The Upside of Schools’ Failure to Move With the Times.

There is an upside to education having languished so long in the 20th Century.  It gives teachers a generous chance to exceed our students’ expectations and make their learning experience worth talking about.

Those teachers who embrace new media still have the chance to surprise their students.  The tools are simple and powerful for enhancing class dynamics, yet at the same time, the expectations of students that their teachers will use them are still low.  There has not been such a favourable conjunction of circumstances this easy to exploit for at least two decades (since I started teaching), and it won’t last five years from now, either.  This could well be the best window of opportunity this generation will get to so easily teach in ways that students think remarkable.

In industries that responded swiftly to new media (several years ago) the curve has already begun to stabilise.  The first restaurants to establish Facebook and Twitter profiles (for example) made impressive gains because they were among the few doing it.  At the time most businesses failed to foresee the potential of  social networks but once the benefits on the bottom line were reported, more and more restaurants started jumping on the bandwagon.  Nowadays, most restaurants have a Facebook and Twitter presence.  They can’t afford not to because the public expects it.  It does not make them look particularly cool though.  There is no longer much cachet in it.

At school though, in 2012, it will still be possible to use new media to be surprising because most students still won’t be expecting it.  This will only be true for as long as few teachers communicate with their students in ways that are generationally relevant.  But as more and more teachers do, (and they will/are) the curve of student expectations will inevitably shift.  When that happens, education in Australia will of course be the better for it. Between now and then, though, we shouldn’t take for granted the exciting opportunity we have to delight our students.

The Biggest Challenge to Overcome for the Effective Use of iPads at School

The biggest challenge isn’t a technological hurdle. It’s a pedagogical one.

As a science teacher, I would not allow my students to conduct an ‘experiment’ involving chemicals that I hadn’t first trialled myself.  In that way I know exactly what is likely to happen.  This allows me to give instructions that will  minimise hazards and help students avoid errors that might produce disappointing results.  Permitting students to mix reagents without a clear knowledge of the product would be stupid, if not negligent.

I think many teachers feel that way with technology, too.  Their instinct dictates that before they permit their students to use an app on the iPad, they must first themselves master it’s use, uncover any issues likely to arise and learn how these can be mitigated.  Then, and only then, will they allow their students to use it under their step-by-step guidance.  While such a cautious approach may be necessary in a science lab, it is not necessary for the effective classroom use of  iPads.  I would go further and say that such a mindset is not just unnecessary but that it retards student learning.

A teacher’s role in the classroom is to supply direction, maturity and wisdom.  It is to raise questions, inspire endeavour and lay down challenges.  A teacher brings purpose to the lesson.  But to be effective in an iPad classroom, she must relinquish control over the tools used,  allowing students to share the responsibility and joy of discovering and sharing solutions to achieve that purpose.

I’m not saying that teachers are absolved of their professional responsibility for learning to use the technology.  But they should admit to being learners, and not let that fact stop their students from using the device in unforeseen ways, in the pursuit of the class goals.

Flipping the Classroom

In my previous post, I made the point that in the education sector,  we have not (yet) seen the radical technology-driven advancement that has characterised other industries in the last quarter-century because rather than allowing technology to liberate us from the limitations of yesterday, we have typically rejected technologies that don’t fit our existing model and instead put our resources into tools that support the old, comfortable way of doing things.  We’ve replaced whiteboards with interactive whiteboards, text books with texts on CD ROM, Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikipedia, and pens with Microsoft Word.  In themselves, these tools are all good – but they are good tools that don’t require us to change our pedagogy.

What then, would make a significant change?   One example, I think, is the flipped classroom model.  The “Flipped Classroom” is a term first used by Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams some time ago but has started to gain traction in 2011, following Sal Khan’s TED talk.

At it’s simplest, flipped teaching involves using podcasts, (whether audio podcast, vodcast, screencast), to teach students at times when they would normally be on their own doing individual homework. This frees up class time for exercise work that would once have been set for homework, while the teacher is there to act as a personal tutor.  (hence the term ‘flipped’).

In my own experience (I started flipping my classes in 2005 – well before the term was coined),  it also makes time in class for more discussions, debates, role-plays, modelling activities, experiments and group work.  Each of these requires people to be together.  A lecture does not.   It’s not just about doing more online.  It’s about considering what works best online, and what works best face-to-face and curating each of these to make our precious class time more valuable.

