Modern Learning with Flexible Structures

“Modern learning” is a phrase I am encountering in more and more places, but still I just can’t seem to find a definition of what exactly it is. The general idea seems to be that a changing 21^st century world demands collaborative creative critical thinkers, and that modern learning involves whatever tools and approaches are needed to help students develop those traits. Discussion about modern learning typically emphasizes the role of the student in learning, flexibility in approaches to the curriculum content, and use of technology to enhance the learning experience and facilitate collaboration.

To experiment with one modern learning idea, I used a flexible structure this semester for the Linear Systems unit with my Grade 10 Applied Mathematics class. I divided the unit’s learning goals into two learning cycles of about five days each. At the end of each day students completed a Google Form to self-assess their progress towards each of the cycle’s learning goals, identify homework, and choose what and how they would like to learn the next day. Content choices aligned with learning goals, and method choices included watching a video, trying an investigation, reading from the textbook, researching online, or participating in a mini-lesson with me. Several times in each cycle they were also asked to choose between writing a quiz and creating a video with Lensoo Create as a method for formative assessment. Each student had a Nexus 7 tablet to use in class to access learning and assessment resources.

OAME Top Three

Year after year the OAME conference gets me thinking about mathematical things in a new or renewed way.  Here are three ideas that have stuck with me from today's speakers at OAME 2015

1.Spiraling through curriculum
The structure of most mathematics courses (or even I suspect most courses) mirrors its curriculum document.  The curriculum divides the course into three or four strands, each with three or four overall expectations that are elaborated on with a half dozen or so specific expectations.  Similarly, long range plans usually divide the course into a half dozen units derived from the overall expectations which are subdivided into lessons to sequentially address each of the skills required.  A linear document (the curriculum) is translated to a linear teaching plan, and most of the time the system works to deliver prepared students to the next grade so long as they don’t fall off the linear skills assembly line (... or if they do so long as we can pick them up and put them back on quickly enough...)

In their tiny five minute long IGNITE talks both Mary Bourassa and Alex Overwijk referred to an alternative approach.  When “spiraling” through the curriculum the linear planning model is gone.  Instead, students wind their way through activities and lessons that span the curriculum.  All of the overall expectations might be addressed within the first six weeks of a course, and then revisited in more depth as the course circles back again and again. 

“Available for group members only” - Now Available!

The Moodle feature “Available for group members only” was just activated last week on our Moodle server, and it could save us all lots of time maintaining Moodle courses.  With this addition any resource or activity can be visible only to a group of students enrolled in a Moodle course rather than all students. 

 

Often I find myself teaching two sections of a course, and often there are small changes in the lessons for each section because of the composition of classes or external factors like assemblies and fire drills.  In the past I’ve maintained two parallel and virtually identical Moodle courses to be able to make those minor modifications when needed.  With “Available for group members only” I can now use a single Moodle course for the students in both sections and show specific resources (or activities) to only one section of students when needed.

Here’s how it works... 

Five ideas from OAME

Recently I attended the OAME 2014 conference at Humber College.  Here are five speakers who got me thinking.

1. Jo Boaler: With a Growth Mindset, anyone can learn mathematics
Performance praise like “You’re smart” actually encourages a fixed mindset, a belief that ability is inherent rather than developed.  In contrast, growth mindsets are cultivated by practices of: persistence, learning from mistakes, determination to keep going, and being encouraged by other’s success (Carol Dweck).  Those with fixed mindsets underachieve when compared with those with growth mindsets, regardless of high or low present ability.  She believes that with a growth mindset, all people can learn mathematics, except perhaps those few limited by cognitive disabilities.   I think I agree with her point of view, with the great challenge being that some students have established habits of behaviour and belief that reinforce fixed mindset behaviour.

Describing Graph Transformations with Input / Output diagrams

I regularly stress to my grade 10 and 11 students that when transforming a function it is imperative to dilate before translating in any direction. In other words, if a function is both stretched and translated horizontally the stretch must happen first. Ron Watkins’ demonstration of Input / Output diagrams at OAME2014 has helped to see how rearranging the equation that describes a function can translate to rearranging the kind and order of transformations

An Input / Output diagram shows the sequence of operations applied on a function’s argument, x, to arrive at its value g(x). Naturally this sequence follows order of operations. What is interesting is that transformations are made clear through the diagram. Look first at the parent function indicated by the red arrow, which in this case is f(x) = x². Moving towards the right are the vertical transformations: stretch by factor 3 then translate 5 up. Following the arrows towards the left are the horizontal transformations: compress by factor one half, translate 4 right.

 Often students don’t see why horizontal transformations on the parent function are related to the inverses of operations seen in the function’s equation.  The diagram shows that to go from the input of the parent function (red arrow) to the horizontal coordinate x requires inverse operations, while going from the output of the parent function to g(x) does not.

