Discovery Education and CoverIt Live: Two great tools that work well together

First off, sorry for the Reeses’ rip-off…now on to my post. I rolled out CoverIt Live with all seven of my classes today.  It went rather well…a few minor technical glitches, several stressed students, and a bit-o-scrambling on my part. I wanted to show a Discovery Education video to my classes, the topic was about 9/11.

This would be a perfect opportunity to also show the students CoverIt Live.  I wanted to make sure the students were focused on the video, not other things, so I thought of my options.   A worksheet full of questions to complete would probably only be done by a few and copied by many, so it was out of the mix.  Discussion is good, but pausing and discussing interesting sections fragments the video and waiting to pause may lessen discussion.  I went with an option many of the students have already experienced; texting while watching videos.  This would give us live discourse without totally disrupting the video.

The iPods were handed out as usual in class and one student in each class got to use the lone iPad my classes have at this time.  The students logged into the Edmodo online classroom, then jumped to the sub-groups.  I embedded a separate CIL for each class on a different wiki page…past experiences have shown that the sharing of pages causes issues with my students.  This is also why I posted the links in the sub-groups, there would be no chance of clicking on the wrong link.

The set up of CoverIt Live can be found here on a previous post.

We watched about the first ten minutes or so of the videos and had the students post a few basic comments.  They introduced themselves and made one or two general comments.  They were urged to use first name and last initial as their post ID. There was one student who tried to use a pseudonym.  The comments were not published, though appropriate, and the students were once again asked to use their real names.  I did not try to figure out who the student was…no harm, no foul in my book.

My first period was a bit hesitant with the process, I had about five or six students adding most of the posts.  Once the others found out they would get participation points for the assignment, I had most of the class jump into CIL.  We actually had students turning in iPods after the dismissal bell in an attempt to get participation points. The timestamp shows when comments were submitted, so I can monitor the process.  Other classes were very interested in the processes, both video and CIL, and we almost ran late in several classes.

Later, several students had to log out earlier classes from Edmodo before they could log in, which happens on occasion with the iPods.  Running 24-25 iPods through one airport, along with several other machines can bog things down, especially when dealing with Cold War Era cement walls.  A few others had previous students names in the ID window…I am not sure how that happened since each class had its own CIL and its own wiki page, but it seems that CIL remembers ID names on each device. The students were focused, for the most part, on the assignment and since we did not have time to finish the video in class, I placed the session on “Standby” and we will continue the process tomorrow.

We did spend a few minutes to discuss etiquette on how to respond to others questions and comments.  I used the free CIL app on my Droid X to walk around the room and review any comments that might need “refined” before they hit the “public” Internet site.

There was an overwhelming preference by the students to use CIL when working with videos in class instead of using worksheets. They seemed genuinely interested in continuing the effort and even expanding it to working with other classes via Skype later in the year.  I hope to utilize Skype in the Classroom to achieve that goal soon.

The lesson can be completed with any type of mobile technology, or computer.  All you need is to be 1:1 students to computers, therein lies the problem for many…

Class Orientation: Day Three…Bring on the Blogs!

Today we slowed the pace down a bit during class orientation and let the ideas of this week soak in.

A student from each period logged into Edmodo and projected their view of Edmodo to the rest of the class.  It looks rather different on an IWB when compared to the screen on an iPod Touch.

We worked around the various functions as a review and the students were given instructions to finish up left over tasks from yesterday.  The students liked the notification feature in the top right of the screen, they saw how easy it was to keep informed of class information.

Next the new assignments were introduced; signing in to their individual blog,  changing their password, and if there was time they would start their Class Expectation Blog Post.  The first two assignments were short and sweet.  The third assignment made their faces drop at first…it seemed as if more than a few were expecting DOOM and GLOOM when the word BLOG was mentioned.

I then explained that instead of writing paragraphs and essay question answers on paper that would be possibly forgotten at home, in a locker, lost by one of us, and eventually thrown out or forgotten, we would complete most of our writing on the INTERNET.  Same writing they are used to completing, different platform for submission.  The mention of Digital Portfolio and Resume did not seem to resonate with them as I had hoped…I will explain that purpose again once they have more information posted online.

