"On the Twelfth Day of Tech-mas"

While most schools mail out holiday greeting cards to all the schools in our district, my school has sent out a video holiday greeting card since 2006. It's been my responsibility to record and produce what has become a holiday tradition for us. This year, our school has acquired a variety of new technologies to support student learning, so it seemed appropriate to change the lyrics to a holiday song and give it a technology spin.

Rather than write it myself, I decided to crowd-source the lyrics to our staff. On our white board in the teacher's lounge, I wrote: "On the twelfth day of Christmas, we got technology," then numbered from 12 down to 1. By the end of the day, most of the lyrics were completed by the group, thanks to our contributors. I then began recording each of the various short segments over a three day period during lunch and after school. I shot the video using my Sony HDR-HC3 mini-HDV camcorder, in 1080i resolution. The on-camera mic was sufficient, so I did not need to use my back-up recording I made with my Zoom H2 digital recorder. Although I did not use the Zoom's recording, it is always a good idea to have a back up.

At first, the lyrics focused too much on the actual technology items we received, such as new laptops, our LCD projectors, and the like. The problem was, the song read like a stale list of "stuff." It felt empty. As soon as we focused on the verbs, the song took on a more animated and lively feel. It felt more like our school and the way we attempt to integrate technology. For example, instead of saying "11 interactive whiteboards," we said, "11 kids engaging;" instead of saying, "9 new printers," we said, "9 students printing." These subtle adjustments gave the song a much more student-centric vibe, which is more like "us." Enjoy! Merry Christmas!

Stick Pick: Coming Soon to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

About a year ago, the idea of an iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch app that would combine equity sticks (you know, those popular popsicle sticks?) and question stems (based on Bloom's Taxonomy) crept into my head. Many of you know that I have been working on this app for quite some time, but for those of you who do not, I'd like to share with you my journey, and for the first time, a summary of Stick Pick.

When the idea first hit me over a year ago, I bought little 3x5 cards and began drawing screen shots and jotting down anything related to my idea. Then, I registered to become an iPhone developer and downloaded the iPhone SDK (Software Developer's Kit) from Apple for $100. 

Being a life-long learner with a knack for technology, I figured I could teach myself the "coding basics" and be on my way to developing my app. Wrong! I naively bought myself a "Teach Yourself" book: C++ Without Fear: A Beginner's Guide That Makes You Feel Smart by Brian Overland. Although it is well-written and easy to understand, it quickly went over my head after the first 100 pages or so.

Frustrated yet determined, I bought another book: Teach Yourself iPhone in 24 Hours, but just like the other book, the author lost me by around page 100. I became even more frustrated. I wondered if joining a user group would help. I found a nice group of developers, designers, and iPhone enthusiasts who meet in Irvine, CA, which is about 30 minutes from my home, every Tuesday night. I visited a few times and met some good folks. About five months ago, the organization sponsored a Saturday event called, "Hello Universe." It was a whole day devoted to iPhone SDK, design, and coding. I shared my app idea for the first time, publicly, and it was then that I decided to call it "Stick Pick."

By the end of the day, I went home with an iPhone sketchbook I had won in a raffle. I also had a renewed vigor towards getting my app done. I spent a few more frustrating hours trying to understand the iPhone SDK, but it was to no avail. I finally decided to hire a coder. In Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, the author postulates that it takes about 10,000 hours to become a master at something. I realized that I don't have that kind of time to become a skilled coder -- not if I hope to have my app developed in this lifetime. On a recommendation from a friend, I found a developer through E-lance, an online conglomeration of software developers. After a ten day bidding war, I awarded the job to a developer, who incidentally, is married to a teacher!

In the following weeks, I spent countless hours drawing sketches, designing screen shots and working out the UI (user interface) in my head, flushing it out on paper. I scanned my sketches and arranged everything into a PowerPoint presentation in an effort to make it easy for my developer to understand. I conducted research on Bloom's taxonomy, learned the difference between Bloom's and Bloom's revised taxonomy, read Benjamin Bloom's historic handbook, interviewed teachers, spoke with publishers, consulted numerous textbooks and teacher-tools, and came up with my own question stems and developed my own rubrics.

