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Classroom Edtech Survey Results

A while ago I posted a Google survey with some basic questions about technology in classrooms. While I am disappointed with the number of people who completed the survey. (I was hoping for 100+ and instead only 23 people filled out the survey.) Strange. I think there are still some interesting things to report from these numbers.

What kind of hardware do you have access to in your classroom?

We’ve heard a lot of hype over the past year about ipads and tablets in classrooms, yet the people who filled out the survey were still split; mostly between desktops and laptops.

And while a lot of people are gaining 1:1 access to either laptops or desktops, we still have relatively few tablets.

And apparently schools are still willing to spend large amounts of their own budgets on technology as 61% of people recorded that their buildings are not BYOD and will not allow their students to use their own phones either.

One result that surprised me was that word processors and Powerpoint still reign supreme….

74% of students are not using Google apps:

and 39% of classrooms have taught at lest some coding skills:

Most teachers who took the survey reported that they have an online space that they use to communicate with students and parents:

Collaboration remains on shaky ground:

and filters remain a significant issue to using technology

I think in many ways, these small results show us some interesting trends that haven’t moved in a few years:

1.) Traditional laptop and desktop computers that are provided by the schools themselves still dominate in classrooms.

2.) We are still using a lot of basic office software in classrooms. We haven’t made much of a leap to concentrate on film or audio making, design or collaboration.

3.) Surprisingly, Google apps still have a lot of inroads to make in schools and classrooms.

4.) Filtering is still a large issue. I was surprised to see this. I thought that in many ways this battle had been fought and at least partially won. Apparently we still have some distance to go with this.

5.) A lot of hype around coding entering classrooms, but it still remains largely on the outside.

I’d be interested in your thoughts about this.

Are 3D Printers Trendy?

by Clarence Fisher 8 Comments

I’ve written before about the fact that I’ve acquired a 3D printer for my classroom this year. It’s been interesting in a lot of ways. Kids are fascinated by it, the possibilities of making things are almost endless and I’ve been pulling out the little hair that I have left trying to keep the machine calibrated and running.

It’s an adventure.

The hype behind 3D printers seem almost endless. Makerbot has been pushing hard, readying ads for the holiday season and contributing to a frantic Donors Choose campaign to put a 3D printer in every classroom in the US.

I think it’s time to step back from the hype.

As with any technology, dropping a 3D printer into a classroom will not fix all that ails education and learning. Some of the kids in my classroom are ready to tinker, make files and work on the printer itself. Others could care less. As I mentioned, the printer in my room seems to require constant work. After it was picked up improperly and knocked out of alignment, it took me hours of work to get it running again.How many people are willing to spend that time? No matter what you buy, it will break down. You can count on it. It might work right out of the box, but after a few weeks the filament will stick, the gears will slip, the calibration will come out of line. I can see all kinds of printers sitting in back rooms about 3 years from now when they have had mechanical troubles and no one is able to fix them.

The same story goes for the files themselves. While it is easy to download things from places like Thingiverse to print, there’s almost no educational purpose in that. This means that you will have to work with kids to design your own 3D meshes and stl files. These files are glitchy, incredibly finicky and often print improperly or sometimes not at all.

The hype behind 3D printers has been incredibly overbuilt as companies like Makerbot work to invent an industry from the ground up. While they are fascinating machines with incredible possibilities behind them, I would caution people to be sure they have a plan before they purchase. The trend and pressure is building. 3D printers are turning into a must have for a lot of teachers and schools, but in my experience, the machines are nowhere near prime time.

As with any other technology, purchase for your school or classroom only after you’ve done your homework and have a solid plan for making sure the goal is learning and not satisfying your shiny gadget syndrome.

Idea Hive Lesson Planning

by Clarence Fisher 1 Comment

My Idea Hive partner, Heather Durnin, and I are working on a few short stories together in our classroom.

Heather and I have been working together collaboratively for a few years. I thought a peek into how we do our planning might be interesting to some people.

Over the past week Heather and I have been working on the story the Monkey’s Paw with our class. It is time to keep moving along. This time, I chose the classic Canadian story To Build A Fire by Jack London for us to work with.

