If school closes tomorrow don’t panic! Here are some ways technology can help kids learn during the coronavirus outbreak

What if school closed tomorrow? We aren’t prepared to go fully online! What can we do?!?!

This message, from a head of school, popped up on my Facebook page this week. He asked for a phone call and while I did my best on the spot to imagine how a school would address the challenge of closing for a day, a week, or even a month, I had no idea how a school could go fully online on the stop of a dime!

With no online learning infrastructure, no funding for an enterprise solution, and no capacity to train teachers and students to use an online learning environment mid-year, I was left to wonder if there was a way to take the long list of edtech tools, and mix up some sort of cornucopia of possibilities to keep kids learning, engaged, and hopefully enjoying a very new kind of learning experience.

As I sat down to author this post, I was faced with the challenge to identify the most powerful and free software out there that would work together and unify around classroom learning.

So here we go.

I am going to walk you through the tools I would use for different phases of a lesson, from how I would use various tools to introduce, engage, and assess student learning.

Introduce

Let’s keep this phase simple. Video conferencing!

 

I use Zoom on a near-daily basis. It has a super-powerful free version of the software that can get you up and running in no time! You can use this software to

• host your live lecture

• hold office hours in small groups or one on one

• record live lectures and discussions, that works for students that missed class or as a flipped learning method

Features and Specs

• Host up to 100 participants

• 40 mins limit on group meetings

• Unlimited number of meetings

• Screen sharing

• Chat messaging

• Video Recording (for students that can’t make it)

• Works on mobile devices in case students don’t have a computer at home

Honorable mentions

 

Google Meet

Organize

There are so many ways to engage students in conversations, activities, and experiences. The challenge will be to keep it all organized! Yes, you can use your school’s LMS but we all know even Google Classroom cannot unite and guide students around learning in a simple way.

 

The coolest strategy I have seen to create cohesive digital journeys for learners is Hyper Docs! I even use a hybrid of the model when creating my workshops for faculty. You can easily organize all components of a lesson so they are accessible in a seamless single document. Google Docs, Drive, Sheets, and Slides are all great resources for distance learning but this article is aimed at kicking it up a notch.

 

Another incredible tool for curation and organization is Wakelet! The power of Wakelet goes beyond the huge variety of content that you can add. Its golden feature is how it keeps the integrity of the content. So tweets look like tweets, next to images that looks like images, under videos, and side by side with quotes. It has an awesome and slick design aka form that doesn’t sacrifice powerful functionality.

If you’re looking to gamify your classroom, look no further than two powerhouse platforms. Classcraft and ClassDojo both create a gamified learning experience in very different ways. Classcraft allows you to create an RPG (Roll playing game) journey that challenges students to learn and advance their character through the world. ClassDojo on the other hand challenge student to grow the skill points of their character as a reflection of their own personal and academic grow.

Engage & Assess

Students want to engage with others, share their ideas, and create! By giving them the avenue to do just that, we create a connection even if we are separated by many miles. Each one of the platforms below is free or freemium. The one thing they have in common is how they could be used as a tool to empower users, teachers and students alike to be content creators and visual storytellers.

Whether it is creating a video conversation around a topic in Flipgrid, telling a story through photos and voice on Adobe Spark Video, or creating an interactive book rich with multimedia in Book Creator, these apps have the ability to impact learning and empower students to facilitate learning to their peers as well. (I am a huge fan of student facilitation as you can tell from here. Students can gamify their own learning and in small groups test each other using Kahoot or Quizlet and share the results with their teacher. In Nearpod, you can have students traveling through viritual tours, or engaging in a variety of interactive activies around classroom content.

The possibilities in many ways are endless.

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Every tool I shared above is free or has freemium access. Many of these companies are currently offering the premium versions of their software at no cost to teachers and students due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Archive & Assess

 

I am a huge fan of portfolios. Seasaw is my go-to even for adults! It is simple to use and can be great at sharing content in a more meaningful format than a Google Drive folder. Students and teachers can comment on work and engage in conversation around other student’s work.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that canceling school for a week or more is incredibly disruptive for schools and families. The challenge is exacerbated by the fact schools have little to no online component to the classroom beyond their LMS systems.

The tools shared above can allow you to create an exciting and engaging learning experience for students at no cost with maximum potential.

If you attempt to app smash these tools to make learning awesome during these uncertain times, please comment below or tag me on your social media posts.