A summary of Stick Pick: Stick Pick is a tool for teachers, by a teacher, that promotes equity among all learners, builds higher order thinking skills across all cognitive levels, and supports English language development. Here's how it works: After a teacher names a class (soup can), he or she can start adding students (popsicle sticks), one at a time. Stick Pick supports up to 12 classes and up to 50 students per class. For each student, the teacher selects a "question starter" mode. The choice of modes are Bloom's, Bloom's Revised, ESL (English as a Second Language), and Stick Only. The teacher then sets the default degree of difficulty for this student. For example, In Bloom's mode, the teacher can pick from among the six levels of Bloom's Taxonomy: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation; (Knowledge" is at the bottom and "Evaluation" is at the top of the hierarchy). In ESL mode, the teacher can pick from among the five levels of Engish language development: Beginning, Beginning Intermediate, Intermediate, Early Advanced, and Advanced.

After all students have been added to the class, the teacher can view the soup can and "swipe up," tap," or "shake" to randomly select a student's stick, which then suddenly appears at the top of the screen. Below the stick are several, appropriate, question stems, such as "Who is...?" or "What is the main idea of...? (depending on the student's skill level previously set by the teacher). After the teacher asks a student a question, the teacher can either mark the stick as "used" (which puts the stick in a special used can), or "reset" the stick (which places the stick back in the can). 

Stick Pick will also allow teachers to track students' performance. Instead of marking the stick "used" or "resetting" the stick right away, a teacher may choose to mark a student's answer as correct, incorrect or opinion. Furthermore, in Bloom's and Bloom's Revised mode, teachers can even evaluate their student's level of understanding using a 0-5 point "critical thinking rubric"; and in ESL mode, teachers can evaluate each English language learner's response on a 0-5 point "elaboration rubric". With one-button ease, each student's performance data can be e-mailed to interested individuals, such as a parents, colleagues, or the principal.

Stick Pick is currently in beta-release ONE, which means, my developer has completed the first draft of the app. It is not yet in public release. I installed the app on my iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and have been field-testing it in my own classroom and sharing it with friends, family, and colleagues for the last two weeks. Recently, I spent about 25 hours drawing up revisions, tweaks, and changes. Beta-release TWO will be coming out any day now. Then, I will have another week or so to suggest any minor changes. Shortly after that, my developer will release the final version, which I will promptly submit to Apple for approval. I imagine it will be available in the iTunes app store by either the end of December, 2010, or early January, 2011. 

Look for tweets, promotions, a new Stick Pick website, and other app-related news in the coming weeks. If you are a blogger/teacher and would be interested in beta testing my app when it's in beta-2 release, let me know and I'll ask my developer if he can "provision" your device. Tweet me or comment on this post for more information. I love it when my passions are aligned with my day job. It's like that saying: "When your work is play, you won't work another day."

A Case for the iPad: Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL)

Just over six months old, the iPad has already become a viable, sustainable platform. With sales topping over 2 million in the first three months, it has quickly captured the hearts and imagination of teachers and administrators around the world. When considering how to best teach ELD, an iPad comes to mind for four compelling reasons.

The iPad is engaging; the App store is bursting with educational apps; the price is reasonable; and many in education are rallying around it. First of all, right out of the box, the iPad is instantly engaging. Because it's so hands-on, user-friendly and easy to use, the iPad is an instant hit with young people. Teachers resonate with the iPad, too, because they see the potential a device like this can have in the classroom. Forget the stigma once felt by some English language learners as they trudge to the back of the classroom for ELD; with iPads, these students will be counting the minutes until ELD starts.

Second, as slick and popular as the iPad is, it would be nothing without apps. There are literally thousands of educational apps available for iPad, with more being added every hour, and for EL students, this is great news. For example, three apps come to mind right off the bat: Dragon Dictation, Keynote, and Comic Touch. Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your words as text. With the iPad's built-in mic, students can immediately see what they're saying out loud! Keynote is like PowerPoint, but better, because it’s even easier to pull in pictures from the Internet and add labels and captions. Students can create their own mini-presentations based on the day’s objective. Comic Touch is a fun way to jazz up any picture with text, such as targeted vocabulary words from the day’s objective. A student can analyze and discuss with a partner the content of a given photograph, then using Comic Touch, he or she can add talking bubbles, titles, labels, captions, and more.

Third, the price is attractive to the education sector. Starting at $499, it’s a price-point that competes heavily with laptops but without all the complications and frustrations of a PC. But the best thing about the price is the apps. When a teacher finds an app they’d like their students to use on their iPads, Apple offers the app for half price with their new volume pricing program. Most apps are inexpensive anyway, ranging from $.99 to $4.99 (although some cost a bit more than that), but Apple’s new volume pricing is a big win for education.

