Category: Laptops

An iPad For Every Child in My Class? No Thanks!

iPads, Laptops, My classPublished on25 Comments on An iPad For Every Child in My Class? No Thanks!

I was recently interested to read about a group of parents in Auburn, Maine, in the US, who were objecting to a large scale iPad project being rolled out for many children in Kindergarten (Nursery / F2).

According to this blog post:

The committee that governs schools in the district voted to spend about $200,000 on the iPads, which also covers insurance, educational software aimed at the appropriate age level, training and other program costs. The program will eventually serve all six elementary schools in the small community.

And so nearly 300 iPad devices are set to be purchased and every Kindergarten pupil will have one. Apparently the parents opposing the use of the device were concerned about the amount of screen time the children would have as well as the detrimental effect it would have on concentration and social skills.

I have worked in a school where teachers were using iPads in the early years and from the ongoing discussion with them and from my experience of how these Foundation stage classrooms are structured I have a few reflections.

Firstly just because you have 25+ iPads in your classroom any teacher worth their salt is not going to be slinging everything out with the boxes the iPads came in. The curriculum that is being delivered in these formative years still needs such breadth that the iPad can only support a small part of that.

I think that the district are to be commended for attempting such an ambitious project, young children love using the iPads and I have seen it many times myself how they take to the device so naturally, testament to the intuitive interface. The bitesize apps are also aimed at narrow parts of the curriculum and so I think they have much to offer schools.

However in my experience I don’t think that it would be a good investment for every child to have a device. In terms of the amount of use you would likely plan in and the way the days are structured, a group of 6-8 devices would be ideal for the group phonic sessions. Perhaps colleagues in the US could explain a little more about how small group work is used in the Kindergarten classes as I have no experience of it.

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From conversations with colleagues having up to 8 devices that could support teaching in those small groups would be just about the right balance – the management of 25+ devices even in the older age groups is an ongoing challenge.

When a prospective technology emerges as purporting to have some positive effects it seems that pushing all the way to 1:1 is the answer. But I dont’ agree. I have worked with netbooks and laptops in my classroom for the last 4-5 years and the ratios have always been about 1 device to 2 pupils. It has not hindered what we can do.

I was lucky enough to meet Sugata Mitra in Doha in 2009 and his research highlights that self organised learning can occur when children have the tools and the space to themselves, but I was always interested in the number of devices he used in these experiments and what can be achieved with nowhere near 1:1 devices.

I can see both sides to this one. I would have spent less money or certainly explored ways to use those funds in other ways such as app creation or training staff to create their own content (this may well be part of it, which would be good to find out). However it still offers the district a great opportunity and for the children involved to enjoy access to an engaging technology. It is now, as always, up to the teachers to make the most of that opportunity in the most appropriate ways.

Giving Children the Tools is Not Enough

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Planning for technology integration in classrooms needs to be done with a big pair of binoculars, ones that preferably can see into the future. I can remember when I planned my first suite of computers in a school all I talked about was “future proofing” everything. It was like some rubber stamp I had marked everything with. But planning for the lifespan of the hardware is one thing, where it fits in with your school’s vision is another.

Sometimes schools can get a bit fixated with provision. We like to reel off a list of the various and wondrous hardware that adorns every nook and cranny of the school building. But it is not simply about provision. I have often heard that “an interactive whiteboard does not make a poor teacher any better”. well in the same vein, “technology provision alone does not make independent, confident learners.”

One of the first steps towards the independent use of technology to support learning is developing a sense of ownership. The 18 laptops we have in my classroom are in a permanent cabinet, they are not shared with anyone. The children manage the organisation of them and we have laptop monitors every week who look after everything and keep it tidy. The technology is not mine, it belongs to the children and this, I feel, helps to develop their confidence around the equipment. This simple organisation develops personal confidence when choosing to use it on their own.

If you have the opportunity to make provision a permanent feature of a learning space or classroom, I would always advise to grab it. Making the technology just another resource available to the children will invariably lead to a more relaxed mind-set about technology in the classroom. We want our students to choose to use technology when it is most appropriate. And in a blended learning environment the laptops are freely available alongside anything else (dictionaries, library books, calculators etc) that will support their learning.

