iPods are for Education

So you think an iPod is just a great music player. Think again. The iPod is becoming another tool that makes learning exciting and rewarding for today’s digital students. An iPod can be used for audio, video, photos, and podcasting. This shouldn’t surprise you. But how about lesson plans, notes, reference material, quizzes, portable harddrive, interactive content, and RSS feeds? Let’s take a closer look at the many uses mentioned in the first list. When we talk audio it isn’t just music. There are audio clips of famous historical speeches, animal sounds, Children's Story Podcast where well known stories are read, poetry, and many classical books available to listen to. In video, you can choose any united streaming video and have it converted into a movie that’s viewable on an iPod. Now students would be able to review a movie that the whole class had already seen. You can also download videos from Teachertube.com and Youtube.com, convert them, and use them on iPods. There are many free educational podcasts available through the iTunes Store for students to listen to. Now, how about the surprises that were mentioned above. Imagine, if you will, a student looking up a word in their iPod dictionary, or reading a classic ebook, or looking up information in their encyclopedia. All of this is possible, and more, when it comes to reference material. Apple has collected lesson plans that are designed for iPod use. You can also take notes and view them on your iPod. As a teacher, you could write up your own notes for the students and sync them to their iPods. Quizzes can be taken on the iPods. Apple has created an application called iQuiz where you can make your own quizzes that students can take. Also, QuizzlerPro.com has a quiz maker that can be used for iPods, computers, or handhelds. These applications do cost, but are available. Interactive content is another tool that excites students. Now you can go to www.mogopop.com>, and create your own material that can be downloaded onto an iPod. The best part about it is that it is free. There is also content already there that can be downloaded. At this point, I would hope you can see just some of the many possibilities that an iPod has for use within a classroom. A great place to begin your research on educational uses for the iPod is at Tony Vincent’s site located on the web at: www.learninginhand.com>. Then click on iPods and be supercharged.

Musings of a Technology Integration Project

In my past articles I’ve talked about the amount of time a project can take due to the fact the students are always trying to improve on it. This is a great skill to learn, but another skill would be deadlines. The length of time students can take on a project, if allowed, can be very frustrating. After working with these types of projects for several years I’ve come to the realization that I, as the teacher, need to help the students micromanage their time better. As an example, when doing a PowerPoint project I would have them get the written work put on the slides first, before they could go on to the fun stuff. This worked well except they then spent too long getting the rest of it finished. Even when they had a deadline, they couldn’t get the project completed due to their poor time management skills. As I look back I believe I needed to set better deadlines and hold them accountable. What do I mean by this? Again, using the PowerPoint project as my example, I needed to break the project up into smaller sections and set a deadline and consequence for each section when not reached. Ideas for breaking it up would be text, background (pictures or colors), pictures within the slide to go with the text, transitions (slide to slide or within the slide), and finally the speech to go with the presentation. Each of these sections would have a deadline as to when it must be completed and I would grade them as to where they were on each section. This would be a completed/ not completed grade that is part of the overall rubric. This could be done with any technology integration project. Just think about the different sections within the project and divide them up. If you are off in your timing, add a day. In other words, when you check everyone on the due date and find they’ve all been focused, yet it’s not completed, tell them that you miscalculated and they have only one more day on that section. This way it forces them to make some final decisions and still get that section completed. If students have done this type of project before, ask them how they think the project should be divided up and scheduled. You may overrule some of their suggestions, but it gives them some input into time management. Project oriented teaching can be very rewarding and many skills can be learned simultaneously. But by helping with the time management and student accountability, you will take most of the frustration out of any project you do. So think about this, plan for next year, and enjoy the summer.

Web 2.0, The New Culture of Social Community

Quoting from an article written by Susan McLester in the April edition of Technology & Learning: “Web 2.0 has essentially transformed the Internet from an e-commerce and Web page publishing venue to a planet-wide networked community where every citizen is invited to create content.” Let’s look at what it is. First, let’s look at three skills: publishing, broadcasting, and movie production. In the past if you wanted to publish a book or article you would have to send it to a publisher and wait to see whether they would publish it. Newspapers and magazines were written by their own hired staff of writers. Only a small group of people compared to the whole population could accomplish this. The only way to broadcast was to work for, or own your own radio studio. Movie production could only be done by a production company with the equipment and know how. Now enters Web 2.0 onto the scene. Anyone with a computer can publish on the internet in blogs or online newsletters. Likewise, you can produce a broadcast by making a podcast using programs like Garageband or Audacity. If you have a video movie camera you can edit your own movie and upload it to the internet for all to see. All of this can be accomplished with a computer and open source (free) software on the internet. It can then be uploaded onto the web for everyone to participate in. You ask, what do I mean by: participate in? Social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube, and Yahoo! Groups have allowed our digital natives to collaborate and share information and thoughts on anything instantly. Instead of just being a passive reader and watcher of what someone says or does, everyone can be an active participant on what goes up on the web. With new open source online tools like Jumpcut, Eyespot, Toufee, Picnik, and more everyone can participate. But wait, there’s more. New hosting sites such as Revver.com, Spymac.com, and uthTv.com have opened a whole new support network for this community. What does this mean to us as educators? No problem, we just block all the sites. After all, it’s our job to protect them from the evils of the internet. I agree, we need to protect them from the evils of the internet, but are the above mentioned sites evil? Is having a social community on the internet wrong or dangerous, or is it something we don’t fully understand? By blocking all the sites are we making ourselves irrelevant in the eyes of the digital native? Shouldn’t we be teaching them how to safely handle the internet, and then participate in it with them? About a month ago I got involved in an online social network called Runescape. My children had been involved in it for awhile and I had been watching. Runescape is a place where you become a virtual person in a virtual medieval world where you can fish, hunt, build houses, and on and on. You can be a free participant, or for $5 a month become a member with more privileges. Last month Runescape topped one million members. This doesn’t count far more that aren’t members. As I participate in this world, I watch as the young people are constantly helping each other, talking to one another, and problem solving. These are skills we want them to learn. Shouldn’t we be integrating these communities into our classrooms, instead of blocking them? We could spark discussion about many academic topics where the student becomes not only the learner but the teacher, too. Think about it.

Communication is Changing

Times have changed, and the internet is changing the way we do many things. In the past, to be an author, you had to submit an article to a publisher and hope to get approval. Today, you set up a blog account and then keyboard away. This allows anyone and everyone to read what you have to say. This is certainly a radical change from the past, for anyone can become a writer.

Visual media used to be solely the product of movie producers and large corporations. Today, a person can take their digital video camera and film their project. They can then load it into their computer and use an inexpensive program, such as iMovie, to edit their film and add effects. For more extensive changes there are other applications available for use at a higher cost, but still within the everyday person's budget. Upon completion, they can take their movie and upload it to YouTube.com for everyone to view.

So what does this mean to education?

In the past, a student wrote an assignment for the teacher to look at and grade. No one else would see it, so the whole goal would be for a grade. Making movies was unheard of. Becoming a published author was reserved for only those lucky enough to catch someone's attention and interest that had the power to publish.

Now all that has changed and is available to everyone. Classblogmeister.com, gaggle.net, or epals.com provide safe places for teachers and students to go and speak their mind and yet allow it to be under the teacher's control. If we, as teachers, continue to do writing the old way it doesn't reach today's students. This isn't how the real world works. If our goal is to get students to become better writers and get excited about writing, we need to provide real world experiences for them.

Your students will thank you, as mine have.