I hope this post was helpful to you and wishing everyone a blessing of health and safety as we overcome this together.

Editor Note:

I wrote this article to help students. There continues to be serious issues and challenges around equity and access. I acknowledge that many students in the US do not have internet access and a computer a home, or even a personal smartphone with 5G. With that said, I do not believe that this article and conversations around technology should be curbed because of issues around equity and access.

 

3 Ways To Use Smore As A Platform For Students To Become Authors And Develop An Eye For Design

This article contains sponsored content that helps keep The Educated By Design project running. Opinions and review are my own. 

Any platform that empowers students to become authors and curators of content gets me excited. When Smore reached out to me to review their platform, I was excited to see two very powerful features. 

So what is Smore?

Smore was  is a platform designed for professionals, AND educators, to create beautiful high quality newsletters and more in a snap. What excites me the most about Smore, like many other platforms I feature and share is that it is also a professional platform. We do ourselves and our students an injustice by mastering and utilizing platforms that do not lead to professional real world use. 

Smore makes it simple to communicate consistently with parents, faculty and community members. Smore allows you to send those newsletters anywhere and track them with detailed analytics and email reporting so that you can truly understand how your audience engages with your content. Smore provides the space to embed multimedia directly into the newsletters to make them even more dynamic. Smore works directly with educators to better understand how to bridge the gap between parent and teacher communication which in turn benefits the students. So what about Smore excites me the most? Let’s dive in!

First, is the “Educator Hive” database of created and shared content, authored by educators for educators. You can check out my vlog review of that here.

The second is the Classroom feature that allows teachers to create a classroom community where students can author content that can be easily accessed and organize.

Lee Araoz, who I follow on Twitter is a Smore master and a power user for over 5 years. Follow him and check out his content in the Smore Educator Hive!

So what are the top 3 reasons that have my interest peaked and my creative juices flowing?

1. It MUST be simple!

I have seen many platforms give students access to their own individual account to create and curate content, but not many that gives the teacher simple and clear access to students and their work. 

As a student you receive a classroom group code to easily log in. For students in early elementary this is huge for workflow and productivity. 

Next in the realm of simplicity, is how you can easily access student content. As you can see below, I have easy and quick access to individual student AND whole class content. 

This might be the most important feature of ANY platform in education, and something I think is worth the premium level prices tag. If I cannot access student content or student’s need to go through 3-5 steps to get it to me, then I am most likely not using it. When I worked in K-8, this would be a constant struggle. I had 3rd graders with no email addresses needing to download content to their device, upload it to google drive, and share it with their teacher making sure that either a single folder setting or individual files were shared properly. Unnecessary steps are one of the biggest reasons for technology not being adopted. 

2. Students learn how to use a variety of content

Our students spend most of their days crafting text based content. When they do create multimedia presentations, their visuals are overshadowed by bullet point content that:

• Is boring and lacks engagement
• Is hard to read
• Results in no long term memory retention due to a cognitive conflict with verbally articulated information. 

With the Smore platform, teachers and students can created incredible pieces of content that in addition to text, will let authors add audio, video, forms, embedded links, buttons, and more! This is important to note. In the age of social media and the internet, companies are valuing employees who have a creative lens in communicating information both internally and externally in a appealing and engaging visual manner. The ability to curate various types of content into a seamless multimedia experience is therefore desirable for us to imbue in our students. Just look at these established business and tech publications. 

• Why Visual Communication Matters – Tech Smith
• Visual Communication Is Transforming Marketing — Are You Up To Speed? – Forbes
• Why a Visual Is Worth A Thousand Words – Entrepreneur Magazine

Bottom Line? Teach your students to create a solid newsletter so they don’t need to pay $400 for a course on how to do it when they’re 25 and trying to start their own business. 

3. Students can become facilitators of learning

How do you know how well you know something? One method (spoiler alert, its the most popular one!) is to engage in a curation of a series of questions to answer that will assess your knowledge on a given topic. Another method would be for someone to present their own curation of information to others, a method also known as a presentation. A third method would be when someone creates content that others learn from independently that can generate a dialogue around that information. Now this third method can be traditionally assessed, but the difference is that it puts the student in the position to explore, discover, and document their finds around a given topic with the goal to teach others something new. This is where Smore shines. To have students easily, quickly, and simply create an artifact of learning around a given topic to let others learn from is a huge asset in our students toolbox of skills and abilities. 