Why I’m excited about Google Apps for Education

After several years of consideration and deliberation, Google Apps for Education has been launched throughout the YRDSB. Google Apps is a collection of services including the Google Docs collaborative suite of office applications, 30 GB of Google Drive cloud storage, email, calendaring, website creation, and more. Every student and staff member now has a Google Apps for Education account with the username and password synchronized to their school computer login.
With Google Apps comes many new possibilities:

• Students can collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentations from any location at any time.
• Teachers can see students’ work as it develops, and give feedback by adding comments.
• Teachers can see which students contribute to a collaborative document by viewing the document’s revision history.
• Documents cannot be forgotten at home or lost on a corrupted USB drive.
• Departments can share a folder of common resources to access them anywhere, and even offline using Google Drive Sync
• All students now have a Google Account, so can use that to easily access services like Khan Academy.
• All students now have an email address under the gapps.yrdsb.ca domain, so they can now enrol services like Prezi’s Enjoy Edu which are free for educational users only.
• Shared calendars which can be added to mobile devices or embedded in Moodle courses can help with communication with departments, classes, clubs, and teams.

What you should do right now

This year, resolve to change your Passwords

My family's online presence started in 1987 when we signed up for the pre-Internet communication provider CompuServe. After dialing in with our modem, we logged in to the service with a nine digit username and a password supplied by CompuServe. Twenty five years later that password is still in use....
I must have hundreds of accounts with passwords on different web sites, and I expect you are the same. Our passwords protect information that ranges in value from inconsequential to critical banking and email details. Wired magazine senior writer Mat Honan discovered first hand this summer how vulnerable our password protected services are when hackers compromised his email accounts and remotely deleted everything on his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. Lacking proper backups, he lost significant personal data including every picture he had ever taken of his 18 month old daughter. Most photos were later retrieved (at considerable expense) by a forensic disk recovery lab, but Honan was left shaken. Reflecting on the incident in December's edition of Wired magazine, he concludes that passwords alone are a flawed way to authenticate identity in a networked world filled with inexpensive and powerful computers. Though it might be a little frightening, I highly recommend reading the full article, or listening to last Friday's interview on Q.
Even if Honan is right that "the age of the password has come to an end," the reality is that we keep using passwords dozens of times a day. We need incorporate practices that give as much protection as possible until more robust authentication methods gain wide-spread use. Here are five things to consider as you decide how to manage your passwords:

iPad Case Studies

During the month of November, six staff at my school experimented with a set of ten iPad's borrowed from our board's technology lending library. Here are stories of two ways they were used.

Zooming Around

Grade 9 students spend a lot of time working with straight lines in math class. They draw lines that model real life scenarios, write equations to represent lines, and look at how pairs of lines intersect. Looking at the equations of two lines, students should be able to say if the lines intersect, of the lines are parallel so do not intersect, or if they are coincident. Graphing sets of equations of lines by hand can help students to connect algebraic and visual representations, but graphing this way has the physical limitation of drawing accuracy. One teacher used iPads with her grade 9 classes to overcome this limitation and investigate the intersection of lines that would be tricky to graph by hand.

The App	Safari Browser to use the Desmos online graphing calculator A home screen icon linking directly to http://www.desmos.com made the website easy to find and made it appear to opens like an app.
The Approach	Arrange students in groups of three. Give students pairs of lines to graph with Desmos. Students zoom in and zoom out to investigate how the lines overlap. Students record their observations on a template.
The Verdict	The teacher liked that zooming manipulation was tactile and directly with the graph, rather than clicking a button. This was good to give students a sense of large and small numbers through zooming. Students appeared engaged - groups were all huddled over the workspace with the iPad.

Explain it to me

One of our geography teachers continues look for are ways to encourage her students to learn in collaborative ways. With a built in microphone and a touch sensitive screen, an iPad is a good tool for students to explain ideas through words and gestures. By recording these explanations, they can be shared with classmates to help them understand concepts or with the teacher to demonstrate learning.

The App	EduCreations is a whiteboard which records sound, writing, typing, and movement. Recordings can be played back on the device or through a website at a later date.
The Approach	Arrange students in groups of three. Give students a discussion question from the textbook. Students discuss their answer to the question in their group and find supporting images online. Students record their explanation and upload the resulting video.
The Verdict	Some groups of three worked well, but in others one worked, one assisted, and one was distracted. More devices would be better. Overall quality of work did not improve, but student work was more accessible because students could look at the work from other groups online after class Lack of ability to edit recordings in EduCreations was disappointing. Because of this there was no way for the teacher or students to correct errors without redoing completely. Students were excited to use iPads, and asked to use them in later classes.

Being Less Helpful* with SMART Notebook

Sometimes being less helpful would be a good thing. A "helpful" friend who shares the highlights and score to a game you've PVR'd is an unwelcome friend. Similarly, giving our students all the information we think they need can diminish curiosity and bypass opportunities to build inference and thinking skills.

