iPods in Education

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iPods and Three Year Olds

Last week, my three year old daughter was grounded from watching “Dragon Tales” on television for several days.  She did a few actions repeatedly and intentionally…even after warnings.  When I told the story of how she earned this punishment, a friend and colleague said, “It reminds me of the ‘Breakfast Club’.”  Once more I felt foolish for acting like a caricature, but it happens on occasion.

By the end of the first night, Sunday, of not watching “Dragon Tales”, my daughter started to turn on the charm and try and work her way out of her punishment.

Questions and negotiations began, “If I eat all of my dinner can I watch ‘Dragon Tales’?” she asked.

“You are not allowed to watch it until Wednesday, remember?” I replied.

“Mommy, if I eat all my dinner, can I watch ‘Dragon Tales’?” she asked again, this time talking past me.

My wife held the adult line, “No, remember what you did?”

My daughter was persistent, she never acknowledged her wrongdoing, although she knew what we were talking about.  She hates to admit when she does something wrong.  She ran down the litany of getting her way, “I love you.”  Hugs and kisses were given out, but we held strong.

Then out of nowhere, we were trumped.  “Daddy, since I cannot watch ‘Dragon Tales’ on TV, can I watch it on my iPod?” she asked in her nicest voice accompanied by puppy-dog eyes. Game.  Set.  Match.

I looked at my wife, who was trying not to laugh too hard.  I had no answer except the obvious.  “You got me little girl…tomorrow you may watch ‘Dragon Tales’ on your iPod.”

She was correct, I was specific in banning the show from TV, but never mentioned the iPod.  She often watches shows from YouTube.  We screen them for content, since you never know what you will find.  That is why YouTube SpongeBob is banned in our house, for some reason that is a favorite for people to edit with inappropriate language.

In an earleir incident, when my wife was singing songs with her in the car from PBS Sprout, my daughter replied, “Mommy, stop.  I do not know that song.  I did not download from the Internet onto my iPod.”  My wife asked her to repeat what she said, not believing her ears.  The quote was the same the second time around.

When we got home I did check her iPod to make sure she has not downloaded anything onto it.  She hasn’t…yet.  Who says iPods are too complex for three year olds.

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iPod Presentation at PETE & C

Jill Machemer and I co-presented at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference a few weeks ago.  We discussed how we were incorporating iPod Touches into the classroom setting for instructional purposes.  During the presentation it was brought to my attention that I was violating copyright rules or laws.  I was committing the violation by pushing music playlists out to more than five iPods at a time.

I understand the concept of copyright, but this did not seem like a big issue.  The students do not have the ability to transfer the music from the iPods.  As I explained to the attendee who questioned me, “It’s pretty much as if I just blasted the music over my class speaker system for all to hear.”  The attendee who questioned me did not agree, and she was right.  However, I was a bit stubborn and held my position, until a friend of mine, whom I’ll just call “Cheryl C.” redirected me back onto topic.  I believe her comment was to the point of, “Let’s just pretend he has the same songs on only sets of five iPods.”  The whole conversation lasted about one minute, if that.

I understand the rule and concept.  I understand that I was being stubborn.  I guess I was mad at myself for overlooking that detail in the grand scheme of things.  After all, I have railed over and over about copyright on many soapboxes only to turn around and violate copyright myself…

Anyway, I came home from Hershey, site of the conference and addressed the issue.  I split the playlist into five separate playlists and pushed them out to the iPods.  The playlists will be rotated every couple of weeks to keep the music fresh for students who would like to listen to it.  The process also keeps the music within copyright legality, the lists are only on five iPods at a time.  I will add a few more playlists to increase the variety of music for the students and rotate it more often, but that project is for the future.

Leave a comment Posted on by Dominic Salvucci iPods in Education, Lessons and Teacher Things

iPod Project: Student Self-Reflection

Did you ever forget old standards because of new information? You get so busy looking forward you lose sight of what is around you…In a previous post I discussed how I was using Examview Test Generator to make short quizzes to embed on the class wiki for my students. I continued to do this with short quizzes to see how my students were understanding our class discussions. I was also printing out a single class set of a paper quiz. Students still took the quiz online via the iPod Touches, but they had a paper copy to read off of. Many prefer to read of the paper copies

The quizzes allow me to break up information into small chunks to work with for the students. The only issue I had was that we are covering a lot of new information and continuous quizzes would wear down my students. If they were not grasping the information well, the quizzes would pull students grades down markedly.

I usually ask questions and try and get discussions going, but even seniors do not like admitting publicly that they do not always understand concepts. I came up with an idea that I forgot about for awhile…I have started using a Google Form to have the students reflect back on the day’s lesson.