Does your curriculum provide the space for learners to develop independence and to make appropriate choices regarding what best resources to use? This is a big challenge. In England the Primary Curriculum has been through the Rose Review and is set to change., supposedly giving more freedom. Nick Jackson picked up on the need for time and space in the comments and explained how important it is to give people time to “play” and freely explore a tool to become familiar. I rarely read manuals or how-to guides, I just get started and “play” with the software or hardware. I expect the guides to answer my questions later on. This is my way to tackle new things, no doubt a percentage of my class will feel the same – others not so.

Unless classroom technology is the same in every classroom, teachers are often left trying to develop and nurture a mindset, an open ethos of approprate use in a single year. This is of course set to the backdrop of the usual school pressures. These are some of things I find important:

  • Find your classroom cornerstones – those applications/tools that just stick, they have depth and can be used across the curriculum.
  • Introduce these tools early on in the year in a simple supported way – give the children routes to easy success.
  • Talk with the children about different ways you can use different tools, “If I wanted to make X then I could also use this…”
  • Highlight the alternatives to achieve different outcomes, “You could do this using…”
  • Don’t be afraid to direct children to certain outcomes as they are building their confidence. Seek to be less didactic about the outcomes as the year progresses.
  • Underestimating the abilities of your class to pick up new ideas will lead to missed opportunities.
  • Encourage children to play with different things you have introduced  in free time.
  • Build the sense of ownership in the beginning of the year by putting the emphasis on the class.
  • In the beginning of the year have narrow expectations in terms of choice. Broaden these as the year goes on.
  • Help develop the children’s repertoire of choice of application and find ways to incorporate these into topics.
  • Find ways to say to your class, “You can choose to show me what you have learned in which ever way you think is best.”

On reflection much of this is centred on the classroom and the point of learning. Whilst this is important, high expectations from the top-down and a whole school approach would serve to make some of these obsolete. For example if in the lower juniors the children have been using a range of multimedia tools, when they get to me we can hit the ground running in the Autumn term.

A whole school approach comes directly from the Head Teacher and school leadership team. A shared vision of what learning looks like at the school. I hope to be able to have a more direct impact on this in my new role after Easter. Developing this positive ethos for learning, which makes the most of what technology can do well, takes time but is key to establishing centres for learning that are making kids ready for their future part in wider society.

If it is not all about provision, what else can we do in the classroom to develop independent and thoughtful use of technology to support learning?

Google Earth is our Paper – Part 3: Consolidate and Empower

Google Earth, Laptops, Literacy, MappingPublished onUpdated on6 Comments on Google Earth is our Paper – Part 3: Consolidate and Empower
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Photo by debaird
Attribution-ShareAlike License

In our writing sessions today I took both classes, all 60 Year 5 children, over two sessions and we continued and completed our work begun yesterday. The children were completing the task of adding 6 audio recordings to the correct placemarks in Google Earth, please see Part 2 for details of the process.

This post is concerned with some issues that have arisen from working with Google Earth and some classroom strategies I have found effective during my work with the application.

 

Consolidate

There is no better way for children to be successful then to have time to complete their tasks – today was a chance for them to consolidate the process they had begun yesterday and to once more practice embedding code in the Google Earth placemarks. All too often we want to rush the children onto the next great thing, it was useful today to take a breather and just ensure we had done a good job of the audio we worked on for our escape story.

Although a powerful and popular application, Google Earth is not used daily and so some children struggled to find their way around the different task panes and views. Having more time allowed them to become more confident. 

As both classes were running into difficulties about what they could or could not see. Often they would think that all of their work had gone, or it has just disappeared – when in fact the placemark had just been unchecked in the Places window. Today I consolidated their basic understanding of the task windows and how to switch between them. I demonstrated the different possible views you could have within the Places window – and pre-empted some of the possible problems based on situations that may or may not have already arisen. 

