ICTs and Placement - NearPod

On my first day of placement, I had to attend a staff meeting.  The purpose was to witness a presentation by my schools CAPA (Creative and Performing Arts) Department on Literacy.  Their presentation was run through a class set (plus optional personal extras) of iPads using software called NearPod.

Nearpod is clever little software.  It allows for interactive presentations and collaborations.  The example I saw today started with typing a response to a question.  The teacher could select from the answers submitted and display it back across all synced devices.  The next page allowed for an image (or multiples) to be circled.  Throughout all this, the teacher's software can monitor remotely how far along each synced device is, and what answers are being submitted.  A Cloze exercise comes up, and words can be dragged into gaps.

I didn't get to play too much with this software, so I came home and had a quick look.  It works on iOS, Windows, and Android - meaning no limitations!  Being an app, as opposed to a website, it becomes more possible to restrict unwanted usage in the background - but it still needs WiFi to connect the pads for the presentation.  Sessions can also be run distance, according to the website....  Homework activities????

https://app.nearpod.com/#/presentation?pin=MOCYF

Synopsis – Week 6

Trying to pull the themes of all of the last 6 weeks (plus Easter break – but who had time to break?), we need to go back to the theories in week one, and find how it all ties in with the different types of ICT.

Going right back to week one, we have Rubenstein and his multiple intelligences – or Gardner’s theory, but Rubenstein liked it.  In 2009, Rubenstein wrote about how brains were individual, but could be prone to change by making the various regions develop and grow.  The multiple intelligences are like “multiple gears that are spread out across the brain”, that “work together through intricate networks”.

As we move through the various ICT tools, we find technology exists that can stimulate and reach various parts of the brain simultaneously.  You don’t need one tool for listening, one for spelling, one for maths – INTEGRATION becomes keys.  GIS type exercises allow study of cartography, geography, and sometimes statistical analysis.  Geocaching demonstrated a Phys.Ed style approach to geography, especially with the EarthCaches.

The Lanphier article (2014) I referenced back in blog 1 stresses this too – how a simple thing as music can cross the borders of the thinking regions – the analysis and patterns reader, the creative genius, the listen and emulate, and the physical responder – and stimulate multiple or ALL sections simultaneously! 

ICTs allow for a Cognitivist’s paradise – multiple experiences for those multiple minds.  As each part of the brain is triggered, the potential to move information from short- to long-term increases.  Throw in some Social Constructivism – sharing of experiences and ideas-, and Connectivism, - implementing 21^st century resources within the classroom – and you have the basis of an expert ICT program.

The SAMR Model is an effective way to establish the development of your ICT program (Puentedura, 2009).  As you move through the 4 levels, the ability to form these crossovers occurs.  The first stages – Substitution and Augmentation – are rather limiting in providing cross-curricular or cross-intelligence experiences.  However exposure to these helps develop comprehension skills needed for Modification and Redefinition, where we use the ICTs to improve or extend on a basic skill.  It is especially within this area, that the ability to integrate multiple strategies, styles and elements comes into play.

These multiple intelligences got tested in some of my projects over the last few weeks.  For example, http://q9708050.weebly.com/ was a Weebly website I set up to introduce people to the world of Geocaching (as ICT as it gets, perhaps?).  A very basic website, it had images and maps, news articles, and YouTube clips.  While the text was more than capable of doing the job, it was hoped that the incorporation of the extra media helped other intelligences.  Making a Podcast, video or blog gives a new motivation to a research topic.  In addition, the need to be able to represent the found information in a transformed presentation (data to speech, research to video etc.) helps to have the information unpackaged and repackaged within our heads.

For me personally, I loved playing around in the virtual museum PowerPoint displays.  Gone are the old slide shows of old that are the new presentation favourite in some higher learning classrooms.  A seamless integration of video, audio, pictures, data, and self-guided interactivity create a highly stimulating environment that is engaging and supportive.  I enjoyed my first outing (http://1drv.ms/1HdJ1QY) that I went and created a second for another subject’s assessment.  I used PowerPoint to embed a piece of sheet music with audio samples, videos, and interactive pages with quizzes and answers as a Literacy and Numeracy tool.

This, to me, sums up the vitality that is E-learning.  Gone is the need for a Physics book AND Geography book and and and….  Through the power of technology, it becomes possible to create learning activities that are MORE than just read-and-regurgitate.  By delivering the content in multiple ways, you create learning possibilities for students who might not have been reachable through the classic education paradigm.  The ability to reach and engage every student in a manner that is best suitable for him or her, we create better learners, better results, and – with hope – the ability to create lifelong learners.

Of course, we would be remiss if we didn't highlight some of the pitfalls associated with ICT.  For example, a classic occurrence on social media is the inability to completely interpret emotion behind text.  Gone are the facial cues, visual signs, pheromone guide.  It becomes so easy to take things the wrong way in group communication.  Also with the internet littered with dank and dismal content, someone always has to be alert – not just to what the kids are looking at, but at what the kids are doing that can be viewed by others.

But let’s not let the worst of the world hold us back.  If e-learning holds the keys for the next generation, we need to be pioneering safe and effective ways to use it in the classrooms – when we get there!

