Students using Showme to show the world.

My friend Kip introduced me to the Showme App this summer and right away I feel in love with the ability to capture screen annotations and voice narrations as the user is demonstrating something on their iPad.
Now in class I can demonstrate solving and graphing an inequality using Showme, and instead of not being able to hear or see that explanation again, the captured vodcast can easily be linked or embedded in a classroom website for later viewing and reviewing.
As my familiarity with the app grew I thought "wouldn't it be great for students to use this to help their classmates with difficult problems and demonstrate to me what they truly know." We distributed the free app to students and literally watched and listened as they showed me and their classmates what they knew.
However, an interesting thing happened the other day. Being curious about how I could use the showme website to support student learning I started clicking through some topics. After selecting Learn by Topic > Geometry I was blown away by what I saw. Here it is:


You see up until now students have solved problems for basically two people: themselves and their teacher. But now students are solving problems for an audience of millions. When I projected the website for them the other day and showed them how their works was showing up in just two clicks of the mouse their mouths dropped. They were blown away by the fact that their work was published and freely available for anyone to view and use. I wish I could have take a picture of their faces you could see the sense of ownership and pride in their work take on new meaning.

Feedback from Parent-Teacher Conferences

Recently parents and teachers congregated in the Zeeland East gymnasium and cafeteria for the time honored tradition of conferences.  Like most teachers, it is a time great excitement and a little bit of apprehension.  The vast majority of conferences go very well and are positive and productive exchanges about the learning that is taking place under the teacher's direction. 

Why would should this year be any different?  At the high school level, each student has used the Ipad as a new tool for learning.  In some classes, this has greatly transformed the way information is delivered and how learning is assessed.  But a time honored question was certain to be raised by some parents in conference with teachers; is new necessarily better for learning?

I had several parents ask questions about the Ipad and how it has been used in class.  This is a question that is fair to ask and one that I was prepared to answer.  Parents were directed to class web pages that I have set up for students to access materials that we use in class on a daily basis.  While I have been doing this for several years, parents now took a more keen interest in seeing how materials could be accessed and then manipulated by their student on the Ipad.  Many parents were amazed at how easily students could download files, open them in different applications, and produce work that could be submitted electronically. 

Beyond this use of the Ipad in my class, each Civics students in my class has created a blog using Blogger or Wordpress.  Student Blogs are being utilized for students to share opinions on a variety of topics ranging from the death of Mommar Qaddafi to their stance on gun laws.  Both parents and students welled up with pride when I pulled these up in conferences.  A lasting comment from conferences that stuck with me was when a parent turned to their child after reading their blog and said: "I didn't know you thought about these types of things.  That is so cool."  The parent then proceeded to write down the blog URL so that they could read it regularly.  What a neat way for parents, students, and teachers to connect with the Ipad and share thoughts on topics that may not have come out in a traditional class discussion.


On a side note: this practice has been a wonderful time and money saver for me personally.  I have saved countless hours not running off as many papers for students.

Real Reflections from the Principal turned Teacher

Principal of Zeeland East H.S., Marc VanSoest, traded in his principal hat for one hour a day to get a taste of teaching in a 1:1 iPad U.S. History class. Here are his words to his staff following the experience:

"Last week, I had the opportunity to get back into the classroom in Matt's 3rd Hour US History class. Going into it, I figured I knew what I was doing....I had taught US History for the better part of 8 years previously...and it's not like anything really changes in history. I was dead wrong. I cannot get over the way that little glass and metal device (iPad) changed almost all of my thinking. As I sat to plan the week, I figured I could do a Keynote, watch a movie clip or two on YouTube (it's Social Studies...I had to show a few movie clips...), maybe we'd do a little survey using eClicker, and I'd have them do some .pdf note taking stuff as we went along.

That was all well and good in theory. Then my old Powerpoints didn't translate into Keynote, YouTube blocked a clip, and eClicker didn't work cause the kids and I were on different networks. I even found an app I wanted the 30 students to download. I'm sure that was useful for the 26 of them that were actually able to download it. Frustrating....

Then I remembered something. I was only doing this for one hour, for one week. 5 hours of my life. In other words, one of your teaching days. I wasn't even toiling with this...this thing...for the 25 hours a week you all are doing it.

It's not that I didn't understand that the iPad was changing us. I knew that. What I didn't understand was the profound level of frustration that accompanies its use in the classroom. But having said that...when things work, it's an amazing thing to watch students create, explore, and drive the learning process in new ways."

Moving Beyond Our Desk AND The Classroom

Integrating the iPad into our classrooms here at Zeeland East High School has not only challenged me and my colleagues to rethink just about everything, but it has also prompted our students to move beyond the old way of doing things.

Rather than standing tethered to our desktop computers to take attendance or to click through a presentation, the iPad has allowed us to move about the room while accomplishing the same tasks. With the Splashtop Whiteboard app on our iPad, and the Splashtop Streamer installed on our desktop system, we can actually take attendance while out amidst our students. Likewise, old PowerPoint presentations can now be run using this application without needing to click keys or wrangle a mouse on our desk. Even better, this same app allows for annotating, drawing, and highlighting right over the content we’re projecting onto the screen in the front of our classroom. The result? More engaging presentations AND the freedom to roam about the room – an essential freedom, especially when working with a group in need of extra classroom management. And it’s this same freedom to work remotely that I was surprised to discover some of my students engaging in just recently.