The bottom line is that Smore is the perfect platform in a classroom if you:

• want to create engaging newsletters to share the learning in your classroom.
• want your students to create content on a platform that lets you easily access their work.
• want students to learn and develop strong visual communication skills (a life skill!).

At $80/per year this platform is affordable for most, and gives you a large set of features and tools to promote student content creation. The platform is simple to use and that is very important for adoption in education. Most importantly this isn’t just another tool but a platform to create and curate many different types of content and easily share it with others.

Have you used Smore before? Let me know in the comments. 

 

 

10 minus 1 awesome ways to App Smash Adobe Spark and Flipgrid

 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so how many words is a video? About 1 billion hours worth, or so says the latest Techcrunch survey of Youtube usage. Video is dominating the way in which we consume content and create it too. Today, nearly all social platforms have embraced the creator side of things, encouraging users to create content that rich with video, images, and text. In comes Adobe Spark Video, a simple and elegant video creation platform that lets your message shine while supporting it with incredible transitions, icons, and background music. The process is simple, and my 15 minute crash course tutorial can get you up and running in no time.

When it comes to giving students a safe, productive place to share their videos, there’s no better network than Flipgrid. Flipgrid is a platform that allows you to be part of a conversation by creating or uploading videos, and engaging with others in the group. Teachers and students can start “rooms” around topics and assignments and everyone can contribute in a safe, secure way without the distractions and risks of mainstream social media networks.

Both platforms keep your students work private and secure, while giving them freedom to create incredible video content to start engaging conversations. Below are a handful of creative ideas to use Adobe Spark Video and Flipgrid to help your students think outside the box in how they communicate and create.   

 

Adobe Spark x Flipgrid Mash Up Ideas

 

Project Pitch

When engaging in projects, we generally require students to run their topic by us. What if we had students create videos using Adobe Spark Video to pitch their project for the class to review and reflect on? Reflection is usually a conclusionary process so why not start with it? Here is a great example of a project pitch using Adobe Spark and Flipgrid – https://admin.flipgrid.com/manage/discovery/1167&

 

Global Collaboration

Many times we look to find ways for our students to use technology to learn and grow. What about us, the teachers? Adobe Spark Video and Flipgrid are a great way to connect with colleagues around the world to discuss topics of interests such as the English classroom or a STEM related theme. A quick topic starter? What are you working on? Why does it inspire you? What are the challenges you need to overcome?

 

Giving Students A Voice With Video

Not every student is comfortable being in front of the camera. Adobe Spark Video gives them the space to work on those verbal communication skills without being on camera, and take part in class discussion.

 

Meet your teachers

Imagine you get an email with a flip code that introduces you to all your teachers for the coming year? Using Adobe Spark Video teachers can create a powerful video with photos, video footage, and icons collaged together over a narrative all about you.

 

My School Year Goals

Students can create videos in Adobe Spark highlighting which areas they hope to grow in their learning, new skills or abilities they hope to develop, or anything else they want to share surrounding their academic growth. After watching the videos and engaging with them in flipgrid, students can then create a second round of videos how they plan to help their peers achieve one or more of their goals. Another approach with this project ideas is to have a second round at the end of the year when students can reflect on how successful they were at achieving their own goals, as well as supporting their peers.

 

Charged With A Chapter

Almost everytime I introduce Adobe Spark Video to middle and high school students, I get a “Spark Notes” comment. In this activity students are challenged to create a videos using Adobe Spark that captures the essence of a chapter or section of reading. Uploading it to Flipgrid gives students the space to learn from each other, validate the quality of peer work, and contribute to the conversation.

 

Get in Character

When reading a novel students can be assigned a character to evaluate and share insights by creating a video narrative around the characters action and behaviors. As the unit progress students can respond to other students characters to create a backstory in flipgrid by using the “name” field to stay in character and the “title” field to add context

 

Media and Marketing     

In this activity students are assigned the task of using Adobe Spark to create a video that best markets a topic, item, or term. The challenge involves students developing their verbal and visual communication skills as well as understanding of audience. Peer voting will establish which videos were best at engaging, informing, and convincing the audience around the video’s topic.

 

Video Based Test Prep

Using Adobe Spark Video and Flipgrid students can each curate a study aid to help prepare for an upcoming test. It can also be used as a formative assessment project as well.

