I’m always looking to move information from websites to my class iPads. The reason is simple: syncing 30 iPads one-to-one with my school MacBook is a pain, but putting material on a website allows for a one-to-many distribution channel. Fortunately, iOS offers a handy default connection between Safari and iBooks. If you point iOS Safari (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) at an ePub file sitting on a webserver, it will ask if you would like to open the file in iBooks. This means I can make eBooks available on our class Moodle site and allow students to browse and download them individually at their own discretion—no syncing required.

There are lots of ways to do this, but the essential elements are:

1. upload the ePub files to a web site
2. create links on a web page that point to the files
3. make these links accessible to your audience

For a few weeks, I’ve been doing this with an ugly setup that involved showing book information and links in a Google Doc spreadsheet:

But today I decided it was time to clean up and get professional. So that meant moving our private digital class library into Moodle.

Moodle includes a helpful module for making databases with a simple wizard interface. I said that each entry in the database needed to have these fields:

1. Title
2. Cover image
3. Open in iBooks [a URL link to the book file]
4. Author
5. Genre
6. Summary

Here’s what that looks like for Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother

The summary info and cover image I pulled from goodreads.com, the phenomenal social networking site for sharing book recommendations.

Now that I’ve got a more streamlined system, I’ll need to keep growing the library and tracking to see what books my scholars are reading.

This is the first eBook that I’ve read cover-to-cover. The publishers say that they want the books to be short enough to digest on a plane flight from New York to Chicago. (More on their innovative publishing model here.) Their claim holds up. I plowed through this on my iPad before even getting out of bed for coffee one morning. When I was done, I understood all the important elements of HTML5 that distinguish it from previous web standards. But more than that, I was entertained. Keith is a smart designer/developer and a wit to boot. This is the first technical book on web technologies that has made me chuckle as I read. Here is is discussing the canvas tag, used for real-time vector drawing within the browser window:

One of the first flagship demonstrations of the power of canvas came from Mozilla Labs. The Bespin application (https://bespin.mozilla.com) is a code editor that runs in the browser (fig 3.03).

It is very powerful. It is very impressive. It is also a perfect example of what not to do with canvas.

Since I’ve been teaching for the past year, rather than keeping up with web development, this was a fantastic way to catch up in very little time.

View all my reviews on Goodreads.com

In late April, we presented this idea to a panel of judges at a pitch event held at Gholson MS: Superintendent Dr. Hite, Chief Academic Officer Dr. Arbogast, and School Board Members Carolyn Boston and Edward Burroughs. We ended up winning the competition, which means we’ll get support from the district administration to make the proposal a reality. This post outlines the idea, the origins of the project, and other innovations proposed by our fellow TFA corp members. Read on for the full story.

Here’s Matt and I talking to the panel, our colleagues, and various county employees:

Presentation (~13 min):

Question & Answer (~1 min):

Our Executive Summary (from the evening’s program)

We can grow and expand data-driven instruction in PGCPS by giving teachers the opportunity to learn tools like Edusoft and Performance Matters on their own time. Currently, there are not enough opportunities for teachers to access professional development on data-driven instruction. Our suggestion to provide high-quality PD to teachers on their own schedules is simple: build a collection of training tools and videos on Google Sites and give teachers access to it starting at PEIP. We envision an online forum for data-driven PD that is always accessible, facilitates discussion among instructors, and is focused on increasing student achievement. Presenters: Matthew McCrea, math/science chair, G. James Gholson Middle School (TFA 2009); Andrew Pratt, 7th grade Reading/English/Language Arts, G. James Gholson Middle School (TFA 2010).

Presentation

Here’s the presentation itself:

On-Demand Professional Development

And the (very incomplete) mock-up site you see me navigating in the video: https://sites.google.com/a/pgcps.org/on-demand-pd/

Background

As part of Maryland’s Race to the Top grant, Prince Georges Country won funds for a multi-year partnership with Teach for America to begin an annual “Innovation Challenge.” In its first year, the project solicited ideas from TFA corps members working in PGCPS and helped them work through a five-month process of developing and refining an entrepreneurial idea that would solve a significant problem within the school system.

