iBooks 2.0….Now with TEXTBOOKS! (or Why Districts Should Adopt the iPad)

At this point you have probably heard of the updated release of iBooks which now includes interactive textbooks! I am not surprised to hear about this, as I doubt anyone who has been following educational technology and Apple’s involvement would be. Of course as soon as I heard about this I downloaded the updated version and a couple of sample textbooks. 

First Impressions: I am a little bummed at the lack of textbooks in the initial offering (there are only 8) but I supposed it is only to be expected that the textbook companies are not lining up and down the block to get on board as the Pearson Biology textbook is only selling at $14.99 when the hardback version sells for $90+. I’m sure this will change as it becomes more popular, and as a former science teacher I can’t complain that 6 of the 8 books are science-based (the other two are Geometry and Algebra 1). Also all of the books are the national version so I’m sure the state editions will hit the market as soon as there is a demand for them. 

All of the books with the exception of E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth (which is free – AND AWESOME… go download it!) are going for $14.99 and range in size from 793MB – 2.77GB and include videos and interactive materials. This is actually not a bad price considering the cost of full-size textbooks, but you have to think about the cost of the iPad itself – another issue altogether that I will address shortly. 

The Breakdown: Now the Biology book is the largest of all the currently released titles at 2.77GB and after looking over the sample I can see why and it’s fully worth the space. It comes with the excellent Untamed Science videos which I sampled and used in my classroom. They are great real-world examples of biology and I love love love them. Just like in the hard-cover version of this textbook (which I had the good fortune to get a copy of last year) each chapter starts with an Untamed Science video which is an opening-chapter mystery that the students will collected clues to understanding as they read through the chapter. 

Just like any other iBook you can long-press on words to highlight, get a definition for, take a tagged note on, or search the web for – an EXCELLENT integration for learning I think. What seems to be a new feature for this though is that if you tap once anywhere on the screen you get your task bar at the top and there is now a button for your notes – it looks like a notebook and it organizes the notes by the chapter you took them from (complete with a small icon showing you the cover picture of the chapter for visual reference) and the order they appear in the chapter. There is also a feature called study cards which can be accessed by clicking the button at the top of the “My Notes” pad (it is greyed out until notes have been taken). OH and you can email your notes very easily, which is a HUGE plus. 

How the study cards feature works – for each note you create the highlighted portion of the book becomes the front of the card and the note you type for yourself becomes the back. You tap once on the card to flip and flick the cards to switch to a new card. 

Images in the textbooks are outstanding – tapping on an image goes to full screen and takes full advantage of the awesome resolution of the iPad. The captions also are included at the bottom of each image so the students always know what they are looking at. 

Interactive features include pop-ups, swipe-able image collections, interactive labeling activities, and the end of section (and I would assume chapter) assessments include a self-quiz which checks your answer for you with the push of a button. 

Wishlist - There are a few features which I would like to eventually come to the table here with these textbooks: 

1) A kindle-like ability to read aloud. I know many teachers have issues with students who have low reading levels who would be much more successful if the book was able to read to them. This would definitely add to the size of the book file, though how much I don’t know. 

2) Click-able vocabulary. The vocabulary words LOOK like they should do something when you touch them, but they don’t. In a world of interactive everything, students are going to expect words and phrases that are highlight with bolding or color to have an action attached to them. At minimum I would hope clicking on the vocabulary would give you a pop-up of the definition and the option of adding it to your notecard stack (without having to highlight and type out the definition). I would like to see the same thing with Big Ideas/Key Questions/Assessments features – automatically populate a note with the question so that the student can type out their answer. Some other textbooks may have this feature – and rightly so – but I hope all of them will eventually.

$$$$$ – The cost of this technology is going to prevent many districts from jumping on board, and I can’t say that I blame them, however after having my iPad2 for many months now I would recommend it for students without reservation. Here is my thought process:

• iPad2 16GB wifi-only – $449 (educational pricing)
• 8 textbooks/year (assuming a few semester courses @ $14.99/each) – $119.92
• AppleCare (2 yrs) – $79.00 (OR $169.99 for BestBuy’s geek squad which will replace if you drop/damage/etc)
• Case/Cover – $60 (being generous – also assuming you want it kept in good condition)
• TOTAL (year one): $707.92

Now – assuming high school textbooks are about $90 a piece (some are higher, some are lower) you are looking at $720 for the same year of hardback books and if they get lost or damaged… well that’s it. The cost of the iPad the second year is only the cost of books – $119.92, while a new set of books is going to cost another $720 for hardback – and assuming you can keep your hardware in good shape for four years, we are talking big savings! 

