Reflections

For my final blog post as an ITRT, I thought a look back at the changes I’ve seen in educational technology might be appropriate.  Let me begin by saying that when my sister first described a microwave oven to me, I thought someone must have been pulling her leg, for what she described didn’t sound at all plausible.--that's how old I am (to borrow a line from David McCaleb.).  In fact, I typed a fifty page Master's thesis on a manual typewriter.

While working on my initial teacher certification,I don’t recall taking any courses in educational technology.  I don’t really remember having any training in how to thread a 16 millimeter projector, replace a bulb in an overhead projector, or how to make a correction on a ditto master with a razor blade.  These were all skills that were pretty easy to acquire, even if I never did figure out how to deal with those ditto sheets without ruining my shirts by somehow smearing purple ink on them.

The overhead projector was the basic piece of technology that distinguished a late 20th century teachers from ones who was still functioning with a chalkboard, as if they were stuck in the 19th century.  I purchased my own sheets of acetate so that I could use the kind which allowed me to burn typed images on them rather than inflicting misery on my students by asking them to read my handwriting.  I dreamed that someday,  perhaps before I retired, the technology might exist to sit at my desk with a keyboard and type in text which would appear on some sort of a monitor visible to the whole class. I relied on those old overheads projectors so heavily that one class, in preparing a presentation for their reunion, took a picture of me posed beside one.

The most technologically advanced thing that I did in my first  five years of teaching (1977-82), back in Michigan, was to use the Oakland County School Board’s equipment to create slides for a slide projector from photos in books.   This was a long and somewhat tedious process and it is no wonder that I have never known another teacher who did anything like that. In fact, Accomack  County,  so far as I know, never provided the technology necessary to perform that task even if someone had wanted to.  There did exist a machine called an opaque projector, which some used to  show their classes photos.   You can still see one of those projectors in the back room of Nandua's media center, but, most teachers just held the book open to the picture and walked around the classroom.

Perhaps the past technology that you’ll find the most  amusing is technique I had for grading papers. I had an answer sheet (made with a ditto machine) that was similar to a Scantron sheet (only purple, of course.).  In addition to the answer columns, the sheet also had two circles, which served as alignment guides, in the upper corners of the page.  Students would circle the letter of the correct answers.  These were graded with the “Blodgetron.”  This was  a board with two nails that were placed to correspond with the alignment guides on the answer sheets.  I’d punch each student response sheet down through the guides, stack them all up,  and then place an answer sheet with the correct answers on the top of the stack.  I’d then take a hammer and nail and drive the nail through all the correct answers, one at a time.  The final  step came when I’d have one of my daughters go through with a red pen with which she'd mark and total the incorrect responses--if the students circled a letter that wasn’t punched through, their answer was wrong.  I couldn’t find a picture of anything similar to this on the Internet, so I guess it was pretty rare--you might say I stood out technologically, even in those days.

Jim Carey was the shop teacher at CHS, and I believe it was through his initiative that all the teachers first got desktop computers.  With them, I was able to use a little device made by Aversion, which turned my classroom television into a desktop monitor.  Using a  scanner I took the slides I made back in Michigan and turned them into JPGs and  inserted them in PowerPoint type presentations, which I showed on the television.

Even though I’m an ITRT, I have to confess that I have been resistant to some of the changes I’ve seen.  For example, although I welcomed  DVDs I was quite disappointed when  Mrs. Heady quit coming around with the AV bus--some of those old 16 millimeter films were really good.  In fact, at Chincoteague High,  the library purchased a little box with a mirror for taking 16 millimeter films and recording them as Video Cassette Tapes with a camcorder.  Due to the difference in shutter speeds, this never really worked very well.

When the county first issued laptop computers to teachers,  I was quite overwhelmed by the extravagance of it all--after all, we had desktops in our classrooms.  As the years passed I came to rely on these laptops so heavily that I've gone several years without owning a personal computing device of any kind--what I’ll own in retirement is yet to be determined.  

Let me conclude by saying that this teaching experience has been a long and interesting journey in many ways, not the least of which has been witnessing the introduction of these technological wonders.  The future seems both clear and near--individual devices for each student--we'll be there before you know it.