References:

CQUniversity Australia (2015), EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design: Study Guide. Retrieved from https://moodle.cqu.edu.au/course/view.php?id=15637, accessed 20 April, 2015

Lanphier, DJ (2014), Here’s a Surprising Look at What Music Does to Your Brain.  Retrieved from http://mic.com/articles/89655/here-s-a-surprising-look-at-what-music-does-to-your-brain, accessed 20 April, 2015.

Queensland Government (2013) The SAMR Model: engage in deep learning and authentic contexts.  Retrieved from https://classroomconnections.eq.edu.au/topics/pages/2013/issue-7/samr-learning-technologies.aspx, accessed 20 April 2015

Rubenstein, Grace (2009), Brain Imagery Probes the Idea of Diverse Intelligences.  Retrieved from http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2tQutL/www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-brain-research,  accessed 20 April 2015

Week 6, Reflection 5 - Mobile Tech

Meet my Lenovo Yoga 2

I bought this on special last week from JB HiFi.  It's got a 16gb hd, a puny processor, and runs Android operating systems.

I bought it specifically for my teaching pracs - excuse me, Embedded Professional Learning experiences.  Why would I do something like that?

It started back when I was working with EQ as an Instrumental Music Teacher......

I started with EQ in 2007, after a number of years with Catholic Education and other user-pay programs in the Gladstone area.  I knew the Rockhampton coordinator from brass band - Mrs Jeanette Douglas - and she asked if I was interested in relief contract work for 6 months.

Fast forward to 2010, and I am still with EQ, and loving it.  Computers have made their ways into the mainstream class, along with IWBs - but Instrumental Music, to my dismay, hadn't quite made the leap.  The teachers preferred books, paper and phone calls over digital files, tablets and emails\texts.  I had horrible handwriting (had is a bad word... I still have bad handwriting!), so I always looked for a digital shortcut - including the admin side of my job, tracking instruments by serial numbers, rolls, reporting (OneSchool reporting was just being phased in).  

Then I saw an add for this:

http://www.asus.com/Tablets_Mobile/Eee_Slate_EP121/ 

I had already decided I was against Apple, due to the lack of functionality crossover between it and the PC - still the most common device en masse, I believe - and these feelings were reinforced, when at a conference, a Mac fan's files weren't congruous for instant exchange.  We were looking at an Excel type file that had further enhanced a document prepared by one of the state co-ordinators for rolls and OneSchool reporting. 

I had already starting playing around with the file, with the help of what little code I could get from the Mac version, when my wife allowed me to purchase the above Asus - a first attempt at putting Windows on a tablet.

It was pure love, for me.

I was able to tweak my file more, to run better on the tablet with a stylus.  I could hand-write straight into Office programs (Word, Excel, etc) and it  could translate my scrawl.  My Excel sheet was "tick-and-flick", and had a database of all my schools' instruments, assignments, automatically generating completed loan agreement forms and tracking progress, summarising all my results into the OneSchool reporting template.

Outside my personal use, my students loved it too.  OneNote Journal came with a manuscript stationary, meaning the kids and I could draw straight onto the tablet in music - handy when some of my classrooms weren't actually classrooms!  In 2011, my local region participated in a trial run of the new Bruce Pearson text Tradition of Excellence, which came with an upgraded Interactive Environment.  This environment was a digital version of the book, with videos and worksheets.  Kids who didn't have their books didn't have to stress - I HAD ALL OF THEM, plus the videos (thanks to mobile phone hot spots at times, as not all my classrooms had WiFi).

Sadly, at the end of last year, my tablet died.

I could have gone out and bought a new Asus - the latest model is a laptop, with a detachable screen that has it's own i5 processor and 128gb hdd, in addition to the laptop base's 500gb.  But that's $1300 - money my wife wouldn't let me spend.

But when this came along, the price enough for me to take a gamble.  Especially now Google Drive has a near perfect facsimile of the Office Suite; in addition to other apps that help it do the job my old Asus did.

 In regards to the replacement of paper, my Lenovo does the job - albeit a smaller screen.  7" vs 12.1" on the Asus is a tough beat!  But it makes it lightweight, portable - and probably easier to keep as a simple system, whereas a PC would be running everything, and getting messy.

With the purchase of a stylus (I am using a Jot Classic - supposedly one of the most precise on the market), handwriting kicks in too - and not just in Word.

This is me marking up a PDF.  I can handwrite straight onto it like paper, or I can leave notation marks (see the little yellow and white bubble boxes?).  Just like leaving a notation on a standard Adobe pdf, except I can handwrite mine - and the tablet transposes it into font.  This example here is my notes from a committee meeting.  I just jot my notes over the agenda and other documents, come home and copy\paste into a minutes template I use.  I intend to be doing a similar process with my observations and other forms I need to complete while on prac.

The pros of this style of a setup in the class extend further with internet functionality.  My OneDrive allows me to increase my storage capacity to 1TB - although there is an option to insert a 128gb mSD card in the back.