A student volunteer worked the Edmodo interface where the assignment, links, directions, and rubric are posted.  They pulled up the documents in a preview mode as we discussed the assignment.  They opened my example post on my Class Expectations for this year and saw what was expected of them.  Students who were in my classes last year added to the information.  Once they concretely saw what was expected of them they became more relaxed.  I suspect, and hope, the office will get less calls this year because, “Mr. Salvucci is making my child blog and I thought the class was about social studies.”

I know information being filtered through students to parents can become muddled or convoluted so I am sending parent information letters home to be signed.  This should help keep confusion to a minimum.  Unfortunately, I forgot to send them home with my earlier classes, so they will all be send home tomorrow.

A few students who were added to my class through schedule changes or being new to our school did not yet have accounts.  I jumped into Edublogs and used my Pro status to create blogs for them.  The entire process took about 30 seconds per student.  During Period 8, we had a slight “hiccup” and my students lost connection with Edublogs, but were still able to access other web sites.  I posted a quick tweet to @Edublogs asking about their status and received a timely reply.  The entire time of being unable to connect was only about five minutes and it was toward the end of class so we just wrapped up the lesson for the day.

In other events of the day, my two world cultures classes voted on dividing into sub-groups.  When the idea was brought up, I began to comment that I know what we can do…which was finished by one of my students from last year, “you are putting it to a vote with a poll.”  Some of my students know me and Edmodo rather well.  The results of the poll will appear later in this post.  Just as a note they were given the option of staying in one group or splitting since they are not an overwhelming number of students.

I have one class, a period 2 20th Century U.S. History class that is one day behind everyone else due to Junior class meetings on Monday.  They were almost caught up by the end of the period, with some students even to the point of logging into their blogs.  It was nice to see them jump right in and be comfortable with what we were doing.

All in all I believe we had a very productive day.

Class Orientation: Day Two

What a day…today was organized chaos with a very productive outcome.  It was also iPod Roll-out Day.

The students remembered the process we discussed yesterday.  I ran a brief discussion as to what we were trying to accomplish and the students seemed confident we would be successful.  The Polyvision interactive whiteboard (IWB) was used to model the steps to each of the following tasks.

They came back to my cart when called to sign out their iPods.  They double checked the numbers, initialed the sign-out sheet and jumped into Safari to go to our district Edmodo domain.  The web pages were open on the Polyvision IWB and the regular dry-erase board contained static text as to what was needed for the class today.

Many students already had accounts and could log in and join my classes, others had to create accounts to join my class groups.  For the most part the students at both levels were at ease with the interface.  Even students who were viewing Edmodo for the first time noticed how it was similar to Facebook in looks.

Once the students logged in they saw the assignments for the day.  Each of today’s three tasks were listed as assignments along with turning in the signed parental forms from yesterday.  The goal was to ingrain the concept of “I need to turn in assignments” on Edmodo and know how to do so.  Last year my students were a bit forgetful with this concept, but we did not use the assignment tool until late in the school year.

At this time the signed forms were collected by hand and the students used the Edmodo assignment interface to leave a digital note that they had their signed forms.  I later compared the turned in forms to the number of students who left digital notes…the numbers were close.

The students were then turned loose to go to their new Gaggle email accounts.  The link to Gaggle was embedded in the Edmodo assignment along with a pdf copy of directions.  I had the directions opened on the Polyvision board with links to the various pages open in multiple tabs.  This enabled the students to view what to expect on their screens with a larger interface.  Students volunteered to run the board during this exercise.

Once logged in to Gaggle, the students came back to my desk to change their passwords.  Administrator or teacher rights are needed to do this with Gaggle.  We had the process down and moved quickly to update passwords without holding up the class.

Students then sent an email to my school email account.  This had them actually complete a task they may need to do in the future and get my school email address in their contact list.  The plan is for them to use their Gaggle accounts when signing up for Web 2.0 tools or to email me when Edmodo is down.  They can access their Gaggle accounts to verify email addresses and retrieve passwords if needed.  Otherwise, we will be using the Edmodo classroom for communications.

Students were great at helping each other and mentoring others who were having technical difficulties.  Their ability and willingness to help out freed me up to handle issues that needed full administrative rights to fix.  These included changing passwords in Edmodo and Gaggle, looking up users in Gaggle, and reconnecting iPods to my dedicated classroom wireless network.