Classroom or Edmodo

In the past I pushed to get teachers to adopt the use of Edmodo.  However, with the migration to Google accounts I chose not to actively recommend Edmodo this year.  Not only can Google Drive files be shared, they can be edited collaboratively.  In addition, at the end of school year 2014 Google was testing a beta version of a management site dubbed Google Classroom.  (Rather than calling it a classroom management system, or even a content management system, let's just call it a Google Drive management system.)

At the start of the year I figured teachers might feel a bit overwhelmed if I tried to get them to adopt booth Google Mail, Google Drive, Google Docs AND Google Classroom.  As a result, I mentioned Google Classroom to very few teachers.

In spite of all of the above  Emily Martin (AHS) made use of Edmodo this year, and Matt Gillis (CHS/CES) used Google Classroom.  So, I thought I'd ask the two of them to briefly describe their experiences with these sites and give teachers a chance to consider them for next year.

Here are some remarks directly from Emily ....

Generally, I will use Edmodo with my upper-level Spanish classes. I give them a situation, and they have to provide a comment. For example, I provided a question in Spanish from a Spanish advice column. Students had to use a particular verb tense that we were reviewing to provide an answer for that question. Then, we discussed phrases such as “I agree,” “That is a good idea,” “I disagree,” etc., and how to explain why. Then, they had to comment on another students´ comment, similar to a blog. I have also used Edmodo as a tool on which students can save Power Point presentations if they do not have a flash drive, or for peer-editing: Students may share sentences that they have written, and then comment upon grammatical errors in other students´ sentences. Then, I comment about whether or not it is correct.
Immediately my students enjoyed the set-up of Edmodo. It is easy to log into, and the fact that it looks like Facebook makes it attractive to them. They seemed disappointed that it does not have all of the Facebook features like “friending” their classmates, but this was the main complaint. It also seems to motivate them to write in Spanish. I have noticed that they may not write in perfect Spanish on Edmodo, but they try with what they know, and they use Spanish more frequently than they do during a normal lesson. In fact, sometimes I do not even have to remind them to use Spanish – it is almost as if they immediately know that they need to use it on Edmodo, and they love to send funny and sarcastic Spanish messages to one another! I love to read their comments.
Overall, I give Edmodo a very good review, and I would recommend it to any teacher who would like to use it as an interactive slightly conversational tool, especially if you struggle with getting all of your students to participate during oral discussions in the classroom.

and here is what Matt had to say about google classroom:

 I've used Google Classroom with my 7th Grade Chorus class, who did a research project on a favorite pop star. It was very easy to set up an assignment for them and set a due date. Since the 7th graders have Chromebooks and Google accounts, it took very little time to get them set up and working. Once they started working, I could monitor their progress from Google account, and I could give each student personalized feedback. Now that they have turned in their projects, I can give them a grade and return it to them. I distribute the assignment and rubric, they do their research, type their notes, create their slide presentation, and get their grade all without using a single sheet of paper.

I'm in a situation where my classroom gets used by others, and at certain times of the year I have to  hold class in different places throughout the school. The flexibility of being able to work on their projects anywhere without the hassle of walking around to each computer with a flash drive was an absolute God-send. There are other apps that can be integrated with Google Classroom to create a rubric and tally a score on the assignment as well. I haven't yet explored those options, because they seem pretty difficult to work with. I will just stick with Classroom for now.
Although Google Classroom just recently came out of Beta testing, I really like the features it has so far. I look forward to what new features will be added to classroom as time goes on.

The big advantage of google classroom is that it integrates well with Google drive --its'strong point is managing the flow of files. It also allows students to use a single log in  Edmodo, on the other hand, is aimed more at classroom management.  The difference can be seen by looking at some of classroom's limitations. According to Alice Keeler, Classroom will not:

Google Classroom does not handle course enrollments like you would find in an LMS or CMS.  Google Classroom does not have a gradebook.  Google Classroom does not track student participation. While students can comment in Google Classroom, there are not discussion boards.Google Classroom does not integrate quizzing features....Google Classroom does not allow teachers to create content within the system. Instead, teachers link to content they build in other places such as Google Docs.  Google Classroom assignments can not be organized into modules or units.