                       Traditional Student                                 iPad Student

Year One                $720                                                 $707.92

Year Two                $720                                                 $119.92

Year Three              $720                                                 $119.92

Year Four                $720                                                 $119.92

TOTAL:                 $2,880                                               $1,067.68

 

Now I know textbooks are re-used from year to year and so this isn’t literally how much each student will cost for books each year – but you can see that from this perspective the iPad has the ability to drastically lower the costs of textbooks. The hardware can be lost or damaged – but the book investment is stored digitally and can’t be lost. Considering that my former school lost close to $70,000 worth of textbooks one year, and that most students who lose a textbook lose LOTS of textbooks – well you can minimize your losses when they can only lose one item instead of 8. Plus with the “Find My iPad” apps now on all iPads recovering your lost items may find itself to be a much easier task than before. 

There are other benefits to providing the students with iPads – they can also create presentations, write papers, use educational apps, or even things as far out there as connect with classrooms around the globe using Skype. Sure there will be problems with rolling out something like this – but there are problems with every roll out and the simplicity of the iPad is sure to mitigate these issues, and isn’t something to be afraid of. 

Verdict: I always hate it when districts jump on the next big thing without thinking of the actual uses of the technology and how feasible it is to be used – and prior to the release of textbooks I would not have recommended the iPad as it’s potential had not been realized yet, but assuming more quality textbooks are added the market I would give this a full-steam ahead! This looks to be a great buy for the 2012-2013 school year. 

 

iBooks 2 Textbook

Life on Earth screenshot

Yes it is an iPad

So I bit the bullet…or actually my wonderful husband did-and I got an iPad 2.I have only had it for a few days but I can tell that I love it already. As a result I’m going to be doing some reviews of apps for productivity and also apps that would be appropriate for an education setting as more and more schools are purchasing them.

I don’t have much to say about it just yet, but I will say this – I find typing on this (in landscape mode) to be much easier and more natural than I would have ever imagined. In fact, I have typed this whole post on my iPad with very difficulty. The keyboard is very similar in size to a netbook, so those with large hands may find it more difficult, but the predictive text corrects most of my mistakes and I can type without staring at the keys, something I never expected to be able to do without the tactile guide of physical keys. Longer fingernails get in the way of the capacitive touch on the lower row of keys occasionally, but honestly I will just cut them if it bugs me enough, that is how convenient this keyboard is.

Also, the battery life is amazing on this thing. I have used it extensively the past few days, and not once has it ran out of battery after a full overnight charge. My cell phone cant even do that and it is a fraction of the size. Oh and did I mention that I was streaming HD videos during parts of the day? Yeah you should be impressed. This is a piece of hardware that could easily last through six classes of moderate use without needing to be charged.

Speaking of streaming media, the video quality is great and the speakers are loud enough for my husband and I to watch tv shows on it together. If you are a teacher this could easily be used to set up stations with different videos on them for the students to watch together. Or you can have them create them by some of the apps I will be talking about at a later date.

Now if your a teacher or technology coordinator you may balk at the $500 starting price for the wifi only version, but from what I can see so far, this is not a purchase that you will regret making. There are some downsides (for example the lack of easy or inexpensive repair in case of accidents) however if you purchase an extended warranty with the product that shouldn’t be a problem. Network integration is a cinch, and you don’t have to worry about kids downloading programs that will slow down or screw up the hardware because they have to know the password for the owner account (which you won’t give them!)

So stay tuned for future app reviews, currently I am evaluating a note taking app that, if it works as they claim could be very useful in a 1-to-1 environment, or even in a collaborative group setting.

See you soon!

Why I Am Considering Divorce from Android

I’m going to take a break from my regular blogging about educational technology to discuss something that really irks me. Android.

I was young, in love, and naive. I should have coughed up the money and went with an Iphone but no… I was lured in by the promise of open-source and Google and freedom from Steve Jobs. At first the relationship was great, we were a perfect fit – I use Google every day so the ability to search right from my homescreen, connect everything on my phone to my Google Account, and customize the background and apps were wonderful.

But then the relationship turned sour. My first phone was a mytouch – which was incredibly slow and glitchy and had to be sent back in to T-Mobile no less than 3 times until I accidently dropped it and cracked the screen – forever ending my ability to have the thing replaced. I sent it in so many times because it was SO SLOW and took forever to load things, frequently force closed applications, dropped calls, and would even call the wrong person on a regular basis (and this was before I dropped it). Finally I traded in my first phone for a newer, shinier version which promised great things.

