Google Apps for the Class- Create a Podcast in Google Apps!

This week the Google Apps Marketplace opened up, and I was quick to discover that there is an audio editing tool in it. I wanted to see how quickly I could create an introduction for my Adventures in Ed Tech podcast.  Never having used the tool before, it took me all but 11 minutes. I think that's a pretty good forecast for an intuitive tool. I created a time-lapse video for that, so if you want to get a peek into the tool, go ahead and watch!


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Tutorials: Infinite Learning Guidance

Scenario:
You're in geometry class, and the teacher has just finished giving a lesson on proofs. She comes around the classroom and you begin working in groups with others. You're confused. You have questions and your group isn't helping you because they can't really articulate what the teacher just said in the right way. You need the teacher. It's okay to need the teacher- except there's only eight minutes left for this period. Teacher still won't come near you, now moving on to another group. 

Ugh. Bell rings.

What do you do? You go home and ask Dad. Dad hasn't done proofs in 30 years. Aha! You get an idea- The Internet!  The Internet can help you! You'll just find help online. So you go to youtube, and you start searching. And searching. And- oops- no that's college geometry, but close. Not helping. Now you just wasted two hours, and it's getting late. Your homework is not done. You're tired.

Are you frustrated yet? Well you should be. You've gone through all of that and- worst of all- you haven't learned anything!  This is the 21st Century, and this should never happen to any student. It's an abomination. A teacher teaching an observable skill has a duty, a responsibility to make those skills available via the Internet at any time and any place in the world. At this point in the 21st Century, this should be common sense.

Robert Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction were based on the old ADDIE model of instruction, which was originally created to get people to memorize facts. Strangely, teachers still use this model of instruction, even though the level of thinking has (hopefully) changed. The Events are still a fine way to deliver instruction, and you can use them to get kids to do more than just memorize stuff, but if you need them to perform a task or observable skill, Event 5 is the money event- "provide learning guidance."

via http://ide.ed.psu.edu/idde/9events.htm

The school day and 40 minute periods are not always suited to all learners. To get students to perform an observable skill in such a limited amount of time that schools offer, a teacher must "guide learning" by then making themselves available after school, during prep periods, and sometimes before school. But what if you could make yourself available 24 hours a day, seven days per week? What if a teacher could be available any time a student needed them? Heck, what if you could offer learning guidance even after you were dead? Well you can; it's called youtube.com. I make myself available eternally at youtube.com/misterrezac .

For some subjects, I can see how a tutorial series may not work or make sense, such as social studies or civics class, but math teachers, technology, even language arts and science can make tutorials of conjugating verbs, solving punnet squares, creating graphs, and performing experiments. With an ELMO camera, teachers can now record all of these actions; here's my test.

This type of instruction is not just for students, though. Learning guidance for teachers through tutorials for professional development is, I would say, still a duty of a Tech Administrator or Facilitator. I created a tutorial series for teachers using Google Apps for Education, and it's a resource that continues to grow and be passed on to others. How many school tech "help" sites, have links to downloadable pdf files? How convenient is it for a teacher to be looking for a solution, only to continually be downloading pdf step-by-step instructions for stuff they don't need? The last thing I'd want to do as developer of teacher tech skills is to make them more frustrated. Let's not make teachers even more frustrated by technology than they already may be. Youtube it.

There are some rules when making tutorials for students or teachers that will provide the best results.

1. Don't just send them to Atomic Learning. While this site can be a helpful tool, guiding a student or a teacher's learning will be more effective if it's coming from their own people- context plays a big part. Besides- you are the leader.
2. Try to give them step-by-step instructions. It just helps keep things organized.
3. KISS - Keep it Short, Silly.  I'm going to say try not to go over five minutes. For some complicated tutorial steps, create two - five minute videos, rather than one - ten minute video. It's very much like the 10-2 teaching strategy, when you're in class you should take a break every 10 minutes for students to "soak it in." For some odd reason, a 10 minute tutorial can really drag on in this sound byte culture, especially if your voice is not animated. 
4. Keep the energy high. How many youtube tutorials have you seen that have put you to sleep? Smile with your voice! 
5. Use a professional tutorial software like Screenflow. It's the iMovie of screencast software. It uploads automatically to youtube.
6. Have fun, you're making a movie!