This is not just squeezing technology into an existing structure.   It’s allowing technology to break us out of a model that served us before we had the Internet and when the only times teachers had to talk to their students was four class periods a week.

Note:  Since posting this, a reader has sent me a link to her fantastic blog post “15 Flipped Classrooms We Can Learn From“.  Thank you Carol

The Remarkable Changes that Technology Can Bring to Teaching and Learning

Since I embarked upon my career as an educator 25 years ago, the changes in the world have been remarkable.   Unless you pause to think about what has changed in the last quarter century, it is easy to take for granted the extent of technological and social change.  Some of the obvious advances that spring to my mind include:

• The introduction of mobile phones to Australia in 1987.
• The storage of data on DVDs which became available in 1999.
• The Global Positioning System (GPS) which only became fully operational in 1994.
• The Human Genome Project which began in 2000 and has now sequenced the entire human genetic sequence, which has in turn led to a transformation of the legal system with the use of DNA profiling for forensics and paternity disputes, and likewise has transformed agriculture with genetically modified crops.
• The invention of fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and similar scanning technologies have revolutionised our understanding of the body and especially the brain.  We can now practically watch people thinking!
• The popularisation of ATM cash dispensers in the ’80s and the start of Internet banking in the late ’90s have revolutionised the banking industry.
• Social networking – is really the dial-tone of the 21st Century.  Most kids with mobile phones don’t actually use them as phones any more at all, but more for the mobile access they provide to social networks.

Were it possible to transport a geneticist through time from a lab in 1986 to a modern biotech facility, she would be dumbfounded by what she saw!  Unable to make sense of what was going on!  She wouldn’t know what the machines were, what the people around her were doing, she wouldn’t even understand many of the words people were using!  The industry is now hundreds of times more efficient and able to achieve things that were the stuff of science fiction in the ’80s.  In many cases the tools have not merely changed how things are done but they have changed what is done.

On the other hand, if it were possible to transport a teacher through time from a classroom in 1986 to a typical modern classroom, he would, in most cases, understand exactly what was going on. The biggest surprise would likely be the change to the board on which the teacher writes (while his 27 students still sit in rows, watching).  The tools that are used have been updated, but the use of the tools has changed relatively little.

So then, either we’d already got it right by 1986 and the model of schooling we had arrived at then can’t really be significantly improved by available technology, or else the remarkable changes that technology can bring to teaching and learning are yet to have a widespread impact.

It’s the latter.

Facebook Killed the Discussion Board

I’ve long been an advocate of class discussion boards. But, I think, now, they are passé.  It’s time to let go.

When I was a student in the 1970s – 80s, if the teacher showed us an educational video in class, we thought it was fantastic; an exciting blend of education and entertainment!

Fast-forward to 2011.  Any video longer than YouTube-clip-length played in class will fail to hold the attention of many students.  The video might still be educational, but it just can’t be entertaining any more. Like it or not, students’ expectations have risen regarding what makes compelling viewing.  It’s pretty hard for an educational video, even a good one, to compete in the entertainment space with mind-blowing CG movies like ‘Avatar’ or bizarre amateur videos on YouTube!

I think we are seeing a similar thing happen with discussion boards.  When I first introduced a discussion board to my class in 2004 students thought it was fantastic!  The idea that you could go online (via dial-up modem)  to ask a question, or read posts by classmates any time of day or night … that was cool!  It’s not perceived that way any more.  How could the pedestrian, text-based discussion boards offered within most Learning Management Systems (including the Ultranet), possibly compete with the vibrant, media-rich experience of modern social networks?  Like it or not, students’ expectations about what comprises compelling online interaction have risen.

That’s not to say that the LMS is dead or that there is no value in the Ultranet – these platforms offer a range of other useful features but so far as an online discussion forum is concerned, a Facebook Group is now the desire path to pave.

More Reasons Our Class Facebook Group Is Better Than My School Discussion Board

Since writing this earlier post ”Why the Facebook Group my Students Created for Themselves is Better Than the Discussion Forum I Created For Them“  a number of other advantages have surfaced.