When I bought the Samsung Vibrant, T-mobile promised an upgrade to Android 2.2 before the end of the year. Stupid me to actually believe them. It’s now January and there is no sign of an upgrade, and I read the most disturbing rumor mill story recently that Samsung was actually delaying the upgrade because they are about to release a newer, shinier version of the Vibrant. This rumor went on to say that the “new” Vibrant is really just the old Vibrant, same guts and all, with a plus at the end of it’s name.

If I could sum up the problems facing the Android platform as a whole it would be this (and I hope the Google and the carriers are reading this):

• fragmentation – there are currently phones with operating systems dating back to 1.6 (or earlier!) all the way to 2.3 (if you’re a developer) which causes irritation for the consumers *who care* and the App developers – imagine trying to create an app that works on
• carrier modifications/set-backs – before each version of the OS is pushed out to the lucky few phones that get it, first the hardware companies and then the carriers tweak and add their own doo-dads on. This results in a several month lag between when Google releases it and when it actually starts arriving at handsets.
• Android Market – I almost wish I could say “enough said” but unfortunately there are probably those out there who aren’t aware. The Market is unreliable and if there is a way to sort your results then I haven’t found it yet. Plus I don’t know if the apps are vetted at all (doubtful) but there is a lot of junk mixed in with the gems if you know what I mean. Oh and did you know there are other Markets springing up that aren’t run by google? (Ex. Amazon App Store)
• No Flash – SERIOUSLY  - unless you have 2.2 there is no flash support. This is the thing that Iphones were lambasted about not having and yet Android has not had flash support until very recently and again only for the lucky few with the newest phone.

Now to be fair there are things that I do like about the Android platform – I like the idea of open source (although not the execution), I like the customization that you can get on an Android phone that Steve Jobs wont allow, and I like not being tied to AT&T (although that is obviously less of an issue now that Verizon has picked up the slack). But you can’t argue that the simplicity of the Iphone is a huge plus. You may not be able to customize it, but this also means that it is easy to use. Steve Jobs may rule the app market with an iron fist but you also know that you get what you pay (or don’t) for. I can’t say that I will jump ship any time soon from my contract with T-mobile (I still have another year and a half technically) but I am vociferously discontent.

So if you too have been burned by your love of Android – don’t be shy, don’t stay quiet. Maybe if we all keep talking about it they will fix something… maybe. It’s worth a shot anyways. I even propose a new hashtag #WhyAndroidWhy for the discussion.

In the meantime, will someone please ask Samsung to send me my Froyo!

P.S. I am aware that you can root the android phones and upgrade them and all that jazz, but I’m hesitant to do so and void my warranty. As stated earlier I do have a tendency to drop my phone on a semi-regular basis and really need to be able to send it in when I do!

Engaging a Gaggle of Googlers

So I stole the title from my #VSS2010 presentation, but it is catchy! (credits go to @dcmcgeary and my husband for helping me come up with it)

The presentation was about information literacy, which I have to be honest, when I first heard about it thought… ugh what a snooze (hence why my presentation is not called “Information Literacy for Students” or something like that) . However, when I started doing my research in order to put my presentation together I realized that it is a really important topic.

Essentially information literacy is the ability to access, evaluate, and create information. What this boils down to is that we have to teach our students how to effectively use google (or any other search engine but yes I am preferential to google) to search for information, how to evaluate the results of that search to make sure that the information they are finding is valid, and then how to take that information and create something new and unique, to add to the experience and journey of other’s.

NASA discovers bacteria that incorporate Arsenic (a poison) into their DNA

From everything that I have learned about information literacy over the past few months of researching for my presentation I have come to realize one thing. This is a topic we cannot afford to ignore if we want to be creating productive citizens from our schools. Here is what I mean, and if you saw my presentation forgive me for repeating myself. As a biology teacher I have the unique perspective of knowing that all of the “facts” that I teach my kids are likely to be declared obsolete before the students graduate, and possibly are already obsolete before I even teach it to them. Is this because I’m a lazy teacher and don’t make sure that I’m teaching the correct information? No, I do my resarch, I’m very well read in my subject area, however the pace of discovery is astounding in the biological (and other) sciences.

Just recently I had to come back to my students and apologize for teaching them that lysosomes were only found in animal cells because recently researchers have discovered them in some plant cells as well. Many of my students were way ahead of me and had seen that in their research for their cell analogy projects that they had turned in the week before. I’m glad the students were able to say “yeah miss, we saw that in our research” because that meant that they had actually dont the research, but on the other hand not a single student questioned me about it. I can, and will, take that two ways. 1) they didn’t remember I had said it or 2) they weren’t paying attention to me in class when I said it.

