The Great Parenting Debate: Should School Kids Rely on Computers?

This FoxNews.com article presents a variety of quotes from two sides of the one-to-one computing debate including comments by parents, educators, and corporate executives.

By John Brandon, Published December 21, 2010 | FoxNews.com:

As you consider whether to arm your child with a laptop computer or iPad this Christmas, consider also which battle line to stand behind, as the fighting grows over the increasing reliance on digital devices in the classroom.

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Photo by Pia Waugh via Flickr

Survey solution for a student project?

A seventh grade student just came to me looking to electronically administer a survey to about 150 students. My first thought was a Google Form. The problem is that about 10 of her questions require the respondent to look at an image and select a multiple-choice, text answer. As far as I can tell, Google Forms does not support an image in the question. (I did find a reference to people editing the HTML of the form and hosting it elsewhere, but that is overly complicated for this case as I want a solution the student can own.)

We have Blackboard's course management system, but you can not link directly into a Blackboard survey (or even a particular course) in our system. Emailing students directions to go to Blackboard, login, select a specific course, and go to a particular survey are enough hurdles that many students probably won't bother to fill out this optional survey. The student doing the project would like to just send her prospective respondents a link, which seems the wise choice to me.

So the best solution I came up with so far is to use a Google Sites web page with an embedded Google Form. The Sites page will contain the 10 images in a 2 x 5 table at the top of the page. Each image will be labeled with a number:

Picture 1

The questions will then say something like "Identify the bird in Picture 1." If the embedded form is sized properly, I believe the images can stay on the screen while the survey requires scrolling through the questions.

What do you think?
I would be happy to hear suggestions for a different solution that would allow the image to be located right in the question. Please post a comment, reply via Twitter, or email me via campbb at d-e.org if you have a suggestion.

HotW: Interview with William Kist, author of The Socially Networked Classroom

The book The Socially Networked Classroom by William Kist was recently been brought to my attention via a recommendation by Steve Hargadon. As my potential reading list outweighs my reading time, I plan to read the couple of chapters available via Google Books and listen to this interview with the author, which I can do during "down time" in the car, before I decide to buy it. (If there were an audio book, I would have probably already made that purchase.)

According to the forward, the book "asks us if the social interactivity of the Web -- Web 2.0 -- has transformed the way we 'do' school and then shows us, with care and specificity, the way to transform our schools."

So far, it looks promising.

This MP3 has been published by Steve Hargadon and/or Elluminate so they retain the rights to the recording, which appears to be All Rights Reserved due to a lack of any indication otherwise. I make no claim to the rights to use this file, am only linking to it, and will take down the link if asked to do so by the owner of the recording.

HotW: PBS/Frontline Digital Nation discussion

Heard on the Web: I'm adding the audio recording of the Digital Nation Classroom 2.0 Live discussion to my listening to do list. In addition to the hosts, it includes special guests Sandy St. Louis, Ramona Pringle, and Kim Flack.

Image via Wikipedia

I found the Frontline Digital Nation documentary interesting to the point that I shared it with one of my students as part of an independent project and am thinking about doing something related to the program with the rest of my class especially with regard to the multitasking segment. However, I've not really discussed the program with other teachers so I've been interested to hear other opinions about the research presented especially after hearing negative comments over lunch at TEDxNYED by two of the speakers. (Unfortunately, I didn't have time to ask them to elaborate.)

This MP3 has been published by Classroom 2.0 Live, which retains the rights to the recording. I make no claim to the right to use this file, am only linking to it, and will take down the link if asked to do so by the owner of the recording. You can subscribe to Classroom 2.0 Live in iTunesU by searching for it in the iTunes store.

Interview with Dan Pink about his book Drive and the educational implications

For a year or so, I have been using the Delicious social bookmarking service to create my own "custom podcast" of recordings I want to listen to. Basically, I have a Delicious tag dedicated to this, and I download my custom podcast in iTunes by subscribing to the RSS feed of the tag. (If anyone would like less technical directions on how do this, let me know.)

This Delicious list was my alternative to subscribing to the entire set of episodes for each show/series, which I used to do, because I found that I never end up listening to more than a small portion of what I downloaded. Therefore, I used this custom podcast via Delicious to pick out only selected episodes that grabbed my interest at the time.

(Update, 1/30/2012: Unfortunately, Delicious no longer seems to support including enclosures such as mp3 files in the RSS feed it generates. Therefore, the method I mentioned above to create your own podcast feed using Delicious no longer works. If someone know a similar alternative, please let me know!)

