Classroom Management for iPads

Posted May 6, 2012 by Andrew Plemmons Pratt & filed under edtech101.

I recently got a question from a corps member in Colorado who has a new set of iPads to use in her classroom. She wanted to know how to set blocks on certain apps in order to keep scholars on track. Since I’ve used a class set of iPads since September, and since classroom management is one area in particular where I’m always trying to improve, I’m acutely aware of the issue. Short answer: managing middle schoolers on iPads is not really possible through iPad restrictions. It takes a combination of investment, management, technological tweaks, and effective instruction. Here are some of my lessons learned, but I would love to hear from others with digital tools in their classrooms how they address management.

This is a tough issue in part because I don’t love thinking about “how you can stop kids from doing things.” But iPads are designed for consumers to do lots of communicating. They were not designed with Lee Canter’s classroom management techniques in mind. And I teach 7th graders, who are wily and bent on pushing every barrier they can find.

Setting restrictions (Settings > General > Restrictions) is the best thing to do, but there is not as of yet any easy way to lock down the iPads to the point that students won’t play around with other unrestricted apps, or the Internet. But here are my concrete recommendations from a year of using iPads in a middle-school English class, where four sections of students share a set of 29 tablets:

Set the restrictions to disable everything but Safari (see above). Make sure your restrictions passcode is something you’ll remember but your kids won’t guess immediately. Several of my students cracked my first code–I think because they saw me enter it. Use the same passcode on all the devices you have in your room.
This means that you have disabled “Installing Apps” which is in my mind the most important thing you can do to calm curious tapping. Angry Birds and Temple Run are both free and oh-so-tempting.
Associate all the iPads with a single Apple ID account that you control. You can use your personal account, but I have an entirely separate one. One issue is that you must associate a credit card with the account, so I use very strong password and never let the kids see me type it in.
Below the list of “Allow:” apps on the Restrictions page, there’s also a list of “Allow Changes:” for Location and Accounts. Flip the setting that stops users from adding or changing accounts, otherwise there will be a strong temptation plug personal Yahoo emails.
Bear in mind that the most important app you will probably want students using is Safari. But that is also the app curious students will use to watch YouTube videos, Google image search for shoes and candids of Lil Wayne and Nikki Minaj, and hop on Twitter. Facebook, thankfully, is blocked at the network level in our district.

Aside from that, it’s all about management, not iOS settings. “The iPads are tools for learning, not socializing,” was my mantra for the first weeks of school. Also all students, even ones who enter mid-year, must sign and have their parents sign an “Acceptable Use Policy” contract. My principal made this a requirement when she agreed to let me use the iPads, and I’m very glad she insisted on it (you can download it as a Word doc here). Be serious about setting expectations and consequences for misuse. My kids know that their iPad goes right back in the locking cabinet if I see even the corner of a Twitter screen. (“That was there when I logged on, I swear!” they say).

Another thing that I’ve found very effective for keeping students on task but with iPads open is simply turning my presentation for the day into a .pdf document and having them open it and scroll along during my minilesson. Here’s the presentation from a recent class to give you an idea of what that looks like.

They see this static version on their iPads, and I have a version in Word on my projector that I add notes and commentary to while teaching.

Again, these are recommendations that worked for me; they’re not research-tested and I would hardly claim to have perfected technological classroom management. Drop your suggestions in the comments!

Dive Into Data With Kickboard

Posted April 17, 2012 by Andrew Plemmons Pratt & filed under edtech101.

Below is a snapshot of assessment data for my four sections of 7th-grade English, pulled from Kickboard, a powerful student data platform. The results come from a test taken at the end of our unit on informational texts, just weeks before our high-stakes state standardized testing:

The first two columns show results across classes for a set of questions on deciphering vocabulary words. The second two columns aggregate results for a set of six related questions on organizational patterns in informational text—patterns like main idea & supporting details, cause & effect, and chronological order. (For a bigger screenshot, click here.) It’s clear from the swaths of red down the second two columns that all of my classes needed additional support to master identifying and analyzing organizational patterns. Drawing this conclusion during the first week of March was particularly important because by that time, I had one week before the Maryland State Assessment. I needed to make the most of those five instructional days.