Nearing the end of our culminating project in one of my 10th Grade English classes, some groups were still scrambling to get their work off of the ground, others were putting the finishing touches on their collaborative efforts, and a few were stymied by some of their teammates being absent. However, there was one particular group that surprised me with their creative solution they found for the absence of one member on their team: the Skype app. I had just finished meeting with one of the teams to check their progress, so I proceeded to check my email, only to find that the absent student had emailed me to see what he was missing in class today. Before I replied to his request, I walked around the doorway to check on his group, only to find their team leader sitting with her iPad propped up next to her with that same student’s face filling her screen. As I approached her, the absent student shouted, “Hey, Mr. Jacob! Did you get my email?” I was stunned. When I asked his teammates what they were doing, they told me that they were Skyping him so they could continue working on their project without having to wait for him to return with the information they needed. What an awesome moment that was! There that student was, sitting up in his sickbed, collaborating with his team so they wouldn’t fall behind on their work. It was quite a moment for me.

No excuses for not having their work ready on time. No excuses that they didn’t know how to reach their teammate. These sophomores did some critical thinking, planned ahead, and made things happen in a way that we couldn’t have imagined happening prior to the arrival of the iPads. This was truly a moment of discovering that, through a little bit of technology, and a little bit of creative problem solving, students can empower themselves to be better collaborative learners. And we as teachers can see how leaving our desk behind is almost as good as students discovering how to leave the classroom behind to reach out to their peers.

Social Studies on the SmartBoard

Using the SmartBoard in interesting/new ways has been a bit of a challenge for me this year. I am good at using the projector (daily) to display student responses/writing, worksheets for modeling skills, and read aloud books, but am working to integrate the SmartBoard software/programs into daily math, science, and social studies. I have been recently working on a Zeeland history unit in social studies and tried the following lesson on 'determining the past or long ago'...

2nd Grade Social Studies - History: We read the book, The Ox Cart Man, together using the projector the first day. The second day, we took a closer look at some of the pictures and words. We thought, like historians, about the information that we could gather from the pictures and words about the past. We talked about comparing the pictures and words with how things are today. Using ImageMate, students were able to come up to the SmartBoard and circle things in the pictures or words on the page that were clues into the past. On the third day, students completed a morning message (SmartBoard Notebook file) with a different illustration (using ImageMate) from the book. They were asked to circle and write about the evidence they found that proved this book took place in the past, just like a historian would do.

My students were more engaged in this book this year because they could come up to the front and "show" other kids their thinking. They could "teach" the others about the evidence they found about the past and what it told them.

I think this is another small step in the direction I am trying to go with my 'daily technology integration'. This did not take along time to plan because I was already doing this lesson in the past, but it did take some rethinking on my part. It was well worth the time and it was more memorable for my students understandings about 'the past'.

(Thanks to K H-A for helping me with this post.)

The Technology Ride

It's truly amazing what is produced when teachers and students get excited. I would like to share a story from Creekside. Mr. Ashby recently made a big change. He moved from 1st grade to 6th grade and he has "taken the bull by the horns". He quickly jumped onto the roller coaster ride we call Technology Twists and Turns here at ZPS. He hopped on the roller coaster right away. His first twist of the year was having his 6th grade social studies students do a scavenger hunt on Google maps. You can view the assignment here. He was quick to share how excited the students were, especially when they found their own house! (It sure is fun seeing teachers excited!)

Scavenger Hunt

His next turn on the coaster took him to recording commercials. Mr. Ashby has provided us with a short description of the assignment. Assignment: Create a commercial to advertise for a destination either to visit or to move to. It has to include research for population, weather and local attractions, but that information has to be used in the advertising (this is not a report about that place). The students created a power point presentation, then saved the slides as .jpg files. They wrote a script and recorded it using Audacity. The voice files and pictures were imported into moviemaker and saved; they had to line up the pictures with their script. We did not have time to put music in, but we'll do music for the next project!

Student Project

Hats off to Mr. Ashby and his 6th graders at Creekside. Keep on riding through the twists and turns of technology!

Student Conceptions Driving Instruction

One of the many great ways to transform our learning environment through iPad integration is in the way of gathering real time student artifacts and using it to direct face to face classroom discussions. Real time response systems, clickers, or classroom response systems have been around for awhile now and used to be tied to a remote control type device.

Since then this instantaneous response system has evolved to web-based response systems and iPad compatible apps. Using these sites and apps gives every student a voice in responding to questions and provides teachers real time feedback based directly on student understanding. Imagine how this can transform our face to face time with students?

Consider a few uses: students complete a lecture or video then navigate to a Google form and answer five questions based off the content. The teacher can pull up the spreadsheet of responses and see immediately what conceptions students are forming and can scaffold instruction accordingly.

Or perhaps students are directed to the teachers Poll Everywhere site at the beginning of class for a 5 question warm up based off of the previous day's content. In real time responses are aggregate on the screen giving the teacher data and understanding of what their students are understanding, from here teachers can regroup their class to spend more time with those who need it and allow those who don't need reinforcing the opportunity to work ahead independently.

There are many great ways to collect student artifacts and use them to drive your instructional time Survey Monkey, Question Press, Poll Daddy, and thatquiz are all web-site based tools that offer some sort of free or educational plan. As well there are iPad/iPod apps that provide similar experiences and student data. Try using one of the above sites or find a great app and see what it tells you about your students understanding. Or, even better, show the class results to your students (in a safe way) to allow them to see what they are and are not understanding. Let their conceptions drive your instruction and their learning.