 

Between Instagram and Snapchat, users, many of them our students are creating 3.5 billion pieces of video content and stories each day on these respective platform. Using video as a medium to communicate is a familiar platform for creation, collaboration, and conversation. It is  a powerful way to boost engagement and support student voice. Combined, Adobe Spark Video and Flipgrid are a powerful recipe to tap into student creativity, give them a feeling of empowerment and voice, and let them take charge of how they express their learning.

 

Here are some great Flipgrid x Adobe Spark Mashups!

https://flipgrid.com/singasong
https://flipgrid.com/positivenoise
http://flipgrid.com/robots
https://flipgrid.com/code
https://flipgrid.com/aquarium
https://flipgrid.com/sharks
https://flipgrid.com/musiccareer
https://flipgrid.com/whatif
https://flipgrid.com/globalvoice

The Secret To Learning With Technology Is Not What You Think. It’s Why You Think.

When I was eight years old living in Southern California, my parents bought a video conferencing system to talk with my grandparents in Philadelphia. To this day I could never figure out how my grandfather, set it up on his end. The mammoth devices used a combination of wires to connect to our house phone and television delivering a blurry 200×100 image of my grandparents whose movement was delayed by 45 seconds as they their voices echoed through the telephone. It was at that moment through a mixture of “Hi Michael” , long pause, and a 45 second delayed handwave, that I realized technology was what I was going to use to change the world. That is because for me, having the latest and greatest tech was less about staying on the cutting edge, but more about trying to figure out ways in which technology could make people’s lives awesome.

So whether it was in the world of design, marketing, event planning, or education, I am constantly looking at how I can help others do amazing things because of not what technology an do, but because of what they can do with it.  

So how do we help others master technology, and believe that it is a tool to help others do great things? 

When I was a Director of Educational Technology, I thought stumbled on something amazing. It was 2011 and I was sitting in a packed conference room with 400 plus educators, learning about “100 apps for the English classroom”. As I sat there, I tried to discover the purpose, the magical essence of why anyone would need that many apps, methods, or approaches to anything in life, especially something so specific. That’s when it dawn on me, that in life, and in education we cannot use technology because of what it does, but because of what we can do with it. It’s about purpose and value. That’s how you master anything. 

“There’s an App for that”

This catchphrase represented something pretty amazing in 2011. The idea that technology could allow us to engage, share, or create digitized experiences on just about any topic was amazing. As the years progressed and technology advanced, the question that I started asking is “why”? “Why do you need an app for that?” WHHHY!!!!??? Why do you need to digitize EVERYTHING?!?! Technology is a tool of productivity and efficiency. Digitizing our lives can actually make them more complicated, confusing, and delayed. The truth is that for real technology integration to occur, you must understand why to use a tool in the first place and what can be achieved through its use. One way I have found to be extremely successful when discussing the idea of integrating technology in a classroom is to challenge educators to think about familiar and so to speak “safe” technologies that we know and love. Think about a typewriter, a calculator, and yes even a pencil. They are familiar, timeless, and their singular functionality leads to expected results. What makes these devices so trusted? Is it the device or what we do with it? Remember when you learned how to drive? What excited you the most? The appreciation for how the gasoline powered the engine? How the differential properly distributes power to the wheels? Like most of us, our focus was not so much on the inner workings of our automobiles, but all of the awesome places we can get to.

You want to master cutting edge technology? What’s the purpose? What’s the value? I do not mean knowing how to use technology. I mean literally mastering the ability to output high quality content through technological means.

Now I don’t write about technology because I have all the answers, or because I found some magical (and easy) solution to classroom management woes. I also don’t write because I believe technology is THE answer. I do however believe that technology is like a garment. No matter how classy you look in that garment, it won’t change who the person wearing it truly is. That’s why it is a bit of a paradox. On one hand, technology clearly can make things awesome, yet at the same time it can’t be about technology. In the end, I believe that when any technology is harnessed properly, it has the ability to engage, enrich, and enliven our learning and our life. In education, we view technology as an external process that is added to teaching and learning. If we take the 20th century education practice, and simply slap on 21st century technology to be “cutting edge” what do we get? We get a horse and carriage that’s equipped with rockets and roller-skates.

Check out Seymour Papart’s book Mindstorms that uses a similar horse/carriage and jet engine analogy to technology. 