Heather and I live 2 700 kms apart so tools like skype, twitter, email and google docs allow us a series of channels to work though. So as I sat down at my kitchen table and began building a structure for us I knew we would be making use of all of these tools. I started with a Google document with some simple lesson plan outlines laid out. We will work through a day of pre reading activities, a few days of reading and then move on to post reading ideas. There is nothing ground breaking in the content and structure of these lessons. Heather and I have managed to break a lot of boundaries, but this set of lessons isn’t about breaking new ground in content. They are mostly focused on getting our students working together and practicing the skills they will need to do that. So, after I had finished a draft of his document I shared it with Heather for her to take a look at, comment on and make any revisions or adjustments. This has to be a collaborative process as we both have a lot of outcomes that we need to meet.

Following this, I begin making up a series of nine documents that we are going to use with our students for the pre and post writing activity. Heather and I have already shared class lists and email addresses for our students so this is a simple matter of making up the activities that we want and sharing them with all of the kids who are in that group. Here is an example of what we are going to do for a pre reading activity for this story. The first day we are working on this story we will start off the day of the lesson with a quick skype call and make some connections between kids and communities. Following this, students from each class will head to their google docs account where they will have an individual and a group activity to complete. Heather and I will split the supervision of the chatrooms that goes with each document, jumping back and forth between the nine groups ensuring that the students are on task, productive and practicing good online collaboration skills.

After these pre reading activities are completed, we will begin reading the actual story. We do this over skype. We will begin the morning with a call, any quick news items and then one of us will read. We have set up a Today’s Meet chatroom for each day that we will read. As the teacher in one classroom reads aloud to all of the students, the other will supervise all of the students in the chat, keeping them focused on the topic and also posting questions and ideas for everyone to consider. (Here ‘s a chat that we used for the story The Monkey’s Paw.) When we finish the reading for the day, we always have the students post their ideas on a linoit bulletin board. (Here’s a bulletin board from The Monkey’s Paw)

We think that the reading of this story will take us two days over skype. Following this we will move the students into a post writing activity. For this story that will involve the students listening to an mp3 of another version of this story as well as completing a task on a group google doc. We’ve also got a few reflection questions for our students to take a look at since at that point they will have finished working with two different texts:

POST READING STUDENT REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1.) While we have read these two stories, I have mostly used the chatrooms to…. (ask questions, socialize, post quotes, post comments, post random thoughts, etc)

2.) I have found the bulletin boards each day helpful / not helpful to help me to think about the reading that day. Why?

3.) How is using these kinds of tools for learning as opposed to socializing different? How is it different working with partners 2 700 kms away?

I started these documents and then shared them with Heather. She was online while I was doing this planning so we talked about a few things, made a adjustments to our plans and are now ready to move ahead.

There is nothing ground breaking in our lesson plans. Pre reading, reading and post reading activities similar to what you would find in many classrooms. What is different is the added value that is brought in the collaboration and the skills that the students (and teachers!) need to focus on when you work in this way. We are not breaking new ground for our students in the content of these lessons, But we are pushing them to use these tools in ways that support learning, collaboration and gaining new perspectives.

Classroom Life in 2013

by Clarence Fisher 1 Comment

It’s 8 AM. School here starts at 9. I’ve been in my classroom working for almost an hour when I start thinking about what today will be like:

- the 3D printer in my classroom has been running since I arrived here. I’ve had a few problems dialing it in, but with a few final adjustments this morning, the quality looks great and I’ve got a backlog of student made projects to print out. It will probably take a few days to catch up.

- My Idea Hive partner, Heather Durnin and I are working on the story the Monkey’s Paw with our students. Our classrooms are 2700 kms apart, but over the past two days we’ve had kids form up into groups and have played vocabulary bingo between our two classrooms. Today, we are going to actually begin reading the story. As well as reading it live on skype between our two classes, we are also recording it on 105thehive radio so that other classes can listen in if they wish. We have a chatroom set up for the kids to use while we are reading the story and a linoit bulletin board for them to post their ideas on after we have finished our reading for today. We need to talk with our students about appropriate use of chatrooms for learning as it is a different skill set than simply using these kinds of tools for socializing.

- My high school web design class started on some simple video editing yesterday. Today, a grade 12 student in our school is coming to show off some of his imovie creations that he made in a class of mine last year. After that, we are spending some time hunting down trailers old cartoons and archival footage from archive.org to put into our own original remixes.

