I saw a two-year old kid (in diapers, in a stroller), using an iPod Touch today. Not just looking at it, but browsing menus and interacting. This is a revolution, guys.

Seth Godin.

It is a revolution. What itouchs are doing for education, PRE K – 12 is staggering. I’d love to have you watch my 4 1/2 year old playing (learning) on her itouch. Podcasts by Sesame Street (and 30 other great creators), Games about letters, colors, words, counting for a buck. The vocabulary is amazing when amazing is what you put in front of them.

The same extraordinary learning happens with high school kids. If you can, get your student an itouch, load it up with apps – the educational kind – along with a couple “fun apps.” If you don’t have a student in your house, buy it for the kid you mentor.

This is a game changer.

More and more often we (the royal we) are looking for a person to do the web publishing stage of a project. If every part of an organization had a way to put information online, share content the place would be a much richer place to work.

I’m beginning to believe that if all people had some background experience with publishing to the web, maybe at a basic level using something like google sites, or publishing articles in a cms, them maybe the other part of communicating to a larger group would become easier.

So, is that the new standard instead of office??

When I meet someone new, go to a seminar, read a book, interact with the world, I often google “them.” The “them” could be the car seat I’m looking to purchase, the person who is presenting (in the room), the new employee, the company who is going to be coming to the house to give me a quote on a new air conditioner.

Do you think college recruiters are any different? Employers? It feels like part of our job as educators is to create opportunities for students to share their greatness in a way that helps them get the next job / college acceptance / fellowship.

High Tech High is one portfolio I’ve run across this morning.

Won’t it be great to send the students to the next “great place” with a portfolio in thier pockets?

Learning to Read –> Reading to Learn

At about 3rd grade, students make the shift from Learning to Read –> Reading to Learn. I’m wondering when students make the shift from Learning Academic Technology –> Technology Skills supporting Academic Learning.

Kids (and some parents) speak to how technological the students are today, how the digital natives set the time on the dvd player, set up the computer, are online and understand computers so well. The kids are the ones who set the ring tones on parents phones. Most parents / educators will agree… Kids are good with technology.

AND many of our students struggle with our ACADEMIC technology demands.

I’m going to offer that we define Educational Technology as a bit different than Facebook, Gaming, and what happens in the homes of our students.

Educational technology is sometimes converting documents between the Office version that the students have at home, with the other version that exists at school. Educational technology is about how to create together in a group, with everyone on different versions/brands of software, with different levels of access. Educational technology is about how to evaluate information, and validity of sources. (The frightening reality is MOST of our students think that GOOGLE is a valid source.) Educational Technology is about using Technology to Learn, a bit like the shift from Learning to Read –> Reading to Learn that happens in about 3rd grade.

Students who are comfortable online at home, come to school and act as if they can (without help) use Technology to Learn…I’m going to suggest that they aren’t always ready and still need a little energy spent on Learning to Use Technology….This doesn’t mean they need the same help as adults, actually quite the contrary, they need a very different type of experience.

Wow.

Apparently I’m way behind, as I have been using Notes (the app that comes pre-installed) on my iPhone for a while. Evernote puts my notes in the cloud, allows access from a browser, and my Evernote iPad app does the same things as my iPhone (plus a couple more) app. Write the note and sync it with the cloud when you have network access, great for iTouchs / iPads, nice for iPhones!

I shared this and Dragon Dictation with someone at work and we went crazy with ideas around kids who have trouble writing! Have the student dictate the beginning of the paragraph into Dragon, copy it to Evernote, sync up with the cloud, do the final markup on a computer, print and the paragraph is done! I can see this working for a lot of material, both school and work.

I can see using this to take notes in meetings, class, organize the grocery / Costco list. You need to pay for the sharing feature, which isn’t much.

Looking for a cloud based solution for students as I hope we move towards a 1-1 solution with iPads in the near future. What are people using, or thinking? I’ve heard Google Apps is going HTML5 this spring, hoping that is a solution for some. The nice piece about Evernote, it just turns on, you don’t have to wait for the pages to load and connect to the server and syncing the documents later has a LOT of appeal.

Using Google Apps, you can create a form, that

• collects feedback
• creates a sign up sheet
• brainstorms ideas
• collects homework answers
• gets input on the latest process/building change

You don’t have to wait until your organization officially adopts Google Apps, you can use your own Google account to do the job.

In these rapidly changing times, sometimes just creating a way for people to submit ideas, give feedback, or measure response feeds our web 2.0 need. These don’t have to be created by outside organizations, they can be done by the people within your group today. Thoughtfully, yet without 5 meetings to plan the plan.

Classrooms are the same way, kids like to be asked, and listened to. This doesn’t always have to happen in class it can happen outside of class – offer up time for everyone to think about it, or offer up ideas quietly. Although, sometimes the thoughtfully written feedback is the most powerful.