We adjusted on the fly with some students not in Gaggle’s system; they could not complete some of the assignments yet, but collected information so I can try and get them in soon.  This situation reinforced the concept of flexibility and the need to adjust as necessary in the classroom.

The day was not flawless by any means, but it was a great learning process for all involved.  What seemed the most impressive to me was that all of this was accomplished on an iPod interface.  Most of my students have used iPods for games and music, but few have used them in a classroom setting, with the exception of students who had me last year in other classes.

20011 School Year Day One: With Students

I titled this post accordingly, since I have been prepping for the 2011/2012 school year for awhile.  In general, I am always trying to build upon what I work on with my classes and improve as a teacher.  Specifically, I have been “game planning” specifics since I was told which courses I would probably be teaching in late May.

My plan was to scale back last year’s student class orientation from the two week monstrosity it became to a nice clean and concise three day roll out.  I am only introducing Edmodo, Gaggle email, and Edublogs as hands on tools right now.  Google Docs and possibly Evernote will be rolled out once we start working with books and documents.  Anything else will be dealt with on an as needed basis throughout the year.

Anyways…away we go…

Today was an intentionally slow day, handed out class rules for students to bring back signed, reviewed the rules, discussed how we use the iPods and iPad in class, talked about what topics we would be covering, and from my third class on introduced Cel.ly.  Cel.ly is the new group text notification tool that I will be using this year.  I will discuss Cel.ly in another post sometime soon.

One reason for starting slow is that the students are still fine tuning their schedules.  I have had several students added to my classes, and one entire class missed their class period due to a Junior Class meeting.  Most students SHOULD have their schedule changes completed by Wednesday at the latest.  Another reason is that I have many students for the first time this year.  It is important for them to be able to ask questions and get an idea what we will be doing before jumping in.  Admittedly, there were few questions from new students, but a good number of questions came from past students.  The most prevalent was whether or not I would be pulled out to be the district’s Technology Integrator again.  I do not know if they were hoping the answer would be “yes” or “no.”

By this evening, a small number of people have signed up for my Cel.ly groups, which is a good sign.  I have everything for tomorrow set up in Edmodo. I am hoping tomorrow’s iPod roll out goes smoothly, that is the key for moving into actual class work in the next few days.

I hope to post a review of tomorrow’s activities by Wednesday morning.

What I Learned Today: iPod Restrictions

Okay, I finally played around with restrictions on my class set of iPods.  I am not a big fan of censorship, and banning things, I prefer to have things open and teach appropriate behavior/use of tools.  Afterall, the world outside of school does not have filters, students need to learn how to self regulate.

Anyway, as I updated the iPod cart I began looking into the restrictions on the devices.  You can limit content and what can be adjusted on the iPods and lock in those restrictions with a four digit code.  I set two iPods up with restrictions to see what would happen.  You can restrict the following items; Safari, YouTube, iTunes, Installing Apps, Deleting Apps, Locations, Accounts, In-App Purchases, ratings for multimedia and apps, and game center settings.

I locked down the two iPods restricting everything but Safari and YouTube, since we have a firewall and filtering system here in school which would control what can be accessed from those apps.  The restrictions were not worth the effort, they not only blocked others from working with the iPods, but they blocked me.  I could no longer use the cart to update apps and information, I had to go into the iPods individually and unlock the passcodes to make adjustments.  The process was going to be too cumbersome.  I need to be able to make adjustments to apps and such from the cart.

By limiting the “accounts” my students would not be able to log into school email using the email app on the device.  I also have the students using Evernote and Google Apps, they would be locked out of adjusting those accounts with the restrictions on.  I took the restrictions off for those items also.

It was a nice, short experiment that proved to me to keep restrictions to a minimum.  I did lock down the Game Center, and restricted media to PG-14.  This was mostly for superficial reasons, the students cannot access the Game Center because they do not have my iTunes password.  The students are also limited to what they can actually download to the devices and I have made a habit of not putting explicit material on them either.

Overall, for the time it takes to adjust the iPods it does not make much sense to put the restrictions in place for a high school setting.  Unless you have a lot of free time with nothing better to do…

CoverIt Live and Current Events: Students’ Choice

This post was started on May 3, 2011, however life got in the way and delayed its publication.