Advanced Search on Google: Make your searches more specific

How many of us have decided that kids are less and less well behaved in the classroom, and seem to pay attention in class less and less? Can you blame them when we are teaching to a model that no longer fits with the way that they learn? Our students are raised in an environment of instant information where they are the gatekeepers to their own knowledge. In the classroom the teacher is the gatekeeper and parses out information as if bestowing a gift (ha!). Instead of teaching facts to students, which is a part of the old model, we should be teaching skills, concepts, ways of thinking. I’m not advocating a fact-less education, as that would be basically impossible, and there are definitely lots of things, facts, that are not going to become obsolete any time soon, if ever. However we do our students a disservice if we do not teach them HOW to find, evaluate, and synthesize information on their own.

One of the first things that students need to learn is the basics of a good google search. Filtering out information that is unnecessary or irrelevant is a big step in the right direction. Here are a couple of basic search operators (replace term with the search phrase you are using)

• Define: term- this will produce a definition (or multiple definitions from various sites) for the search term you have input
• term OR term- this will provide you with results from either search term (but not both)
• “term” – this will provide you with results that contain the EXACT phrase found within the quotation marks. Very useful if you are trying to check for plagiarism!
• search phrase -term this will provide you with results that do not include the term with the (-) attached to it (leave off the space after the dash)
• *- google calls this the “fill in the blanks” operator, you may (or may not) have heard it called a “boolean operator”. Basically input the * in place of any word in a search phrase and it will return results with a variety of terms substituted in.

• Everything: By default, your Google search will show unfiltered results that can include all the types of content below.
• Images: See only results from Google Images.
• News: See only results from Google News.
• Books: See only results from Google Books including reviews, excerpts, and where you can buy the book.
• Videos: See only results from Google Videos and YouTube.
• Blogs: See only results from Google Blog Search.
• Places: See only results from Google Place Pages.
• Shopping: See only results from Google Product Search. (With this option, you’ll see results within the Product Search site rather than in a Google search results page.)
• Realtime: See only real-time updates from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others. Learn more about Google real-time search.
• Discussions: See what people are saying in discussion groups, forums, and question-and-answer sites.

there are a variety of other operators or advanced search options to choose from, do a quick google search for “advanced search options” and you will find not only a google article, but many websites and videos with tips.

Well this is the first in my series on improving the information literacy of your students, in following posts we will discuss ways for them to validate their sources, as well as ways to take the new information they find and create something to further someone else’s information journey.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a very Happy New Year to all!

*Note: Google has recently added a feature that allows you to view the reading level of your search results – it’s found in the advanced search box and there are only three levels, basic, intermediate, and advanced, but hey it’s a start! If you are searching for introductory information for your kiddos you may want to select basic or perhaps intermediate.

*Update 12/22 – check out this website (The Google Guide) for even more information on Google skills! It has options for Teens, Novices, and Experts to get started learning more!

My Kind of Blended

I have a vision for a 21st century school, and I’m determined to make my vision a reality. I know that a lot of talk is going on right now about education reform and what are we going to do about our current school system. Honestly I’m not sure that the problem of the public school can be fixed from the inside.

I have long believed in the power of the free market – yes it can be used for evil and not good (RE: current economic crisis and meltdown of wall street) but I also know that, just like my students in the classroom, excellence is bred in the evolutionary soup of survival of the fittest (I’m of course being metaphoric here). Anyone who has read 1984 knows that mediocrity is the only thing that comes of everyone doing the same thing because it’s what they are supposed to do, and that is what our public school system has become.

First of all, we have to get rid of the “one size fits all” educational system that we currently have. Okay so maybe we have two sizes, possibly even three if you count special education, but overall you are either advanced or you aren’t, and other than that we all learn the same thing (give or take). I can tell you that from looking around at the population of my school, 65 percent, 65 PERCENT (and I’m understating it even I think) of the students at my school are being failed by the system we have in place. Our test scores are great, our graduation rate is the highest in our district (and that is including the rich schools), we were even Recognized ratings in the accountability standards, and only missed Exemplary by a few points, and still I say we fail them. They know that they are just jumping through a series of hoops in order to graduate, and in the end many of our students are unprepared for the rigors of college, and are certainly unprepared for the real world critical thinking and problem solving that will be expected of them. Not to mention that the majority of the students in my school have little ambition to even attend college (many are poor and first generation (if that) citizens) and so will leave high school with that notch on their belt and join the working world. WHY are we not preparing them for the path that they intend to take???

I’m calling first of all for a return of the vocational school! There is no shame in a student learning a trade that will actually benefit them and give them a valuable, marketable skill (not to mention that many skilled tradesmen and women make more money that us teachers do!) in the process. Many economists are citing the lack of skilled tradesmen as one thing that is hurting our economy as we have to outsource many of the jobs that were originally done by Americans. Many of our students are checking out mentally, and sometimes even physically, because school has lost it’s relevancy to them. We are one of the few first world countries that still tries to force everyone to fit the college-bound educational mold. Why?!