Not exactly two things I’d put together right away.

Yet, they have the same technology need right now.  Imagine how hard it is to get 35 kids around a sewing machine, and show them how to tread a bobbin. Imagine doing biology lab demonstration with small pieces to a group of 35 students.

Enter the Flip video camera. Both teachers are using the Flip to record the demonstration they would normally give in class, submit it to our podcast server and then show it during class, on a big screen (or smartboard). They are able to stop, rewind, point out (on a large screen for all to see) discuss, answer questions without being tied to a little bobbin….that 27 kids can’t see anyways.

We take it a step further. Publish to the podcast server.

The enriched biology students watch the video at home, discuss things before the lab, and then get to work. The sewing students have a set of iTouches in class, when they get stuck with a step, grab an iTouch, watch the process – listen to the directions – correct their process and move forward. Stopping to ask the teacher questions that can’t be answered via video. Allowing the teacher to help kids who are really behind & struggling. Everyone is calmer and happier, because everyone is learning! (without having to wait)…

Try it sometime, video the demonstration, share it online if you have that ability. Or, use ours, they are out there for everyone!

~powered by Google. Tools for Every School Part 4

We are doing it. Seems like everyone else on the block has, or is making the move.

Starting with students, and the optional document usage and storage for staff. I do believe this is a game changer, field leveler for kids. If everyone has access to the same software from whatever web connected computer – isn’t that better than 5 different versions of different word processing software?

I do think that to make it work you need to start with staff, using things that they already do professionally.

Meeting notes – have a couple people taking notes at those dept meetings, then make them viewable by the whole staff, great place to teach how / when to Insert – Comment

Agendas – why shouldn’t everyone have the ability to add to the agenda before the meeting starts?

Shared Docs – helps people start controlling who sees what, and who can edit

The great thing about Google Apps, you can use it, without waiting for your district to get the cloud set up. Make the change for your students, now, share the success and get the change for everyone later!

Jing from jingproject.com created by the people that make Camtasia have created a really inexpensive piece of software that helps you make screen captures. The ability to record into a movie what steps you go thru to post a web page, enlarge columns in a spreadsheet, read an email attachment, rename a file saves me a ton of time explaining. Now I can SHOW the steps and talk thru them like I’m sitting with you at the computer. You can pause me, rewind me, play me again and again. Just helping with software questions, this app is worth the $15 I spent on it.

Now, think about having the ability to record what you are writing / doing on a smartboard. Watch and Listen to the teacher complete the square, diagram a sentence, read and explain the french sentence in English. This is the BIG MONEY app. Now as the teacher, am anywhere I need to be to help the kids at anytime of the day or night. When I’m off at a meeting, the sub now plays the snippets of me. I’ll say that again, now when I’m off LEARNING how to be a better teacher, the sub plays the snippets of me. This doesn’t replace me, it doesn’t hold their attention everyday, nor is a one directional lecture always the best, but it is better than the English major trying to teach graphing a parabola.

I’ve tried different apps, and keep coming back to Jing. Go, pick a screen capture tool, start creating short instructional videos for your kids, then share them on say…Moodle. Watch what happens when you run out of time doing homework problems, and they start saying, just Jing it. “Not everyone needs you to go over this problem, so could you Jing it for me?”

Next up: Podcast Server from Apple. Once you have one teacher who makes 200 videos for her class, and this idea catches on like wildfire, you need something more than just Moodle. I’ll explain more in the next post.

I worry about todays generation, ok maybe all of us today. We don’t always have the ability to be private, and many of our successes (and failures) are going to be google-able. Seth Godin wrote a really nice post about how to handle the age of google. Creating a long tail so that even if the first 3 things that return on a search for yourself are “bad” then the next 10 are interesting or at least a little positive. I like the approach, don’t run from it, embrace it.

If you have a name like Jennifer Nelson, you can just hide in the multitude of jnelson’s out in the world. Or, you can try to become a little unique and answer to Jenn Nelson, only to find that other of us have adopted that same strategy. Maybe I’ll get pinned with someone else’s success instead of their drinking binge.

Talking to kids about what they post and what they don’t, is kind of like talking to them about driving. You don’t really know what happens when they leave your sight, until someone in the community sees them in your unique car. Maybe being Googled is something like that, having someone else see your child in your car out in the world.  I did call a friend recently when her son posted something a little too, wrong, (for age 9) on Facebook.  Yes, she’s doing all the right things with him on Facebook, she controls who his friends are, watches what he posts, manages his privacy levels etc. Exposing him at this age to the environment that he’ll grow up in, is a good idea. Having him delete a silly post is also wise.

At this age, his silly post is: I Hate School.

Much better than the binge drinking picture, hopefully he’ll learn the lesson before it can haunt him into job interviews.