Cover Up

Using white ink to cover information in SMART Notebook can be used to encourage curiosity, while building inference and thinking skills.
 
Help students to develop their ability to infer meaning from text by covering key words and short phrases, and then ask students to suggest what might fill the blanks. Ask students to write their suggestions on the board to complete the document. When finished, read the document together to see if the text reads smoothly and coherently. Finally, use the eraser tool to reveal the underlying text so that students can compare their inference with the original writing.
Many textbooks and resources turn problem solving opportunities into pattern matching activities. Sometimes these scenarios and the questions that follow have the possibility to spark curiosity and prompt thinking, but too often instead of scaffolding the question in a light and differentiated way, the resource builds an elevator to "the answer" where all that is required of us and our class has the equivalent complexity to walking and pressing a button. By covering up as much information as possible we can open the range of approaches and help students to develop their thinking and problem solving skills.

The Technique

To cover text with white ink:
1. Pick up a pen from the tray
2. Press the Colour button to display the palette
3. Press the white square in the lower right
4. Press the Line Style button to the right of the colour button to choose a wider pen thickness.
5. Draw with white ink over the items you would like to conceal.

Sources:

• Michelle Grainger: Markville SS Digital Literacy strategies for OSSLT (bit.ly/Pf3fla)
• Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover (bit.ly/QwwOM5)
• Foundations of Mathematics 10, McGraw-Hill Ryerson

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[*]"Be Less Helpful" is Dan Meyer's slogan. For more of his work see: http://blog.mrmeyer.com

Getting into the "Real-World" with SMART Ink

Internet connected classroom computers link us and our students with the world. A web browser is a powerful teaching and learning tool providing access to current information, real data sets, rich media, interactive applets, and collaborative authoring tools. When used with a web browser, you might think of your SMART Board then as a centrally located computer interface, with the added benefits of easy annotation and capture.

Introducing SMART Ink

With the release of SMART Notebook 11, the "ink layer" has been replaced with a new program called SMART Ink.

Write Anywhere

SMART Ink is activated when a computer which has SMART Board Tools running is connected to a SMART Board or another SMART interface like an Airliner. A small toolbar is added to the title bar of each program. Picking up a pen adds a pen colour indicator to the SMART Ink tool bar to show that it is ready for writing. You can write or draw anywhere on the program window. Writing on the screen does not block interaction with the program like it did with the old "ink layer," and ink is associated with the underlying program so that it follows the location of the program window even when minimized. Unfortunately, ink does not scroll with the underlying program, so annotations will become misaligned on a web page if you scroll to read more.

Insert Writing as Text

Through SMART Ink, handwriting can be inserted as text in any application. First write the phrase to insert on the application. Next select the writing by returning the pen to the tray and touching the writing.[1] Make sure that the cursor is at the location you would like to insert the text by touching that place. Finally touch the icon beside the writing to recognize and insert the text. Unfortunately SMART Ink handwriting recognition is not as accurate as within SMART Notebook.

Choose a variety of Tools

Different pens and additional tool like a highlighter can be selected from the SMART Ink toolbar at the top of each window, or from the floating toolbar at the edge of the screen. The floating toolbar can be shown by choosing "Show Floating Tools" from the icon: in the tray in the lower right of the screen.

SMART Ink Setbacks

There two key features that were present in the old "ink layer" system that have now been removed: Ink can only be used outside of SMART Notebook when a SMART device is attached, and a few tools like the Magic Pen no longer work outside of SMART Notebook.

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[1] On boards with Touch Recognition enabled it is not necessary to put the pen back before selecting the writing because the board can sense the difference between the size of a pen tip and finger.

Blended Learning

Learning that incorporates both face to face classroom settings and online environments is known as "Blended Learning." Because there are many ways to blend these environments, blended learning may look quite different to match with the needs of different classes. For example, a teacher using a blended learning environment might:

• post reference, remedial and enrichment materials for students on a class Moodle
• use classroom computers or a lab for students to learn at their own pace through self-directed online activities
• use online quizzes for formative assessment
• ask students to share their learning with classmates online through a Moodle forum
• encourage the use of Google Docs for group tasks so that students can learn to collaborate remotely and be accountable for their own work.
• use webquests to help students work with primary Internet sources in an inquiry format

Why use Blended Learning

As we prepare students for success both at high school and after they move beyond there are many reasons to consider enhancing how we employ Blended Learning in our teaching practice. Here are three:

1. Differentiated Learning: Learning in an online environment can often be more individualized because students may be able to choose from alternative formats like interactive activities, and progress through material at their own pace. Additionally, some students who are hesitant to share their views or ask questions in a physical group environment will participate online.
2. Authentic Learning: Linking to real world stories and data is a natural fit with online environments. We can also help students learn to find and evaluate Internet sources when seeking information. Working with real scenarios can contribute to student engagement and is a valuable life skill.
3. Lifelong Learning: In many workplaces, as well as college and university, our students will need to learn and collaborate in online environments. We can make a strong contribution to our students' success in the coming decades is to build their Digital Literacy, and I believe this is a responsibility we share regardless of subject area in the way we all contribute to foundational literacy and numeracy.

