The Dichotomous Teacher

Students explore the Web 2.0

I am caught between two worlds. I have a functioning traditional classroom with most of the things you would expect in a progressive learning environment. But I step next door into the connected classroom and I am met with a shadowy vision of what the future will look like, only it isn’t the future. It is where I teach half the time. It is like half my brain is analog and half is digital. I feel disconnected.

I don’t know how to teach in this web 2.0 world. It is cold comfort to realize that nobody does! There are pioneers out there doing amazing things, but no consensus exists about which is the right way to go about this digital adventure. The technology, medium, and philosophy are new and evolving. The netbooks we use are more powerful than the laptops of 4 years ago. The flow of information through email, Elluminate, Bridgit, and video conferencing is different to traditional classroom interaction. With internet search engines, such as Google, students have instant access to a vast knowledge base. We don’t need to teach knowledge; we need to teach process. But what does that mean?

And so everyday I take those two steps to the connected classroom and leave the familiarity of a 150 year old traditional classroom and move into the future. A future where I struggle to create a scope and sequence of skills and experiences to shepherd the students. I flounder setting multimedia assignments for them to create. And I am perplexed as to the best way of collecting and grading those assignments.

But I do wake up in the morning excited about the day’s challenges and opportunities. The kids are enthusiastic, parents are supportive and administration is confident about the program. A measure of academic success is discipline issues requiring attention. There has been no discipline issues in the connected classroom. Even when dealing with 75 students in a virtual conference the kids are engaged. Parents have had nothing but positive things to say about the program. They openly express their gratitude for the opportunities that the students are receiving.  Administration has bent over backwards to make this program a success. There has been no pressure, only encouragement and support. So why do I feel like my right and left brain are heading off in different directions?

Connected classrooms places the connected team somewhere that we haven’t been before. It forces us far beyond our comfort zones and asks us to learn new skills and invent others. It makes us reflect and question everything we do in the traditional classroom. We ask ourselves constantly, does this need to be done and if so, could it be done better in a digital format? We see the future and it challenges our assumptions of who we are as teachers and what we do. It is both uncomfortable and exhilarating. And some days it makes me feel a little crazy.

Connecting Classrooms – Bravely Going Where No Classroom Has Gone Before

Technology brings a tide of disruptive innovation.

We just finished our three day planning session for the Connected Classroom project. We are embarking on a process of connecting three rural classrooms with each other and the world via the internet. Each class has been allocated a set of laptops, a suite of video conferencing programs, a room with conferencing cameras, and a SMART Board interactive whiteboard. Technical support for this program is in place and just about every detail has been thought of and addressed including a steady supply of home baked goodies from our lead principal Teresa Downs.

While no one likes to give up summer holidays these past three days have been very good. The first day we looked at the research around the subject and began the process of developing a shared view. Collaboration is going to be the key to this project. We are team teaching at a distance. Team teaching always requires meaningful consultation, how much more when you are physically isolated. One of the first things we did was set out a schedule of virtual meetings to keep in close contact with everyone on the team.

Our second day was a hands-on exploration of the hardware, software and intellectual process of connecting over a distance. I had some trepidation about the tools that we were being given, but that soon turned into excitement as the usability and power of them became evident. Using the video conferencing system was an easy combination of turning on a TV and making a phone call. We spent an hour or so playing with the video conferencing system and came away confident that that we could make it work.  We also had expert instruction from Tracy Ramsay on Elluminate Live. Elluminate is a virtual meeting software solution that is full of features that allow groups to have web based meetings at no cost. Bridgit, a conferencing software package, allows the remote use of a SMART Board at a distance. Our brains were brimming over with information, but it was clear that we had the necessary tools. The rest of the day was spent focusing on ensuring that these tools would be used to meet the needs of our students in this revolutionary digital age.

Our final day was spent planning. We developed a shared vision of expectations for both students, educators and administrators involved. We created a scope and sequence for a process that we had never experienced and could barely imagine. We set out schedules for meetings and blocked off time in our timetables for instruction. We sketched out the content that we would like to cover and set goals to implement instructional strategies. It was pretty heady stuff for mid August!

In the end we left with a feeling that we were embarking on one of the most exciting educational and professional adventures of our careers. We felt confident that the tools were in place, and that we were part of a team that would create amazing learning opportunities for students unimagined ten years ago. And yes on this voyage of discovery there might be the odd challenging Klingon to deal with, but we would overcome and triumph. Now does anyone remember where the USB microphone plugs in?

