Author: timcalvin

SitRep

A very, very busy week- and not for reasons I’d like, for the most part. Regardless:

1. The Mass Digital Publication conference is inching every closer- make sure you sign up to come a share. We’re pushing towards a future where educators can quickly and easily produce their own custom digital textbooks without having to rely on commercial publishers. I’ll be presenting, likely on the topics of containers- which means formats for you to put your content into. I’ll likely be covering PDF’s, ePub’s, and iBooks Author files. And I keep saying “likely” because things aren’t set in stone. Yet.

2. There’s a post coming up on this subject, but I’ll mention it here a bit: I’ve been spending a chunk of time in the last two months or so working on how we display information to students. At first, it was just play. I wanted to mix up my setup a bit in part just to tinker. What I’m finding, however, is that the physical means by which we show data to students can make a profound impact on how that information is received and interpreted. Again, a full post on this soon.

3. We made Google Drive live for our staff (on our Google Apps for Ed deployment). I’m looking forward to the possibilites it opens up for sharing even more, and I’m even more looking forward to being able to open it up to students. Also: Google needs to make an iOS app for Drive. STAT.

4. I know it’s my darling, but If This Then That just keeps getting better- every time I go, I find more ideas about how to use it to make my life richer and simpler. If you’re not using it, I really do suggest trying it out. It’s a way (however small) of moving towards the very interesting future of the Internet of Things.

That’s it, for now.

 

t.

 

SitRep!

It been a few weeks since I’ve done one of these, so I figured it was time again. All sorts of new bits in the works. So:

1. The Massachusetts Digital Publication Collaborative is doing it’s thing this June 25-27th. I’ll be there (and I’m helping organize and whatnot…). It’s looking likely that I’ll be presenting, most probably on the subject of digital textbook containers (ePub/PDF/iBooks Author, etc…). Sign up, come, say “Hi.”

2. I’m teaching a two day session for EDCO in Waltham MA. It’s focused on using iPads in High School classrooms. I suspect there’s still space, and it’ll be a good time. Maybe I’ll see you there, too.

3. Apple came back to our school for a video profile and interviewed me again- so there’s the chance you’ll be seeing me in a video on their webpage, thought that’s likely a few months out still.

4. I’ve been neck-deep in iBooks Author for a few months now. I’m starting to find it’s areas of both usefulness and limitations. It makes for a very nice, clean, enjoyable output, but it’s clearly be aimed mostly at professional producers.

5. I’ve been getting back to twitter in an interactive way recently. I was posting lots of content, but most of it wasn’t aimed a specific groups- it was just broadcast out into the twitterverse. These days, however, I’ve been finding myself on #sschat more and more. I feel a little traitorous doing it- I’m an English teacher by training, and hanging out with the History/SocialStudies people is all sorts of wrong. That said, they’re a really good group… and, well… #engchat feels pretty dead whenever I drop by. So now you know where to find me.

 

A new student project.

I was out sick the other day.

That’s not entirely accurate. I was home with a sick child, which is slightly different.

And, as is usually the case when that happens, I emailed my student the plans they needed for the day. I’m a big fan of that, by the way, as it eliminates the uncertainty of what a Sub might do. But I digress.

I sent the following text to my students:

English: Papers were due last night at 11:59. I’ll start looking at those shortly. In the meantime, you should have already read to the end of chapter 5 in TKAM. In class today, I’d like you to create a map of Scout’s neighborhood in Maycomb. You’ll need to do this in groups not larger than three, and you’ll need to do it digitally. I’ll leave the specifics of what you use up to you, but I do have a few other constraints:
1. Every item must be labeled.
2. Every item must have a page number where the quote describing it’s location exists
3. You must have a minimum of 20 items on your map.
I look forward to seeing these tomorrow. For homework, you’ll need to have read chapters 6 & 7.

I come from a pencil-and-paper era, so I had thoughts about students producing stuff that was analogous to that. I was thinking I’d get a stack of PDF’s emailed to me, and that’d be the end of it.

It wasn’t.

I got a few PDF’s and the like- drawings done digitally. What I expected. But by leaving the door open the way I did, I also go a few surprises. Two, in particular, were very interesting:

1. A small group of students built a Google Sketchup file that was a 3d model of how they saw the town of Maycomb.

 

2. A small group of students used the Eden World Creator app to build a Minecraft world of Maycomb.

I was, to say the least, blown away. The willingness and thoughtfulness my students displayed in choosing alternative means by which to fullfil the requirements of the assignment warms my heart for the following reason: They were willing to take the risk involved.

The students that chose “safer” methods have, I suspect, been trained to take the least amount of risk in order to maximize the payoff in school. It’s a reasonable technique that leads to (usually) reasonable results, but in my experience seldom leads to wild success. The willingness to risk can (and often does) lead to failure (of some sort), but with it comes the possibility- the slightest chance- of true greatness.

I guess I’m proud that I got some really good work. And I guess I’m even more proud that to whatever small degree I’ve not completely obliterated my student’s willingness to take risks in the classroom.

t.

Something I’m not going to do.

Ok, look. It’s time we had a talk, you and I. About links.

Here’s what I’m not going to do anymore: If your link is a “fb.something” I won’t click it.

I’ve discontinued my use of Facebook, and as a result, I won’t me clicking links that go there. That includes links via twitter or other social media.

 

t.

The Answer?

There’s been a lot of talk in the last few years of Education about how we assess teachers in classrooms. Walkthroughs, mentoring, surveys, and a million other options have all been kicked around as possibilities. Being fans of “empirical data,” politicians have decided that using an assessment that wasn’t meant to look at teacher achievement as a measure of… wait for it… teacher achievement is like a good idea.

False.

But I’ve stumbled across something that might actually be a solution. Really. Honestly.

Some lovely folks over at MIT published a paper on measuring brain activity via a small wristband. They do this by measuring electrodermal activity and using this to help measure cognitive activity.

Changes in skin conductance at the surface, referred to as electrodermal activity (EDA), reflect activity within the sympathetic axis of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and provide a sensitive and convenient measure of assessing alterations in sympathetic arousal associated with emotion, cognition, and attention.

From:

Poh, M.Z., Swenson, N.C., Picard, R.W., “A Wearable Sensor for Unobtrusive, Long-term Assessment of Electrodermal Activity,” IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol.57, no.5, pp.1243-1252, May 2010. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2009.2038487 PDF

That PDF link will get you the whole paper. It’s a bit technical (though pretty readable…), but it outlines that there is now a way to measure the level of engagement a student is experiencing directly. In hard numbers. I’m looking forward to being able to monitor my own state- Can I actually tell when I’m engaged? Am I always right? Do the things that I think engage me actually do that?

The wealth of data that this can provide to educators would allow us to fine-tune our delivery and our instruction to maximize it’s impact on our students.

Some new Setup stuff…

I’ve recently gotten a few things up and running around here, and I thought some video to share was in order. None of this is faked- it’s all real. And it’s all on my desk. For how long, who knows…

So that’s a bit over the top, but it’s honestly what I’m currently using. I’d love to get a third monitor in there to fix some formatting issues, but that’s in the “eventual” pile of things to do. Then, there’s this:

 

This is harder to justify, but way cooler. And more META. And cooler.

Hope you enjoy.

 

t.

 

Baloney Detection Kit

It’s been a bit, but this just came across my desk:

This is the sort of thing that provides students with the exact skill set that they need to be able to determine a reputable source compared to a fraudulent/biased one.

Totally Required Viewing.