timcalvin

I ignore iPads.

It’s true- I do.

Let’s sort this out, though.

I like iPads a lot. They’re not the only decent device anymore, but they’re very good, and they’re not too expensive. Blah blah blah.

I love that my students have a device with them all the time. I can’t imagine teaching without it, at this point. I’d cry (and debate a change in location/profession) if they were taken away or banned.

All that said, people keep asking me “how I use the iPads in the classroom.” And the answer- the honest truth in the answer– is that I mostly ignore them.

The device isn’t the point. I’d never try to shoehorn a device (or tech of any sort) into a lesson. That’s all sorts of backwards. The tech lubricates the lesson. It allows things that weren’t possible before. It allows things to happen quickly. It smoothes the road. So when I design lessons, I just factor in the myriad things that students can now do. It’s like a bunch more colors got added to my pallet and the pictures I’m painting are that much more vivid. I simply factor into the plan that research/writing/notes/web work can all happen on the fly. That collaboration on an essay is not only possible, but is normal. That data isn’t lost. That the classroom can extend far beyond the 43 minutes I have.

But I don’t know that I’ve ever told students to open a specific app. I know I’ve never demanded that they have an app. I know that I don’t really care about the apps that they have- just that they have apps that work for them to accomplish the tasks that I need them to do.

I know what I’m talking about here is specific to High School. That’s what I do, and that’s likely to remain the focus here.

Required Viewing

God help me.

The list of projects grows. Uncontrollably, it seems. I’ve bumped a few off (tonsillectomy, etc…), but more loom than I ever imagined. Here’s what I’m up to:

1. Started working on a handbook for my media production class for next year based on some of the concepts from Tom Sach’s handbook for employees of his studio. His video is here, and is a good watch if you’re a dork like me. Nearly, nearly done.

2. In the midst of uploading near-as-makes-no-difference 11,000 songs to Google Play. I’ll be able to rock out anywhere from the cloud! Too bad the upload has taken three full days so far- and will almost certainly take another two. Done. Now just need to use it.

3. Building a new fly rod for myself- a fiberglass switch rod created out of the unholy union of some existing rods. It’ll be cheap, dirty, and wildly unattractive, but fun. How often do you get to use a hacksaw while building a rod?

4. Breaking in this new computer. MacBook Air 11″ Done, mostly. Still missing some software, but that’s just a matter of time.

5. Pushing towards no local storage use. Combo of GDrive and Dropbox right now. More specifics in an upcoming post on Setup.

6. Overhauling the backyard. I get to mount a brush blade on my gas line trimmer. Woooo!

7. Tonsillectomy. Today, actually. Done. Ugly, ugly.

8. Still waiting on Apple to release their school profile of BHS- and hoping to see a little of my shining visage in it.

9. Migrating (again) my large(ish) collection of digital photos. Not looking forward to this.

10. Tons of new art to hang at the house. Frames, as always, slowing that down. Have a literal stack of pieces to deal with.

11. Pre-production of several new Tangential episodes. These will be delayed in shooting until I heal from #7. Camera in hand, now have no time. Typical.

12. Roll out of 250 new iPad2′s at the High School. Prepped!

13. Prep for mid-year distribution of ~1000 iPad2′s for Middle School.

14. Prep for 500 person 3 day district PD (#bpscon) to kick off the year. Schedule done, next to do: logistics. Also: photos.

15. Prep for huge Google Conference in November @BHS

16. MASSIVE project (#iCon2013) coming in April 2013. Multi-day, massive. Massive.

17. Migration of our Junior and Senior year textbooks from hard-copy to digital version. ~300 pages each.

18. Fim/edit clips for BPSCON 2012

19. Fim new English Department Intro video

20. Handbook for our HelpDesk class.

21. Finish new layout of new classroom.

22. Install FCPX on new lab computers

23. Build new class blog for me.

24. Photography for new custom iOS app for our district.

25. Start prep work on two student run conferences: One internal, one external.

26. Install/finish middle school library setup. Includes putting books on shelves.

27. New AV setup for new classroom.

28. Promo material for #iCon2013 picked and ordered.

29. Assemble render farm for FCP (post FCPX arriving)

I think that about does it. As it were.