- Later today we are going to use Khan Academy videos to practice a few geometry skills that we are struggling with. I’m not a huge user of Khan Academy and I’ve read many critiques of the site, but I am willing to use any resource I can find to help when my students struggle. I think that the site has a good set of tutorials and practice exercises on this topic and I am willing to use them.

- Finally, my students have to finish up their writing of a fantasy story that they have been working on. We usually use Google docs for any kind of writing like this. It makes revising and editing easy. It makes it easy to work on something here and at home as well. It also lets students share their work between each other and me to get some feedback as they go.

I’ve been teaching for almost 20 years. Any one who thinks education isn’t changing and isn’t more powerful now than in the past needs to spend more time in classrooms.

Web Literacy Standard

by Clarence Fisher 7 Comments

After over a year of work, Mozilla has released it’s web literacy standards.

I like their list. It’s simple (yet surprisingly full of depth), easy to follow and filled with common sense.

This is something to use in your classroom as you look at the breadth and depth of the activities that you have your students take part in. This is something that you could build a curriculum around. There is information here and here to learn more about this initiative.

Murals and Drawings? Old School…

by Clarence Fisher 1 Comment

So, let me get this straight….

1.) I can buy Raspberry Pi computers for my classroom at about $35 each…

2.) I can buy Minecraft classroom version for about $40….

3.) I can buy a small 3D printer for a few hundred dollars…

4.) I can control that printer using the Raspberry Pi using free Octoprint software…

5.) I can print the things we create in Minecraft using Printcraft.

So lets pull this entire story together….

I can buy cheap computers for my classroom and create entire worlds with my students. We could build everything from historically correct versions of Egypt and Rome to entire fantasy worlds.

We could use those worlds to explore and create entire problem spaces.

Then, once we have done these things, the kids could print out the buildings, castles, temples, etc that they have created and take them home. All for less then the price of buying a desktop computer for my classroom?

Why do I still sometimes ask kids to draw murals or things like that in my classroom?

The State of Edtech in Classrooms: Fall 2013

by Clarence Fisher

Edtech is changing, advancing and maturing.

That is a good thing.

It’s time to take a snapshot of where we are right now, in the fall of 2013.

I’ve made a simple google survey for us to get an look at where our classrooms and schools are. If you are K – 12 classroom teacher, click this link and please fill out the survey. 5 – 10 minutes max. If you are an administrator, either pass this along to your staff or fill it out thinking about a typical classroom in your school.

The questions are basic: software, hardware, BYOD, coding, access to a makerspace, etc. It is meant to give our community a quick snapshot of where we are.

I promise to make the results freely available to everyone that way we can see where we are as a K – 12 edtech community.

Thanks for taking the time to do this.

Online Book Reviews – The Buddypress Version

by Clarence Fisher 1 Comment

I’m not a fan of book reports. I never have been. As a student who was forced to complete them I never found a purpose for them. As a teacher, I struggle with the same problem.

But recently the language arts consultant in my school division and I came up with a plan for book reports with a twist. Nothing fancy, but I thought people might be looking for another idea. It’s always worthwhile to share.

The digital age has brought us many ideas for book reports and reviews. People have done both video and audio reports and reviews. I have seen reports and reviews done live in classrooms as well as animations outlining books. I wanted something quick and simple. I wanted something that would serve as a review and something that others could access.

This brought me back to having a class website.

My class website runs on WordPress with a Buddypress overlay. This gives us the ability to make groups. I’ve also installed a plugin called Buddypress documents. This lets us make online documents that are associated with a group. Unfortunately, these documents can be associated with a specific group, so others can see them, but they cannot be worked on by multiple students at the same time. This plugin is not a replacement for google docs.

Starting at our Idea Hive classroom website, we have a group simply called Books. In this group, a few students have started talking about their reading and what they are reading. Inside of this group is a set of documents that are being created. Each of these documents has been created by a student and is a review of a specific book. Each of these documents follows a specific format, but, overall, they are meant to be a place for students to give others a quick look inside of a book. As well, using the settings that this plugin gives us, anyone can find and read the reviews that we are writing, but only the students who are part of the Idea Hive can leave comments about the books. Public and safe at the same time. As well, using our settings, other students who have read a specific book that a review has already been posted for can add their own information and thoughts to that already created review.