Moodle as a tool for Blended Learning

Moodle 2 offers several features that make it a great tool to support blended learning. As always, resources can be linked and curated by the teacher making it an excellent anchor for a class' online elements. The new "Activity Completion" feature makes a Moodle course more engaging by revealing different and perhaps more appropriate activities based on the success or completion of other activities. The workshop activity builds self and peer assessment into the writing process. Enhancements in the quiz and feedback activities, especially in the ways they are created, make them good tools for adding interactivity and individual feedback online.

Beyond SMART Notebook

A major benefit to using a SMART Board is that teachers and students can control the class computer while standing right beside the projected image at the front and centre of the classroom. A SMART Board can interact with most programs, not only SMART Notebook. Here are four ways to interact beyond SMART Notebook.

SMART Board as an Interface

Touching a SMART Board is the same as pressing the left mouse button at that location. This allows you to click buttons or drag objects in any program like you would when sitting at the computer. To use the right mouse button, press the right button on the tool tray to make the next touch on the screen a right click or drag. To type short amounts of text, press the left button on the tool tray to display the onscreen keyboard. The tray button actions can be modified in the SMART Control Panel to function as a middle mouse button or a "floating mouse" for programs where hovering the mouse without clicking is important.

Ink Layer

The Ink Layer is like a huge acetate stretched over the whole screen which you can use to draw on top of any program. First, start the SMART Board Tools. This is found under START > All Programs > SMART Technologies > SMART Product Drivers > SMART Board Tools ( ), but you can drag this link to your desktop to make it easier to find. After the tools are started, picking up any pen from the tray will add the Ink Layer frame around the screen. While this frame is showing you cannot interact with the underlying program, but you can use the pens to mark-up the screen. The Ink Layer has three buttons in the upper right corner to clear the Ink Layer, copy a screenshot to SMART Notebook to keep a record, and close the ink layer.

SMART Aware

Some programs like Microsoft Office and SMART Ideas are "SMART Aware," meaning that they recognize input from the SMART Board as more than just mouse actions. When SMART Board Tools are running and you use a SMART Aware program, picking up a pen from the tray will not add the Ink Layer frame, but instead writing will be captured directly by the program. One advantage is that you can still interact with the program. Different SMART Aware programs can use ink in different ways. In Microsoft Office, ink is captured temporarily, and can be added more permanently to documents and presentations by clicking the "Insert as Image" ( ) or "Insert as Text" ( )buttons in the Aware Tools bar. You will also be prompted to add the ink as an image when you close the program or presentation.

Transparent Background

SMART Notebook has a Transparent Background mode ( ) which removes the usual toolbars, tabs, and white background to allow you to see and interact with other programs. SMART Notebook objects (like the circle in the example at the right) are still visible. Text, graphics, and hyperlinks can be added to the Notebook page by dragging them from the underlying program to any SMART Notebook object. Picking up a pen captures writing in the smart notebook page.

3 Ways To “Flip” Instruction

If you read last week’s post about Classroom Flipping and are curious to give it a try, here are several ways that you could record a lesson for students.

