At a Crossroads…

I’ve reached another crossroads in both my physical and online lives.  Almost three years ago, in June of 2006, I switched jobs.  I moved from being a classroom teacher to an Academic ICT consultant with the Toronto Catholic District School Board.  A dramatic shift occurred at this time as I met new people and this exposure led to an experimentation in, and then a full adoption of, online tools.  Creating this new online life was not easy as a struggled for some time to find an identity for myself by publishing content in wikis and through expression first in blogs, and then later in Twitter.

My first blog, http://canuckhistory.wordpress.com was an attempt to unite what I was previously doing in the classroom before my web 2.0 “awakening” and what I was experimenting with after this “awakening”.  While I maintained that blog for a little more than one year, I found that I had changed too much.  Many people still visit that blog but I haven’t contributed to it for over a year.  I lost interest in posting links to resources for instruction in Canadian history and wanted to delve into something a little more cutting edge.  The purchase of my first iPod in 2006 and my Blackberry Pearl in 2007 convinced me that using mobile devices for learning was what I wanted to talk about and have maintained this blog for a little over one year.

However, I’ve reached another crossroads.  I started a new job this week as an elementary school vice-principal and I am once again struggling with my identity.  How do I unite my love for mobile digital tools, my passion for educating kids and my current role as an administrator?  While I will likely shut down that history blog at some point in the near future, I want to continue this one as I believe that mobile learning is the future and conversations around these tools need to continue.  However, how will I keep up with the amount of massive change when significantly more of my time is needed to run a school?  I guess that is where my online PLN comes in.  I do realize that something is going to have to give and I will have to let some things go.  As I already mentioned, that history blog is going to have to go.  However, this blog and my new initiative, The Ontario Educator Meetup, are too important to me and I want to continue them.  What shape these will take only time will tell.

Hopefully, the mix between admin and technolgy will produce something even more fruitful.  The last time I was faced with change, something fruitful resulted.  My hope is that the same thing happens again.

Mobile Learning: A Brief Reading List

To further your exploration into the world of mobile learning, here is a list of 10 blog post, articles and other musing on the topic of mobile learning that I have read recently:

1.  iTouch Learning: A page on Jane Hart’s Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies website that lists of reasons why the iPhone/iPod Touch are ideal for mlearning.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/iTouchLearning/index.html

2.  Lift the Cell Phone Ban: Hosted on the Scholastic website, this article is a plea to lift the ban on cell phones in schools and to use these devices to help students learn.

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3751073

3.  From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning: Liz Kolb’s blog on using cell phones for learning.

http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/

4.  100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better: The title says it all.  A post found on the iPod Hacker Blog.

http://the-ipod-hacker.blogspot.com/2008/02/100-ways-to-use-your-ipod-to-learn-and.html

5.  Why an iPod Touch in Education? Chris Webb’s blog post with links to resources that can be used on an iPod Touch to help students learn.

http://projects.minot.k12.nd.us/groups/chris/weblog/5ce29/Why_an_iPod_Touch_in_education_.html

6.  School Axes Textbooks as Pupils Download their Homework onto their Mobile Phones: A news article in the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper on a school that is moving away from analog content and toward digital content.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1082928/School-axes-textbooks-pupils-download-homework-mobile-phones.html

7.  Using the iPod for Learning: A slideshare presentation from an Grace Poli, Media Specialist and Apple Distinguished Educator.

http://www.slideshare.net/gpoli/an-ipod-in-your-classroom-toolbox-presentation-736951?type=powerpoint

8. Mobile Phones and Citizen Journalism: A wiki on the MobileActive.org website on using cell phones in citizen journalism.

http://mobileactive.org/wiki/Mobile_Phones_and_Citizen_Journalism

9. MurMur: A concept where oral histories are collected and shared in various areas in 8 cities around the world (as of this writing) where the general public is free to both record and listen to personal histories connected to their neighbourhoods.

http://murmurtoronto.ca/

10.  Enabling Mobile Learning: An article about enabling mobile learning on the Educase Connect website.

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/EnablingMobileLearning/40549?time=1220792835

Update: Polling by Cell Phone – Can We Completely By-Pass Clickers?

As the break-neck speed at which development of digital technology continues to take place, and considering that my November 27, 2007 blog post titled “Polling by Cell Phone – Can We Completely By-Pass Clickers?” is currently my most viewed post, I decided to share an update concerning the use of a cell phone, and now even an iPod Touch, as a clicker.

Thanks to my Twitter network, in particular @dougpete, I was made aware of a recent announcement made by Turning Technologies that they are making available a free iPhone/iPod Touch app that will allow users to install their clicker software to a student’s iPhone/iPod Touch, thus incorporating the ability to poll students using their response system software on a mobile device that students already possess.  A quick visit to their website also revealed that Turning Technologies also has a version of their software available for Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices.  A powerful way to incorporate devices students already have without the cost of purchasing clickers and the problems of storage and the aging of equipment.

I spoke a representitive of Turning Technologies at the most recent ECOO conference and while I can’t remember the exact costs of their service, I do remember it to be very reasonable.  In addition, I also recall their service being totally web based so that students without a compatible mobile device can still participate in a poll by inputing their responses from a computer.