Christine Ward, left, Katherine Cohoon and Catherine Ward take classes through the Florida Virtual School, the fastest-growing school system in the state.

Secondly, we need to be integrating blended education into the “traditional” schools that remain – classes that meet online the majority of the time and only meet face to face a few hours a week. This would eliminate the need for “seat time” requirements, allow students to work at a pace that fits their lifestyles (when do most of your students do their work… I guarantee you it’s after 7pm) while still giving them a measure of accountability in the face to face meeting times.  Students who are advanced can work ahead or be given supplemental assignments without it being awkward or difficult, and students who are behind or need extra help can get remediation BEFORE the test because the remediation will be a built in part of the course.

Flexible scheduling will also allow for school buildings to be smaller – rooms can be shared when meeting times don’t overlap, which cuts down on maintenance costs, and the role of the teacher switches from that of dispenser of knowledge to that of a facilitator. This could even potentially allow for teachers to take on (slightly) larger numbers of students, as many online tasks can be automated and when you are answering questions and facilitating it takes much less time per student than lecturing, grading, discipline management, etc can take currently. Teachers can also lighten the grading load by assigning collaborative projects in which the students work in more realistic group settings than individually, and even can allow students to critique and assist each other. One of the greatest side-effects of my class facebook page has been that when students have questions they post them on the facebook page, and other students will actually answer them!

Another benefit to flexible scheduling will be in creating a more college like atmosphere to help prepare students for the actual schedule of college. I know that one reason many of my friends struggled in college was the adjustment they had to make to the new schedule. Add in the fact that many professors just didn’t take attendance and you had a recipe for disaster. If students are already familiar with and comfortable with only physically attending classes a few hours a week, plus have it built in as a habit to attend class, I think they will find it easier to adjust and make them more likely to attend their classes. Not to mention the fact that the type of blended classes I envision are going to build in the students a habit of learning on their own and using all of their available resources to make sure they understand, which is going to create more independence and self-reliance – definitely both traits essential to success in college. Right now many students are learning the exact opposite in their secondary school classes (ex. if i keep quiet or alternatively yell out the wrong answer enough the teacher will give me the right one).

Seattle Science Fiction Museum

Flexible scheduling also will be useful to students who are heavily involved in other activities. If you do not have to be in class every day, or can schedule to attend on a different day when conflicts arise in your schedule, then you will have more control over your learning, and be less likely to be penalized for being absent for various activities. As an example I have a student who recently switched into my class, and I kid you not today was the 4th time I have seen her in the 3 weeks she has been in my class. Now she was sick a couple of days, and I was in Arizona at VSS for another 3 of those days, but the rest of the time she has been out for various school activities. Her grades are suffering because she hasn’t been present in class enough to keep up with her work and really know what is going on. Her learning is seriously disrupted by her extra curricular activities but there is no way she is going to give them up if  you ask her. I’m sure that other people have had experienced similar situations.

This idea is still open to suggestions and if you have any I would love to hear them. As I said I fully intend to see my blended school become a reality one day soon, although I may have to leave the public school system in order to do it unfortunately. I would really like to open something like this in Seattle and last I checked charter schools were still a no-go there. Texas allows charters but I love the weather in Seattle… plus I have never seen so much green in all my life. Plus how can you not love a place that has the craziest looking sci-fi museum ever, and a troll under a bridge?!

The “New Normal” of Sec. Duncan

Secretary Duncan gave a speech last week that has surely ruffled many a-feather. While I certainly agree that this is a time to re-vamp our educational system, disrupt the current model and innovate, I do not agree with everything he had to say.

The first thing that is bothering me is his announcement that districts need to think about increasing class sizes. I have three problems with this and I will address them each separately.

(1) He claims that Japan and South Korea have larger class sizes and are far more successful than we are and therefore we should increase class sizes. This is not a logical argument. For one thing, the culture of asian countries is EXTREMELY different than the culture in the United States. Hello! How many times have you heard from your kids “oh yeah well _____ is asian so of course he/she makes good grades”. There isn’t anything biologically different between Asian students and American students (at least.. I don’t think there is), the difference is cultural! The majority of my Asian students have been instilled from a young age the value of hard work and education. Kudos to their parents! Shame on the rest of us. In any case – saying that because these countries do well with larger class sizes and then so should we is easier said than done. It would also involve a massive cultural shift here in the States. Additionally I have done a little reading myself and find that parents in these countries would prefer for their kids to be in small classes, but financially it isn’t viable for their governments. Many of us have also heard about the excellence of education offered in Finland – their classes are even smaller than ours… an average of 20 students per class! (let’s not even begin to talk about how much more the teachers get paid….)