Disruptive Innovation

Rural Communities Celebrate Diversity

 

Michael B. Horn is an academic, writer and generally brilliant guy who gave a talk at the Virtual Schools conference in Vancouver about Disruptive Innovation. His presentation was about how social or technological changes unexpectedly come along and cause existing systems to crash. He used models from the business world which were both illustrative and shocking.

 

I have written before about the newspaper industry and how the internet has almost completely undermined its model of operation. One of the main problems is that the newspaper companies are unable to let go of their attachment to the word “paper” and create a new model based on just “news”. This is perfect example of a disruptive technology and the difficulty that previously successful companies have adapting to the new reality.

 

Education as we know it has been around for a century, with very little structural change. But change is coming. We see most of the change happening at the upper levels with universities, colleges and high schools being forced to restructure around delivering courses via distance learning.  Rural students are perhaps the biggest winners in this new technology because, provided there is a relatively fast internet connection, any student can be connected to a vibrant and efficient learning program. This can be a two-edged sword for rural schools. In the future students could remain in their home community and participate in enriched distance learning at a small local high school, or that school might be shut down while distance learning instruction was provided to the student at home. The latter option would be limited but very cost-effective.

 

Around the province and around the continent distance learning is the fastest growing segment in education. And with continued refinements in methodology and technology it is poised to grow even faster. Fortunately for educators we are not faced with the immediate extinction that The Boston Globe is–a situation that has evolved in just a couple of years.  However, even primary education is likely to be radically changed in the next 10 years. Opportunities to provide rural students with cutting edge instruction will be easily within our reach. Our survival as teachers may depend on whether we are ready and able to take advantage of those opportunities.

The 8 Rules of Engagement – What works for e-learning?

 

 

She ain't heavy she's my partner!

At the VSS conference I listened to Ellen Wagner deliver an inspiring and wide ranging talk about technology and its impact on teaching. In my skeletal notes from that talk I have eight words written that Ellen might have spoken. If what I write makes sense it comes from Ellen. If my post sounds bizarre and incomprehensible then I claim sole ownership.

 

Ellen’s talk resonated with me because for the past year or so I have been trying to rearrange my teacher DNA. I needed to do this to accommodate the transformational principals of Formative Assessment. This is not easy as I have been following an old-school pattern of teaching that was ingrained many decades ago. Somehow Formative Assessment was able to shake the foundations of my pedagogy and inspire me to teach differently.

 

Whether from Faye Brownlie, The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics or Ellen Wagner, the elements of Formative Assessment are being hammered deeper into my consciousness.  As a teacher on the cusp of entering the Web 2.0 world of education Ellen’s talk spoke directly to me. These are her rules of engagement as I understood them.

 

The 8 rules:

1 Attention- This is the easiest to do, at least for a brief time. Any teacher worth their salt knows that getting student attention is not only the first step to learning, but also essential for survival in the business.

2 Care- How do we do get students to care about what they are learning? The learning task would have to be meaningful to their lives and we the teachers would need to be honestly enthusiastic about it.

3 Motivate- Good teachers do this; I can do this, sometimes. The problem is I am not really sure how I do it.

4 Choices- When you give choices you give up some control over the outcome. For many teachers this is scary stuff. But I have made the transition from rows to groups, so I guess I can embrace the concept of choice in all of my lessons too.

5 Connect to a Community- I believe this, but it takes effort to accomplish on a regular basis. Sometimes a community can be the group of four that you work with, your whole class or school. Other times a community can be the population of the place where you live, or the whole world via the internet.

6 Induce the Students to Participate- Learners need to become engaged in the process of learning. They need to do the work of learning, the teacher can’t do that. This to me is the key to all the other rules.

7 Opportunities to Contribute- Students need to have a chance to have their voices heard. This is a hard one for my teacher DNA. Somewhere along the line I accepted as fact that a quiet classroom was a good classroom. It is still a challenge to provide constructive opportunities for students to contribute in everyway to their learning experience.

8 Memorable- Teachers need to make the experience of learning memorable for the learners. I suspect that if we satisfied the first seven rules of engagement for learning that the eighth will by default be accomplished too.

 

No one ever said that teaching got easier. If we are lucky the experience may get better. I believe with Ellen’s rules of engagement for e-learning there is a better chance of that happening.

How much does classroom multimedia cost?

Cayoosh Kidz

 

 

To illustrate the cost of multimedia for a classroom Cayoosh Kidz created a short multimedia-rich video demonstrating a range of media types. A school’s multimedia budget can be satisfied with the purchase of a single digital camera for around $300 dollars. The camera that we use is the Canon S3 IS which was in that range. We bought it 3 years ago. It is showing no signs of wear so for less than thirty cents a day we have paid it off. Multimedia is free from now on!