‘Likes’ lower the participation threshold

The ability to “Like” a post makes it possible for students to contribute to a discussion, without necessarily having to compose a significant new thought or question.  It lowers the participation threshold.  As a result the level of participation increases.  (see image below)

‘One click entry’ lowers the inconvenience barrier

Logging into my “official” discussion board, requires a student to enter a URL (or click on a bookmark), then type in a username and password.  While that is not prohibitively cumbersome, it’s certainly a few extra steps that you have to deliberately take to visit the discussion.  Compare that to a Facebook Group, where students are generally already logged in to Facebook anyway, so visiting the Facebook Group, requires (effectively) no log in.

Cross-posting from YouTube makes sharing seamless.

If a student or teacher is watching YouTube videos and finds one that is relevant to what is being studied, s/he can post the YouTube video directly to the Facebook Group wall, without having to leave YouTube – or even having to pause the video!  Back on the Facebook Group, classmates can watch the YouTube video right there on the wall, without having to leave Facebook!

The Facebook Group attracts a different crowd.

Our school-based discussion board was visited regularly by some of the most academic and enthusiastic students but only occasionally by others.  The Facebook Group is quite different.  It’s visited regularly, even by students who rarely visited my school discussion board. The reason for this is quite obvious.  Less academically inclined students are often the ones who spend the most time of an evening socialising on Facebook!  When they see that little red notification flag appear – they are just one click away from reading and ‘liking’ what they read.

Free Social Networking – lowers the mobile cost barrier.

Even for students with a smart phone (about 65% of them now) visiting our old discussion forum is not only fiddly -but uses mobile data – which, depending on the student’s mobile phone plan, can be expensive.  But many pre-paid mobile phone plans include free Facebook and Twitter access.  That makes our Facebook Group  very accessible via mobile phone. (not to mention that the Facebook iPhone app is quite slick).

What’s the Downside?

The biggest downside of a Facebook Group compared to a more traditional old-school discussion board, is that in most schools Facebook is blocked on the school network.  This is less of an impediment to students than one might expect as most VCE students now have a smartphone (assuming phones are not also banned) so can thereby step around the school’s network when it gets in the way of their learning. ; )

Let’s Not Be the EMI of Education

The biggest challenges confronting recording artists and music lovers are distribution and access, respectively.  In the past this made it necessary  for both parties to deal with recording labels like EMI.  How else would the public get exposure to the worlds best artists? How else would artists get connected to a fan base so they could be paid for their work?

In 2007 Radiohead decided they don’t need a middle-man anymore. EMI, so Radiohead reasoned, take more than 80% of the wholesale revenue in exchange for marketing, distribution and pirate-chasing. The war on piracy is evidently not working and as for promotion and distribution, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, argued that the band could now bypass EMI by marketing and distributing their music directly to fans using social media. That’s my paraphrase of Yorke’s argument. His actual words were:

“The time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs [a record company]. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say ‘F#@& you’ to this decaying business model.”

So Radiohead’s next album “In Rainbows” was distributed directly from the band’s website to fans who were asked to pay whatever they wanted to for it.  As it turned out, most fans who downloaded the album paid nothing at all for it, yet “In Rainbows” still made more money for the band, even before it was released, than they made in total from the previous album “Hail To The Thief“!

If I were the CEO of a record company – I’d be a bit concerned about that.  But EMI’s “decaying business model” that once made music distribution possible, is now just getting in the way of it.

If recording companies are the traditional gatekeepers of music, schools are the traditional gatekeepers of education. It is schools that have connected educators with those needing an education. How else would students get access to knowledge? How else would teachers get connected to a group of students so they could be paid for their work?

But what I see is a growing number of educators, qualified and unqualified, who are producing high-quality lessons and publishing them directly to students via Youtube, Vimeo, and iTunes, thereby bypassing the gatekeeper (take as examples the Kahn Academy, iTunes U, McDonalds’ Maths Online and teachers independently publishing podcasts). But in many schools, video download sites such as Youtube, Vimeo, and even iTunes are blocked by the school’s Internet filters, and so all that learning is going on after hours despite the school, not because of it!

Let’s just be careful that in our attempt to control Internet access, school is not just getting in the way of education.

Why the Facebook Group My Students Created for Themselves is Better than the Discussion Forum I Created for Them.

Since 2004 I’ve created a website of some kind for each class, with a discussion board – a place where students can ask questions or make comments on our class any time of day or night and get a response.  I think it’s an essential component of any modern class.