The concept is so simple, I cannot believe that I was not doing it sooner…I make a simple Google Form, four or five questions long and embed it on a wiki page.  The link to the page is placed in Edmodo and on the left hand navigation column of my class wiki, so the students have easy access to the form.  The questions are: Name, Period, What did you understand best, What did you understand least, and what do you feel you need/want to learn more about.  They receive participation points for taking the exercise seriously.  All questions have room for the students to explain why they answered they way they did.

I get a nice little spreadsheet of information to work from.  I review the students responses and create a file in Easiteach to hit the areas that students feel they need help with or are interested in.  My review requires the students to participate, I prompt them to their notes from past lessons and try to add to those notes.  The students use their iPods to find answers to the new questions and we work on bridging the gaps in understanding.  So far, the process seems to be working.  Hopefully the success will continue into the future.

Leave a comment Posted on by Dominic Salvucci iPods in Education, Lessons and Teacher Things

iPod Project: Moving into the 21st Century

I will be the first to admit, that I did not start out using my classroom set of iPods as 21st Century Learning devices. The learning curve was not steep, but getting everyone, including myself, to full speed took some time. To paraphrase the drill instructor-like driving instructor who had a one episode cameo in SpongeBob Squarepants, ” Before you can run, you must learn to walk. Before you can walk, you must learn to crawl.”  We started at a crawl, and quickly moved to a walk. I am now in the process of getting up to full speed with the iPods.  I am attempting to make my lessons more interactive and have a true conversation with the students while getting them to learn.

In the past, getting information out to them was a chore.  If I made a PowerPoint the way they are supposed to be, there was not enough information for them on the screen.  They did not listen to what I was saying, and they struggled.  If I put all the info on the slides, they wrote to there fingers bled, still didn’t listen, and thought you needed to embed a Word Doc to make a good PowerPoint.  Neither option was acceptable, I had to practice, “Do as I say, not as I do,” when I assigned PowerPoints as projects.

I have a Polyvision Interactive Whiteboard in my room now, with a working copy of RM Easiteach, which I did not have last year.  I now import my PowerPoints into RM Easiteach, either with “Glass Mode” or “Merge” .JPG files into each page of a file.  I then make a bare bones outline page in between each PowerPoint slide page.  The bare bones contain a few critical questions I want the students to know.

I then flip through the Easiteach presentation, I state the topic, and pose a few questions.  The students are encouraged to brainstorm ideas.  I still need to remind them, “each of you has a computer in front of you, (iPod Touch), use it.”  They are getting better.  They search for answers, some on the mark, some not, but that is okay, we are learning.  We put the brainstormed and “Googled” ideas up on the board and sift through the information.  The critical thinking process is modeled and worked through as a class.  We discuss the points and see which is correct and which may not be.  The reasoning as to why each is correct or not on topic is discussed.

Once we answer these questions and narrow the focus to the correct topic, questions usually pop up to further the conversation.  If this does not happen, I ask a few more questions and the process is repeated.  Students still need prompted and I still need to circulate through the room, but they are working, they are thinking, and they are active.

Once we have a good bit of information, I pull the board into “Split Screen” and we compare the facts the students found to what I had on my PowerPoint.  Sometimes, the information I have is a few years old and out of date, we correct the information and move on. At the end of the period, I “Save” the file for that class and reopen a scaled down mater file for the next period.

The following class repeats the process, but does not always find the same results.  This is another lesson unto itself and we do work through the divergent information to see if one is correct and one not, or they are both correct, just different.  Students learn from the process.  They learn how to find information, how to discriminate and choose the correct information, and they learn the curriculum.

I can copy and paste the slides into grouped information, then upload it into my Edmodo classroom.  The students can use the free Easiteach reader download to view the files from home.  I also create a podcast for each file, nothing spectacular, just an audio of the focus points of the file.  I push the podcasts out to my Podbean.com account and iTunes.  In an unabashed act of egocentricity, I subscribe to my own podcast on iTunes and push it out on the iPods.  Now my students have access to the material even if they are not in class, or if they need to review information.

I know I name dropped some specific brand names, but we are a Polyvision school. I am pretty sure I could do similar style lessons with other brands of Interactive Whiteboards.  The concept is what is important, getting the students to participate in learning and thinking, not just sitting there…passively.

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Music on the iPods: Moving Forward

I previously wrote about my attempt to use the free Pandora App to allow students to listen to music in class. It did not work, because unlike the iPhone, the iPod Touch does not allow you to run multiple apps at the same time. I decided to push out a variety of music to the students from my library. Using student supplied music would be too time consuming with the need to listen to all of the tracks before I uploaded them.