Accessing information on the Internet is a behavior most adults still haven't mastered, but accessing information is a much more important skill these days than memorizing facts. If two students both don't know an answer to a question, but one of them knows how to find the answer, that's an authentic skill that will help that student many times over in their future.

I still get excited when I hear a student or teacher say, "show me."  I will show you, and now I can- even when I'm dead. Now that's eternal learning guidance.



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Google Apps for the Class: Exporting Google Earth to My Maps

Okay, so Google Maps is not part of Google Apps. However, it is still possible to use this tool to share students' work. This next part of my tutorial series, Google Apps for the Class shows you how to take students' Google Earth folders and files, and bulk upload them to a Google Map or My Map.

I have middle school kids and would not sign them up for regular Google accounts just so that they can use the My Maps feature, so what I am doing here is just using my own Google Maps account.  I know that there are other ways to do this, but I found this way just fine.  Hope it gives you some ideas. Enjoy!

Oh, and here is the link to my students' completed Olympic Venues Map. 


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The Phenomenon Effect

Let me tell you a few things about The Phenomenon Effect:

• It didn't exist before 1995.
• It's not so much an addiction, as it is a condition. 
• It doesn't involve John Travolta or Kyra Sedgwick, but it was inspired by that movie.
• It may help you solve problems that known scientists have been trying to solve for years. 
• To feel its effects, you must have a high speed Internet connection. 

Graphically I like to use this image to explain it:

What you see above are two ideas. They might be the most random of ideas, but as you can see above, that they are only millimeters apart from connecting. They are so very close. 

Now one idea could be- a theory of time travel, and the other could be about how to bake the best cake in high altitude: 

What matters is that both ideas need answers, and in 2010, the first mode of answers for most folks is going to be the Internet, or as some folks call it, our Collective Intelligence. Now, before 1995, and the commercial Internet, the probability that the idea of baking a cake at high altitude could inspire a particle physicist was probably small, but today the Internet is flowing with good (and bad) ideas everywhere and connecting the most random of people. If Einstein was inspired by the music of Mozart then what could he have accomplished with a blog, and an online community of millions (or billions)? What if he gave TED talks like Sean Carroll? How many would he have inspired?

Okay- but that's not really the big picture. Really what you see above is a side effect of The Phenomenon Effect, or a by-product. And why is it related to that (sometimes cheezy) movie?  Because that movie had a premise that is commenting on our present condition. 

Can the Internet make you move objects with your mind? 

George Malley (John Travolta) is a lowly small-town car mechanic, who, one night, sees a bright light in the sky, which knocks him off his feet. Consequently, he begins to tap into unseen amounts of intelligence in his own mind, staying up most nights, reading every book imaginable, and creating usable inventions that could revolutionize agriculture and our planet. 

The unforeseen premise this movie left out was- the Internet. The Internet was only a baby when this movie came out. The idea that a person can just, at any moment right now, tap into the collective intelligence of the human population wasn't even foreseen in Gordon Moore's law (Intel's co-founder), which states that, "the number of transistors on a chip will double nearly every two years."   

via Intel.com

What happens to technology when people begin sharing all of their ideas via the Internet, and ideas previously unheard of begin connecting with other random ones? Shouldn't Moore's Law begin to start looking like this? Instead of doubling, shouldn't technology (okay, transistors) begin to triple or quadruple if we're collectively starting to share information?

To make this point, I think of The Human Genome Project- it finished ahead of schedule and under budget mostly because scientists pooled their research and essentially crowd-sourced their scientific data to other scientists. On the Internet you have millions of ideas passing over each other, like ships in the night, and it's only a matter of time before one of those ideas connects and becomes a practice or a fact. 

So, in relation to George Malley's gift, I think that it's clear now- we all have that gift. We are discovering that we all have the ability to learn beyond what we previously thought was imaginable. The collective intelligence of the Internet, blogs, and the sharing of information via Twitter are allowing us to reach an untapped potential in our own minds. How many of us are staying up later at night listening to Bill Gates speak about the future of energy on TED.com?  How many of us are risking our life Twittering in our cars (please, pull over)  because you absolutely must respond to the folks that offered you a new idea about creating a Digital Learning Space at your school? Or- in strictly commerce terms- how many of us have discovered a new way to streamline a product because of a video or podcast we saw on the Internet?  Have you begun springing out of bed in the morning because you know- you absolutely know- that you are going to learn something new today? It's like a prophecy; it is written. 