Back in the land of the living…

Holy Smokes.

Having your tonsils out at my age is (as everyone told me…) no joke. It’s been over a week and I’m just getting back to feeling like I’m alive again.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten a good start on my handbook/course expectations for my media production course this year. I’m doing it in iBooks Author because I want a) It to look glossy and nice and b) Because I want/need more practice with it as a publishing platform. It’s looking good thus far- heavily influenced by the Tom Sachs “10 Bullets” video I posted a couple of months ago. Next step with it is graphics work. Content is (mostly) there.

I’m headed back to work (I think…) tomorrow, for the rest of the summer. That’s right, kids: my year starts tomorrow. Long list of things to do there- see my last post for details. I’m sort-of looking forward to it, but I’ll miss the time with family.

Anyway.

Pretty excited for my new classroom. I’m going to spend some serious time working on it’s layout and configuration, and I’ve been doing some reading on the nature of creativity and creative spaces- that is to say, spaces that have been optimized to stimulate creativity- and I’m eager to apply them to my classroom.

Projects, oh my…

Figures. It’s halfway through summer and I’ve got more projects going than I can shake a stick at. Here’s a few:

4. Breaking in this new computer. MacBook Air 11″

5. Pushing towards no local storage use. Combo of GDrive and Dropbox right now. More specifics in an upcoming post on Setup.

6. Overhauling the backyard. I get to mount a brush blade on my gas line trimmer. Woooo!

7. Tonsillectomy. Today, actually.

8. Still waiting on Apple to release they’re school profile of BHS- and hoping to see a little of my shining visage in it.

9. Migrating (again) my large(ish) collection of digital photos. Not looking forward to this.

10. Tons of new art to hang at the house. Frames, as always, slowing that down. Have a literal stack of pieces to deal with.

11. Pre-production of several new Tangential episodes. These will be delayed in shooting until I heal from #7.

12. Roll out of 250 new iPad2’s at the High School.

13. Prep for mid-year distribution of ~1000 iPad2’s for Middle School.

14. Prep for 500 person 3 day district PD to kick off the year.

15. Prep for huge Google Conference in November.

That’s enough to mention here for now- but there’s more. I’ve found that the pile is so big I can’t look at it in the eye- only from the side before I get overwhelmed.

Side eye it is, then.

Current Thinking About Flipped

There’s a lot of new terms people are trying to define kicking around the twittersphere about “Flipped” rooms and “Hybrid” classes. “Blended” Whatever.

Here’s where I am with all that right now.

It’s all the same thing, really- a series of methods to extend the learning beyond the classroom. Like homework.

And that’s the catch, really. All the academic work indicates that homework at the elementary level has a negative effect on students. That at the middle school level homework is, at best, a break-even activity. It’s not until high school that we’re looking at real benefit.

While it might be nice to think about assigning a video to watch in the evening is a better thing for a young student, once we consider that the video is really just homework, it’s hard to get as excited. Even at the high school level, it’s just another thing to assign. Maybe better. Maybe worse. Is watching a video for homework inherently more interesting than reading an article? Hardly.

Excuse the “This isn’t that big a deal” tone here for a minute: I’m building.

What I do see as a genuine improvement here is for talented educators to make videos so good that students choose to watch them out of pure curiosity and engagement. What if educators built content so good- so engaging and compelling that students were eager to watch the next episode? What about production value? Graphics? What about having the content that teachers distribute not look like second-rate rehashed, re-photocopied, dubbed from VHS, straight-out-of-1996, monospaced-font junk?

What if we approached the making of our content like serious producers- and did just worry about the content itself, but also the quality of the package we hand to students?

How long is it ok to be a sage for?

So I have this quandry:

I’ve made a few Tangential videos thus far, and have met some (limited) success in the response to them. I worry, though, that despite the frenetic editing and my high-speed delivery, they’re really just a video version of sage-on-a-stage. Which is, to some degree, needed here. There’s information to be disseminated, and me talking to you is a efficient way of doing that. Also, given the nature of video, it allows students to watch multiple times to catch anything they might have missed. So that’s good. And, to be fair (to myself?) I keep the length of Tangential videos pretty short- usually around 5 minutes or so. That’s not much sage-ing, and I really intend them to be a jumping off point for class activities, discussions, projects and whatnot. Plenty of whatnot.