Finally, the iPad community is growing and vibrant. Developers are quick to write engaging apps for the device and responsive to user-feedback so updates occur frequently. And what’s nice is that updates are always free; you never have to purchase the next-generation of an app to receive updates. Teachers are regularly posting reviews online of new apps they’ve tried out in their classrooms, so there’s never a shortage of great ideas. iTunes University has almost half a million videos available for free on all kinds of educational topics. And of course, the iPad is an amazing e-book reader and audio book reader. All in all, the iPad is by far the most compelling, best supported, easy to use, engaging advancement in technology to hit the hallways of America ever.

A Vision of 21st Century Teachers

Today, my friend, Steve Zurier, Managing Editor for TMG, sent me this cool education video and has been passing it around to his colleagues in education. This is one of those videos where each subject, in this case, teacher, holds up a hand-written fact or thought provoking snippet; as opposed to talking into the camera. This is a welcome style and change of pace, having spent countless hours this weekend editing voice-driven video content.

One teacher shares how many hours she spends searching the web for lesson ideas; another shares how many hours she spends each week maintaining her classroom website. It's nice to just sit back, listen to the accompaniment, and "read" my colleagues vision for education in the 21st century. 

Chemistry is Cool

Thanks, Mr. Byrne, for sharing such an awesome video by an innovative middle school science teacher from Colorado named Chris Bergmann. He has posted a few, fun videos on his YouTube channel, such as demonstrating colorful chemical reactions and recreating Galileo's renowned gravity experiment. You'll enjoy this highlight reel of some of Mr. Bergmann's wackiest chemistry experiments. Maybe this will inspire you to jazz up your own science lessons like it did for me.

Personal Learning Networks for Educators

Just viewed this great video on why participation in a Personal Learning Network (PLN) is crucial for teachers. In the video, Skip Via poses the question: What if your go-to, techie colleague suddenly moves to a different school or moves away? Would your whole technology support network come crashing down? He then explains how one would go about creating his or her own PLN and indicates that teachers shouldn't merely be "takers" of help; but become providers of assistance whenever possible. Skip suggests turning to the Internet for your quick questions-- and not to burden your busy PLN with questions that you can easily find on your own using Google or Wikipedia. He postulates that ultimately, we're in charge of our own professional development; that it's unrealistic to expect a school district to train everyone with their own custom-tailored training. I intend to show this video to my colleagues at our next staff meeting. Way to go, Skip! Great video!

Teach With A Light Saber

My school has made a serious commitment to equip our classrooms by providing us with some amazing technology, of which, one of my favorites is our new light saber. It doesn't just slice and dice Stormtroopers; it keeps students from turning to the Dark Side. OK, the light saber wasn't actually purchased by our district; it was a gift from one of my students last year. And although it looks and sounds real, it can't really slice and dice. Dang it. And it won't keep kids from turning to the Dark Side. Double Dang It!

My truly favorite device of all is my wireless pad. It's a tablet that uses wireless (Bluetooth) technology and a stylus which allows me to stand anywhere in my classroom and control my computer (which is projected on the board). It has successfully kept me from having to stand in front of the white board during direct instruction. But alas, today, my pad's battery died, and I was forced to go "old school" on my kids. I had to stand at the board. It felt so awkward. Here are some tips if this ever happens to you-- if you're goingto stand up at the board to teach, at least follow these simple rules:

1) Don't stand there too long. No one wants to stare at your back side as it shakes and waddles while you write a bunch of information up there. I had this one teacher when I was a kid, and her large rear end shook like a duck; it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Don't be the butt of your kids' jokes by shaking yours. Get up there, write it down, and get away from it.

2) Use a light saber. OK, it doesn't have to be a light saber, but use a fun, unique, interesting pointing device whenever possible. Change it up all the time. Get a cheap laser pointer and switch out the caps. I was at a flea market and found a laser pointer with over 100 different caps you screw on for only $2. There were shapes from animals to UFOs. No one could ever predict which one I'd use next.

3) Get the kids up out of their seat. Invite your students to work problems out on the board. While they are up at the board, move around the class and use your proximity (distance from students) to keep students from going off task or losing interest. The students need to interact with the board, so design lessons that require them to get up there, tap an icon, write a word, slide a reveal icon, or pop a balloon.

4) Charge your wireless pad every night. This whole ordeal could have been avoided had I simply plugged in my wireless pad before I went home for the weekend. So, before shutting off the lights and driving home, check to see that your pad is hooked up to power.