When I was first applying to TFA, I told people that in addition to learning how to teach, my time in the corps would also serve as a training course in social entrepreneurship. But burdened by the stresses of a first-year teacher, I balked at the idea of participating in the Challenge. How was I supposed to research and build an entire project when I was expending all my energy on lesson planning?

One morning at a TFA Professional Development Saturday, I arrived early for a Special Education session. But I found that some crossed communication channels had led me to an event that was no longer happening. I wandered for a minute and realized that the first Innovation Challenge meeting was taking place at the same time, so I sat down, listened in, and told Matt that I wanted to work with him.

Now we’ll be working in collaboration over the summer to build the site and record the training videos. Very much looking forward to it.

Full Event Video

To see all the presentations at the event, as well as the opening and closing remarks (all short and sweet), you can watch videos here:
https://sites.google.com/site/pgcpstfainnovationchallenge/

Wireless Generation student tracking softare. (via CAP)

I noticed on one of my observation visits that the teacher almost never put down her clipboard. On it, she kept a chart that allowed her to track student progress and comprehension, take notes on students who needed additional help after short conferences, and what elements of her lesson plan were working. Over the course of the period, a wealth of information flowed onto a few thin sheets of paper. There has to be a better medium for capturing that data, I thought.

My iPhone came to mind—surely there was some way of capturing what was mostly qualitative information in a digital format that was more flexible and durable than the butcher paper progress charts on the wall. But the first ways I would incorporate a smartphone into classroom instruction are significantly different from the educational games described in a recent Fast Company article, “A Is for App.” While fascinating, the report makes it clear that a there’s a divide between educational technology that focuses on engaging students and educational technology that amplifies the power of a key classroom variable: the effectiveness of the teacher.

One of the key points from the Teaching As Leadership chapter on how to “Execute Effectively” is amusingly blunt: insist on seeing reality. The teacher I was observing was taking notes on the reality before her: were students learning what her lesson was intended to teach?

Effective teachers, writes Farr, are constantly using a variety of methods to capture information about where students really are. “They use brief end-of-lesson assessments, student interest surveys, and objective-mastery tracking systems to get a better understanding of student progress,” he says.

Now some methods for checking for understanding are instantaneous, simply, and brilliant: having students simultaneously write answers on small white boards or index cards, signing the first letter of a correct response in American Sign Language. Those results are more ephemeral than any note that ends up on the a clipboard, but part of the point is to make sure that your lesson is effective in the first place and to check for instances where you must re-teach a concept you failed to communicate. Yet what if you could capture those small, rapid checks for understanding and analyze them within the context of more formal assessments? That’s a lot of data you could work with. Again, a smartphone is a tantalizing device because it can handle just such a task.

Now, in her article, Anya Kamenetz explains some impressive instructional tools, especially the TeacherMate, a cheap handheld device that elementary school children can use to practice math and reading skills that align with lesson objectives. A Chicago South Side elementary teacher explains:

the software on her laptop lets her track each student’s performance. Once a week, when she plugs each student’s TeacherMate into her docking station, she downloads a record of their game play and generates reports for herself as well as for parents. Then she sets the precise skills, levels, and allotted time for the upcoming week. The programs are synced with the reading and math curricula used in the school — right down to the same spelling words each week.

This is to what I’m imagining: fine-grained results that test individual student understanding of specific lesson objectives, safely and flexibly stored in a digital format for export and analysis. Kamenetz reports that Arne Duncan is a fan of the platform and the company that makes the software and designed the device, Innovations for Learning, has seen the tool adopted in 500 schools in 15 states. All very impressive.

But the article makes it clear another premise that companies in the education technology space rest upon is that smartphones, OX laptops, and learning software, “are tools for expression and connection, not just passive absorption,” unlike Sesame Street and, apparently, teacher instruction. And this is where things start to get wish-washy. “A system built around tools that allow children to explore and figure things out for themselves would be radical for most developing-world schools, which emphasize learning by rote. In the United States, which is currently so in love with state curriculum benchmarks and standardized tests, it could be just as hard a sell,” writes Kamenetz.