(2) Secretary Duncan is listing this class size reduction as a part of a group of reforms to help schools deal with smaller school budgets, but contradictorily had this to say:

During a question and answer period, one teacher questioned that rationale [larger classes], saying that if she took on additional students, that’s asking her to do more for the same amount of money. Duncan said he’d like districts to consider reworking contracts so that effective teachers (particularly those who choose to work with more kids) can make a lot more money, say $80,000, or even $125,000. *

How on earth are districts going to be paying between double and triple the current salaries (depending on where you are from -i’m basing my projections off my own district) when we are discussing how we don’t have any money?! This doesn’t make any sense. Especially since in the same speech he was discussing class size increases to a mere 26… umm I don’t know about you but I would LOVE to have classes that small. My BIOLOGY classes were 38 kids each up until this about a week ago. Let’s not even talk about the safety issues that causes. Most classes are already very large and I dont see my district saying “Hey Adrianne… you know you have been dealing with ridiculously large class sizes, we are going to triple your salary”. Right. Also – what constitutes an “effective” teacher – one who has high standardized test scores? I think we all know how reliable a metric that is… (another post for another day)

(3) I have first hand (see above) experience with large class sizes (related to the mentality that if you teach Pre-AP you are teaching the “good” kids – that is a post for another day though) and I can tell you that I absolutely would not want that for my own children (whenever I decide to procreate that is). Even in classes with the “good kids” you have discipline issues – they are a chatty bunch those advanced students – and teachers just DO NOT have the time to assess understanding on an individual level and make sure everyone is keeping up. Also the load on the teachers to deal with the headache of keeping that many kids in line and the grading.. oh the grading… I don’t have enough time in the day to grade and provide the level of feedback that I feel is necessary to redirect and correct misconceptions, not if I want to have a life and spend time with my husband, and even if I didn’t I still wouldn’t have enough time to grade 178 student’s papers when we give assignments every day (and yet another post for another day).

The second thing I wanted to (briefly) discuss was his comment about not paying teacher’s with Master’s degrees more. Why shouldn’t we reward teachers for continuing their educations? Do we not want life-long learners in our classrooms? If you want talent you have to pay for it! Now I know that having a Master’s degree is no guarantee of teaching capability, but that is a separate issue. If a teacher sucks, then help them improve, and if they can’t or wont, then get rid of them. Having a higher degree means that you are (theoretically) more knowledgeable than someone without. And if we are going to go that route then why even hire a teacher with a Bachelor’s degree? Have any studies proved that Bachelors improve student achievement? Why not just stick someone in an alt. certification program, provide them with the text and send them on their way? You learn more about your subject from actually teaching it anyways. (Note: I am not advocating this). For an educational secretary he certainly doesn’t seem to value an education very much!

Sadly I feel that it is thoughts like this that are driving more and more potential teachers away from the profession because the opportunity to make more money and have less stress is increasingly being found in the private sector, not the public school system.

But enough about what I think, what do you think? I want to hear it all, agree or disagree. I’m admittedly not as well read on many of this as some of you are so I want to know!

My Life in the Internets

As I was growing up, AOL chat and AIM (aol instant messenger) were THE THING to be doing on the computer. Nevermind the fact that I had to go through a dial-up connection to get to it. I can still hear the sound of the modem connecting to the world wide internets. Ahh memories. Don’t forget about the fact that I usually was trying to muffle that sound so my parents wouldn’t know that I was getting “online” in the middle of the night at the ripe old age of 10. Email was something that I had heard of, but typically I only got spam on it because none of my other 10 year old friends had email accounts. They were too busy doing things like… playing outside. psh.

Remember Me? AOL Instant Messenger

I was a heavy AIM user by the time I had graduated from high school – all of my friends had caught up to me at this point and keep in mind that unlimited text messaging was still a thing of the future, or at least was still too expensive for reasonable parents to pay for their teenagers. So my friends and I continued our endless conversation stream via AIM or perhaps even Trillion (don’t remember Trillion – that’s okay most people don’t – but it was a program that allowed you to access your AIM, Yahoo Chat, Hotmail chat, etc. all at the same time… I only used it for AIM though) – though Trillion may not have come into my life until early college now that I think about it. Two enterprising students in my school also designed and launched the “Klein Forums” which was a novel concept at the time (keep in mind this was 2002) and all of my graduating class, and the class below us, were on the forums discussing all the inane things that teenagers discuss. I will say though that the forums were very influential in the Prom King and Queen race that year – one of the first cases of social networking influencing elections I suppose. My date and I had been nominated, and while we were well known I was not what I would consider to be popular by any definition, the race between us and the “popular couple” was being vociferously debated on the Forums. When the results were announced at the dance (in a rather unceremonious fashion I recall thinking.. nothing like the movies that were being released at the time..) my date was crowned King and the female half of the other couple was crowned Queen. Don’t mourn for me though, I was happy just to get nominated. In retrospect I do like to think that the vote was close, but in reality I have no idea.