 So when looking at technology’s role in your classroom, the first question you must ask yourself is – Why? Why should I use technology in my classroom, and what will it do for me and my students? It is a hard question, because it might result in a realization that technology might prevent learning from being successful. So before we figure out how technology might magically solve a problem or make an experience amazing, let’s look at areas in which technology can help us. Remember that car? Well it won’t do much for you if you are trying to get from New York to London.

The Reason Why Teachers Are Afraid Of Technology, and 2 Ways We Can Help Them Embrace It.

When I was eight years old living in Southern California, my parents bought a video conferencing system to talk with my grandparents in Philadelphia. To this day I could never figure out how my grandfather, set it up on his end. The mammoth devices used a combination of wires to connect to our phone line and television, delivering a blurry 200×100 image of my grandparents. It was quite a scene. With a mixture of movement delayed by 45 seconds and their voices echoing through the telephone, I felt as if I was in a 14.4K internet induction program. It was at that moment though, through a mixture of “Hi Michael” , long pause, and a severely delayed handwave, that I realized technology was the tool I was going to use to change the world.

For me, having the latest and greatest technology was and is less about staying on the cutting edge, and instead about trying to figure out ways in which technology can make people’s lives awesome. Plain and simple. When I was 12 and sent my first email, to my father (It was 1997 and none of my friends had email), it was awesome. When I was 15 and I learned how to use Photoshop 6.0 on my own without YouTube to create graphic and media content, it was awesome. When I video conferenced with my grandmother at my wedding when she couldn’t be there due to health reasons, it was awesome. So what do these three stories have in common? Meaning. Each experience was life changing, meaningful, and allowed me to help make the lives of others better.

If technology is not improving someone’s life and being seen as something of value, then maybe technology is the problem, and not the person. 

It’s easy to judge someone not embracing technology. It is 2017 after all. Have you wondered why? Have you tried to empathize with them and see from their perspective why technology isn’t viewed as something useful? There isn’t a dedicated teacher on the face of the planet who would pass up creating an engaging and thriving community of learning in their classroom. So why is an iPad, Chromebook, or laptop viewed as a barrier to achieving such an impactful reality? Once I understood that purpose and value must be viewed through an empathic lens, I was ready to impact education and support all faculty in adopting technology in their classrooms. Without empathy, I could not take credit for aiding in the successful launch of a 1:1 technology initiative. I couldn’t take credit for our school becoming an Apple Distinguished School 3 years after we went 1:1 and ditched that computer lab. Mind you that owning Apple products does not qualify you as a distinguished school, but rather, visionary leadership, innovative teaching and learning, evidence of success, use of learning spaces, and continued professional development. Many congratulated me, but at the ceremony in front of 800 members of our schools community I reminded them, this award was to the students who took charge of their learning with technology, and the teachers that helped them get there. 

 

 The students at my former school used technology to aid themselves in loving to learn. I must confess though that I haven’t always loved learning. It wasn’t the act of learning, rather it was the rigid and limiting way in which I was told how and what to learn but not why to learn. It’s ironic then, (like so many amazing educators) that I became the very thing that I didn’t appreciate. I became a teacher. In the beginning before any formal classroom roles, I didn’t even realize I was “teaching”. Soon enough, it was clear to me that I had a special ability to help people learn new things, and even more to learn new things on their own. After 3 years of teaching I then became a Director of Educational Technology, and it was in this role that I stumbled on something amazing. It was 2011 and I was sitting in a packed conference room with 400 plus educators, learning about “10,000 apps for the English classroom”. As I sat there, I tried to discover the purpose, the magical essence of why anyone would need that many apps, methods, or approaches to anything in life, especially something so specific. That’s when it dawn on me, that in life, and in education we cannot use technology because of what it does, but because of what we can do with it.

Now I am not writing about  technology use because I have all the answers, or because I found some magical (and easy) solution to classroom management woes. I also didn’t write this because I believe technology is THE answer. I do however believe, or even bolder know that technology is a garment, and no matter how classy you look, it won’t change who the person wearing it truly is. That’s why this is a bit of a paradox. It’s about how technology can make things awesome, and at the same time isn’t about technology at all. In the end, I am writing this because I believe that when any technology is harnessed properly, it has the ability to engage, enrich, and enliven our learning and our life. 

