Category Archives: technology

iPad Lesson: Creating a Food Web

21st Century Skills, Education, professional development, technology

I’ve been doing some training for teachers who will be using iPads in their classrooms this coming year.  I wanted to show them the power of mobile technologies so designed a lesson plan that I thought others might find interesting, particularly if you doing your own training.

Pretty simple idea: the content I used was the food web since it seems to be a ubiquitous standard in the biological sciences.  The teachers started with their own school campuses to locate and photograph the various parts of the food web that they could find.  If they couldn’t find certain ones, they were allowed to supplement with photos from the web.  They opened the photos in Skitch to do some annotations and then used an interactive whiteboard app to create a presentation.  The preferred app was educreations as it allowed the user to have multiple screens.  Considering the limited amount of time we were able to devote to the activity (just about an hour), the resulting products were pretty good.

This past week, I also had math teachers so I gave them the option of creating one related to triangles and other geometric shapes.  They were able to easily find photos in the school and combine them into great presentations.

I would love to hear about other ways you’ve incorporated hands on learning in your professional development…I’m convinced that if teachers can experience engagement with the devices, they will be more likely to use them in more powerful ways.

Feeling Like a Digital Native

gaming, technology

I sometimes bristle at the digital native/digital immigrant divide.  I feel like I can stand toe-to-toe with any 20-something, and I do every semester when I teach undergraduates.  They know what they know about Facebook and email but are surprised by much of what I show them.  They even look at me apologetically when they get out their analog agendas and spiral notebooks.

But when the conversation turns to gaming, at least on a game console, I feel like a digital immigrant.  I have never spent hours playing video games on a game console like a Nintendo. The closest I’ve ever gotten to a console game is the Wii that I’ve had for a few years, and, in my middle school/high school days, an early Atari.  In between…not so much.  In college, we played arcade games at the laundromat.  After college, I was too poor to buy a game console, and since I didn’t have kids, I never had an easy excuse to buy one later. I tried one out with my nephew but never had the time to get any better during our short visits.

Jane McGonigal is 34 years old: closer in age to my nephew than me by at least a dozen years.  She was 10 when Nintendo was introduced.  I had just graduated from college.  It seems to me, that at least in terms of gaming on consoles, age matters.  Unlike email and word processing and other computer applications, I did not have to learn how to use a Nintendo in order to do my job.  Gaming was entertainment and thus optional.  A generation later, it seems like having a game console is equivalent to having a television and homes with kids probably have them.  I suspect that most homes had a game console before they had a computer.

There is some data on gaming but it tends to lump all kinds of gaming–console, digital, mobile–together.  This report from the Entertainment Software Association suggests that some 49% of homes have at least one game console. I’m wondering if that includes me since I do have a Wii.

And then I’m also reminded that digital native is in the eye of the beholder.  I have an old friend with who I have a friendly Trivial Pursuit rivalry.  During one visit, we decided to play on the Wii.  I won and my friend, who is about 10 years older, suggested that because I was a techie, I had some kind of edge.  In her mind, I was the digital native.

 

The QR Code Game

teaching, technical skills, technology

I spend two precious weeks on gaming with my students: I introduce them to Scratch one week and then have them play games the following week.  Inspired by Matt Dunleavy’s augmented reality games, I decided to create my own game using QR codes.  While I do not believe they are going to revolutionize education, I do think they have the potential to quickly create interactive experiences for students to promote learning with a dose of critical thinking that comes from playing the game itself.

I tweeted that we were doing this activity and a few folks expressed interest along with the opinion that I was corrupting my pre-service teachers, so I will take a moment to share the pretty simple “rules” for the game.  The goal of the game was to learn a bit about gaming and education, be introduced to a few people I think are interesting or important plus just some fun stuff. Remember, my content is technology so showing them how to create and use QR codes is itself part of the objective of the game.

QR Code Game:

1. Students gathered in class and formed teams.  Each team received the first sheet in the game.  It included three QR Codes: one for the directions, one for the first clue, and one for the next location.  We used the directions code to test their scanners and do some troubleshooting. Then, they scanned for the first clue, used the Internet to locate the information requested and tweeted it to my attention. Finally, they scanned the next location which was somewhat cryptic (ie, the snack machines were billed as “cookies on a hook”).