 

The S3 IS and other cameras in its class can capture hours of audio in editable .wav files, thousands of images in the .jpeg format and 20 continuous minutes of video in .avi files; all with just a two GB memory card. One of the best things about the Canon is that SD memory cards can be instantly transferred to a computer for easy editing.

 

I have assumed that there is a computer available for editing and therefore haven’t included its cost in my calculations. I suggest that those who are serious about multimedia storytelling consider purchasing reliable video editing software. Video editing is demanding of resources and can easily cause a system crash, so you might as well begin with a functional and stable editing platform. The multimedia project attached was assembled using Adobe Premiere Elements 6. However we have edited videos with free software and obtained acceptable results. If you haven’t seen one of our videos have a look at Cayoosh Kidz.

 

The S3 IS is a great tool for importing non-digital images. It is often preferable to have students create something with traditional media (crayons and paper) and then take a picture of it to upload. We have done this with all kinds of science, art, language and social studies projects. In most cases it is a lot faster than stapling the work to a bulletin board. These images we usually post to our Flickr account.

 

The audio recording feature on the S3 IS was a surprising bonus. We have made field recordings of crickets, First Nations legends, concerts and radio plays. It is a fast and efficient way to record sound clips.

 

On a technical note for this project, while we did include audio, photographs, video and text, if you count the title, in the video, the finished product would have been more effective and a lot easier to edit if we had just shot video clips. Next time we would not include the slide show with video.

 

Multimedia storytelling doesn’t need to be expensive; in fact it can cost just pennies a day.

 

 

The N86 and the Future of Multimedia Storytelling

The biggest challenge of multimedia storytelling is recording student productions and publishing them to the web as efficiently as possible. Efficiently means fast and half of fast means having the right tools. The other half of fast relates to attitude and skill sets, but more about that on another blog.

Nokia has a new cell phone the N86. It is a minor case of déjà vu, as I recently wrote about the JVC GY-HM100U and Canon 5D Mark II. The N86 caught my attention for a similar reason – convergence. The Canon is an SLRD that records HD video while the JVC is an inexpensive professional video camera that records in a codex native to Final Cut Pro providing ease of editing. I won’t belabour the benefits of these products here, but they point the way to a future where professional quality multimedia video is available at a fraction of the current cost and in a pocket sized package. Nokia’s N86 continues the line of technological evolution. What makes the N86 special is its high quality 8 mp camera (with a Carl Zeiss lens). It has been described as a camera with a cell phone attached. It also captures 640×480 video at 30 frames per second, not good enough for the big screen but fine for the internet. With its ability to record audio and some text, it is a powerful multimedia tool the size of a chocolate bar, all for under $500. And the N86 can directly upload content to the internet wherever you are.

There are similar emerging products like the N86 and together they provide a glimpse of the possibilities for multimedia storytelling in the very foreseeable future. Yes I think I have seen the future of multimedia. Now, if I could only do something really useful and see the future of the stock market!

Top Seven Tips for Multimedia Storytelling – What really works!

 

Classroom teachers don’t have time to mess around with technology that doesn’t work. If multimedia is going to become a powerful learning tool in our classrooms we need to use the tools and techniques that will provide fast and efficient work flow.

 

Tip #1 Dump the Tapes

 

Shoot with a camera or camcorder that uses flash memory. Dump the tapes and mini-disks! You will save hours of time and headaches. Flash memory can be directly transferred to your computer and moved into an editing program.  Besides time, you will also save money by not buying consumable recording media.

 

Tip #2 Shoot Smart – No editing

 

Digital editing is creative, but it sucks time out of your busy life! Try to capture video in one long take – no editing required. While there is no question that editing improves the quality of a video, what you really want to do is share creative content. You will be able to do more of that if you don’t have to take the time to edit.

 

Tip #3 Storyboard Your Shooting Sequences

 

If you are going to edit, carefully plan your shots. Take the time to create a storyboard and plan a logical shooting sequence. You will save a ton of time editing your work later.

 

Tip #4 Buy Software That Works

 

While it is possible to produce impressive projects with free software, there is usually a reason that it is free. If you are serious about producing regular multimedia content then purchase industry standard software that efficiently does the job.  If you are using a PC try Adobe Premiere Elements or on a Mac look at Final Cut Express. These programs work, have lots of great features and provide a stepping stone to more advanced tools.

