EdSurge Summit 2013 Review

On Saturday, November 2, I attended the EdSurge Summit with Middle School teachers Ryan Hopper, Sally Jaeger, and Jain Pak. The EdSurge Summit Conference was a showcase for 30 vendors and their newest Ed Tech wares.

Several new products were completely amazing and one was, I have to admit, kind of creepy!

This is a list of the vendors broken into categories, which makes it easy for one to check out these new Ed Tech tools:

I found an interesting trend of products designed for tracking and collecting student and teacher data while providing a service. This includes flashcard review for students, classroom feedback for teachers, patterns in attendance, proficiency in math – if you can think of it there was something out there!

I will highlight five products that impressed me the most:  Zaption, LearnBop, Knowmia, Lumosity, and Globaloria. Some, but not all, require a nominal, annual fee.

Zaption - http://www.zaption.com

This is a site that allows you to make video clips literally interactive! You can transform a video from YouTube, Vimeo, your personal library with embedded questions, comment sections, multiple choice and multiple answer to share a few features. It turns the passive act of watching a video into active learning that helps students focus on the most important parts of the content. It also records your students’ answers for your review AND it works with Moodle! Great for a flipped assignment at any level.

LearnBop - http://www.learnbop.net

This is a math site for students in grades 5-9. It was created by math experts to “uncover knowledge gaps” while tracking your students’ progress. The tracking allows the teacher to hone in to specific areas of need for each student in the class. The part that I thought would be useful is that it collects learning data for teachers to use and be able to perhaps better assess curriculum effectiveness. (There is an elementary math service as well called Motion Math but I don’t know much about it.)

Knowmia - http://www.knowmia.com/

This is another great flipping the classroom, video tool that some folks have used already but it allows a teacher to make a video, and include (or not) a face recording to make it a bit more personalized. They also have over 19,000 teacher made videos in a searchable library. A cool feature is that it also provides teacher data in that it records student use: how many times did they watch the video, and for how long.

Lumosity - http://www.lumosity.com/

Many folks already know of this one but it is a host of scientific “games” that increases cognitive function. No, seriously! I am smarter already! Some of them even focus on avoiding distractions and improving focus.

Globaloria - http://www.globaloria.org/

This product uses laptops to teach students in grades 6-12 how to code and design educational games. We heard from a history teacher who uses it to teach his content and reinforce student learning. Students must learn and show mastery of the content to be able to design a rich game. Thankfully, Globaloria also provides teacher support.

Now for the creepy one (my opinion only!): 

ObserverNet -

As far as I understood it, ObserverNet installs a 360-degree camera into the ceiling of your classroom. Teachers may record a class and then upload the media to a panel of expert educators who provide feedback on content and classroom management. The idea of feedback is awesome but the whole camera in the ceiling of the classroom just seemed over the top to me.

Creepiness of ObserverNet aside, I left EdSurge Summit Conference overflowing with information and excited about how many new things are out there. However, as I shared with my colleagues, if you just take away one or two things to try out in your curriculum that is a successful conference.

by Kali Baird

Earth Science Teacher
Middle School Science Leader Teacher

Middle School Technology Coordinator

The Promise of Technology - HyperCard Was It or, Was It?

In 1945 Vannevar Bush, wrote As We May Think in the Atlantic Monthly. In the introduction to this groundbreaking article the editor explains Bush's thesis:

"instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages."

45 years later, Apple Computer, Inc. published Learning With Interactive Multimedia: Developing and Using Multimedia Tools in Education (Microsoft Press). Edited by Sueann Ambron and Kristina Hooper, this compilation promised to explore the ways in which "interactive multimedia gives us an opportunity to learn in new, more dynamic, and more exiting ways." In fact, said Ambron and Hooper, "We hope this book contributes to making that happen."

In those hopeful days for technology in education (years before the introduction of Netscape Navigator and the world wide web) teachers were most excited about Apple's HyperCard software. This new software allowed them to easily and quickly collect, collate, and deliver vast amounts of information for their students. In addition, teachers could create "interactive links" between the "cards' in their HyperCard "stacks" allowing students to explore random connections between related information.

With their $14 million purchase of the Silicon Valley company Forethought (makers of the Macintosh-based software called PowerPoint) Microsoft Corp. signaled it's own interest in digital interactive publishing.

At about the same time Tim Berners-Lee came up with idea of interactive, hyperlinked pages on something that would later be called the Internet.

While Microsoft was interested in helping businesses use PowerPoint to grow their profits and Apple envisioned digital publishing for educators and by students, Berners-Lee believed this information and creative interactive capabilities should be available to anyone anywhere in the world.

In their chapter from Learning With Interactive Multimedia,  "HyperCard: A New Deal in the Classroom," Lowell High School librarian Robert Campbell and english teacher Patricia Hanlon predict the future for technology in the classroom:

It is likely that it will be as easy to create materials that combine text, video, and audio as it is to do word processing today. We will be able to record and retrieve events from wherever we are: in the library, in the classroom, in the office, or at home. An audio interface with the computer will be commonplace, and software advances should be able to provide us with our own personalized intelligent agent who maintains our "electronic household" for us. Video via telephone will be commonplace. Television sets will be thin, wall size, of extremely high definition, and will contain a built-in computer.

23 years later the confluence of ideas that helped create hypermedia and the world wide web echo back to us as the San Domenico School enters our third year of a one to one iPad learning program.

Today education doesn't look exactly like Vannevar Bush's dream of information access or Campbell and Hanlon's view of the modern classroom. But at San Domenico School most of these ideas are in action every day.

