a copy of the recordings to each of the students for them to listen to (For non-Android phones you can access Google Voice via the web). Without Google Voice and student cell phones how would you duplicate this lesson? What would it cost the district? How much time would it take? Would you be able to archive the recordings and share them with the students?

Additional side notes - For this lesson the cell phones worked exactly as they should. The students had no problem using their own phone and at no time did they use the school network. Easy to use and no glitches. How often can you say this about classroom technology.

How do you record student conversations at your school?

Student Cell Phones - Interference or Innovation?

Here in New Jersey all new administrators have to go through a 2-year mentoring program. In the second year of the program you have to conduct an action research project. I am three-quarters of the way through the program. My research project is exploring the use of student cell phones to enhance instruction and learning in the classroom. I am also looking at ways to reduce the distractions cell phones cause as part of the school day. I started this blog as a way to report on my findings. Below are the research questions I will be seeking to answer as as part of my research.

1. Is there a way to eliminate the power struggle that ensues between teachers and students when the teacher tries to confiscate the cell phone during class after a cell phone violation occurred?

2. Are there steps schools can take to reduce the number of cell phone infractions that occur during the school day?

3. Can students be taught and expected to use cell phones in a responsible manner during the school day?

4. Given the ubiquitous proliferation of mobile phones in both the business and consumer market do schools have an obligation to teach students how to use their cell phones in a socially responsible manner?

5. Are their legitimate uses of student cell phones to enhance instruction and learning in the classroom?

I welcome feedback and input on my research questions regardless of how you feel about the issue. You can comment on this blog or email me at kbals@holmdelschools.org . I have written extensively on this blog about many of my findings and what we have done here at my high school. Below are the posts related specifically to my project and what we have done at the high school I work at:

What is more disruptive - Banning or Embracing Student Cell Phones?

Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers

To Ban or Embrace

No Big Deal

Use Outlook to Send Text Message Reminders to Students

Using Student Cell Phones and iPadio to Record Student Conversations

Using Google Voice in a World Language Classroom

Why did I name the blog Living in the 4th Screen? Watch the video below.

Atlanta school embraces mobile computing

In a recent article Education Week reports that a high school near Atlanta is embracing iPod Touches and other mobile handheld devices. The following are some quotes from the article:

Students can use their iPod touches in plain sight in Mark Schuler’s World History class at Roswell High School here.

Roswell officials, unlike most of their counterparts around the country, have changed their view of the MP3 players, seeing them less as contraband and more as educational accessories. Educators at the 2,400-student school in suburban Atlanta are hoping to put more content at students’ fingertips and capture their interest by enlisting the digital tools today’s teenagers have already mastered for social and leisure purposes.

“Five years ago iPods were banned, but we got overwhelmed with trying to discipline kids and fight the technology,” says Edward Spurka, the principal of Roswell High. “Our philosophy here now is let them have it, ..."

It is interesting that the principal concluded that it was a losing battle to ban the technology. Instead they are now trying to use it to further the students learning. This is just one of many schools across the country that has come to this conclusion.

The growth in mobile computing increases the demand for content to fit on the small screen

In this article, Education Week tackles the growing problem of finding relevant and rigorous content to use in the classroom with mobile handheld devices. Below are some quotes from the article.

In the push for mobile learning as a way to utilize tools that students are adept at using and are enthusiastic about, the quest for creating and finding high-quality content is proving a challenge. But as more schools decide to incorporate portable technologies into the school day, demand is growing for curricula developed with a three-inch display window in mind.

The Florida Virtual School officials are trying to get beyond such simple uses. They have enlisted a team of experts to develop mobile software, in partnership with a commercial provider, that incorporates video, interactive and social-networking features, and Web resources adapted for the devices.

In St. Marys, Ohio, a 2,150-student district that issues mobile phones to elementary students, teachers have put together an online forum for sharing curriculum ideas and resources with members. Teachers there have also organized show-and-tell sessions to demonstrate how they work with cellphones in the classroom.

Apple's App Store has fueled the growth in apps for the iPod Touch and the iPhone. Many of these applications are specifically for the education market. As the use of mobile devices grows in schools the success of the App Store will spill over into other markets. There has already be significant growth in Google's Android market. It will be exciting to see the applications that arise over the next few years for mobile devices.