I chose to present what I considered an eclectic mix of music to the students. Here is the first batch of music I pushed pushed out: a Big Band CD of Desi Arnaz and Chico Marx Orchestras, Dave Brubeck’s “On Time,” Bo Diddley’s Greatest Hits, a Blues Compendium, “The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Blues,” War’s “The Best of War and More,” Donnie Iris’s “King Cool,” and the last selection from another local band, The Clarks “The Clarks Live.”

To set up the music, I pulled the music off of CDs into iTunes. I created a Playlist folder entitled, “Class iPods” and listed the individual playlists by genre.  I did have to initially set each iPod under music to “Sync Selected Music” and check off the “Class iPod” folder. This allows me to adjust the music within the class folder on my computer without resetting each individual iPod. I can now move playlists in and out of the folder as I choose, and the music will automatically sync onto the iPods.

At first, it created class discussion as to what was I thinking, the students had not heard fo many of the artists, except the two local groups. This was a nice little lesson unto itself, just getting the names out there was important in my eyes. Too often, we tend to ignore topics outside of the state standards, or standardized tests in public education.

The students are little by little sampling the music on the iPods. They run one earbud, volume on low, and take notes as we discuss the class curriculum. I keep tabs on their progress during the discussion, I am a natural pacer and usually move about the room throughout class. I will continue to monitor the progress of the effort and adjust accordingly.

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Music on the iPods: a minor setback

I have been planning on putting music on the iPods for my students since before we rolled them out. I wanted to see how the students would work with the technology before giving them “perks.” Well, for the most part, the students have earned the right to listen to music while working in class.

I proposed my idea of music for the students on the class set of iPods with two conditions. The two ground rules were; 1. No inappropriate music on iPods, 2. I do not want to hear sound coming from their iPods.

One of my students brought up a very valid point, no matter what music I placed on the iPods, the students would complain, because of the selection. The students suggested Pandora as an alternative. Pandora is an online music site that allows users to customize the songs they play by title or artist. I love using Pandora, it has all of the music I need without having to pull the songs off of CD’s or downloads.

My only concern was how the bandwidth would hold up with 25 iPods streaming music and transferring information over the Internet. I pushed out the Pandora App to the iPods and we ran a test in class.

Bandwidth was not an issue, but the idea did not fly. The issue is that if you run Pandora, you cannot work on any other apps. It does not work like regular music you place on an iPod Touch, which will play in the background while you work on other Apps. I tried some other music Apps I have on my iPod, such as IHeartRadio and Wolfgang’s Concert Vault. The result was the same.

My fall back position will be to place a variety of music on the iPods from my collection and let the students listen to music they may never have heard of before. I have some ideas as to the eclectic mix I would like to set up, jazz, classical, some big band, to War, and They Might Be Giants, along with some New Wave. After all, the music is an added bonus, not the reason why we are using the iPods. I hope to have a post about the continuation of this issue soon.

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iPods in the Classroom: Voice Recording

I bought a couple of styles of inexpensive microphones for the iPods Touches. I found several for around $10 on Amazon.com. I paid $12.95 for a thumb tack microphone from myGearStore.com, it works well, and is very affordable. I purchased a handful of Mini Microphones from two vendors. I paid $3.28, plus shipping for one Menotek mini microphone from DreamBargains.net. It records with the approximately the same audio quality as the Thumb Tack Microphone. I then purchased five more from Elmenos for 12.45 total, plus shipping. The only issue was that shipping cost more than the product, about $14 and change for the order. The microphones plug into the earphone jack for use. Because of the plug in location, you cannot hear sound from the iPod while the microphones are plugged in. We will experiment with splitters to see if we can run earphones and the microphones and the same time, but that will be another post.

The programs we are using for recording are free in the iTunes Store. Evernote for iPods and iPhones allows for voice note recording. Audio files can be synced from an iPod to a users online Evernote account. Once online, you can pull the information to any computer the user has installed Evernote on. This is a nice little tool for my seniors, many of which will be heading off to college next year.

We are experimenting with another voice recording program for the iPod Touches, Quickvoice. We are currently using the free version which allows for users to record and send messages up to 2 MB in size via e-mail. Some of my students recorded notes for their Credit Project presentations and e-mailed them to themselves. We are hoping to find a way to drop the audio files into PowerPoint, iMovie, Windows MovieMaker, or Camtasia Studio to create a short video presentation. The students are currently working on this, and receiving bonus points for their effort. So far the students did not have any issue with file size. They have actually been overly cautious in breaking their audio files into smaller bits.