Looking to my assessment data in order to make teaching decisions is of course a standard TFA practice. And I could have done this with my district software, Edusoft, which also handles scanning answer sheets & analyzing test data. Here’s part of what an analogous report looks like in that platform:

The same information is there… if you cross-reference the indicator codes with their full descriptions and know the thresholds for the “Basic” band. In short, it was a lot easier to see what standards I needed to reteach once I had my data in Kickboard. Fortunately, the entrepreneurs behind the software (who include several TFA alums) have built in a feature that allows users to upload Edusoft data. That meant I could follow all my administration’s protocol for administering and storing the data from the assessment, but I could then move it over to the far more legible and user-friendly Kickboard system, which is also where I track behavioral data and parent contacts.

(Full disclosure: Kickboard was a partner on the January EdcampDC, which I helped organize.)

The Kickboard feature set is too big to cover in one post, but the group is out ahead of the pack in building a powerful Student Information System that integrates academic data and behavioral information. The software is already in wide use in the New Orleans school district, and for the next few weeks, the company will run a private beta test with 15 users. Participants will get free lifetime access to the platform: sign up here and more info below, but registration for the beta closes Wednesday.

Below, I’ll run through the process I went through to get Edusoft data into the system. The fact that you have to move information from one system to another to get better analytical tools is a fact of life at the moment, but systems like Kickboard are growing, and it’s up to classroom leaders to leverage them. When teachers can show administrators the link between new platforms like this one and student achievement, then we can make stronger arguments that resources should go to these nimble startups, not to the entrenched companies peddling mediocre data tools at the district level.

Moving Data from Edusoft to Kickboard

These instructions will make the most sense if you have Edusoft in your district, but they should also give you an idea of the Kickboard “assessment scorecard” interface.

1) Export assessment data from Edusoft as an “Item Response Report.” This will generate an Excel document that shows how each student answered each multiple-choice question on the assessment:

2) Create a new “assessment scorecard” under the Academics section in Kickboard. This is essentially a flexible data set for results from one assessment that you can then dissect multiple ways:

3) Next, you align each of the questions from the assessment with standards that you’ve previously entered into the system:
assessment scorecard 2

4) Now that you have the standards and questions aligned in Kickboard, you upload the (somewhat messy) Edusoft spreadsheet, check that the student names all match up, and viola:
scorecard upload

Did Kickboard allow me to make the best instructional decision for my students last month? I believe it did. But I’m waiting on the Maryland State Assessment data to come back before I can be sure.

More on the Private Beta

This info comes from the Kickboard staff, who are interested in assembling a team of data-loving beta testers: If you’re interested in free lifetime access to the software, apply for their invitation-only private beta. Thousands of teachers currently use the tool for behavior and academic data in the schools that subscribe to Kickboard, but they want to learn more about how it can be just as effective for individual teachers.

They’ll give you free lifetime access, training, and support. In return they expect you to use Kickboard for 6 weeks, answer 8 short surveys, and potentially do a ten minute phone interview. They’re only accepting 15 testers, so if you’re interested sign up now. The beta starts this Thursday, April 19 and runs until June 1, but you’ll need to apply using the short form linked above in the next 48 hours to get invited.

How to Manage All Those Phone Calls Home

Posted April 7, 2012 by Andrew Plemmons Pratt & filed under edtech101.

I knew going into teaching that having a Google Voice number would be useful for staying in touch with parents and students. Nearing the end of my second year in the classroom, I don’t know what I would do without it. In this post, I’ll show you how I use Google Voice as a Parent Relationship Management system and I’ll highlight an even more powerful parent content tool that alumni in New Orleans are building.

Google Voice is a free service that gives you a single phone number that works independent of whatever phone you have. It can direct calls to your cell, a land line, or a work line. It lets you dial numbers by clicking on a contact from within a web browser. It integrates phone numbers with your Google contacts. It can even handle texts and recording and transcribing voicemail messages. Here are the key features that make it invaluable for me.

Dialing From the Web

When you describe this–click on phone numbers and your phone rings and connects–it doesn’t sound that awesome. Then you have a disruptive student who’s escalated his or her attention-seeking behavior past your consequences for lost points or individual conferencing. There’s little that will redirect classroom attention faster than pulling up Google Voice on your projector, searching for a parent contact, clicking “call,” and then hearing the cell in your pocket ring as it connects you directly to their work phone. (Click the image to embiggen.)