I recall that at my college orientation they warned us not to instant message our roommates because it lead to antisocial behavior since they were most likely sitting directly across the 12×12 room you shared. My roommate Nikki and I had a laugh one night when we messaged each other just because of that comment. I remember saying “we are now the people they warned us about!” My sophomore year in college Facebook made it’s way to our campus. This was in the early stages of the now megalithic social network, when each college had it’s own individual networks and you could only friend people who went to school with you. It was addicting, and many people lost many hours to constantly monitoring status updates, browsing pages, etc (recall if you will dear reader that the news feed was just a twinkle in Mark Z’s eye at this point and of course there was no chat function).

Looking back on the early days of facebook it seems as if ever change was met with fierce resistance – as if the tumultuous revolutionary cries of the 60′s and 70′s were being sparked across college campuses for things

Mark Zuckerberg - Founder of Facebook

like “NO high school kids on facebook!”, “Newsfeed is a privacy invasion”, “I hate the new layout”, “Where is the dislike button?!”. At this point it seems like everyone has adjusted to the fact that Mr. Zuckerberg is going to do whatever the heck he wants and that what was once a novel and revolutionary concept has now sadly become something to view with mild distrust and irritation (yes I’m speaking to you farmville/mafia wars/questions about you).

My junior year of college I interned with the Bush Administration and I recall very vividly an early meeting that we had in the Eisenhower building where one of the PR people came in to talk to us about what we put on our Facebook profiles. They cautioned us to either clean up our pages if there was questionable content and we wanted to say that we worked at the White House, or just to not mention that we worked there at all. They wanted to warn us that privacy was a joke on the internet, and then he proceeded to read details from various intern’s facebook pages (much to their surprise I’m sure) just to prove that even if you set your page to private, someone could find a way in. I tell this story to my students every year in hopes that they will take it to heart, but unfortunately for many of them my words are falling on deaf ears. For me though, this was definitely a wake up call that everything I do or say online is recorded and out there for anyone to find.

The internet has changed over the past 15 years, and I have been one of the fortunate who were aware of it early enough to be a part of it, although I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. In educational speak some would call me a “digital native” as I speak the language as fluently as I speak english. I would like to take the time to point out that digital immigrant vs. digital native often has nothing to do with your age and more to do with your inclination – most of my friends in my own age group, and the majority of the students I teach are no where near as saavy with the internet and technology as I and my husband are (not to boast, just stating facts) and they often look to us when they need help with these sorts of things. There are also people far older than us who are better at it than we are – the 50+ year old man who lives a couple of condos down from us knows more about smartphones than anyone I have ever met. He is a developer for both Apple and Android apps and has at least 6 of the most current versions of both the Iphone and various Android based phones.

In closing, I hope that you will read my story and realize that knowing what is going on in this world wide web of stuff is more about just diving in and immersing yourself in experiences than studying and reading how-to guides. If you do nothing else today, visit an application you have never tried before and piddle around. Yes I said piddle. Don’t try to read their manual – just jump in and press buttons. You may not like the results the first time, and you  may have to erase whatever it is that you have created and start again, but WHO CARES! That is how you learn to use things. Not to mention that when you try to show someone else how to use it you will have experienced some of the tangential issues that can arise and hopefully help them troubleshoot them.

Here’s an article from Wired Magazine to tide you over until I return

The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet

Explaining my Absence

Hi Faithful Readers

I wanted to apologize for the length of time that has elapsed since my last substantive post. In my defense let me explain to you the last four weeks (aka since school started). **Flashback Music**

So the Saturday prior to school starting my husband and I went to a couples bridal shower, and after the shower he started complaining of feeling nauseated. Once we got home it quickly became apparent that he had food poisoning of some kind. I was being the dutiful wife and nursing him back to health when a couple of hours later the following conversation went down:

Me – “Do you feel nauseous right now?”

Him – “Yup”

Me – “I think I’m having sympathy pains”

….. famous last words – I quickly realized that I too had whatever gastrointestinal ailment had befallen my hubby. The next 48-72 hours were suuuuuper fun. As it turns out I ended up missing the first day of school, which if that has ever happened to you, then you know how badly that screws up the start of school.