Preparing	Before recording a “flipped” lesson, plan carefully what you want to teach so that you can record the lesson in one take and avoid the need for editing afterwards. You may want to prepare visuals ahead of time so that the lesson can progress quickly and smoothly. So long as the lesson is clear, you do not need to be concerned about moving too quickly or leaving wait time because students can pause the lesson whenever they choose. For my class, I made jot notes of the lesson sequence, and used PowerPoint slides for visuals to annotate during the lesson.
Recording	SMART Recorder + SMART Board SMART Recorder is “screencast” software bundled with SMART Board Tools. Open SMART Notebook, then right click the toolbar, and drag the video camera icon to your toolbar. Click that buttion to open SMART Recorder. Press the red button to begin recording. The down arrow beside the record button will control whether SMART Recorder will record the whole screen, or just part of it along with your audio. When finished, press the square stop button. You can choose where to save your video file. If audio is not correctly recorded, double click the speaker icon in the system tray (lower right corner of the screen) to adjust audio properties. Make sure the microphone is checked as a recording source, and that the volume is not zero. The SMART Board and microphone in the Library conference room can be used for recording with this method.	CamStudio + Airliner This is the method I used. The free “screencast” software CamStudio captures microphone sound and any region of a computer screen to create a video. Steps: 1. Download from camstudio. org 2. Set options. I used: Compressor: Microsoft Video 1 Frame Rate: Auto Adjust Record to AVI (button bar) 3. Click Options > “Record Audio From Microphone” 4. Minimize CamStudio 5. Press F8 to Start or Pause recording 6. Press F9 to finish and save AVI file. I also used an Airliner tablet to be able to write on the screen while recording. If you would like to borrow an Airliner for home use or a laptop to try with CamStudio that could be arranged. The Airliner is very portable, but also takes some practice to work on hand-eye coordination. CamStudio is very flexible, but a little complicated, so next time I might use SMART Recorder instead. SMART Notebook and SMART Board tools are available for home install. Please speak with me for a license key.	Other Alternatives Online Recording The web-based Screencast-O-Matic (www.screencast-o-matic.com) tool is very easy to use. The free version has two minor limitations: recordings have a “Screencast-O-Matic” logo, and are limited to 15 minutes. Flipped lesson videos should be about 5-10 minutes, so the length restriction is not a problem. iPad Recording Explain Everything is an iPad screencast app (www. explaineverything. com). It works well, is very portable, and at $3 it is a very affordable way to screencast … so long as you already own the iPad. For more resources see: bit.ly/K5SJF4 Document Camera Recording Directing a a document camera (or web cam) at a piece of paper is a simple option. Start a recording program, then write on the page while you narrate the lesson. The ELMO and IPEVO document cameras, as well as most web cams, come with recording software. Use Existing Video TED Ed (ed.ted.com), Learn 360, Learner.org, and Discovery Streaming, have thousands of excellent and curricularly relevant videos.
Disseminating	One of the most frustrating things I have found when working with video is the wide variety of file formats which can cause compatibility issues when playing videos on different devices. My solution was YouTube. YouTube will accept videos in many formats, and will automatically convert them for viewing online. YouTube works on computers and mobile devices, and videos stream right away so that students do not have to download a large file before beginning to watch. With a tool likeVideo Download Helper or Online Convert ( http://www.online-convert.com), students can download videos for offline viewing too. To upload videos to YouTube you will need to sign in with (or create) a Google Account. Privacy permissions can be set when uploading videos. I set mine so that anyone can view videos if they know the link, but links are not public. I made these essentially private videos available to students by linking to them from the class Moodle. Here is an example:bit.ly/K5Yhzr

"Flipping" Instruction

Four years ago , two high school science teachers in Colorado decided to try swapping the place of lecture and practice for their class. Instead of leading a teacher-centred lesson in class and sending students home with related exercises to complete, they turned their lessons into videos for students to watch at home, and used class time for students to apply their knowledge by working through problems together.
While these two teachers, Bergman and Sams, are widely credited with starting a "Flipped Classroom" revolution, I expect they were not the first to try teaching this way. After all,  years ago when my high school English teachers said "read this, then come to class prepared to discuss it" they were essentially following a "flipped classroom" model. There is, however, something in the zeitgeist that Bergman and Sams' "flipping" language has been picked up by a swath of established media including the Globe and Mail , the Harvard Education Letter, the New York Times, and the Economist. Beyond print media, the 2011 TED Talk "Let's use video to reinvent education" by Khan Academy founder and high profile "flipping" advocate Sal Khan titled has been viewed nearly 1.5 million times. This is the degree of dissemination into the wider culture is more than most pedagogical approaches ever see, and it means that if "flipping" has not yet come up in a conversation with friends or a parent it might surface soon.

Flipping Pros and Cons

There is much support for the Flipped Classroom model, but also much criticism. Here is a short list from what I have observed and read, perhaps you can add an item or two?

Pros

Cons

· It assists differentiation: students can learn at different rates by pausing or replaying the lesson · Flipped lessons can be more dynamic than class lessons by including interactive and authentic learning elements. · It supports problem based learning and critical thinking by learning prerequisite knowledge out of class to apply in class · Students have peer and teacher support as they practice · Some students like videos, and will watch them when they would not do other homework. Improved student achievement

· It undermines differentiation: one lesson for all students, and the teacher can't check understanding during the lesson · It affirms lecture style rote-learning It undermines learning through investigation Students don't like videos of lectures · Lessons day and night? Students need a break! · Bill Gates funds Khan Academy, which draws a connection between the "flipping" and teacher performance discussions.