2. There were five clue sheets in all.  When the completed the last clue, they turned the sheets over.  Each had a letter and they used the five letters to spell a word which was where I was located with the prizes.

Pretty simple.  It got them up and moving and even outside on a nice day.  And it showed these digital natives another use for their phones, something none of them had ever tried before. I didn’t give a quiz to see if they learned but I think they saw a particular activity that had lots of possible applications and did not require every kid to have a device.  One iPad that would scan and had internet access would be sufficient. You could find a work around for the tweeting part if that wasn’t available in the classroom. But I’ve been trying to get them to give Twitter a chance and this was another way to show them its potential educational application.  We tweet everything we create from Voice Threads to Scratch projects so they are shared with the group and the world and it makes it easy for us to display them.

Technology Enhanced Gardening

community, Education, social networking, technology

I learned about the Window Farms project today and as I watched the segment on Growing a Greener World, I was excited by this powerful example of how the Web can support collaborative community, beginning with one person sharing a passion.

It demonstrates the local/global relationship that can be supported by the Web.  Home gardening is an intensive local activity, requiring lots of analog attention.  But, Windowfarms shows how individual gardeners, often solitary folks who spend much time among plants, can be part of a community where they are encouraged to make a positive contribution of their own ideas and experiences.  The assumption was that the first window farm, created by Britta Riley in a Brooklyn apartment, could be improved and modified, and through an open source community, the world is doing just that.  It is global problem solving to help solve local problems and is a model for collaborative research and development in the 21st century.

They are dabbling in a different business model as well.  Windowfarms is a business with a social mission, according to the website, a for-profit social enterprise. They have investors and sell some products.  But they take certain social and environmental factors into consideration as they do their business.  They used Kickstarter for fund raising, taking advantage of a more grass roots way to gather small investors.

So, here’s the question once asked by Ben & Jerry in the pre-Internet days: Is it possible to do good and make some money?  And with the advent of the Web can you afford to provide a free platform for collaboration as part of that mission?

And, for educators, the question remains: are we preparing our kids to live and thrive in this kind of world?

 

 

 

The Middle Way

Media, Media Literacy, technology

The faculty and staff at St. Michael’s College is on a technology fast, giving up cell phones, email and the like for the week to have a chance to reflect on their use of digital media. The article gives examples of similar movements, including a comedian who went web-less for a whole year, and I was reminded of the “turn off the TV” campaign we did at my middle school back in the 90s.  I also found myself  substituting different words for the digital media; for instance, I have something of  a “reading addiction” so wondered if I needed to go on a “book fast,” as a way to reconnect with others and examine my seemingly endless need to absorb written text.

I have no complaint with these “disconnect to reconnect” movements.  We fall into habits and only by stepping outside them can we see how they might be causing harm. But the question not addressed in the article is about what kind of changes result from these fasts.  If it’s like my own attempts to give up chocolate for Lent, then not much long term change happens.  I’m grumpy for a few days, eventually get used to not eating it, but when Easter morning dawns, I breakfast on a chocolate bunny and bring chocolate back into my life. I wonder if it is similar for these fasters: we put aside the cell phones and iPads and video games for a few days, but once the fast is over, return to a life of texting and talking and emailing without applying any of the supposed insights we gained.

If the goal is to establish a better relationship to digital media then fasting doesn’t seem to be the right answer.  Instead, we might consider the Buddha who, after living a life of wealth, then living a life of austerity, chose his final path to be the Middle Way, one of moderation in all things.  Rather than an all or nothing approach of a fast, this might mean setting particular times when you are online versus offline.  So, you drop into Twitter for an hour in the morning and afternoon, or you make a list of particular emails to send and answer and when the list is completed, you close your client and move on.  Leave your cell phone in the car when you go into dinner.  Turn it off when you gather with friends. Choose a day out of the week when you are not digitally available.  It seems to me that these are practices that will lead to more long term change and a better overall relationship with media, certainly a lesson that will help both us and our students as we move into an increasingly connected age.