St. Christopher’s is now a Google Apps for Education School

In December 2010, St. Christopher's became a Google Apps for Education School. This program provides educational institutions with a suite of tools that will provide our students and teachers with greater opportunities for communication and collaboration internally and also with students and teachers from around the world.

Why move to Google Apps? With the pending 1:1 laptop program in the MS and US, the tech department believed this would provide our students and teachers with tools that supports the list of Essential Skills for the 21st Century developed by the thinking task force. In addition to supporting those skills, Google Apps is a web based product that doesn't require the installation of software or a specific operating system(OS) to run. And best of all, using Google Apps for education comes at no cost to the school.

Beta Testing Google Apps: We currently have over 200 students and teachers using Google Docs in each of the 3 divisions.  Google Docs is 1 of 6 applications available through Google Apps.  Essentially, Google Docs is an office suite that provides word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and drawings.  File storage is done in the cloud(on Google's servers) and students and teachers can share files easily. NO MORE THUMBDRIVES and hopefully less paper.

Will STC be abandoning Microsoft Office in 2011? No.  We plan on phasing out Microsoft Office for students and teachers but the tech department needs to evaluate if Google Docs will satisfy all curricular requirements.

Will STC start using Gmail? Possibly. Email is a very complex server application and we have intentionally steered clear of interrupting service during the school year because of the complexity. Serious consideration however is being given to providing students with Gmail perhaps as early as the Fall of 2011 but additional research needs to be done.

Please revisit this blog to see what other tools we are using to support our boys.

How tutoring strengthened my belief that content is not king!

http://onwardstate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/end-of-semester-student-studying-finals-week-grading-essays.jpg

I've been teaching for 20 years this year and I am a firm believer that there is too much emphasis on content.  I see students and my own children often wondering, fighting, and resisting that the information that they are required to learn is unimportant or does not apply to them.  Which then leads to parents and educators struggling to defend the status quo when students ask the following: Why is this important?  How does this impact me? Or how is this helpful?

These questions prompted me to reflect upon a blog post on memorization back in December of 2008: Education 2.0: Never Memorize Again? If you haven't read this blog and you are interested in stirring up the pot in the faculty room, leave a couple of copies by the coffee maker or stack of holiday treats.

So what is prompting this post?  A couple of things come to mind.  A recent question from a student on how to calculate the angle between the hands of an analog clock and my latest experiences tutoring chemistry.

The geometry question is a classic anachronism. The student who was struggling with the concept asked how many analog clocks do you think I see in day?  Now I'm not saying that the concept itself is not valid but the question does appear to be out of sync with the student experience.

With respects to tutoring HS chemistry, it's been a wonderful opportunity to take a step back and look at the vast quantities of info students are required to learn just in this course.  I couldn't help but empathize with my student's musings about why is she learning this. What I found most disconcerting were the follow up questions. What do I need to know? Is there a pattern, a mnemonic, some quick fix to assist her learn the material?

Now I couldn't help but feel sorry for her because so many students are in her shoes. I love science.  I actually would rather watch the Discovery Channel than most sporting events but it seems like she's already ruled out chemistry as anything but interesting and more of an obstacle.

This is far from a unique observation but if I had a magic curricular wand, I would probably cut close to 50% of the curriculum in chemistry and approach the learning through integration with Environmental Science, Biology, and Physics and include experimental design/project based learning and hands on activities that are more topical.  I would stop asking students to memorize the periodic table but ask them to use the info that it stores.  Learn by doing, constructing, and making connections.

I'm not saying that memorization should not be utilized or is not valuable.  I am however hoping more teachers will stop using memorization as a crutch in order to crank through content. It's time to develop new activities, simulations, and opportunities that use the concepts students need to know without forcing them to memorize on a regular basis.  Leverage Tech to assist with learning and with the right balance, the content objectives will be mastered because the affective objectives were emphasized a bit more.

Readability: It's Quietube for Print

Websites are just chock full of advertisements, distractions, and at times unsavory content.  To clean up articles, blogposts, or websites, try using the Bookmarklet Readability.  When one goes to the Readability website, one will have an opportunity to select the format for the article, website, or post.
There is a preview option which takes the guess work out.

Here is the setting interface:

The settings selected in the image above are set for newspaper, medium, and wide. Making these selections alters the javascript in the bookmarklet to the desired format.

After selecting the settings, drag the bookmarklet into your bookmark toolbar. To activate, click on the bookmarklet when it's time to clean up an article.

To see it in action, I've included images of an article before and after applying readability.

Article taken from the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/science/14angier.html?ref=science

Before

After

As one can see, applying Readability cleans up the article substantially and although not visible in the image above, it provides the option to email and print out this version.