Total benefits - a word processor, a text book, an internet device, a popular smart device, and paperless study tool in an affordable, lightweight body.

The cons - need power (although this one appears power friendly for the time being) and internet (although there is capacity to insert a microSIM card), plus a stylus (starting at around $15).  Would they become a distraction in class?  Is there a way to govern who can put apps on, and what apps?

Interesting - Using Chrome as the internet client on this and my PC, my passwords, bookmarks and internet history carry over.  If managed properly, this could also be a very helpful tool.  I would then be wondering if an Android operating system on a PC\Laptop could create a management environment to control app usage and so forth - maybe one  day I'll get to investigate!

Week 5 Reflection 4 - Powerpoint and Google Maps

Running late!!!   Aggghhhhh!!!!  Stupid Australian National Band Championships, and commitments.  Oh well, guess I'll have to wear the penalty.

When looking at the group 3 tools, I had the added advantage of seeing other class member's results, and my wife's professional experience.  Rebekah is the Reliability Engineer at Drayton, an open pit coal mine owned by Anglo American in the heart of the Hunter Valley's horse and wine country.  It is her daily activity to prepare data on equipment usage, repair stats, oil qualities (an indicator used to help prepare for up and coming maintenance disasters).  More often than not, these presentations are aided with a display of some sort.  So - what better resource and reflective tool than a professional?

Before opting for PowerPoint, I had a look at a sample Prezi as designed by classmate Mischa Freeman.  While I could not fault her content, and I admired what the software tried to do, my wife commented that the constant zooming - in her field, anyway - would get annoying or cumbersome.  For me, it was PowerPoint with special transitions.  I don't doubt I could play with it more, but it didn't captivate me as something I needed to understand better.

I wanted to look into PowerPoint because it's a tool that is used often - and sometimes poorly, in my experience.  I sat through 4 days of lecturers trying to present data to us at the Residential School, and they all made it look so painful!!!

But I must say I am glad I looked.  I loved the links to the virtual museums.  So much so, I wanted to have a go.

I decided, after starting, that I'd cheat - I almost covered part of my reflection in the design of the PowerPoint.  What PowerPoint?  THIS PowerPoint!  As you'll see as you run the show, I've covered three levels of PowerPoint usage - each at varying levels of SAMR.

1. Basic Level - Palm Cards for the teacher
2. Secondary Level - Integrated Presentation System.
3. Tertiary Level - Complete Immersion.

Level one is barely a substitution.  Sure beat writing things up, and having something to refer to when presenting to the class is always helpful.  I've seen some samples of this where people just have the title - just as a reminder as to where you're taking the conversation.

Level 2 becomes an augmentation of the traditional teaching tools.  It's a text book, and the old TV on a wheelie trolley with a DVD (or VCR for older people), and instant references to the Internet if needed.  

I personally feel that at these levels, these are teacher-driven tools.  They make TEACHING easier -but do they help learning?  I suppose they could, when you consider the relationships of test and words simultaneously and other theories (see last week's blog) - but still, the power4 is lying with the teacher to use these tools to guide the learning, and not allowing students to explore the content.

Level 3 is the virtual museum level.  It allows for student driven exploration of a digital environment.  The content is still there, but it's delivered in a way that allows for a little bit of independent reaction.  Personally, I feel that this sits on the border of Modification and Re-imagination on the SAMR chart.  In my slide show, the integration comes from the map - you can select your region (click a blue arrow) and the slide show takes you to the relevant pages.  Obviously, you can go back and add more and more content.

I showed my wife my presentation, and while she liked the integration, she stressed a simple point - as a display tool, you need to limit the amount of data on a slide.  Slides, in her experience, work better with accompanying documents.  While I see her viewpoint (and I mentioned that she is one of a small number of women her field, therefore the short precise information is less about effectiveness of PowerPoint, and more about the learning style of males), I think that she is sticking with the substitution and augmentation of the ICT within her workplace.

Give her a few years of new teaching skills to develop her new colleagues, and she'll change her mind - just as she's done within her office to the older workers.  :D

Bonus Reflection - Google Maps in the Classroom

I made a comment last week about trying to integrate the Geocaching map into my Weebly website.  I reflected then that Google would only let me put one pin in.

I was wrong!  Google has a GIS design system!  GIS (Geographical Information Systems) are used to overlay maps with data, or rather:

 ...to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of spatial or geographical data.

I've worked with GIS software for previous assessment at CQUniversity, where I did a report of integrating real estate trends and census data with school enrollment data to track school populations, looking for trends and predicting the needs of infrastructure and staffing. I proposed that if we monitored school catchment areas for population trends, we'd see in advance the need to adjust staffing, or invest in extra classes; thus limiting the need to put catchment restrictions on school registration.

In the classroom, the ability to modify a map to place your OWN waypoints, census data, trends and other data onto a geographical display could come in handy, especially as a geography and history teacher.  Draw in old borders of ancient realms.  Plot sites of volcanoes and earthquakes.

I said at the time of my GIS course that it could become a powerful tool in the classroom in multiple subjects too - evolution of music genres as each style advanced into the world.

Regardless of how it's used, I stand by my opinion at that time.