Buddypress Document Setting Options

In the end, writing quick reviews that others can access, edit and add to is an assignment that has more purpose to me than traditional book reports that no one else sees but the teacher.

There are a lot of options out there for options, but this is one that works for us.

Ghost – Bringing Blogging Back

by Clarence Fisher 3 Comments

I’m a big fan of WordPress. Since I moved away from a centralized service and started hosting my own blog, I’ve always worked with WordPress. The size of it’s community and of it’s repositories of plugins, themes and code extensions never ceases to amaze me.

But as with all things technology related, new things are always on the horizon.

Today brings us Ghost.

Ghost is an open source alternative to WordPress which focuses simply on blogging. As their introductory video says, WordPress has grown into a piece of software with huge capabilities, blogging being only one of them. Ghost, on the other hand, promises to simply be blogging software that is simple and easy to use.

Their blog is here, and the code repository that Ghost can be downloaded from is here. You can also set up a free account at Ghost and download the software directly from them. I’m also interested in the fact that the software looks fairly light and should run on something like a Raspberry Pi with few problems.

Among a constant stream of emerging apps and multimedia suites, I continue to believe platforms such as this that allow people around the world to get their voices heard are still one of the most valuable aspects of the internet.

Tinkering

by Clarence Fisher 1 Comment

This poster hangs in my classroom

I’ve been writing and tweeting a lot lately about the fact that I’ve got a new 3D printer for my classroom. I’ve been impressed by the new excitement and learning that it’s brought with it.

One of the first things that you learn when you put a 3D printer into operation is that it isn’t easy to use. There are a million things that can go wrong. From troubles with the files themselves to a machine that is finicky to use and needs constant, ongoing and continual care, these machines are not for the faint of heart.

Naturally, that means that you need to do a lot of tinkering to get things to work. We’ve searched for workarounds, for software solutions, for different settings and for people and groups who can help us. Luckily, the internet is filled with many patient people who have been willing to teach us a lot of things.
Some students find this need to fix up and calibrate a source of endless frustration. They want the process of creation to be frictionless and easy. Others find it fascinating. They want to work to improve things and are willing to spend the time they need to for this to happen.

As we’ve become a throw away society over the last few decades, I think that we’ve largely lost the mindset of tinkering. The childhood of many people used to be filled with construction projects, chemistry sets and exploration. My own children are amazed when I tell them how we used to take our bikes out into the bush around our community, catch frogs, make a fire and eat them.(kind of nasty as an adult, but hey, we were kids!). We used to build forts and rafts, catch fish and figure out how to turn them into something edible. One trip would see us hauling axes and rope and saws out on our backpacks and in the next we’d have a load of something else we needed.

This has me thinking about school work in general. Teachers are often frustrated with students who want to be spoon fed information and who aren’t able to make a connection to the work they need to complete. Students see a lot of the work in classrooms as irrelevant and to simply be completed as quickly as possible. They don’t see it as something to be worked on, mulled over, improved and tinkered with. From science experiments to pieces of writing, we need to work in classrooms to restore an ethos of tinkering.

As professionals, we constantly tinker with our practices. We reflect on what worked and what didn’t and adjust to do better the next time. This is tinkering. We should expect no less from our students. Students working on a piece of writing should try out “thought experiments” to see where a plot twist or the introduction of a new character will take them. This is tinkering. Students should be encouraged to think about science experiments, how effective they were, and how they might be improved. Tools like Scratch, that allow students to download the code of others and build on it and change it encourage this active mindset.

I’m currently in the middle of reading Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager’s new book Invent to Learn. It’s being called the Bible of the emerging maker movement in schools for good reason. Outlining the history of constuctivist thinking in schools as well as the benefits of making, tinkering and engineering in classrooms, this book encourages us to build classrooms around active construction.

Just as we’ve developed an ethos, a mindset, in education over the past few years of community development, we also need to think about developing an attitude of tinkering with learning of all types. This brings with it a certain type of lesson, a certain type of classroom design, and of assessment among other things. Tinkering is an old fashioned word in some ways, but I think it is also one way forward into the future of education and learning.