Curious about how to clean up youtube clips? Then check out my post on Quietube: Video without Distractions.

Blogging about Tweets: Open-Source Texts

I continue to be amazed by the conversations that I have on twitter.  I talk it up regularly but I can't seem to get the majority of my teachers or administrators to dive into this incredibly valuable application.  So instead, I use twitter to feed my faculty and staff with little pearls that are shared by peeps from around the world.  I must admit that when asked where did you find this information or resource, I'm proud to say that it came from my PLN on twitter.

All right I'll get off my soapbox and back to the gist of this post.

In early December, @fredbartels posted a tweet regarding online texts.  Below is a transcript of our conversation.

fredbartels: How do we get the Chemistry teachers together for a day to brainstorm replacements for textbooks?5:33am, Dec 03 from Twitter for iPhone

cuevash: @fredbartels How about organizing a series of unconference events to bring folks together? thoughts?5:48am, Dec 03 from Web

fredbartels: @cuevash Unconference events to bring folks together is a brilliant idea! Who do we get to organize and fund them?6:02am, Dec 03 from Web

cuevash: @fredbartels it may be possible for individual school's to sponsor a certain discipline and have an opportunity to connect w all on the web6:26am, Dec 03 from Echofon

fredbartels: @cuevash Seems like a viable approach. What would be the incentive for a subject area specialist to attend one of these?

At this point I fell off the conversation because family life took over.  A few days later we picked up right where we left off.

cuevash6:43am via HootSuite

@fredbartels Realized I nvr responded to ur last tweet re: unconference and incentive 4 subj area specialists.

cuevash6:44am via HootSuite

@fredbartels Hope to gather life long learners who would want to participate in a collaborative effort to develop a superior resource

cuevash: @fredbartels for students that is inexpensive and or free, accessible from the web, self managed and updated for accuracy and relevance.6:46am, Dec 11 from HootSuite

cuevash6:49am via HootSuite

@fredbartels it would be great if discipline leaders would emerge to facilitate the process and perhaps dev a standardized format.

@fredbartels @cuevash Brilliant! A compellling rationale for helping with open source 'texts'. Love how Twitter can help distill ideas down to essences.

So where does this leave us?  Well the conversation is certainly far from over but perhaps with sufficient interest, we can overcome inertia and get something started.

Are you interested? Know someone who might be interested?  Then join the conversation but at minimum let others know.

Thanks Fred for the inspiration!

Modeling Classroom Management

Today was a professional day at our school. However, as with most meetings at school I am often stunned by the number of colleagues who are engrossed in other things.  Laptop screens were up and cell phones were being used to send text messages.  That said, I can only imagine how those individuals  would react if their students behaved in a similar manner while they were giving a presentation. 

Am I guilty of this behavior? Absolutely. But before I could start tapping away at the keyboard today, our MS Head, Phil Spears, did something that caught not only my attention but the attention of the entire division.  Prior to his presentation, he asked the faculty for some tech free time and he requested that we lower the lids of our laptops.  

That was it!  Phil modeled effective classroom management albeit with his teachers. He had our attention and we were all better for it. 

So is it the technology's fault? Hardly, it is an exercise in self control, restraint, and ultimately respect.

Ok class, lids down!

Leveraging your Student Information System

Four years ago, St. Christopher's School had over 10 databases that held every imaginable piece of information. To make matters worse, none of the DBs spoke to each other and in some instances the flat nature of the DB allowed only one user to view or edit information at a time.

In an effort to reduce the number of DBs and also allow for various members of the community to share information, we moved our data onto WhippleHill's combined website and student information solution. The move to their system could not have been a better move for us. And as a heavy user, having access to so much information has made it easier for our school to leverage other systems.

So what exactly am I doing with the information stored at WhippleHill?  We're using the userid which I'm pretty sure is serving as a primary key of sorts at WhippleHill as our student's ID for a variety of other applications.  For example, student ID's are now standardized for ERBs, the Library Check Out System, and DyKnow.  But as an AlertNow  and PickaTime subscriber, I fairly confident that those IDs are being used through their respective APIs as well.  As I look to the future, my hope is that we will start to use this number for Point of Sales transactions for our dining hall and bookstore..

Is this anything new?  Hardly! But there are still plenty of schools that miss out on how to leverage one of the most powerful DBs at their school.

Getting Back in the Saddle

My blog has been neglected for too many months.  It's not due to a lack of things to write about but more a time issue.  Fortunately, my PLN but more specifically @raventech wrote a piece on For Startes; Neglect is not an Option which for all intensive purposes has gotten me back in the saddle.

I have lots to share in the coming posts and I look forward to everyone's feedback and constructive criticisms.

Let's hear it for the 2010-2011 school year to prompt a fresh start.