This is not to say that Alice Keeler doesn't think highly of Classroom, after all, she states,  "Since it is from Google, it integrates with Google Drive in amazing ways." and offers a list of 50 things you can do with classroom. In essence, Classroom allows you to set up an environment to both distribute and collect assignments. She offers an entire collection of posts on the use of Google Classroom.

You might consider adopting one of these two in the fall, however,  before making a decision, I'd recommend that you wait until August or September to do so because Google Classroom is evolving as I write and some of the things listed as limitations above, may have be available this fall.

Remarks from a former Google CEO

Some of you are already aware that I took some personal days this past week in order to attend my youngest daughter’s graduation ceremony from Va Tech.  The commencement speaker was Eric Schmidt,  who, for over ten years was the  CEO of Google.  YouTube has made it possible for me to replay those remarks and pass along an abridged version of his address as the subject of this post.  Please keep in mind that I am not copying from a formal printed document, rather I’m transcribing from a speech, therefore the punctuation and phrasing won’t be exactly as it would be had it been prepared for publication.

             …"You're connecting to each other in ways that it was not possible before.  You're using those connections to strengthen invisible ties that hold humanity together.   The connections are what make us human.  They're the things that make  us stronger, ...

If you're awake you're on line, ...you're connected, ...some of you are probably texting right now....Don't take that power for granted.  What you carry with you every day can change the world.  When I was in college, I spent the summers working at Burris Hall in the computer center and the computer center consisted of one computer called an IBM 371-58 and it had a megabit of memory and a  megahertz of processing power, and I was talking to someone the other day and they said "Oh it's a room with a computer,  and I said ‘No, no,  you don't understand, the computer was as big as the room’, ...  and it probably cost around a 10 million dollars.

 Now take a break  from snap chatting and just listen to these numbers, In your phone you probably got 64 or 128 gigabytes of computation for let's say $500 plus or minus,  unsubsidized  That's  20,000 times cheaper and  100,000 times faster, so it's  two trillion times more useful than the computer i used here forty years ago.

Mr. Schmidt pointed out that the commencement address he delivered in 1999 is not on line...

 …because YouTube wasn't invented. And I didn't have a smart phone because they weren't invented, Google was one year old…Amazon was still only a bookstore. Facebook had not been founded.   You couldn't use Twitter, …and, of course, Google Maps  didn't exist, .....So, when you think about it, that's a lot of change, ....[when I was in college] all of our information was what our teachers told us. … now you can know almost everything about everything, .....[just by using]  your smartphone.

If you change the way you approach things,  then you have an opportunity to change the way your life begins.  In other words you chose to live this way… So figure out a way to take advantage of these tools,…  You're the Internet generation, you grew up on line.   You’re the first generation to literally grow up with this as ubiquitous.  It's interesting that I hear lots of people bemoaning this generation, specifically that you all grew up living life [in front of] computer screens always connected to something or someone.  I'm absolutely convinced that these critics are wrong.  The fact that we are now all connected is a blessing.  It's a blessing for safety. It's a blessing for education.  It's a blessing for world peace.  It's a blessing for economic growth.   It's a blessing for your business futures…

 A world's worth of information is perpetually now at your fingertips.  This opens the door to all sorts of interesting questions: How are we going to process all of this data?  … How will you use it?  How will you use it for  good?  How will we find the right balance between letting the data lead us and following our inherent creative and brilliant human intuition….

It is interesting that in the digital age, analysis and interpretation  are even more important than factual knowledge,  ...So here's the deal, …Just because we know so much doesn't mean our problems go away.  The future, doesn't just happen.  …Technology doesn't work on its own.  It's just  a tool.   You're the ones who harness its power.  You're the ones who lead it.  It's in our service and in particular in your service.   It's up to you to know your environment and to use these new tools at your disposal in the smartest and most effective ways possible... A computer is obviously capable of identifying insights…but, the truth is there's plenty we can do and we need to do for ourselves. Intuition, compassion and creativity, these are the things that make us special, ...These are the things we do much better than machines and that define us as humans....

So we're on a cusp of a new and much larger scale of innovation. ...  [Progress will be made in areas such as climate change, fighting cancer, etc…]   But, someone has to make it happen and those people are you.  Computers won't just do this.  It's not going to happen on an auto pilot and it's not going to happen because computers think it's going to happen.  You need to drive it.   You need to make it happen.  ...All  of us are counting on you.   The future that you're building is mine too, ...I need you to do some things; ...I need you to be curious...Ask a lot of questions and go out and try to find the answers.  Don't accept traditional or conventional wisdom.  …When someone says you're thinking too big, say, ‘I don't think I'm thinking big enough.’ 