An issue that is well worth knowing about prior to working in Google Earth on a class laptop set is that of multiple content. For our escape story we have 7 placemarks and a path that loads up and is visible – when another child begins their own work another set of the placemarks is loaded up. Today some laptops had 3 sets visible. Children were saying they could not right click any of the placemarks but they had not realised (as the placemarks are identical) that there were multiple placemarks on top of each other. Again I reinforced checking only those placemarks which you need to be visible in the Places pane.

Empower

One of the disadvantages of working in Google Earth is that it is intended to work on a local level – as in the placemarks and items saved in My Places remain on that machine. This causes every laptop to have a different looking Google Earth Places pane, which naturally leads to some confusion. It is worth spending some time keeping on top of what files should and should not be there. My children would be using different laptops everyday and it is unfeasible to try and work with the same one everyday which would have been a time sapper of an organisational problem. Saving work is a little tricky due to the nested nature of the placemarks and content, however this is what we had to do.

I gave myself a good slice of time at the end of each session over the last few days to walkthrough the saving process with both classes.

  1. Any opened work from a network drive will begin life in the Temporary Places folder.
  2. Find the main folder for your work, all of your placemarks should be below it in a list. Select it.
  3. Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
  4. Click “Save to My Places”.
  5. The folder moves up and out of Temporary Places.
  6. Find the main folder for your work again. Select it.
  7. Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
  8. Click “Save as…” or “Save place as…”
  9. Navigate to your network folder.
  10. Name the file appropriately so you know what it is.
  11. Save.
  12. If saving over the top of previous work allow it to replace the older file.

We wouldn’t have been as successful if it wasn’t for about 6-8 children in each class who became the experts. These children had completed the tasks set them and had a very good understanding for what we had done. They knew their way around Google Earth. I would encourage you to seek these children out and empower them to support their peers.
The class experts for the saving routine above, were simply those who had been successful – I just called upon them to go and support someone else doing it. They were willing and supportive with their peers and guided them rather than taking over an important difference which I am always pointing out. This supportive ethos has always been with us as we help the children to understand how to problem solve with their class laptop resource. We try to encourage them to ask two other class member to help before talking to an adult.

Quick round-up
  • The slightly tricky nature of local content in Google Earth and saving work can cause younger children to get a bit disorientated.
  • Take plenty of time with younger students to demo and walkthrough the save process to a network folder.
  • With panes and folders open or closed the views can be very different on different machines so it is worth having confident children to help support their peers and to try and pre-empt some issues.
  • As everyone in this set of activities is altering the same placemarks, multiple copies can arise and can confuse. Ensure the children only have one set of placemarks checked.
  • Take time to consolidate Google Earth skills and confidence – use outside of the writing time and just allow them to explore. Reinforce the basic layout and structures.
  • Encourage a general sense of independence in problem solving – ask 2 friends for help before an adult. Do not underestimate the impact low level informal peer support can have on a technology rich lesson or environment.
  • Empower those confident students to actively support their peers, call them experts and make them feel special.

What my class thought of our Google Docs project

Google Docs, Laptops, My class, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on15 Comments on What my class thought of our Google Docs project

Class comments about GDocs projectAs our summer term Google Docs project drew to a close I asked the children in my class to reflect on what we had done. I asked them to record the one thing they found the biggest challenge about working together with Google Docs and the aspect they enjoyed the most.

No I didn’t set up a Google form with a spreadsheet to pool our thoughts – I just asked them to write them on some paper speech bubbles. Some of their responses formed part of our Geography display.

Below I have transcribed them as they are, which provides a revealing picture about the project.