I had known about (but really, never watched) Hank and John Green’s YouTube channel CrashCourse, in which Hank teaches biology and John teaches World History. They are, it seems, better at it than I am. Which I am, for the moment, ok with. But these videos are clocking in at 15 minutes (plus or minus 5). Which seems like a lot of sage-ing. But maybe it’s not- and I’m not sure what that threshold should be. Thoughts?

BTW, here’s an early video from John:

Where’d I go?

To Maine, actually. For a week.

And yes, it was lovely.

But I’m back for a week or so, and thought I’d do some work on here. To whit:

1. Updated (a bit) the “About Me” Section

2. Added a “Tangential” Tab, with a drop down menu of available videos

3. Deleted exactly 776 spam comments

Which tired me out, so I had a cup of tea.

I’m teaching a two day session at EDCO at the end of the week, and I’m pretty excited. It’s about iPads in the High School classroom, and I’m looking forward to conversations and questions.

Sit Rep!

It’s the very start of the summer, and here’s where I’m at with projects:

1. The Massachusetts Digital Publication Collaborative is happening tomorrow, and I’m pretty excited. We’re over 600 people registered- making it one of the larger one-day education conferences in the northeast. I’m leading one session the first day, and I’m leading four sessions (including a keynote) the second day. Busy busy busy. Exciting stuff, though.

2. I’ve had to put the fifth episode of Tangential on hold for a minute. Between the end-of-the-year, exams, moving my classroom, #madpc, and getting ready for some genuine vacation time, there’s not been any time to shoot or edit an episode. The subject and script are both ready, I’ve just not been able to crank it out. Keep calm: I’ll be doing it this summer. Earlier- but likely not for about two weeks. Likely. As it stands right now, the entire Tangential series is less than twenty minutes long- but don’t underestimate how densely packed that twenty minutes is. That’s wall to wall, foot to the floor delivery- and boy, being a Boston kid, can I talk fast.

3. I’ve had a bit of a transformative moment after watching this video put out by Tom Sach’s studio. I’m not entirely sure why it’s effected me so much- but it’s been creeping into my life ever since. I’ve been knolling my cutting board in the kitchen while making our meals. No, really. Anyway, I think some of the concepts will form the basis of my new Media Production classroom for next year. The idea of “sacred space” and “the code” are pretty compelling. So compelling that I’m writing my own handbook for success.

That’s it, for now.

SitRep!

Hey Folks!

Lots going on, even though it’s the very end of my school year. The fun don’t stop.

1. The Mass Digital Publication Collaborative is nearly here, and numbers are booming! Nearly (as of Friday, anyway) at 600 people coming, and I do hope you’re one of them. The schedule is up, and I’m running a few sessions. The catering’s being done by B.Good, who are both excellent and excellent to work with. Can’t say enough good things about them. I’m getting excited- and I’ve got tons to share. If you can’t make it, make sure you follow the conference on twitter with the #madpc hashtag.

2. I’ve been doing the research for Tangential Ep5- I’m hoping to shoot/edit/post that this week, likely earlier rather than later. It’s a bit crazy right now with finals and whatnot going on, but I’m going to try to get it done anyway. View counts are still pretty low there, but I’m hoping that’s because it’s the end-of-the-year wind-down and nobody is looking for new stuff right now. Though, truth be told, it could just as easily be because (a) nobody really wants to see me that close up or (b) nobody really dives into the tangential stuff I do with Lord of the Flies. 50/50 really.

3. I’m working on some digital publications. That should come come as no surprise, I suppose, given #1, but it’s true. I’ll post more about them when they’re in a state to be posted.

4. I’m doing a bunch of work to refine my setup. Nothing that’s posted on the Setup page as of yet, but some clear changes that’ll simplify and amplify how I work, I hope. Cutting back on the number of machines I work at/with, clearing up some crazy cable messes, mounting things differently, etc… One of that inspirations for that came from this excellent video, found via The Setup.

5. I’m doing a lot more posting over at G+. More so, even, then here or twitter. I can’t recommend it enough as a platform, and it’s really maturing nicely with features. By far the most interactive place I’ve found to share ideas.

That’s it!