So the bug finally passes and I get ready for work Tuesday morning. Little did I know I was about to walk into the largest cluster of chaos … ever. My first hint of the chaos was that my first two classes were pretty large… about 35 kids per class in a biology lab. My second hint was when only one student showed up to my fifth period class. I hadn’t heard anything from my substitute from day one, so I did not know that this was a continuation of the mess that had begun the day before. My campus has 3 different lunches, Freshmen, A, and B lunch. As a result 4th and 5th period vary depending on which lunch you have, and it turns out to be quite a big deal. In my fifth period class I had a mix of freshmen and sophomores, and the reason that only 1 student showed up to class was that most of my students were freshmen and therefore were still in their 4th period when my standard 5th period was starting (since I was on B lunch schedule), so they didn’t show up until about 30 minutes later. Confused? Yeah, so was I.

So once all of my students showed up it turns out that I had 50 students in that class… yeah.. that’s right, I said FIFTY. I had kids at every desk, at every lab stool and then had students sitting on the floor. I think everyone has experienced crazy classes the first couple of days of school, but it finally came out later that week that we had about 40 kids enroll the week before school started who had been in private school previously, so of course they all signed up for the Pre-AP classes… there were scheduling issues in all of the freshmen Pre-AP Classes but apparently I got to experience the worst of it.

In order to make room for the increased enrollment I had to give up my conference period in order to create another class. So currently I’m dealing with 6 classes  (5 Pre-AP and 1 AP) as well as the responsibilities of being the AP Coordinator for the campus all on one planning/conference period (the previous coordinator had 3 conference/planning periods for comparison). And as if that wasn’t busy enough I still have ~36 kids in all five of my freshmen sections now.

There is also of course all the other regular things still going on in my life (such as finishing course design for the Biology course I’ve been working on, writing my presentation for VSS and K12online conferences, and remodeling the condo).

So that was my very long explanation for why the blog has unfortunately had to play second fiddle for the past few weeks, but I promise that I will get back on my game! I’m currently planning posts on Openzine, OpenStudy, Udemy, and Jing. Stay Tuned!!

Ning Alternatives

I’m sure it’s old news at this point that Ning free services are at an end (and if it’s not old news What rock have you been under??) and that the new “education-free” account is poo-poo. Yes it is great they are offering a sponsored version for educators but it is lacking a majority of the features that came standard with my original (free) account – like the ability to upload your own videos which was important to me since I have had students create their own videos for my class and I wanted to display them!

My current favorite Ning alternative would be Grouply. The migration process was very simple – I clicked a button, entered my ning URL and login information and in a few hours the migration process was completed and they sent me an email letting me know it was done and to come have a look. I was super impressed – all of my forum posts and student’s profiles had been ported over without a problem. They then offer you the ability to send an email to all your members alerting them to the new website. One of the features that I liked the most about this process is that whenever anything was posted to the new website all members received an email about it and prompting them to come to the site (which would result in them completing the migration process) so that even if the student missed the original email inviting them over, they still received emails every time an update happened! I had 100% migration from my class with minimal work on my end. It was great!

Since my initial migration they have also added the ability to migrate subgroup forums and photos and are working on migrating blog entries. Unfortunately they do not have a video migration, but considering how at the point when Ning announced their new pricing structure I had only embedded videos at that point I’m not too worried about it.

There are many great features about grouply that I find perfect for the educational crowd (click the link to read their own blog post about their educational platform… but read the rest of mine first! ha!)

• First of all you can set your privacy levels, and you can actually set them to the point that people who are not already a member of the group  cannot even see the home screen. All they are able to see is the name of the group and a button to request membership.
• You can create subgroups within your overall group – allowing you to split into lab groups, teams, class periods, whatever you want!
• Educational accounts are free and include 20 GB of space (plenty!) – all you have to do is email support@grouply.com and request your account be updated. It also removes advertisements and gives you unlimited page and subgroup creation.
• You can moderate every single aspect of the site if you want, none of it, or somewhere in between really easily. There is also a nifty features that allows you to change the moderation status of individuals, in case you have one particular student who is being a bit of a brat.
• There is now a chat feature which is great if you want to host an online Q&A session or a student emails you with a question that you can answer there quickly. I haven’t played with this feature too much yet but it seems it can be moderated as well.

I created a grouply to demonstrate to my administration how they could use social networking to help organize their content teams (in this case the AP teachers) and improve communication and information dissemination. You are more than welcome to take a look at it as well –   www.k12online.grouply.com I hope to see you around!

By the way if you have been reading my posts do me a favor and drop me a line in the comment box! Knowing what you guys like or don’t like (or that you are there) helps keep me going! Enjoy the rest of your summer, I know it’s coming to a close quickly for most of us!