“There’s an App for that”

This catchphrase represented something pretty amazing in 2011. The question is how far have we come writing this in the middle of 2017? The idea that technology could allow us to view, share, or make digitized experiences on just about any topic is amazing. As the years progressed and technology advanced, the question that I started asking is “Why do you need an app for that?” WHHHY!!!!??? OR worse, “Why do you need to digitize EVERYTHING?!?!” Technology is a tool that provides ability, productivity, and efficiency. Digitizing our lives can actually make them more complicated, confusing, and delayed. The truth is that for real technology integration to occur, you must understand why to use a tool in the first place and what can be achieved through its use. One way I have found to be extremely successful when discussing the idea of integrating technology in a classroom is to challenge educators to think about familiar and so to speak “safe” technologies that they know and love. Think about a typewriter, a calculator, and yes even a pencil. They are familiar, timeless, and their singular functionality leads to expected results. What makes these devices so trusted? Is it the device or what we do with it?

Remember when you learned how to drive? What excited you the most? The appreciation for how the gasoline powered the engine? How the differential properly distributed power to the wheels? Like most of us, our focus was not so much on the inner workings of our automobiles, but all of the awesome places we would get to go.

So when looking to shift the mindset of a skeptical teacher, maybe this teacher is you, and their view of technology’s role in their classroom, the first question we must help them answer is – Why? Why should we use technology in our classroom, and what will it do for us and our students? It is a hard question, because it might result in a realization that one possible outcome is that technology may prevent learning from being successful. So before we figure out how technology might magically solve a problem or make an experience awesome, let’s look at areas in which technology can help us. Remember that car? Well it won’t do much for you if you are trying to get from New York to London.

It’s with this shift in mindset for both the techno-addicts and technophobics that together we can ensure that students are given the chance to not just redefine their learning, but prepare them for a way of thinking and processing to thrive in the world of tomorrow.

The Invisible iPad – Part II

 

 

Invisible Technology in Theory is powerful. Its practical application for educators can be challenging, frustrating, and fill even the most confident learning facilitator with doubt. Invisible Technology empowers its user to be independent, collaborative, and truly shift learning into the 21st century. How do we measure its success? Is there a definitive technology yardstick to build confidence not only in the student, but in the teacher as well? What are our goals and skills we wish our students to acquire, develop, and reflect upon?

If our goal to create an army of App Savvy iPad Aficionados then we have utterly failed.

We are not trying to create students that successfully use technology, because they don’t actually need us for that. We have seen the viral videos of toddlers successfully executing in app purchases on their favorite game, and their digital literacy skills will only increase with their exposure to new technologies. My colleague Yossie Frankel stated it simply that,

 We cannot confuse Digital Literacy (ICT) with 21st Century Competencies. 

If we do, we rob our students of what we really can offer them, which is the ability to communicate, think critically, collaborate, solve problems, and create dynamic ways of internalizing information and sharing it with others. This is what our place is in 21st century learning. Yes, we will need to support them with certain technology skill building, suach as keyboarding skills, app fluency (Greg Kulowiec), best practices of sharing and store, and the certain nuances of utilizing technology tools, but this isnt a class or a workshop.

Students don’t need theoretical workshops, they want hands on action with a purpose.

As I wrote in my previous article, when we teach someone to effectively and properly use traditional tools, our reason is not for the tool itself but for what we are able to achieve. No one gets excited over using a welder, but its ability to connect difference pieces together to create something unique and useful from raw material, is where its value as a tool really shines. Our challenge with technology like the iPad is that it has so many different abilities, that the user is faced with a real dilemma of losing sight of what the tool accomplishes, for the experience of using the tool. 

Before we even begin to think about how and where we place the iPad in our learning process, we have to concretize our goals, possible challenges, and the planned path of process. If we reach a point during the project and hit a road block, it can be flustered to not have even a rough outline to backtrack to a clear point of success. This all starts with identifying which skills we will need to use. In elementary and middle school, these skills need to be clear and simple so students know that right now they are “collaborating” or “problem solving”. We can expect these skills to be sub conscience as adults, but this is not realistic for most students below or even at high school level. At each grade level the following Learning and Innovation Skills can be acquired by students and built upon as they learn and grow.

• Learning and Innovation Skills (the 7 C’s) + (2 P’s)

  • Creativity/Contribution

  • Critical Thinking

  • Communication

  • Collaboration/Cooperation

  • Connection

  • Community

  • Continual Learning

  • Culture

  • Problem Solving

  • Personalized Learning

Once our skill sets are assessed, we then can use these skills in our PBL experiences. Bloom’s Taxonomy, ISTE 21st Century Standards, UNESCO Competency  Framework, are all great sources to teach these foundational skills. Many confuse the SAMR Model as a way to learn. The SAMR Model, is not viable method for learning. Its success is in measuring and assessing effective use of technology in our learning.