This semester something new happened, though.  My students created a Facebook group for my class (and then invited me to join it!).  Slowly I’ve watched and noticed more and more, that students are posting on that Facebook group instead of the discussion forum I’d created for them!

While at first, the control-freak in me wanted to send them all back to the “official class discussion forum”,  The advantages of the Facebook group have become increasingly compelling and I’m wondering whether it’s time to let the forum I created go the way of cassette tapes and typewriters.  Why is a Facebook group better? For one thing, Facebook is a digital home for many students.  So a group based there is comfortable to them – it’s on their virtual turf. Because of this, the Facebook group is even more of a desire path than my discussion forum is.

Some other advantages of the Facebook group over the discussion board I created are: 

• When students (or I) find a youtube video that we want to share with the group, this can be simply done directly from Youtube by clicking the “share” button under the video as it plays.
• The group can be accessed easily using a mobile device… for example from the iPhone Facebook app (picture right).  On the other hand checking my discussion forum in Safari on an iPhone is nowhere near as elegant.
• Videos and Podcasts on the Facebook group wall play right there in the wall… rather than simply being a link that leads you to another page.  It’s a better user experience.
• When someone posts on the Facebook group wall, all the members of the group get a notification, and since many of them are in Facebook at the time anyway, they get it immediately!  (In contrast, my discussion forum can be set up to send email notifications… but many students don’t check their email very often.)

Frankly I’ve been delighted to see the level of interaction between my students in that group.  It’s increased.  Look at the screen grab below for example.  Via this Facebook group, my students (independently of me) have been organising to buy some rabbits and breed them to test the genetic theory they are learning in class!  All the planning has taken place via the Facebook group.   In the last week there have been more than 50 comments posted just on this rabbit discussion alone!  And in addition, there have been posts on other topics, videos shared, etc.

It bears mentioning, too, that it’s not necessary to “friend” students in order to interact with them in a group.  Furthermore, if the group is set up as a “closed” group, as ours is, then access is restricted to people who are invited by the group to join, as I was.

See also “More Reasons Our Class Facebook Group Is Better than My School Discussion Board”  and “Facebook Killed the Discussion Board“

Work, Rest & Play in an Anytime, Anywhere Century

“If you are suggesting that teachers teach online in the evening, and make podcasts and such in their own time, isn’t this asking teachers to spend more and more personal time working?”

“How do you have the time to teach a virtual class, make podcasts, etc.? Do you ever sleep?”

I get asked questions like these a lot.

It’s interesting to reflect on how the world has changed since unions fought for 888 (8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure and 8 hours of rest). While the principle of work/leisure/rest balance is still as relevant now as it was in 1910, the division of our day into 3 discreet 8-hour periods, I don’t think is relevant any more.

Blurring the 888 Boundaries

The borders between work and leisure are already blurred. We already take our planning, correction and report-writing home and work into the evening. We feel comfortable phoning our family members during the day, or minding our child at work if they can’t attend school. We have “social committees” at work, and our work itself increasingly involves an element of play. All these things blur the once clear boundary between work and leisure. I don’t think my school is unusual in this regard. Any given day sees several humorous education-related emails circulated amongst staff. Being at work can be fun, and dare I say it, at times it feels like leisure. In fact I’d argue that working in a job you love, IS a form of leisure. Take Anne Mirtschin from Hawkesdale P-12. She recently expressed it like this to me (in a tweet) “[teaching online in the evening] is more like entertainment. I don’t watch TV much, and just love learning and the eLearning environment.” That is what Sir Ken Robinson would call a teacher in her “Element”.

Compare this to the Henry Ford clock-in-clock-out work ethic. Ford is well known for having sacked employees for laughing at work, or on some occasions for even smiling! Work was not a place for fun. Fun was reserved for a man’s 8 hours of leisure and had no place in the factory. Today, most teachers approach their work oftentimes with a sense of play, happily blurring the boundaries between work, leisure and rest, and i think it would be sad to go back to the rigidity of the 888 model unions fought for a century ago.

De-specification of Time and Place

The Internet has led to the de-specification of hours in many facets of life. We now buy our music when we want to online rather than waiting until Sanity is open during the day, we book our holidays online in the evening rather than trying to get to the travel agent during our lunch-break, we bank online, shop online and keep in touch with our friends online via Facebook and Twitter all week rather than waiting to see them on the weekend. Our colleagues email us in the evening for help with their computers and our family members email us during the work day for help with theirs.