While I am definitely not pleadging my support for any one brand, I am highlighting Turning Technologies as an example of what is already possible and that it is not necessary, despite what other vendors (who will remain nameless) tell us, to purchase propriety hardware in order to take advantage of clicker technology in the classroom.  Purchasing only the service and providing students the ability to install the app on their iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry or Windows Mobile device is a much cheaper alternative that allows students to use their parents’ invesment for learning.

iPods in Education Part 11: Digital Flash Cards

This blog post is in response to all the digital flash card websites that I’ve been coming across lately that are offering teachers digital flash cards for iPod for a fee.  There is an easy option for teachers and students to create their own digital flash cards that is totally free.

Obviously, the concept of using flash cards is not new.  Traditionally, flash cards are paper cards that have questions on one side and answers on the other.  They have been used as a way to help student reinforce curricular learning, to study for tests and to make studying a little more visual (addressing needs of visual learners).  However, with the advent of digital media devices, many educators and students are creating digital versions of flash cards and placing them on digital media devices such as an iPod to help student take their study tools with them.

Ultimately, digital flash cards that are placed on an iPod are images and ‘flipping’ the card is simply moving from one image to the next. To create a flash card, one can use a variety of tools but the easiest for this purpose is to use slide presentation software such as MS PowerPoint or Keynote.  A teacher, or student, can place the question on one slide and the solution on the next.  This process can continue until all the needed flash cards are created in one single MS PowerPoint or Keynote file.  The trick is to save the slides as separate images: when saving the file, change the file type to .jpg image format.  An image taken from PowerPoint is seen below.

As long as the files are named in such a way as the file name containing a question is in higher alphabetical order than the file name containing the answer, then the questions will always appear before their answers.  For example, flash card 1 can have a file name Warof1812 – Qu1q for the question and a file name Warof1812 – Qu1s (s meaning solution) for the answer.  Having a consistent naming convention will make finding files easy and ensure that the questions always display before the answers.

The images can be uploaded into iTunes and sent to the iPod as usual. The flash cards will appear in the Photos area of the iPod.  For more information on this topic, listen to episode #9 and #10 of Tony Vincent’s Learning in Hand Podcast.

Where Are We Headed?

Often in this blog, and other education-related blogs that I read, the focus of  blog posts is often on the technology tools themselves, why these tools should be incorporated into the classroom to help students learn and how-to’s of accomplishing this tasks.  However, sometimes I feel a desire to be philosophical and look at the state of how things really are and where things are going.  In doing so, it is often easy to take the stance the what is happening right now in education is insufficient, that we as educators are often ineffective (at least when it comes to connecting kids with technology) and that we have to make things better. At this point in time, feeling this way is especially tempting for me as I work with my network to get the Ontario Educator Meetup off the ground.

I want to get a little philosophical but I don’t want to fall into that negativity trap.  Obviously, something right is happening in today’s schools because kids are learning, reforms are taking hold and improvements are being made.  Jobs are being filled by qualified individuals and standards of living are improving.  Negative comments that bemoan the quality of today’s education system and/or the capabilities of today’s students/graduates reek more of nostalgia than of actual reality.  For example, I’ve often heard complaints that today’s youth can’t do mental math when handling a job as a cashier. I can’t help to believe that the statements like this are biased and non-reflective.  I challenge particular example with the following statement: in modern capitalism, cashiers have always used some sort of adding machine and when those weren’t available, calculations were always done on paper.  I challenge this statement in another way as well – if a young person has the high stress job of being a cashier at a the largest discount department store in the world (and we all know which one that is don’t we?), they couldn’t possibly deal with the pressures of the job if they couldn’t rely on cash registers.  Essentially, then, the comments made by these individuals are not based on reflective thought on the nature of reality but on some biased, preconceived notions.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/faeryboots/2922132321/

Let’s look at reality – where are we headed?  Socially, western societies are becoming more global.  People are taking advantage of technology to organize their lives, to communicate with others in a number of different ways and to access content on-demand.  Individuals young and old are leveraging their immediate access to the Internet to live differently.  Corporate staff rely on BlackBerries.  Graphic designers and other visual artists rely on computers and software packages.  Doctors are using mobile devices to search for reference information or to prescribe medications.  Others in the general public use their mobile phones to:

• communicate via Facebook, MySpace, SMS, Twitter, voice calls;
• manage their time through calendars, alerts and reminders;
• consume multimedia; and
• browse the Internet

Handheld devices are becoming the means by which more and more people are organizing their lives, consuming content and creating content.

Education needs to resemble this new reality.

Leaders in education need to ignore ill-advised , unreflective opinion and focus on meeting the needs of kids in today’s reality.

Ontario Educator Meetup Session #2: “How Learners Can Leverage the Creative Commons in their Creative Work”

After a successful first session, I would like to announce the date and time of the second session of the Ontario Educator Meetup.

Date: Tuesday January 27th 2009 @ 6:00 p.m. EST. Click here for time zone information

Theme: “How Learners Can Leverage the Creative Commons in their Creative Work“. Rodd Lucier, aka @thecleversheep, will be providing a 5-10 minute talk which will be followed by a 20-25 minute general conversation on the subject.

Place: Adobe Connect: http://connect.tcdsb.org/ontmeetup

Currently, there is space for 40 participants in this online meeting room. Please keep in mind that while this is for Ontario educators, everyone from anywhere in the world is invited to attend. Come by and share your thoughts – we will all benefit.

BTW, I’m still looking for an official name for this gathering.  I’ve been thinking about Ontario: Connected and using oncon as the blog/delicious tag and #oncon as the Twitter hash tag.  What are your thoughts?