Most notably- how many more of us are writing more than we ever thought we could, in hopes that one of our own ideas will have one of those miracle connections, and, two ideas will meet and become a practice, a fact, or an experience?

This is The Phenomenon Effect. This is life!

So, if you, like me, are suffering The Phenomenon Effect, please take heed: it's okay to be addicted to learning. As long as you're sharing that learning with others.

How to know your "suffering" from The Phenomenon Effect: 

• You sometimes think that if you think hard enough, you could "figure out" interstellar travel; it's just one night's sleep away.
• You feel like, if there's a problem, you can always find a way to fix it. Always. 
• You think that using The Force is a very good possibility. "Just give me time..."
• Webinars are where you go to eat breakfast. 
• You have more ideas than you know what to do with. "Hey- have you heard of Ning.com?...."
• You believe everything is a teachable moment. 
• Learning trumps lunch. 
• Podcasts trump NPR 
• You have (at least) 1000 colleagues, and that's not even considered a lot. 
• You just know that someday you're going to find the "magic bullet" to inspire a child to learn.  

So, have you seen the light? 

via Mario Armstrong A Digital Learning Space:

NYC Uses Motion Capture in Classroom.

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It's About Process! Streamline Teaching Strategies with Google Apps!

This is my presentation on using Google Apps with some of your favorite age-old teaching strategies!

Link: http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AWWzaaRnYL0HZGNmZzliNjZfMzgzNjk5c25tczY&hl=en



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Teach More! Manage Less! Learning Management in the Cloud

This is my presentation on learning management resources for the ICE 2010 conference.


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Using ELMO Cameras to Record Math Tutorials

I am not a math teacher, by any means, but, as a technology teacher, I do teach observable skills. I have therefore been on a crusade of late when it comes to creating tutorials. If you teach observable skills, I believe you have a responsibility to post your tutorials online so that students can get further guidance from you when they leave the classroom. You may not agree with me, but I know my students and they're going to go to youtube for tutorials anyway. Why not watch mine?

45 minutes is a very short time. How many math teachers have the time to get around to every student during a math lesson? It's very difficult, especially if you are teaching complex skills like algebra or calculus.

What if your students could rewind you, or fast forward you? Or pause you? With an ELMO document camera, and your PC or Mac, they can! Below is my second example of using the ELMO for a sample subtraction lesson that I did. Of course, I'm not a math teacher (but I did use manipulatives- dots!), so please accept my rudimentary example.

After a lesson, you let students practice, right? Here's how I think you can be super successful using tutorials in the classroom:

1. Model the skill live.
2. Have students then view a different example on your youtube channel. (here's my channel).
3. Allow students to practice, and let them access the tutorials as much as they need.
4. Check for understanding - give them a problem to see if they "get it" without using the tutorial.
5. Give homework. They'll have access to your tutorials at home (hopefully), so they can check if they need any more guidance.

A couple other things:

• Make sure your tutorials are step-by-step, not a glossed over version of your classroom lesson.
• The shorter the better. If you wax and wane for 10 minutes online, you may totally lose their interest, and they'll find your tutorials boring. Short, sweet, and to the point.

Tutorials are not a replacement for teaching, but a super compliment and great for guiding learning during practice. There's also a caveat to making tutorials- they need to come from the classroom teacher- context is extremely important. So- better to come from you than some guy from Illinois!


Thanks to luckyguy for the image.
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Using Two Mice with Your Mac

This is a quick share, but I wanted to share this quite easy and helpful accommodation for the Mac. In my classroom we have a student who does not use his right hand. Now, most of his aides (and myself) all use our right hand, so this creates some logistical issues when we try to help him (and try to do it quickly and seamlessly). So I thought I'd plug in a mouse to the other side of the keyboard, just to see if it would work with both mice at the same time, and... it worked!

It reminded me of drivers ed, where you use a car that has two brake pedals.

Hope this helps some folks out there!
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