As an experimental next step, I've decided to start publishing my custom podcast list through this blog instead so I can more easily link back to the original source and, at times, elaborate on the subject of the recordings or link to related information.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Cover via Amazon

I'm starting with this recorded interview of Dan Pink discussing his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Dan was interviewed by Steve Hargadon on February 17, 2010 as part of his Future of Education series of interviews. More information about the interview from Steve is available on his blog.

This MP3 has been published by Steve Hargadon and/or Elluminate so they retain the rights to the recording, which appears to be All Rights Reserved due to a lack of any indication otherwise. I make no claim to the rights to use this file, am only linking to it, and will take down the link if asked to do so by the owner of the recording.

What does "good enough" mean for a one-to-one program?

Pat Woessner, a middle-school instructional technologist at MICDS, which seems like a school with which we at D-E have some similarities, echoed an interesting idea from an article in Wired Magazine. (By the way, MICDS also has a one-to-one tablet computer program.)  In Pat's latest blog post, which you can read here, he said that the "crapification of everything IS an improvement" and schools should embrace that.  Before you get crazy by reading this idea out of context, note that he was talking about hardware and software technology tools and the point is that while many of the cheap or free online tools currently available might not be the "best of breed" they can still be powerfull with regard to educating students. In fact, simplicity may make them more valuable. (The post is short so you can read it yourself and not take my word on it.)

This is definite food for thought for schools with one-to-one programs, especially tablet PC programs since tablets are generally more expensive that standard laptops.  While we definitely have some classes where not having ink would be a loss, those courses might be in the minority at the moment.  Netbooks are worth some thought as the draw of an almost disposable computer is strong. It would be  easier to keep computing ubiquitous and reliable for every student in every classroom if the majority of hardware repairs required only a hard drive swap into a new replacement and we could quickly send students back out the door without dealing with insurance, parts ordering, and loaner pool management.

Many people who have used Netbooks say they don't run high-powered applications well. For example, is video editing and production viable on a Netbook? I don't yet have the Netbook experience to answer this question but my gut feeling is no (as the technology stands today).  Of course, hardware performance will increase faster than cost as it always does with computer technology so maybe this problem will be elminated sooner than we think.

The flip side of trading tablets for netbooks is that even if you think our current use of tablet ink by students is expendable, should we radically change a program only based on current use.  As with any program, it evolves over time.

Does pen input by students provide potential for improving student learning that still needs to be further developed?
Should efforts that might go toward making this hardware platform change instead go toward professional development and possibly obtaining better tools to make ink use more powerful?
If we shut the door on ink by eliminating pen input or causing it not to be umbiqutious, will we miss valuable opportunites?

I honestly don't know at this point but am interested in hearing from others on the topic so if you are reading this, please post a comment.

How to keep those old electronic grade books

As we are about to start the new school year with a new student information system, the old teacher grade book software, InteGrade, which we previously used will no longer be available. This caused a good question to be raised by member of the faculty:

A thought just occurred to me as both a teacher and former department chair.

Seeing as though there is no longer going to be use of Integrade, it may seem that we no longer need the program application around. However I have my own Integrade files over the years as a teacher, and as a former department chair who kept department faculty's files each marking period. If I delete the program application, ALL THOSE FILES Become unreadable (data rot). Is there something in place as a school, so that if the need arises, we can access the information in those file in future years?

There seems to be no conversion option for Integrade files. In other words -- are we going to keep at least one turntable around in order to play the record albums in the future?

I posted my response here for others with the same question:

We no longer have the rights to use InteGrade and there is no plan to keep it around somewhere for the purpose you mention. This is a common problem with all electronic data and the best practice for dealing with this problem in general is to save the data for later viewing in a common format. In this case, I recommend that you print the appropriate InteGrade reports for record keeping purposes to a PDF file. Primo PDF, which we have supplied on your tablet, will work well for this purpose.

In some cases, PDF files are better than the original proprietary application data because most hard drive search tools or uploading files to services such as Evernote will allow you to search them all en mass. (While Google Docs lets you upload PDFs, it doesn't currently appear to let you search them all at once. Bummer.) The version of PrimoPDF I just tested (4.0) does create searchable PDFs. If your tablet has an older version that does not create searchable PDFs, you can download the latest version for free at primopdf.com. (I don't remember when Primo added this feature but I believe it was a few years ago.)

All that said, InteGrade does not need to be "installed" in order to use it. If you copy the InteGrade program folder currently on your tablet to a CD and stick it on a shelf, you could copy it back onto your computer at a later date if necessary and it should run. (It might even run directly off of the CD.) Of course, this assumes in the future that you are using a computer and operating system that InteGrade would still work under, which is not a certainty as technology evolves. This is another reason why common file formats like PDF are good for archiving.