Whether it be biology students taking pictures in the garden to document recycling in nature, middle school students making movies to document their science labs, or students in a religion class creating e-Books, San Domenico School students and teachers are using their iPad tablets to gather their information from a wide range of media sources. They use modern "cloud-based" tools to store and collate their data and the latest software "apps" to produce the interactive materials necessary to complete the assignments at hand.

In "HyperCard: A New Deal in the Classroom" Campbell and Hanlon try to answer the question of whether it's worth all the effort to integrate this new interactive technology in their classrooms:

To say that teaching with interactive media helps illustrate and dramatize things is both obvious and an understatement. It seems to inject a sense of immediacy and reality in a subject that is evident in the way students regard what they are studying. Rather than telling students that a subject is relevant or significant, we have a way of helping them to discover that for themselves. And in addition to the vividness and impact that learning in this way can have, it is also more effective and precise. Students more quickly grasp the issues and possibilities, and they find information more efficiently. When they find facts or helpful interpretations, or if they gain some insights, they have a powerful way to share them.

Teachers are quick to explore new technology because they know it will engage their students in learning and provide them with access to the information in a way Vannevar Bush imagined some 68 years ago.  Schools that embrace and support one to one programs will provide this deep learning environment for their students. This is no educational dream for San Domenico School students and teachers. We are creating this reality every day.

Brad Lakritz

Director of Technology

Show me the Nervous System!

High School biology teacher Hilary Staples uses ShowMe (@showmeapp) to transform students into teachers:

In order to review what they learned during their unit on the Nervous system students needed to be able to explain various concepts such as the anatomy of the brain, how we hear, see, smell and taste, and neurons. In addition they needed to understand the more complicated physiology of how neurons communicate, create electrical signals and transfer information chemically across the synapse. As they say, "If you can teach it, then you know it." That is why students were put into pairs or threes and given a topic in which to make a ShowMe. Then the links to the ShowMe presentations were added to their review sheets in the class Box (@BoxHQ) folder for everyone to be able to watch as much as they want while they are reviewing for the unit test.

Some examples:

http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=9scfPqi

http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=lulrNCq

iWalking @sandomenico!

Kali Baird, Middle School science teacher and technology facilitator, has been instrumental in the success of our 1-to-1 integrated technology program.  She recently took a walk through the classrooms during a prep period:

After a full semester of iPads in our classrooms, I decided to hit the hallways and check out the scene to see what I could see. I knew that the teachers were integrating technology and had an overall sense that things were going well but needed a clearer picture.

In Valerie Davis’ 6^th grade math class, she has her iPad on a stand and is projecting the latest concept in math via iAnnotate (@iAnnotate). As she explains the steps to her students she is also writing notes. The students are either viewing the worksheet of problems or taking notes, in Noteshelf (@noteshelf), on their iPads. The feeling in her classroom is uncomplicated. In other words, the ease with which the students use their iPad as a math tool is impressive.

As I walk in to Rob Shashoua’s 7^th Spanish class, he informs me that they are just wrapping up their iPad use for the period. Too late for me. But wait! He gets excited and switches gears in class. He asks the students to go to the app store and download the new app, Rover, which allows access to sites that use Flash to be played on the iPad (@theroverapp). The Spanish textbook is aligned with the website Classzone.com which has several interactive features that use Flash to re-enforce learning and vocabulary. It took the students literally under five minutes to get the app downloaded and onto the chapter that they are studying.

Entering Wynn Richard’s 6^th grade history class, all is silent! The students have their iPads docked on external keyboards and are typing their Ancient India stories. I ask the students about this project. They first did research and note taking on their iPads to gather information and images which would help them write detailed stories from the perspective of a selected caste. Part of this activity involved viewing maps of the different regions and photos of different caste members, and using Google Earth to really see the geography of the area. The goal of this project is to combine the students’ final stories into an eBook to be shared with the whole class. Exciting!

As I walk back to my classroom, I am thinking about what I have seen and also how many tours we have recently hosted. When a tour comes through, we really want them to be able to see what it is that makes San Domenico such a high quality school. On the Middle School tour, parents walk into my classroom to hear a bit about our foray into technology integration. I realize at that moment that our “everyday technology attire” is so amazing that it is like our “Sunday best!”

Journey to the Center of the Earth.. with iPads!

Sixth graders recently completed a science project that featured student iPads integrated naturally.  Kali Baird, Middle School Science Teacher and Technology Facilitator shared two examples of student iMovies and a description of the lesson unit:

"Sixth grade science students have recently completed a model Earth project in the classroom. They first read about the interior and surface features of the Earth followed by class discussions, guided digital worksheets, Google Earth and USGS exploration. The students brought in supplies to work in a group to create a model Earth using various items. They were required to take photos/brief videos as they created their models. As a project enrichment and wrap-up, students created an iMovie or a PowerPoint that showcased the model making process supported by vocabulary terms specific to parts of the Earth. It served to reinforce concepts that they had studied in a media that they enjoy - some spent an inordinate amount of time selecting the perfect soundtrack to go with their presentation!"

Learning psychology with iPads

As part of our 1-to-1 iPad program, our high school students are learning with new "apps" as they and teachers explore new opportunities. High School Science Department Chair Hilary Staples gave us this update on learning psychology with iPads:

"After units on learning, memory and cognition, the AP Psychology class is now exploring neuroscience and all aspects of the brain and nervous system. In order to understand and engage with the concepts students have completed a diversity of assignments; from analyzing 'how many parts of your brain it takes to ride a bike to Redhill', to acting out the neurotransmitter exchanges in the synapse and how drugs interfere, and even eating celebratory brain (shaped) jello. As we work on reviewing this material the students have really enjoyed using the 3D Brain App on their iPads which allows them to rotate the model of the brain in multiple directions. Areas can be selected and information about each location is highlighted."