I thought all of this is a good reminder that technology is a tool which we have to use if we are to connect with today’s digital generation.  Also, teaching this generation higher order thinking skills is far more important than the impartation of facts, after all, students can find all the facts in the world merely by taking their phones out of their pockets.  We need to help them develop the skills for using these facts.

flippity

Mr. Steve Fortna is a Spanish teacher who created flippity.net.  He alerted Richard Byrne who reviewed it in his technology blog, which is read by Melissa Rollosson who spread the word to her middle school teachers, and to me. I decided to try it for myself.

Flippity.net simply provides a Google Sheets template for making and publishing flashcards.  For example, I made this set of Flashcards on some of our American Presidents.  According to Richard Byrne, Google provides different templates to do this same sort of thing,  but, they aren't as easy to work with as Flippity.   I didn't try the Google provided templates out myself, but, Flippity was pretty easy. Indeed--I just experienced a few minor "hiccups."

First, if, upon reading this review,  you decide to try Flippity, be sure to go to flippity.net (dot com will take you to the wrong site).

As you read the directions it says to "make a copy of this template"--that won't be difficult, because once you click on the hyperlink, making a copy is your only option.  As it says, make sure you are already signed in to your Google Account.  Next, after glancing at the spreadsheet, you'll understand that you should replace the text that is there with your own terms and definitions.  You can make the list longer or shorter, change the colors--it's pretty self-explanatory.

The creator of Flippity, Steve Fortna, has obviously gone to some trouble to try to make his directions as simple and brief as possible.  However, in making it so concise, a potential user might be a bit puzzled at this next step--publishing the cards and getting the link.  As you follow the directions  you go to a site where you get a  link and then you might wonder why you copy that link and get a second link.  The first link (which you copy) if followed, merely takes you back to a published version of the spreadsheet--not to the flashcards.  After you click the tab on the bottom or your spreadsheet, and paste in the copied link where directed, then you get a link  which your students can follow to get to the flashcards.  (You may want to use goo.gl to shorten that link.--for more on goo.gl click here.)

In summary,  Flippity is a elegantly simple way to make flashcards for your students.

A few additional comments.  While making these flashcards you create a spreadsheet in your Google Drive.  By default, if you go back and make changes your flashcards automatically update.  In the sample there are examples of images which appear on the web and can be included on the cards--as well as a YouTube which seems to get by our filter just fine (YouTube videos used in Flippity MUST already come through the YouTube EDU filter).  If you want to include either of these types of things and have questions--how to do it is further explained in the Frequently Asked Question section.  Students have the option of viewing and printing the cards in two columns, as a fill in the blank quiz, or as a matching quiz. I also note that in an the antiquated version of Firefox on a school desktop, flippity didn't work...once updated...no problem.  Finally, you'll note that Flippity also provides a template for making a Jeopardy style game.

Google World Wonders

As a former Geography teacher, Google World Wonders sounded wonderful to me.  In the World Geography SOLs there are World Monuments which the students have to be able to identify--Taj Mahal, Big Ben, the Gateway Arch, etc. I knew that Google World Wonders utilized Google Earth street level imagery and I figured that this would be a terrific way to teach these monuments.  Well,  it is, but, I was disappointed to learn that the monuments which can be visited on a World Wonders virtual field trips are limited to a mere 173. This means that of the cultural monuments in the United States, for example,  the Golden Gate Bridge and Independence Hall are among the wonders included, but, the U.S. Capital building and the Gateway Arch are not. Neither is the Eiffel Tower.

With both the capital building and the Eiffel Tower, I found that if I clicked on the Maps icon in my Google Apps box, searched for these locations, and then switched to the street level view, they have some terrific views of those landmarks.  That being the case, why would a geography teacher, or any other teacher, use the World Wonders site rather than just using Google Maps?  I, for one, would certainly use both were I still in the classroom.