And the Students Say…

In November I tried out the flipped class model for one unit in grade 10 academic math. I chose an algebra unit because the most difficult aspect of the unit was learning how to apply the knowledge of a handful of factoring skills, which requires practice.
Student feedback was mixed. One student who struggled with the course liked the approach and wrote that it was "better than homework at home, easier to watch a lesson and practice at school." Another said: "I loved these, wish every lesson had this, helps studying, etc." Also in support, another wrote: "I could watch it over and over until I understood it." Others however did not like the model. One student said: "I didn't like this because I forgot the questions I had [at home]. Also, if I was tired I could just skim through the video without learning anything." An honest student admitted "Didn't bother to watch."
From looking at Moodle reports I know that most students in the class watched all nine of the videos lessons I made for the unit. 25% of students missed two or more videos, but overall the class completed this homework more regularly than written exercises in other units. The class had developed a fairly good pattern of working in groups, so I found that with heterogeneous groups there was a lot of good peer-tutoring in class. Through testing this class showed better understanding of this unit than other classes of the same course I taught last year, but this was also a stronger class over all. If you experiment with "flipping" please let me know what you find!

Three online tools for Reading

While proper precautions need to be taken to avoid strain while "screen reading," online tools to help build reading and understanding can make it worthwhile. Here are three tools to consider with your students.

Vocabulary Building with Lingro

Lingro (http://lingro.com) is an excellent tool for vocabulary development, and it has been well received by ESL students at Unionville. When looking at any web page through Lingro, every word on the page becomes clickable to speak, define, or translate the word. For beginning English Language Learners and Modern Languages students, Lingro supports translation between most combinations of 11 major languages including English, Chineese, French, and Spanish. More advanced students can use definitions in the language they are learning for help understanding the word.
A powerful feature of Lingro is its ability to create personalized word lists as students read. Every word that is clicked is automatically added to that student's "Word History," and students can drag and drop these words into word lists. To reinforce these words, Lingro can show students the sentence in which they encountered the word, and can randomize them into a flash cards game as a study tool. When students register for a free account with Lingro they can save their word history and access it from a different computer.
While Lingro works best while reading public web pages, it also has a file upload feature to allow Lingro tools to be used with text, Word (in .doc format), and PDF documents.

Active Reading with Diigo

Highlighting and note taking are good active reading skills. Diigo (http://www.diigo.com) is a great tool for highlighting web pages in any of four colours and adding floating "sticky notes" to summarize ideas. Diigo annotations are saved automatically, and can be shared with others like peers or with a teacher. The site also has good teacher tools to manage a class of free student accounts. Diigo works with password protected sites, so students can annotate a text posted on a Moodle page. For more information on Diigo, see the January 13, January 20 and February 10 Digital Dispatches on the Unionville Digital Literacy moodle.

"Drawing" Connections with MarkUp

MarkUP (http://markup.io/) is a tool that turns any web page into a whiteboard that you can draw or type on. This could be used in text to trace implied references in pronouns or between ideas. Drawing on a diagram or image could highlight important details or build connections between different parts of the work. MarkUp does not use accounts to save annotations, and instead gives a unique URL link to a page with the annotations and a snapshot image of the web page at the time it was annotated. MarkUp will work on password protected pages, but has limited security so should not be used on sensitive information.

Textbooks in Transition

When three major textbook publishers announced six weeks ago that they had reached an agreement with Apple to release their books for use on the iPad I was intrigued. Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt account for 90% of textbook sales in the US, and with a net worth of over half a trillion dollars , Apple is the world’s most valuable company. These four make a powerful partnership, so it seems likely that there will be changes ahead for both for what we think of as a textbook and how they are used by teachers and students.

Ontology and Appeal

Textbooks were a major part of my own schooling starting as far back as I can remember (probably about grade 9) and continuing through most of my university courses. If textbooks are entering a transition period, that prompts two initial questions for me: what exactly is a textbook, and why do most students and teachers seem to like them? Here are my initial musings, and please revise and extend my list by add your thoughts at http://bit.ly/nexttext
A textbook...

• is comprehensive of all the material in a curriculum
• presents an orderly progression through the material
• includes learning aids like review materials, glossaries, and self-assessment

Students and teachers want textbooks because...

• they are a reliable reference when students miss class, or want to work ahead
• they provide an alternative explanation of material to what was given in class
• they include lots of self-check and practice questions

Dream On

Looking ahead, textbooks may not be limited by existing only in ink and paper form. Setting aside technical and other obstacles, what would you imagine as features of a re-designed textbook? Here is my current list, what would you add?

• Workbook-like: students are forever writing in textbooks, let's encourage it.
• Inquiry Design: gradual release of information through interactive passages.
• Authentic Learning: inclusion of recent news events and real-life applications.
• Interactive Learning: embedded manipulatives, simulations, or virtual experiments
• Deep Exploration: ability to explore related concepts and consult primary sources
• Collaborative: students can help each other learn, perhaps via shared annotation.
• Adaptive: material changes pace and adds or removes hints as students work.
• Accommodating: material available at different reading levels and with audio-visual alternatives
• Modifiable: easy to change material to suit the learning needs of the class.
• Continual Revision: colleagues can share modified versions and merge others’ changes, including those from authors and publishers.
• Coaching Supports: teachers or parents can monitor student progress through the text, and students can ask questions from within the text
• Portable: material can be used on a variety of devices, including offline.