A significant and unanticipated impact

A while back I wrote about Project K-Nect going on in a school in North Carolina (Click here to read the post). This article I recently read on O'Reilly Radar talks about the project in more detail. Project K-Nect was a small pilot were 150 ninth-graders were given cell phones to use 24/7, but primarily as a tool in their algebra class. The pilot project, by all accounts, was very successful. As I read this recent article I was intrigued by a few of the authors observations.

Midway through the article the author writes:

A final observation is that having a digitally mediated component to the learning environment can be surprisingly inclusive. As teachers in Project K-Nect began to experiment with using the blogs and instant messaging for discussing math in the classroom, an unexpected (to us) dynamic emerged. It turns out that many kids who don't like speaking up in class are completely comfortable speaking up online. Students who don't like to raise their hands use the devices to ask questions or participate in collaborative problem solving. There appears to be something democratizing about having a "back channel" as part of the learning environment.

 As a former math teacher of 18 years I know how difficult it can be for students to ask questions about mathematics in front of their peers. Using the cell phones leveled the playing field for these students. I don't see how you can duplicate this result without the cell phones and the social networks that emerged around the devices.

 The other comment made by the author that I found interesting was that the "connected learning community had a significant and unanticipated impact on these students." Below is the quote in context:

Much of the teaching has also shifted to problem-based learning. I was fascinated to see an example of this on one visit. The students worked in groups to develop a public service announcement describing the dangers of compound interest and credit card debt. They then made a video of their commercial using their cell phones and posted it to the shared blog. Not only did they learn by discussing and debating as a team how best to communicate compound interest, but they then had the resulting video to refer to when it came time to review for the test. In fact, they had everyone's videos at their fingertips via their cell phone browsers. If one team's explanation didn't kindle the "aha" moment, another one just might. Once again, the connected learning community had a significant and unanticipated impact on these students.

As you read the article you will learn about the significant impact the project had on the students involved. What I find interesting is that it is not the device that had the impact, but the access the device provided. The mobile device allowed the learning to move beyond the four walls of the classroom and provided 24/7 access and enough of a barrier where students felt free to open up and discuss mathematics in creative ways. How do you accomplish this without the mobile devices?

The other interesting thing is that the social networking impact was unanticipated. The researchers did not plan for it. It happened organically. How exciting is that? I will be interested to see how Project K-Nect moves forward and what they discover about using cell phones in the classroom.

Do you think mobile learning might work?

Martha Lane Fox discusses mobile learning on the BBC's Digital Giants series. Here are some quotes from the interview about mobile learning I found on the moblearn blog: 

- mobile is everywhere!

- it is about inclusion, as much as about trendy gadgets

- ignore it at your peril

These points apply to teachers, and teaching too!

I am surprised how often I still get into conversations that start “but do you think mobile learning might work?”.

Of course it works!

In Africa. In Europe. In America. In India. In Australia. For young. For old. For rich. For poor. It may take different shapes, but mobile learning is working well, and is coming whether you like it or not.

Surely it is far better to learn how to make it work well, now, than be a victim and be overtaken by it in 3 years time!

Mobile learning does work. I have seen it work at my school. I have seen it work at other schools. I have read about it working in locations all over the world. I agree with Martha Lane Fox in that mobile learning will continue to expand all across the globe. It is the next learning tsunami that will crash upon the educational shores. Is your school ready for it?

Continuing to Touch Students

If you use an iPod Touch in the classroom or are investigating their use, below are some links with a host of resources. I continue to be impressed with the iPod Touch. In my mind it is the preeminent mobile device for schools. Not that it does everything a netbook can do, but but it does many things very well and is cheaper than a netbook. It also does things easily that is more difficult on a netbook. Besides, there are tens of thousands of apps for the iPod Touch and many of them are free.

Chris Webb's Space

Wesley Fryer's Handouts

iPod Touch for Special Education Students

Tweet Call - Voice to Text Tweets

Thanks to Liz Kolb for posting this. Liz continually tries to equalize the playing field by advocating for technology tools that are available to all. Not all kids have a smartphone. Below is a clip from the tweetcall webpage.