 What Google World Wonders has that a street level view elsewhere may not have would be "details"--that is some script giving a bit of  background information about the site. They also have "collections", put together by Google.  These collections might include historic photographs as well as current ones.  For example, you can compare Louis XIV's bedroom as it appeared in the 19th century with how it looks today. In addition you can look  through "user galleries" which is just what the name implies--pictures put together in an album, which some user has created for others to view. Quite often these galleries will include comments from the user as well as details about where the photograph came from, etc. Finally, you can create your own collections--that is, you can gather various items available at Google World Wonders into an album of your own--organize them, add comments, and then show them, or make them available to your students. However, you cannot add photos or other items from outside the project (except for YouTube videos--which you can add--so I guess you could put photos into a YouTube video and add that--once you take care of the filtering issues.)

Here is what someone else had to say about the educational use of World Wonders:

"The World Wonders Project offers an Education page dedicated to assisting educators in history and geography topics. Teacher guides are available for primary school and secondary school. These guides include activity sheets, lesson plans, and presentations. Beyond the obvious use of the free guides, the resources, pictures, historical content and 360 degree view are easy to use and are organized for quick accessibility in the classroom.... The most developed program is secondary school history and geography topics. History topics include: Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annuziata, Liverpool, Palace of Versailles, Florence, and Independence Hall. Geography topics include: Ogasawara Islands, Dorset and East Devon Coast, and Paris. Each topic includes teaching activity sheets, lesson plans, and presentations."

Etec602.wikispaces.com,. 'Etec602 - Google World Wonders Project'. N. p., 2015. Web. 6 Feb. 2015.

Again, if I were in the classroom, I'd certainly ALSO use Google Maps or Google Earth to bring a street level view of World Monuments to my Geography students.  In addition to Social Studies applications, Google World Wonders might be useful for literature, science (World Wonders includes some nice underwater shots), and even math (angles on the Eiffel Towers, math problems involving the Leaning Tower of  Pisa, etc.) What can you come up with?

SoundBible.com

When I taught history, my typical lesson was in the form of a PowerPoint or SMART Notebook lesson (that is following 15 years in which  my typical lesson was in the form of transparency notes from an overhead projector.)  Assuming that many of you still use such lessons to some extent, I'm sure you want to include more than just text in these presentations*.   You might add video clips, links to websites, animations,  and....sound effects.  The point of this post is to walk you through the use of  SoundBible.com to add sound effects to your presentations.  I'll speak specifically to using PowerPoint and Notebook, but, much of what I say could be applied to presentations made in sites such as  Prezi or Slideshare.com, or sites which host online classroom webpages ( I link to nine of them in my Binder of Teacher Tools.

So, here is a step by step guide.
First, go to a site such as SoundBible.com

By clicking here, you can go to a review of fifty-five sites from which you can download free sound effects--with more listed in the comments at the end of the review.

Second - find the sound you want to use.
For example, let's say you want the sound of a creaking door hinge.  I went to the search box in the upper right and typed in creaking door hinge--no luck, After several attempts--door, hinge, creak, etc. I finally found: "large metal rusty door",  "squeaking door 2", "Creaking Door Spooky", and "Door Squeak".  You can click on the "listen" icon preview (prelisten?) and select the one you want.

Third - Download the sound.
Click on the title of your selection in the "sound effect" column.  A page will come up which has icons for downloading the sound either as a .wav file or as an .mp3  Either of these works well in PowerPoint. In SMART Notebook I found that the mp3 worked better than the wav.  Click on one of those icons and make sure you know where the downloaded file is placed.  The location of the file may vary depending on which browser you use, and what you've done in the past (changing the default download location, etc.)

Last - put the sound in your presentation.
Go to the PowerPoint slide where you want to use this sound.  Once there, click  on "insert".  Then, mouse over to the right and click on "audio",  From the drop down menu, select "audio from file" and navigate to the file you just downloaded.  Select it, and a little speaker will appear on the slide.  During the presentation just click on that speaker and the sound will play.

Alternately,  if you want it to play as part of the transition to that slide, click "transition" on the ribbon bar and then click on the pull down list (down arrow) next to the word "sound" (on the right).  I was surprised to see a selection of about fifteen sounds appear.  By clicking on "other sound" a directory structure appears from which you can navigate to your downloaded file.  You'll note that PowerPoint presents you with the option to adjust the duration of the sound and the option of applying it to all the slides.