The challenge for educators, especially Directors of Educational Technology, Innovation, etc. is that we need to not limit how our teachers teach, but to focus on the foundational skills, and provide a clear and concrete formula for how different technological devices and applications will enhance these skills and give a learner the ability to create a product that will change the world.

How to translate this vision to a tangible process is a challenge. In the next few weeks I will be featuring guest articles from faculty members that have successfully integrated technology into learning.

Im having trouble locating the iPad though, must be that invisible thing.

Is Education Technology Worth The Hype?

Is Education Technology worth the hype? Are we talking about iPads and Macbooks, or changing the tools we use to facilitate, integrate, and accumulate learning experiences.

iPads are hype, but using them to creative dynamic and creative personalized learning experiences is priceless.

New inventions tend to generate hype. Its a natural cycle which at some point will inevitably lead to jaded and sometimes scornful attitudes toward the tool.

The iPad wont make us better thinkers, but if we actually think independently and creatively, it just might help us make something amazing.

The technology breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution and even more so in the past decade, have completely transformed how we go about our work, our learning, and even how we relax. The question is why do we hype the technology itself instead of what it gives us the ability to achieve? Is there hype surrounding technology and its long term relevance in education? Many question its ability to authentically and effectively integrate into learning. Others are concerned about high costs and planned obsolescence. If technology is about the devices themselves then we fail to appreciate the experience and results that we gain from our use of technology. Take a simple hand tool for example. Very few people get excited about a hammer anymore. Even less consciously appreciate its multi use function, adaptability, durability, and efficiency. Thats because their challenge and needs were the main focus, not the experience of using the tool to help them accomplish their desired task.

Successful use of technology is only as strong as the vision and goals we believe we can achieve.

The education world is aware of these challenges, and visionaries such as Dr. Pentedura have created the SAMR Model, and others have incorporated Gartner’s Hype Cycle into tangable realistic measures of successful use of technology in education. I constantly use these models to support faculty in their curriculum building as well as enhancing current projects. However sometimes these models in their simplicity put unrealistic pressure on educators, and in many times make teachers feel inadequate if they do not reach the “highest level”. I had a teacher question my Modification label of their project, which they felt was more in line with Redefinition. If the project can be Redefined by specific students, or by others at different points during the process, I still believe that quality learning is achievable by simple substitutions and augmentation. This point is expanded on by Beth Holland who wrote about how many teachers feel Redefinition is what defines their success in technology integration. Darren Draper wrote an article that offers constructive criticism of the SAMR Model. He offers great insight into how a model that helps put perspective on the challenge of integration, can unintentionally hamper its potential success.

I think that as educators and learners, we need to consider for a second that successful technology integration into learning is not about technology at all, its about experiencing the information, relating to it, and discovering how we are able to share it with others. The tool itself isn’t more than a substitute for a previous tool. Its not until our creativity, innovation, and passion for discovery is filtered through the tool that it becomes anything more than a tool with possibilities.

When analyzing the essence of the SAMR Model, I find that it is not limited to computing technology. It is applicable in any change in process to achieve a better, faster, and stronger result. Take mail delivery for example;

Between the horse and the iPad, the desire has not changed. People want to communicate as often and fast as possible. The only thing that has changed is the process. We have found faster, more efficient, and more cost effective methods to communicate. When you received a letter by horse, it was expensive, and timely. This meant you received only a dozen or so letters in your lifetime and cherished almost all of them. As the process advances, the quality of communication has deteriorated, while other factors such as speed and cost decrease. This final result is that we spend the first 20 minutes of our day deleting emails from list serves and have an inbox count of over 2,000. Still, our desire to communicate, connect, and share makes even a little bit of hype worth it.

The Invisible iPad

If this event becomes a meeting about how we got rid of power cords, extended battery life, and solved workflow challenges with some neat app, then we fail.

The iPad summit is not about the iPad

With these words, Greg Kulowiec  had me hooked. Since the launch of the iPad in 2010, we have seen a revolutionary transformation in how we create, consume, and communicate. Whether the iPad is an authentic educational tool is not relavant, because

it’s not about the iPad.