Alternative Text Models

iBooks

Apple’s iBooks reader mixes words, multimedia, and interactive elements. Students can annotate while reading. Anyone with (access to a Mac) can write an interactive text with iBooks Author, however questions arise about the control Apple asserts over this content. Additionally, iBooks texts can only be read on an iPad. Dan Meyer observes that many textbooks do not yet live up to the potential of the platform, and are instead reproductions of printed works with superficial eye candy.

• Apple’s Take: bit.ly/wVyU9i
• Dan Meyer: bit.ly/AhBv45

CK-12 Flexbooks

With the non-profit CK12 organization’s Flexbooks platform teachers can mix, match, and adapt content from other teachers or the nearly 100 texts it has commissioned. All works use a Creative Commons licence and can be freely modified. Texts can be read with a web browser, printed, or saved for offline use with any eReader.

• CK-12 Flexbooks: bit.ly/wcaIV3

Our Choice

Al Gore’s book on Climate Change shows how interactive and exploratory a book could be. Well worth watching the trailer for the book. Unfortunately interactivity only available for iDevices

• Our Choice the App: bit.ly/xwZf4q
• Our Choice the Book: bit.ly/w8bCOG

Moodle

Some Moodle sites are comprehensive enough in the materials they include and link to that they are essentially a custom textbook.

Organized and Accountable Online Research

With students conducting more and more research online, Diigo can be an excellent tool for individual students, groups, and classes.
Students can organize their online research in three ways that are analogous to research with printed texts. Web pages can be bookmarked, described, and tagged for reference as was described in the January 13th post. With the Diigo Toolbar, students can highlight in one of four colours directly on the web page, and these sections will remain highlighted whenever the student visits the web page while logged in to Diigo. Finally, students can add freeform notes summarizing or extending what they read and attach them anywhere on the web page like "sticky notes." Like highlighting, these notes will appear in that location on the page every time the student returns to that web page while logged in to Diigo. All notes and highlighting are automatically extracted to the student's "Diigo Library," and can also be copied for use in other programs like Word.

By creating a "Diigo Group" for a group of students or a class, bookmarks and annotations are shared so that students can research a topic collaboratively and the teacher can monitor progress. The contributions of each student are identified meaning that individual assessment of the research portion of a group assignment is possible and fairly easy.

Field Testing

I tried Diigo for a small research assignment with my Grade 12 Learning Strategies class last semester and was pleased with the results. Diigo caters to educators by offering a free "Educator Account" upgrade which increases student privacy settings and adds a "Teacher Console" to create and manage student accounts and groups. Students found the highlighter easy to use and helpful, though the problem of over highlighting still persists in digital form. I expect that if students work more with extracted annotations they will see the importance of thinking critically as they read and highlighting selectively. I found evaluation worked well by giving a clear self-evaluation tool which I verified against their individually identified bookmarks and annotations in our class Diigo group.

Now, What Was That Website Again?

Keeping track of online resources is challenging. Whether it is an infographic to share with your class, or something amusing to show a friend, sometimes you just can't find that great website that you were sure you bookmarked (or marked as a "favourite") when you go to look for it. The problem is that we often use several computers or other devices a day to access the web, and because each web browser on each device creates a separate bookmarks list, we end up with a half dozen lists to check … not very convenient.

A Better Way

Finally, more than fifteen years after the "world wide web" hit the mainstream, keeping track of bookmarks of web pages across several machines is becoming easier. Third-party services like Xmarks which synchronize bookmark lists between devices have been around for several years. Now some web browsers have bookmarks synching built in, like Mozilla Firefox through Firefox Sync and Safari through iCloud.

An alternative to synchronizing bookmarks is to use a "cloud-based" service where each person's bookmarks are stored privately in a central location on the Internet, and accessed by them from any computer. Bookmarks in a cloud-based service can also be easily shared, and many people do, earning this way of organizing web page addresses the moniker "social bookmarking." Ease of access to my bookmarks and ease of sharing them with colleagues are the main reasons that I chose a cloud-based method over synchronization, and the tool I use is called Diigo.

Organizing website bookmarks with Diigo

Diigo has many useful features which I will write about in the coming weeks, but the best way to get started is to use Diigo to remember your favourite websites. After creating a Diigo Account, choose a tool to make recording and recalling websites smoother by integrating it with your web browser. I like using the Diigo Toolbar with the Firefox web browser, but there are tools for many platforms including Apple products and Android.
When you are reading a web page you want to remember, choose "Bookmark this Page" from the blue "d" Diigo menu button ( ) beside the address bar. In the window that opens you can enter information about the page like key word "tags" to categorize your bookmarks, or you can leave everything blank and just click save to record just the address and title of the page.
Once you have marked pages with Diigo that list is available to you from any device, either through the Diigo Toolbar, or directly with any web browser by signing in on the Diigo website. Most of my bookmarks are marked private at this point because I am still new to the tool, but you can get a sense of how a bookmarks list in Diigo might be accessed by looking at a list that a couple of us in the math department have begun to assemble recently at http://groups.diigo.com/group/uhs_math.