A Local Number

This might not seem important at a time when remembering phone numbers isn’t critical and when the friends’ numbers stored in your cell have area codes from all over the country. But remember that anyone who calls you from a land line will be much more likely to do so if they can make a local, rather than long-distance, call. Also, it’s nice street cred to have a local area code. Since I’m from Atlanta, my direct cell number begins with 404, but I’ve been in Washington, DC, for six years, so I feel more at home with a 202 area code. Google Voice lets you pick the area code and gives you a choice of numbers.

A Professional Number

Wait, why would you want another phone number when you already have one? As a teacher, this is useful because you now have a highly portable “professional” number in addition to your personal cell number. I give the phone’s 404 number to friends and family, but am liberal with sharing my 202 Google Voice number with students, colleagues, parents, and, well, anyone I’m willing to email (it’s in my signature). Moreover, you can create groups of contacts with separate rules about how calls get handled. Calls from colleagues might go straight to your cell. Parent calls might go to your classroom phone, but then get directed to a special parent voicemail if you’re unavailable. Calls from unknown numbers might require the caller to announce his or her name before connecting (very useful if crafty middle schoolers decide to prank call late on a Friday night).

Automatic Call Logging

Being able to place a call with the click of a mouse becomes even more useful if you have several calls to make all in a row, as it saves dialing or time spent scrolling through contacts. But what really makes calling 10 parents more difficult is logging the date and substance of each call. Let’s face it–if you’re making lots of calls, its very easy to just skipping the logging, even if you know it’s a good idea or your administration requires it. But Google Voice logs time, date, phone number (and contact), and duration, for every call placed, received, or missed. It even lets you add notes to individual call logs. This means that if I can’t member the last time I called a parent, I can just scan through my placed call logs and see it was two weeks ago. (Click the image to embiggen.)

Dash: A Tool for Next-Generation Parent Engagement

Google Voice is great for teachers, but it isn’t designed for teachers. Dash is a smartphone application under development that “organizes and tracks parent-teacher communication, helping teachers make frequent and well-informed calls.” Three entrepreneurial corps members designed a system that would streamline managing all this parental engagement information and flew it to a Startup Weekend in New York. The idea took second place and the team regrouped in New Orleans to begin beta testing.

You can learn about Dash and help get the venture off the ground by making a donation on their Start Some Good page. Here’s their promo vid:

I read that book on my phone! Don’t remember it at all.

Posted April 3, 2012 by Andrew Plemmons Pratt & filed under books, edu tech.

I can distinctly remember studying for finals in college and pouring over academic articles I’d read and carefully annotated. For certain material that I knew well, I could recall the specific place on the page where I’d read a fact or quotation–upper right corner, middle of the page, just after a chapter heading, etc. These articles were photocopies or pdf printouts. That is, they were paper pages.

Turns out that the fixed layout of printed pages helps you absorb and learn information better. The context and landmarks on a printed page–headings, images, position on a spread–are one factor in cementing information in your mind. In contrast, the endless flow of text in most ebooks leaves readers in sea of words that is more difficult to fix in memory. Maia Szalavitz of TIME magazine talked to the researchers who have looked into the issue and reported back:

“What we found was that people on paper started to ‘know’ the material more quickly over the passage of time,” says [Kate] Garland [of the University of Leicester]. “It took longer and [required] more repeated testing to get into that knowing state [with the computer reading, but] eventually the people who did it on the computer caught up with the people who [were reading] on paper.” Context and landmarks may actually be important to going from “remembering” to “knowing.” The more associations a particular memory can trigger, the more easily it tends to be recalled. Consequently, seemingly irrelevant factors like remembering whether you read something at the top or the bottom of page — or whether it was on the right or left hand side of a two-page spread or near a graphic — can help cement material in mind.

Obviously, I’m concerned about my own ability to retain what I read as more of what I read is in ebook format. But this further underscores my skepticism about the difficulty of teaching middle schoolers literacy skills like annotation in a digital context. It’s entirely possible that cross-platform annotation tools will solve this problem for ebooks in the near future. But for the moment, I’m going to remember what I read better–and the research suggests the same for my students–if I can mark up a paper version.

Image: Spread from Ellen Lupton’s “Thinking With Type”–sample pages available at elupton.com Bet you can remember where the iPhone was on the spread.