Is the automobile an authentic education tool? What about the refrigerator? Revolutionary inventions are not about the invention itself, but whats the invention gives use the ability to do. A truly revolutionary invention should in time become invisible. No longer is it viewed as something special, yet its effects are far reaching. The lightbulb changed the way the world functioned. The world was no longer bound to productivity during daylight, or the length of time it takes your oil lamp to burn up. It was about what you would be able to do because now there was a constant and stable source of light.

While the iPad does a little more than a lightbulb, its success in eduction is on the principle that the iPad does the same for learners as the lightbulb.

It liberates us from the limitations of creative tools, the challenges of access to quality content, as well as our source of inspiration, and innovation being based on geographic location. 

Yes, the iPad needs to be invisible because we are searching for something deeper than a manipulative touch screen device. We are looking to start a conversation, create a personal expression, and to fashion a brick in a collaborative digital structure.

Before the EdTechTeacher iPad Summit, I understood the philosophy, but I lacked the language to express it with words like App Fluency and App Smashing, as well as the support of like minded visionaries with more experience than myself. This and more I found at the #ettipad conference. In the past I have written about the process of integrating technology into education and its correlation to the experience of building something by hand. When we build something, our tools are chosen keeping in mind their quality, versatility, and ease of use. A responsible individual does not put someone in front of a table saw and say, “Good Luck!”, so why do we drop an iPad in someones lap and do just that? Cutting off a finger is not the only danger of using technology wrong, and I see it time and time again with the iPad.

The iPad isnt a great way to take a test, or read a book, or even create a movie. It isn’t enough to change how we use the iPad, but why we use the iPad, or any other device for that matter.

We use technology to liberate ourselves from mundane robotic like tasks that lack any sort of creative drive or purpose. A robot can memorize 100 vocabulary words, the question is now, what do we do with those words? Do we use them for creative expression, or do we let them collect dust in the deep recesses of our brain? Technology is not here to make us lazy, or to avoid basic communication skills, but

it is here to make us think critically, solve problems, collaborate, communicate, create, and ideate. 

These words have far surpassed cliché status in education, as if they are the key to tagging successful learning outcomes, but the truth is that when the iPad is invisible, you really get to see those words in action.

As long as our focus is on learning outcomes and the experience it brings, then the this just might be the best iPad experience yet.

App Fluency Vs. App Addiction

As a Director of Educational Technology, my biggest challenge is giving students and teachers the guidance to help foster authentic and imaginative learning solutions with the help of technology. Its sounds glorious when I type it, yet in practice it sometimes seems near impossible.

When we launched our iPad 1:1 Pilot program as well as three classroom iPad carts, our philosophy has been centered around the SAMR Model coupled with content creation and curation based apps. This meant staying away from “Appcentric” Apps that either perform a singular function, or do not have the ability to export its content.

Today in the Advanced iPad Workshop with @GregKulowiec in addition to filling my brain with so much information it was ready to explode, we put a name to this philosophy.

It’s called App Fluency

and its my favorite new word. In the video above I used multiple apps to create a hopefully humorous video short about the difference between App Fluency and App Addiction. (Camera, Tellagami, Morfo, iMovie, Google Drive & Youtube) The process of App Fluency is that our experience with the iPad is not based on the iPad itself, but its ability to achieve a specific and hopefully lofty learning outcome. This means that our ability to glide seamlessly through multiple apps should be not only effortless, but effective, and with practice, invisible. Since our main focus is on achieving our goal, each App and the iPad itself is simply part of the tool kit to build the project.

While hammers and screw drivers have lost their technologically advanced luster, they are a reminder of how effective tools are when they become invisible.

We all know what it feels like to put together furniture from IKEA, and no one seems to get caught up with the screws, compressed particle board, or even the  “super useful” allen key.

 We see the pieces on the floor of our living space, and  close our eyes  envisioning a sturdy, complete, beautiful bookshelf that doesn’t take us an entire Sunday to put together. This is how a person needs to approach using an iPad as a learning tool. True, your IKEA bookshelf doesn’t have Angry Birds loaded on it, or the ability to stream movies from your Netflix account, but it has everything to do with how we view iPads as a tool for teaching and learning. 

@GregKulowiec wrote that if we “believe that […] pioneering the use of iPads and tablets in schools […] is about the iPad, then […] we have failed.”