I purchased the pro version of Quickvoice for $1.05, including tax, to try for myself. This version allows you to sent 20 MB of information via e-mail. This version also allows you to send voice to text files via e-mail. I will be working with this app over break to become more familiar with how to utilize it in the classroom.

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iPod and Edmodo

Today, me seniors jumped into my Edmodo online classroom on the iPod Touches. I needed an easy online source where we can coordinate all of our work. I believe this is it. We have been building basic skills on the iPods and the students have been learning to use tools they can take with them and use in college or the work place. It is a good thing, but all of the tools are individual parts of a system. I needed a platform to pull them together.

Now, we can use Edmodo as that platform. My students go onto Safari, the browser on the iPods, and either use the bookmark access or type in Edmodo.com and they are in the classroom.

Today, they either signed up if they did not have an account, or sign in if they were existing users, typed in the short code, and  they were in my class. Fantastic. They started by taking a short poll on how they store notes for my class, then posted a ‘Note” in response to a question I asked. They will then reply to a classmates note for their next assignment. A semi-threaded discussion board in a matter of minutes.

I have a second poll up now, asking which day of the week is best for them to access my after-school virtual office. I will open office hours one night per week, via Elluminate. The polling tool in Edmodo is easy to use and easy to get results.

All class announcements and copies of assignments can be placed on the site, so students will have 24/7 access to information. They can also hand assignments in via Edmodo, so we do not have to worry about hard copies getting lost or forgotten.

I linked all of our major tools to each class, this way, the students will log into Edmodo and begin the lessons from their. No more trying to type long URLs into the navigation bar, search Diigo for the correct link, or anything like that. Just log in and see the assignments. This will be great for students who miss class too.

Other teachers in the district have been using it for awhile. I toyed with it briefly last year, but we had BlackBoard, so I stuck with that. Moodle is on the horizon in our district, but Edmodo fits the iPods better. Less clutter on the screen, less of a learning curve for the kids. It has a “Facebook” feel to the pages.

My colleague, Bryan Pasquale, asked, Jeff O’Hara,  @zemote on Twitter, if there were any upcoming apps for Balckberries and/or iPods/iPhones. The reply was yes. Jeff, @zemote, reiterated that message again via a direct message in Twitter. Then we will be able to just jump to Edmodo from the iPod screen, no web browser needed. The site will not only make using the iPods easier, but make my overall classroom setup more powerful without the steep learning curve of Blackboard or Moodle.

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iPod Online Quizzes

Yesterday, I ran a quiz for my Senior Econ  classes online, using Examview Test Generator and our class wiki. The results were rather good, although there are adjustments I need to make.

I made the quiz, a review of the terms we had been discussing, in Examview and chose to save them as an html file. I went to my class wiki at http;//mrsal.wikispaces.com and upload the quiz as a regular file. I have a page set up for this purpose.

In class the students went to the wiki page and opened the test on the iPod Touches. They had to enlarge the text to read the choices. All the questions were multiple choice or true/false, so the students only had to negotiate a drop down menu to answer the questions. You can create any number of formats, but I did not want to overwhelm them on the first try.

I allowed the students to use their online notes in Google Docs or Evernote, or their paper copies of the notes. Most of the students used the on;ine version of their notes and were scrolling back and forth between the web pages. This was difficult for a few students to handle, so they reverted to paper notes.

We did have a couple of students hit the wrong button to submit the quiz to me via e-mail, however we were able to get back to the quizzes without losing any information. The quizzes and results were then sent to my e-mail.

The first adjustment that I need to make is to have a paper copy of the version for students to have, just in case they want an easier copy to read. They will still answer online, but reading from a paper copy will help several of my kids out. They were struggling with scrolling around the screen while trying to read the enlarged text.

The main adjustment is for me to use quizzes for formative assessment, short quick reviews and study guides, instead of larger summative exams. The shorter versions will allow, or force students to see how much of the material they understand. They can then adjust their study habits accordingly. I will give them participation points for using these as a self-assesment tool. In the past it seemed to help my students greatly.

Overall I was very pleased with how the exercise went.

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iPod Project Update: Hiccup in system.

I have been using Documents 2, the free version to use as a word processor on the iPod Touches. We have an issue and are trying to find a work around. My students can edit and add information to documents that were originated on Documents 2 and uploaded to our districts’ Google Apps Domain, but cannot edit documents that originated in another program.

I paid for the upgrade to Documents 2, the pay version and it does not address the issue. Students will only be using iPod Touches in my classroom. In study hall, or outside of school they will be using some other form of computer. I will be working on this fix for awhile. I tossed it out to the students, offering extra credit to the first to find the fix. So far there have been no takers.

I am in the process of contacting Savvy Soda, the app creator, to see if they know how to correct the issue.