My classes have been observing the events of the last few days and commenting on them through their blogs.  Today my Honors Civics class was given a choice before viewing videos of the recent events.  The first option was to view the videos and respond via their Edublogs accounts; while the second option was to comment while watching the videos using CoverIt Live (CIL).

Their response was unanimous in favor of live dialog. I quickly created an event through my CoverIt Live account and embedded the code for the event in my class wiki. This enabled me to archive the event and keep it public. The link was pushed out to the students through our Edmodo classroom. By pushing the link out this way the students do not need to type in urls, they only have to go into our classroom and click on the link.  This makes it easier for them when using our class iPod set.

Once the students were on the CIL wiki page, they typed in a short greeting as prompted and we started watching the news videos. There was no need to post any starter or ice breaker questions, the students jumped right in with comments. Several of my most even-keeled students were set up for approved comments without moderation, while most of the others had to have their comments approved. This was just a safety precaution, students usually get approved to post once they show they are acting responsibly. I walked around the room using the CoverIt Live application on my Droid X to moderate the debate.

Most of the students were commenting appropriately, they a a great group of Freshmen. There were several comments that needed to be adjusted, there was nothing inappropriate or rude about the comments.  However, some of the wording could have been misconstrued, especially the tone or intent when read later on the Internet.  The students viewed the comments, and rewrote them to get rid of any ambiguity.  Most of the students agreed with the rewrites, and understood how the misconceptions could occur.

The debate was rather spirited on the topics of the day.  The students were very opinionated about the world events, but respectful of opposing opinions.  This was the third time the students have used CIL in class and they are becoming much better at working on the iPod platform and commenting appropriately.  The students were also getting better at using “@” to direct comments to specific authors in response to their initial comments.

While writing this I now realize that I forgot to hand out the class iPad, which rotates to students in lieu of an iPod who request to use it.

iPad and Car Chargers

I do not have much luck with trying to charge my iPad via a dc outlet in my vehicles, however our Nissan Rogue comes equipped with a full USB connection.  This connection allows me to plug iPods/iPads directly into the Rogue’s audio system.  This type of connection charges the devices AND allows them to be controlled by the vehicle’s radio controls.  It is nice to be able to use the standard radio controls to safely control the music selections on iPods or iPads.

Previously with an iPod/iPad plugged in to the auxillary port on the dashboard or a wireless connection over an unused radio station you were stuck with random shuffling of songs or a linear playlist.  My how things have changed since I was a little boy sitting in the backseat of my father’s car listening to AM radio.

iPods: Back to 1 to 1

My iPod cart is back in the hands of my students, albeit in a limited basis and with strict conditions, which I will not get into now.   But I will accept the conditions, since we are once again moving forward.  The iPods have been rolled out on a consistent basis with my Honors Civics class, a good group of 9th graders with a wide array of technology experience.  They have another 3 years in the building and the experience will help them throughout their stay.  The other classes will gain access to the iPods, not on as consistent a basis as I would like, but we are again moving in the right direction.

This also makes it easier, and much more logical, to reincorporate the iPad into the classes.  There was no sense in having a single iPad to be passed around as a toy between students.  Now it can be rotated around on a daily basis, along with the iPods, so students can become familiar with the mobile platforms.  Last year proved that if the iPods can be used on a regular, almost daily basis, the novelty wears off and the students goof off less.  The students still need to be monitored, they goof off with pencil and paper, so it is not necessarily the iPods that are the distraction.

The entire process will hopefully build momentum and experience with the students, where they can not only learn the course content; but they will also learn how to utilize the tools they already have access to appropriately, effectively, and creatively.  The added experience on my end will hopefully allow me to continue to grow as an educator and improve upon creating a student centered and driven learning environment.

School Week Two: A change in plans

Week Two of the 2010-2011 school year is now in the books, fortunately, so here is my take on how things went…

by the end of Week One, the students were becoming a bit frazzled with getting hit with new tools everyday, even though they were not familiar with using the iPods and the tools.  I had the students log into the class blog site on Edublogs.  I upgraded to the pro account and set up student accounts.  I will not explain the process here, since I already have several posts explaining the process.  The students logged in and followed along watching what I was doing on my laptop.  I had my screen projected over the LCD projector onto my Polyvision Board.