 

Tip #5 Use a Powerful PC

 

Video editing takes computing power! You will need a newer machine with enough ram memory. Nothing frustrates the creative impulse as much as a constantly crashing computer when you are trying to piece together your video masterpiece.

 

Tip #6 Come Prepared

 

Plan before you shoot.  Time is always limited, so when you do get your 30 minute period to produce a video make sure you have all the materials that you need.

 

Tip #7 TeacherTube

 

Avoid using your own website to host the video. Mount your video on a site like TeacherTube or Vimeo then put a link on your own website or blog. This saves both time and money as you will be charged extra if your site’s traffic exceeds the specified limit.

 

Telling multimedia stories is about creating efficient work flow. You want to focus your energy on telling stories and sharing content, not getting bogged down with inefficient tools and techniques.

Why are these the best times to tell multimedia stories?

•  We are seeing undreamed of possibilities for sharing our creations. Through web 2.0 social networking via the internet we can have an audience of thousands and possibly millions. All this with no real cost. Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress and Del.icio.us provide us with infinite possibilities for meaningful exchange.

 

•   The dramatic drop in the hardware costs of creating multimedia stories brings unprecedented opportunities. Not only has it dropped to affordable levels but it is set to drop a lot further! A dozen years ago a video camera with professional features would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Now cameras such as the Canon XH A1 can out perform those earlier monsters for around $3000. If that still seems too rich for your wallet, take heart; 75 000 people have viewed our 50 odd Cayoosh Kidz videos. These videos were done on a camera costing around $300.

 

• There is the availability of free, or near free multimedia editing software: software for video editing, photoshop-type programs for pictures and Audacity for editing sound. These programs ensure that we can sculpture our raw files into pleasing final products.

 

• We not only have the technical means to produce multimedia stories; we have the evolution of accessible simplified new media grammar. With radical changes in the news industry, new approaches to creating web based media have appeared. These approaches easily transfer from the news-gathering realm to the educational. Educators are under the same constraints of time and budgets as reporters. By learning to tell stories like reporters we can quickly master the skills necessary to both tell our own stories, and assist our students to tell theirs. These emerging resources can be found at sites such as Advancing the Story  or Mastering Multimedia . Here they boil down the process of digital creativity to its simple essence and provide great models to inspire us.

 

We have the tools and we have access to the techniques, now all that’s needed is the creative spark. What are we waiting for?

Publishing to the World

We all want to be heard; to publish our work validates our efforts in creating it. The Internet provides a simple and inexpensive way to share work with hundreds or maybe even thousands of others. Over the next few posts I will sketch out how Cayoosh Kidz  www.cayooshkidz.net has created a web presence with 70 thousand hits per year. Our hits come from dozens of countries around the world.

Webpage

Our webpage is the locus of our new media enterprise. A webpage doesn’t need to be complicated. The webpage is where people come to find the location of our digital content. The simplest way to manage content is to produce and store it on a third party website such as Flickr. Once you have the content in place you post the links to that content on your webpage. For example, we keep our videos on TeacherTube and our pictures on Flickr. It is much easier and it provides a better looking product to do this, unless you have the skills to build and manage a sophisticated webpage.

Four Media Types

There are four media types: video, audio, image and text. You can simplify your web presence by just creating a media rich blog with all the media types. I will explore easy ways to develop content of all types in the next post.

The last word on Assessment for Learning

Well actually the last word for assessment on this particular blog. There is a great resource at www.sd70.bc.ca/_Teach/Cameron_Rubric.doc . You will find a wide range of useful Word templates that can be customized for your needs.

Ken

 

 

 

Connecting in Isolation

 

Halloween is over for another year and besides an occasional megaton blast and the disappearance of eggs from the grocery store shelves the haunting season seemed to be a success. Now with the day past, things have returned to normal; you can tell because the stores have restocked eggs. We will post our Halloween pictures on Flickr and students will blog about their adventures when they get back to school on Monday.

 

Creating meaningful content with students is always a challenge. As adults we write to be read, kids are the same. The bigger the audience the more effort kids are willing to invest in the creative enterprise. The internet provides a vehicle many times more powerful than a bulletin board or even a newsletter home.

 

Over the past year or so our class website www.cayooshkidz.net  has received over 60000 hits. To say the students are excited about their success would be an understatement. They are motivated to communicate with the world and they want to do the best that they can. In the classroom writing is seen as a reward.

 

Over the next few weeks I will share the steps that the class took to create their new media and web presence.