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.

We’ve been creating short instructional videos for our students to view for remediation, review, learning (when they miss class) and to help gain a better handle on the academic English. It does have incredible impact on student achievement.

Adding the iPad to the mix, or an iTouch in every student’s hand is going to revolutionize the way class is taught.  Here’s what is on my test iPad, we’ll be messing with this next fall, measuring academic impact the best we can, asking students for feedback, and seeing if it changes spending habits.

Here are the “apps” as of now.

• link to Classzone
• link to Podcasts (those instructional videos)
• PI83
• Moodle

Any others?

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?

Pete shared this me a while ago…Text to Audio Track using Automator…guess I wasn’t ready for the classroom application…yet.

Here is a really great tutorial that shows you how to copy text and use Automate to process it into an MP3 file. WOW, it is fast. The voice is really pretty good, Alex (the automated man) even breathes.

Right now we are using it to create audio files of things that students read in class (without the expensive software), putting the files on an iTouch for the student to use, and soon we should have some measurement metrics of success. Our first target set of students are those transitioning out of the ELL program and into regular coursework. Thinking social studies, science and English…areas with lots of reading and academic English for the students to learn will be job(s) one.  I suspect the hardest part is going to be scaling it to match the needs of the whole building.

Take a look at the Automator, really great idea!

The WHAT. Teachers use an interactive whiteboard (Smart), microphone (generic) and screen capture software (JING) to record themselves teaching a concept (like, graphing a parabola, completing the square, factoring polynomials). Students can access these videos via our podcast server, or in class on an iTouch.

NOT rocket science. YET the results are out of this world.

Another teacher, another group of students. This time a little better statistical measure of the data. Students increased test scores by AT LEAST one standard deviation IF they watched instructional videos during the chapter of study.

Our biology teachers are recording labs with flip cams, sewing teacher recording steps of a project with the flip, math teachers do screen captures and flip (constructions), language teachers recording verb stuff on the screen, sign language with the flip.

It is amazing. It is simple, and I wish more students would use it. (AND more teachers would create material) The academic difference it makes is nothing short of remarkable.

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.

I’m wondering when it is we start teaching electronic calendar management. First I suppose we teach ourselves, then start sharing it with our students. Google allows for multiple calendar creation, making it nice to have the subscribed calendar for PeeWee Hockey -just add events to my virtual life. At work we are moving towards a Google Calendar for each class that we teach, having the students subscribe to the calendars so they end up in one place.

calendar

I suppose this works better when the information comes to the device in your pocket. I know all the phones text, and I wonder how many of them would (or do) calendar if we asked them.

It is great to see people adopt this strategy, even if people then write the events down in a paper thing that goes into the backpack. It will sure make it easier for the crack-berry generation get a sense of what is happening with those teenagers (who hardly speak out loud anymore). It also speaks to my need for every kid to have a digital device that is small enough to fit in a bag..think netbook, iTouch, iPad. I can’t wait for us to be connected to the information so the learning can be about what to do with it, not recite it back to me.

I know we are close, it just isn’t there.

Yet.

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.