Cell Phones in the Classroom, and Other Controversies

In recent years students' use of cell phones has periodically surfaced as an issue in schools, occasionally grabbing mainstream media headlines . Some boards have banned, and then later permitted, cell phone use, while our school board has chosen policy and guidelines which say that phones can be used, but only with explicit teacher permission. I may be fortunate, but my experience so far at Unionville has been that cell phones have not been a big distraction in classes. The rare time I do see eyes peering suspiciously down into their desk or lap, I ask students to just use the device on the desk if what they are doing is important and that usually helps them to make a good decision.
But cell phones now are only one of the many kinds of electronic devices my students carry to class. With pockets and bags stuffed with communication tools, am I missing an opportunity if those devices stay hidden in pockets and bags? I am pretty sure the answer is yes, so the next challenge is to find out how best to have them used to support student learning.

Bring Your Own Device

"One to one" programs where each student has access to their own computing device have been discussed for over a decade, but the idea has been more recentlydeveloping a higher profile. Proponents point to increased critical thinking skills and student engagement by focusing on higher order skills like evaluating over remembering, by encouraging collaboration, and by allowing students to learn at different rates and in different ways. A 2010 study of 997 American schools found that one to one computing significantly improved student achievement through a variety of measures, especially when computers are used for formative assessment and teachers collaborate weekly. Still, "one to one" programs are not common, especially because of the cost to provide and difficulty to maintain computer equipment for the entire student population.
In response to the slow adaptation of "one to one" programs, some teachers are beginning to ask students to "BYOD", or "Bring Your Own Device." Some strongly object to BYOD because of equity concerns and the challenges of leading a class with a variety of student-owned hardware. I think these issues can be reasonably addressed by surveying classes to find out what technology students already have and would be willing to use, and designing class activities that fit with those devices. My experience with three classes of Grade 10 Academic math is that 50% of students currently have Internet access that they are willing to use in class, which means that in pairs or groups I can already ask students to search or respond online. One day "BYO Device" may be as mundane a request as "BYO Pencil," but we do not need to wait for 100% saturation to begin experimenting with how student owned technology could support their learning and evolve our classroom models.

See Also

• Royan Lee's excellent blog "Why you shouldn't do BYOD" ( http://bit.ly/t8lKHv )
• Royan's follow up: "Why I don't think BYOD is a socio-economic issue, Why one size never fits all, …" ( http://bit.ly/sIbP9N )
• Education World reviews pros and cons of one-to-one computing (http://bit.ly/vaFKQV )

LiveScribe: Student-Centred Large Group Discussion

My two year old daughter has a new favourite song called "Rolly-Polly." Consequently, "Rolly-Polly" is not one of my favourite songs because we sing it over and over (… and over), but because it has actions and only six words she has learned it. For her obviously repetition is a key part of learning, but I think the reason this one has stuck more than other repeated songs is that she can, and does, participate in its rendition.
Most of us learn well by participating, and in class setting one way of participating is by discussing ideas. In a good discussion we can hear a variety of points of view, connect new ideas with old ideas, and share ideas or questions to move the conversation forward. Discussion based teaching models fit well with constructivist educational ideas and can help to develop higher order thinking skills, but also can have difficulties.
A key difficulty with discussion in large groups is encouraging all participants to contribute. In a group of a dozen students or more, some need to learn to listen carefully so that they do not speak too much. Others are self-conscious of their ideas or language and need support. Still others are not engaged because they have not prepared to be able to contribute, and so lose interest.

The Harkness Mapping and LiveScribe Pens

Philips Exeter Academy in the 1930's, may help. One element is physical arrangement. In the Harkness Model a dozen students are arranged around a large table so that they can see each other, and the teacher does not have a distinguished location. This is to help discussion to remain student-centric.

While it may not solve all ailments of group discussions, elements of the Harkness Model, a tutorial style teaching program developed at

A second element of the model is discussion mapping as a group reflection tool. A rough sketch of the table layout is drawn with each of the participants shown. Then a recorder puts their pen to the page at the name of the first speaker, and moves their pen speaker to speaker during the conversation to create a visual representation of the conversation flow. Patterns emerge showing loud spots and quiet spots at the table, and which speakers interact most frequently with each other.
This could be a great application for LiveScribe pens which we have looked at in the last two "Digital Literacy Dispatch" articles. No additional time is needed on the part of the recorder during the conversation, but during debrief of the discussion map afterwards the audio of any portion of the conversation can be replayed to help the participants identify why imbalances exist in their discussion.