Biggest Challenge when working together in Google Docs:

  • When everyone gets a laptop and everyone delets stuff.
  • The hardest thing for me is when were in groups and we are all sharing the same document.
  • Delite stuff what we need.
  • My biggest challenge is problems happening on google docs like things what I cants solve for myself.
  • Putting up with arguing with other people.
  • The thing I find hardest is when two or more people are on the same document and are writing in the same space.
  • When we are all not talking and people move stuff and people shout.
  • I find it difficult when the whole group work on the same document.
  • It is hard to work with other people.
  • The biggest challenge is to stop arguing.
  • The thing I find hard would be the working together.
  • When thay move things around.
  • When you are trying concentrate on your work.
  • I think it has bin a tough challenge getting use to working together because you have to talk then work and then talk etc.
  • Probably if somone eles deleats your work.
  • It is a challing when other pepole are writing where you are,

Most enjoyable part:

  • The most thing I enjoy is that we work as a group.
  • What I injoy the most about Google Docs is being able to see what other people are doing.
  • I’ve enjoyed it because I like doing research about india becasue there is a lot of things about india.
  • I like working this way because we can chat on the computer.
  • The best thing is that one person has a laptop.
  • I like the fact that we can chat on google docs.
  • I have enjoyed working in this way because it gives us a chance to use the laptops more and get to work in partners more.
  • I’ve enjoyed it about google dogs like researching and doing a presentation.
  • I enjoy working as a group.
  • That we get to talk and wright on the same doc.
  • I like the chat.
  • We get more ideas down.
  • I enjoy working on google docs and wth other people.

It is very important that these comments help to define what we do with Google Docs in the new academic year.

The children have clearly told me here that the biggest challenge is working as a group. Before we began using Google Docs the class struggled to participate collaboratively in group activities, I knew this. Working on a document at the same time as someone else is new classroom behaviour and in my opinion needs to be modelled. Just as we would model the correct way to use a hacksaw or modelling how to write in a particular style – we can facilitate the group dynamics by modelling collaborative authoring in Google Docs. But the tool is not a magic answer to communication and working in a group as you can see from the children’s comments. When you undertake a Google Docs project, if you are working on a shared doc between a group, communication and talk must be the most important focus – not the tool.

The chat has been a popular part of the work we have done, although it is only in the presentation tool that you can instant message. This did prove a very powerful learning activity and I would recommend a reflective backchannel that collates feedback to be part of future presentation projects. Comments about seeing what other people are doing and getting more ideas down are interesting as children perhaps become more accountable for their contributions in a group – reminding me of the way Voicethread allows you to see the efforts of others.

There have been many positives from this project and I have been really pleased how Google Docs has performed so reliably under classroom conditions (30 laptops 1 wireless access point) and I would strongly recommend the two following elements to focus on if you are undertaking a similar project with your classes.

  1. Model good practices – much of what the children will experience with synchronous document editing is totally new. They may have never done anything like it before and it is a new way to work in the classroom. We found that the children had a better understanding both functionally and socially/collaboratively when we modelled good practice, and gave a commentary about what we were doing as we worked together in Google Docs.
  2. Communication is key – beyond learning about the functionality of Google Docs (which they picked up very quickly) the children need to understand why communicating as a group is so essential. Spend time talking with the children about what to expect and how best to approach different situations. Troubleshoot groups going off track and work as a class to help solve and suggest solutions. I asked my children are you making your work C.L.E.A.R – Communication with your team, Listening to what is going on around you, Eye contact when we are talking, Ask about problems or issues and Review what is going on in the team. (Once again number 1 can apply a great deal here)

I wish you success with your own classroom Google Docs projects and hope that some of these insights help you to better use the tools to impact children’s learning. Please drop me a line to say what you are up to.

Other relevant posts:

Mr Barrett I have got glue on my laptop…

Laptops, My class, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on12 Comments on Mr Barrett I have got glue on my laptop…

Although I may have led you to think that everything in the image is stuck to the laptop, I have to disappoint you! However I really like this image of my classroom because of just that sort of possibility. I want a learning environment for my class that blends the best tools for what we are doing – a blended tools approach. Whether that be a laptop and access to an online application, a headphone mic set or a gluestick. This is a natural picture of my classroom, it is not what you would see everyday, but the children think of the technology as just another tool. Long may the risk of glue on the laptops continue!

What does this image say to you? What sort of challenges do we face as educators in creating an environment that blends the best technology tools for learning and what is considered more traditional?

18th July – I have decided to change the image to a Voicethread, after I posted the image I realised it would be a much more effective way for people to comment on the image – please take a look and add you comments in which ever form you wish.