If you want to use the sound on a SMART Notebook page, select the graphic or textbox you want to associate the sound with and then pull down the menu from the upper right hand corner.  Alternately, after selecting the object you could click on "insert" on the tool bar at the top of the page.  On either list you'll find "sound",  Click there  and browse to your file, Next you are given a choice "play by pressing: corner icon, [or] object" - I prefer the sound playing when I click on the object itself, but that's up to you.  Finally, click on "attach sound" and you are done.

This may sound complicated,but it's not....just follow the steps one at a time and you can literally add some "bells and whistles" to your lesson.   I'll insert a two minute video tutorial below which walks through these steps.  I note that in the video the sound of the bell is quiet enough that it is difficult to hear--trust me, it is there.  Thanks for taking the time to read this.  I hope you find it useful.

*Although I'd like to believe that as a division ACPS is moving away from PowerPoints and toward GoogleSlides, I have to admit that I have not found a way to add a sound effect to a GoogleSlides presentation from a .wav or .mp3 file.

Testimonial Time

As a former classroom teacher, I know how rewarding it is when one of your ex-students tells me how they benefited from having been in my class.  With my job as an ITRT I have somewhat the same feelings when a teacher tells me how their students have become more engaged because of the new ways in which technology is being used in their classroom.  I recently had two such experiences and I am going to use this post to pass them on to you in the hope that they will inspire you to consider taking your technology usage to a  new level and engage your students in a similar manner.

I happened to be in Mr. Hennessey's (science--NHS) class making updates on some laptops.  As I finished Mr. Hennessey related that his students used their cell phones to do lab reports and as a result of being able to use their technology gadgets, they were much more interested in writing up the reports and were handing in much better quality work.  It seems they are able to use their cell phones to take pictures of microscope slides--which they previously had to draw using paper and pencil. Now this news might have been a bit more rewarding to me personally, if I had had some degree of involvement in making this happen.  Nevertheless, it is exciting to see the students figuring out how to take these pictures, transfer them to some device, include them in a lab report, and use their GoogleDrive to hand those reports in to their teacher.

DON'T just skip over these links,  click on them and look at the quality of these reports.  I asked Mr. Hennessey if he could give me a couple of samples to pass on, and he had these to me the following day--so they are not something some student spent extra time on because it  was going to appear here--it's a genuine sample of the quality of the lab reports which his students are creating.
Sample One
Sample Two

Here is a statement from the students involved:

...Taking pictures of each step with our cell phones helped us organize our process and allowed us to remember exactly what was done weeks after. Not only is using technology beneficial to our future endeavors where everything will be processed digitally, we were excited to use our new virtual tools. Putting our new skills to work, using google docs, made the lab exciting and through searching for information on the internet we were able to learn much more about the topic. We look forward to the next lab as we are getting better and better with our understanding of technology.

The second experience I can claim to have a hand in, in that I have worked with Judy Fieth (English CHS/CMS) spending some time in her classroom and helping her walk her students as they initially logged on to their school Google accounts.  Some months have passed since that time and I really hadn't heard a lot from Ms. Fieth as to the effect this might have had on her classes.  However, she had a series of email exchanges with my colleague  Melissa Rollosson, and somehow or another the discussion got around to the impact the use of these the Google applications has had.  Below I'm going to paste two statements, by Ms. Fieth, copied from one of those emails:

Having DOCS this year is wonderful!  It makes my English teacher life much better.  Students write more and better and I'm able to give detailed feedback quickly.  It's such an improvement over notes scrawled in the margins!

I can't believe that English teachers aren't flocking to Docs. The kids take their assignments much more seriously now.  They sense that they're in a "real world" environment, which they are.  I get a lot less of - "When would we ever use this?"   Last semester I had amazing results - students actually ASKING for writing projects.  I've noticed that a few of them have kept working on their projects even though they're not in English class!   Very cool.

Now I realize that some of you have experienced a lot of frustration in the past due to such problems as limited band-width, limited computer availability,  students forgetting their passwords, etc.  If that is you, please realize that strides are being taken to overcome these difficulties--new and faster access points, more devices available (and still more coming this fall), permanent passwords for all  new student accounts, etc.  and consider how you might use technology to more fully engage your students.