But when it comes to time and schooling, the paradigm hasn’t changed much. We still think that students need to be at school, sitting in classrooms between the hours of 9:00 AM and 3:30 PM. Like other areas of our life, I think it’s only a matter of time before we see that the system is actually more efficient and more convenient if students can access “the classroom” 24/7. Just as for other spheres of life, this will be made possible in part by the automation of repetitious and routine practices and in part by the de-specification of work hours both for teachers and students. The need for a class to be together in time and space for learning to take place is diminishing rapidly. Bill Gates recently mused: “Place-based colleges’ are good for parties, but are becoming less crucial for learning thanks to the Internet”.

A second point I want to make, is that I think if teachers are teaching virtual classes in the evening, they should be entitled to take time off in lieu during the work-day. In other words, if we are going to de-specify our hours, we need to de-specify the hours we spend at school, too. This is certainly the case for me and I know its true of some other teachers like the excellent Steve Collis at Northern Beaches Christian School. Steve teaches virtual classes online of an evening and comes in to work late on Tuesdays. In my case, I teach online on Tuesday evenings, and usually take Friday afternoons off in lieu. It’s a great trade off as far as I’m concerned. Instead of teaching tired weekend-ready students who are forced to be in class on Friday afternoon, I get to teach them after dinner, on Tuesday evening, when they are relaxed at home after a break from school. Plus I often get to have lunch with my wife on Friday afternoon while our own children are at school. There’s not too much to resent about that trade-off.

Time and Efficiency

The other important point that needs to be made here is that teaching online in various forms is much more efficient than teaching ‘on the ground’. Take podcasting for example. In a one-hour podcast, I can cover more than in a week’s worth of classes, and it amplifies the effectiveness of my teaching, too. Students can listen to it when they are in a receptive mood. They can listen when they want to, where they want to, as many times as they need to, for as long as they want to. They can come back and listen again for revision. If they are away sick they don’t miss out. If their mind wanders they can rewind – instead of approaching me for a second explanation. On my forum they can ask as many questions as they want, as they think of them, and someone will answer. As a result, I have fewer students needing my help out of class time than I once did. This efficiency also saves me personal time. I’m a more effective teacher than I was, but I’m spending less time to do so.

I’m blessed to have a principal who gets this and is open-minded enough about the 21st Century, to give me the latitude to explore it.

♫ Thank You For The Music – For Giving It To Me ♫

I recently came across a web 2.0 application called uJam that may just be the coolest web app I’ve seen this year! When I first saw it I thought “Great idea! I bet it doesn’t work”. I was so wrong.

The concept of uJam is novel. You sing an original song, and uJam puts music to it in whatever style you want! Then you can export the finished song as an mp3. (listen to the example at the end of this post).

I’ve often encouraged students to present their work in a range of different formats, as do most teachers, and I’ve invited them to do something creative – such as write and sing a song (here’s an example). The results are usually charming, and often very entertaining, but a little … amateurish, sometimes even “cringe-worthy” and I think most students find the social risks involved in writing and singing a song outweigh even their desire to impress the teacher!

But I think uJam changes that, because the results sound surprisingly good. Even if you don’t sing perfectly in tune, uJam can fix your voice to make it right!.

To demonstrate the power of uJam at a staff meeting yesterday, I asked Andrew, a colleague, to sing an impromptu song. I asked the audience to nominate a theme and someone called out “Valentines day”. Then I asked the audience to suggest a music style and someone called out “Reggae!!” So I selected Reggae from the exhaustive list of styles in uJam,  clicked the “Record” button and Andrew started singing.  After a minute’s wait, uJam had crafted a reggae beat  to fit Andrew’s song, and a click on the “save as mp3″ button downloaded it to my desktop!

The result? Not lame at all! It’s like UB40 had sung a song about getting a tripod for Valentines day!

(Remember this was a live 5-minute demo in a staff meeting, with someone who had never before seen uJam, making up a song as he went along and set to a music style pulled out of a hat. As evidence of just how impromptu this all was, if you listen closely at the beginning, you can even hear me still pointing out the features of the uJam window … but uJam has even made those instructions sound kind of funky).

Listen for yourself: Valentines Reggae

Amazing isn’t it? You’ve got to love the 21st Century!