Huh? Why is structured learning the opposite of creativity?

Education that quashes student creativity is obviously no good. Kids should experiment, express themselves, and learn from a diversity of perspectives. But leaving room from student creativity and ensuring that they can comprehend complex passages of text or sift information from word-based math problems are not mutually exclusive.

Simply put, a lot of stories about innovation in educational technology are overshadowed by the myth that the way we teach now is suffocating students and their only salvation is in devices that will make them digital artists and publishers.

I think all students should learn to be digital artists and publishers. Just throwing the tools at them isn’t going to do that. Using technology to leverage good teaching seems like a better approach.

Contrast the educational quiz games model with one that expands the power of teachers to collect and analyze data from their existing lessons. That’s the focus of a successful company not mentioned in the Fast Company piece called Wireless Generation. Here’s a summary from my CAP colleagues that makes the clipboard and pen system sound downright medieval:

The company’s core program is software, which allows teachers to use a handheld device—rather than paper—to assess and collect data on their students. The data teachers collect can be used to immediately create web-based reports on individual students, classrooms, schools, districts, and even demographic subgroups. The better and more immediate data allows teachers and administrators to easily monitor student progress and tailor their instruction to students’ needs. The online nature of the data also allows teachers with similar classroom issues to find each other and collaborate on solutions. Because they can track students’ progress over time, it is easy to see what is working and what’s not.

The company makes its mission clear right on its website: “The test for any Wireless Generation product or service is always: does it really help educators to do their jobs?” The assumption being, no matter how good the software or hardware of our new magical learning devices, teachers are not going to vanish from classrooms any time soon. So innovation in educational technology should make the most of their work, especially since effective teaching is so highly correlated with student achievement.

NPR of course offers a spiffy web-based station finder map for scoring your closest Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me! or All Things Considered fix. But it’s a little too full-featured to work on a dinky mobile browser. But let’s also not kid ourselves about functionality here; this was an excuse to learn some super-basic PHP:

http://appratt.com/npr/

We’ll call this version 1.0 because it lacks anything resembling a design; it doesn’t verify that you’re feeding it ZIP codes or return appropriate error messages if nothing is in range; and it doesn’t indicate station strength (though station strength is something you can figure out pretty quickly with your tuner).

What is does do is query the NPR API and return a list of the closest stations with city and call number, ranked in order of proximity. Which is all you need when you know you’re missing Michelle Norris and all you can find is Delilah.

In an attempt to learn how to make information graphics dance around on the screen, I’ve learned the basics of ActionScript and have attempted (with little success) to learn the rudiments of Ruby On Rails. I’m dubious about the utility of a language built on top of another somewhat defunct language, but the ability to manipulate typography within a web browser without having to muck around with a timeline is intriguing.

This example from the Processing site’s “Exhibition” section is well within the realm of what’s possible in Flash, but it has a pleasant polish to it:

Venture outside the world of information graphics and into digital art and you get Processing applications like this, a music video for Radiohead’s “Bodysnatchers” generated by a reactive program that responds to audio input:

Bodysnatchers – Zeno Music Visualiser from Glenn Marshall on Vimeo.

And finally, here’s an applet I pulled directly from the examples that come with the v1.0.1 package, exported, and then uploaded to my server. The code is 17 lines long:


void setup()
{
size(200, 200);
noStroke();
colorMode(RGB, 255, 255, 255, 100);
rectMode(CENTER);
}



void draw()
{
background(51);
fill(255, 80);
rect(mouseX, height/2, mouseY/2+10, mouseY/2+10);
fill(255, 80);
int inverseX = width-mouseX;
int inverseY = height-mouseY;
rect(inverseX, height/2, (inverseY/2)+10, (inverseY/2)+10);
}


This could be worth playing around with.

Source: SSTI