Students were given the opportunity to sign up for an Animoto account using my all access teacher code which enables them to make longer videos and have all of the advanced account privileges for free.  They understood that we would not use it right away, but needed to sign up now so they could use it over the next six months.  They viewed an example of an Animoto video while they signed up.  We were able to create accounts using the Free Animoto App on the iPods.

We had a short week to begin with the Labor Day holiday on Monday, then we had Foresight Benchmark testing on Wednesday and Thursday.  The testing creates shorter classes, about 30 minutes each, so we used the time to have students work on their introductory blog posts and get caught up with any account sign ups and basic tasks.  Students were still coming and going on my class roster, so catch ups were necessary.

Students continued using the mini Eno Board and the LiveScribe pen throughout the week, but it was hard finding a rhythm in such an abnormal week.    I figured it best to hold off on the rest of the tools until they are needed, the kids were getting stressed and tired of practice.  Week Three starts the roll out of curriculum and projects that will receive more scrutiny in the assessment and grading departments.

I do need to roll Google Apps for Education out in the next week or so, but that is another story for a later date.

The Latest iTunes Update: WHY!?!

Yesterday, September 10, 2010, I updated iTunes on my Macbook and started pushing out the update to my classroom iPods. It seemed like no big deal, I was in a hurry so I did not read about the new update, a big mistake on my part. If I would have taken the time to read over what was new with the update, I would have saved myself a lot of stress.

It was just a bit hectic, which is not an excuse, just how my day was going. I had students coming into my homeroom for extra help, when I began updating the iPods, then we jumped into first period. I had a couple of students come into my class second period during my planning time, but I kept updating the iPods in the cart. @bpasquale from twitter was in my room, we were planning out the scavenger hunt our Freshmen will be doing in the next couple of weeks, so I was not very focused.

By fifth period, I had a number of iPods updated and the students were finishing up their blog assignment. That is when one of my students showed me an app that they thought shouldn’t be on the iPod. I have been asking them to keep track of content on them and let me know if they find things on the iPods that should not be there. The app was a game app and my iTunes account ID was in the log in screen, (See image below).

Highlighted by circle and arrow.

Highlighted by circle and arrow.

I could not delete the app, either by holding my finger on the screen to make it deletable (sic), or by going back into iTunes and pulling the app off of the iPod.  I asked several students to double check my process and they siad i was going about the delete process correctly.  Around this time, I was denied access to the iTunes Store, which added to my concern.  I logged out of iTunes and tried to sign back in, when I received a message that my log in was shut off for security reasons…so someone had tried to log in to my account…my blood pressure was rising.  As I double checked which students had access to the iPod in question, I was bothered by the fact that none of the students who had that iPod seemed like the type of person who would try and hack into my account.  I pulled the iPod in question out of class access and focused on the last two classes before lunch.

In the moment I did not think to ask if anyone else had that app on their iPod, which was another mistake.  By asking the students that question I would have seen the multiple apps and known it was not a single student issue, but something much different and less troublesome.  I chose to not bring attention to the issue with students, reverting to I am the boss and” know it all” of the room, ugh.

At lunch I found out that the school web filter was adjusted, political correct terms meaning locked down, so that was probably the cause of getting bounced from the iTunes Store.  No more updates would happen today, software updates need access to the iTunes Store, not just the controlling laptop.

My period 8 Freshmen were working on their blog posts, when I decided to ask one of my super tech proficient students for assistance.  I explained what was going on and he quickly responded, “You can’t delete anything iTunes puts on your iPod.  Did you update to the new iTunes?  If they built the app into iTunes you can’t get rid of it unless you downgrade iTunes…”

His explanation continued, but I lost the words as I realized how much stress I had caused myself because I had reverted to “Master and pupil” mode when I encountered a possibly bad situation in class. I thanked him for the advice and finished out the day, in a much more relaxed state of being.

I can actually laugh about the entire situation now, especially since I can get back into my iTunes account and everything is okay.  I just need to remember that the students are partners in this iPod project and they sometimes know more about the iPods than I do.  There is no shame in admitting that and asking for their help when I encounter issues that are difficult to overcome.

As for Apple, thanks for forcing an app onto my iPod that I have no use for…but I will always remember to read the update details before pushing info out to my class iPods.