by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.
Why is there such a love affair with interactive white boards? Soon after the PQ government was elected this fall, it announced a moratorium on the previous government’s plan to put an interactive white board in every classroom across the province.
I say this is a good thing.
IWBs are expensive and do very little to help students develop competencies.
So why the love affair? It’s an easy way to say, yes, we are integrating technology into our classrooms without really changing much. It integrates tech and maintains the status quo of teacher-centric classrooms.
Is that the source of the obsession, then? They make us look like we are using technology to meet the needs of our students but really they are meeting the needs of educators who are afraid or don’t know how to give up the central role as teacher in their classrooms?
Summary:
I presented our story and talked about our main learnings:
When introducing new teaching tools be sure to include a lot of teacher-centered PD, allowing time to address teacher concerns with the hows and whys of using new tools, the fear of changing teacher roles, working through discomfort with technology, and allowing for teachers to learn how to use the tools in a meaningful way.
iPads are tools to help teachers bring great pedagogy to their students and learning environments. Don’t throw a bunch of iPads into a classroom and expect magic to happen.
iPads are best used when they are recognized as individual user devices. Don’t try to use them and control them in the same way that you would paper workbooks or computers and laptops. You can not control which apps a student chooses to use on the iPad (beyond limiting the apps you put on it…but even then, a savvy student can download whatever app they want.) What I find great about a tablet is that the apps allow us to offer much more individualized and interactive learning experiences so students are generally more engaged in active participation than evasive techniques.
As opposed to focusing on specific apps, I like to look at what is already available on the iPad that can enhance learning. Specifically, the video capabilities are fabulous ways to practice langauge, understanding, performance tasks in a safe way.
Feedback: We received lots of great feedback, including some that wished we had more time (as did I! I will take that into account for next time. One hour is just not enough time to present AND respond to the needs in the room!) and some that seemed to be asking for more elementary school level apps. As outlined in the workshop description, the session was intended to showcase what we are doing at Nova – an adult education centre. So we don’t really work with elementary level apps. However, I’ve included links below to some blogs and other places that do showcase elementary level apps. I hope that you all made it to the literacy workshop that followed mine, apparently they did highlight quite a few apps for lower levels :)
Ali’s Top 10 Math apps – they range in price from free to $7.00. Only 1 requires wifi to use (Ace). Preparation Educreations – great for preparing lessons that students can refer to on their own time or if they need another listen to/look at the explanation or if they missed the class. (I also like its potential for student-created lessons…if a student can create a lesson on a topic, they get it.)
Conversion Converter – a unit converter for many, many different types of units
Algebra Algebra Touch – touch and see how algebra works.
Tritutor – search for this in your app store. The links I found all point to the US app store, which won’t work for us but it can be found on the app store from your iPad. Ace – High School Math Algebra (require wifi). Step-by-step video examples for a variety of high school algebra topics. HUP Polynomials – more videos…
Geometry MathGraph – interactive app for graphing circles, elipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas WinPossible Geometry Tutor – (from the website) Having difficulty with some parts of Geometry or just need a refresher course? Then this video series is for you. With 15 MAJOR CATEGORIES and 81 VIDEO LECTURES totaling over 7 HOURS of lessons, Video Geometry Tutor covers all the essential areas you need to know about Geometry. Unit Circle
Multi-topic Math Aptitude – Looks like a comprehensive math learning app for multiple topics (high school). The link goes to the US store, you may need to search for it within the Canadian store or directly from your iPad.
Last night, at 10:39, I found out about the midnight deadline for applying to the Google Teacher Academy taking place in New York this October. How was it that I only clued into the application process in the, practically literally, 11th hour? That may have a little something to do with this kind of thing:
And I’m realizing that me in 2012 is not much different from the me when I started teaching 16 years ago. Nah, actually I am a lot different. I’m more focused, I have more knowledge when it comes to working with a diverse student group, more knowledge about pedagogy and curriculum and integrating technology but that focus and knowledge are steeped in the same locus of care that brought me into teaching in the first place.
So my application video is nothing fancy. Really. Nothing. Fancy. It’s 50 some odd seconds of me sitting on my bed looking like I am talking to someone off screen because I still haven’t mastered the iPad video feature (I tend to want to look at my eyes when I’m talking to a camera…) but it is honest and it reflects what I believe needs to be the starting point for anything to really happen in education: the recognition that motivation and learning come first from ourselves. The educators. Discover what motivates us as educators and stay true to that.
I recently completed a 4-month contract as a technology consultant at two adult education centres. I loved it. Throughout the whole experience I felt this is what I am meant to be doing. The focus on tech reached out to my inner geek and the focus on relationship reached in towards my personal ethics of care.
The other day I was doing some thinking about the past 4 months and decided to put it on paper (so to speak) and to frame it within a guiding question. The question I came up with was:
How can the way I help other educators affect their practice?
I used Dabbleboard to help draw it out and came up with this (click to enlarge)
I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague the other day. She is a teacher in adult education with upwards of 35 years in the classroom and she said to me that the model we recently used in her class and others, with me going directly into the classroom and working with students, makes sense to her. I love this drawing of a classroom. It was done by Todd Berman, a substitute teacher in San Francisco. Click it to go to his website.(I visited her Economics classroom and talked about technology and advertising. Then I returned on 3 different occasions to work directly with individual and small groups of students as they created advertisements for virtual businesses.)
She said (and these are her words) that she will never know enough about tech to be able to teach her students anything new about tech. She said that it is a waste of time to send her off to do workshops to learn a new technology in the hopes that she would then teach it to her students, and that it is best to show the tech to the students so they can use it within the context of her curriculum and that, if anything, they should be the ones showing her how to use it.
This model
a) keeps teachers in the classroom as opposed to sending them out of the classroom for PD.
b) allows teachers to focus on their curriculum while offering different pathways to students to get through it
c) allows for professional collaboration between teachers and consultants
d) fosters student leadership as they learn new tools from a consultant and can show it to each other and their teachers.
We went on to talk about how the big work is in creating teachers like her who are willing to let something like that happen in their classrooms.
I like that idea – the idea of classroom as a site of professional learning.
