The copy numbers are in. Where do I stand?

Periodically, a spreadsheet is sent out showing the number of copies made by every person working in the school, from teachers to secretaries to custodians. Partly I think they send the info so people know where they stand relative to others and get a sense of how many copies are made. Mostly, though, I think it's a shaming exercise. They used to highlight the top ten, and I was consistently in it, or just outside. What can I say? I have lots of students, and I'm a handout kind of guy.

But this year, it's different. I'm way way down the list at number 42 (hey! the meaning of life). The top ten are almost all 2X my number, and of those below me, many are part time or in the PE and Art departments, which of course have low copy numbers.

So, some facts to back up my previous post on the number of copies saved. I think it's a good argument in favor of investing in e-schools. Over x number of years the savings in paper will pay the cost of the hardware.

An aside: we have 60+ teachers?! Egads.

Rank	Department	# of Copies
1	Science	4130
2	Science	3861
3	English	3452
4	English	3335
5	English	3083
6	Social Studies	2986
7	English	2979
8	English	2925
9	English	2919
10	Math	2897
42	Mr. B	1584
43	Science	1531
44	Part time	1517
45	English	1443
46	English	1440
47	Math	1425
48	English	1423
49	Part time	1386
50	English	1291
51	English	1255
52	English	993
53	English	963
54	English	957
55	Part Time	597
56	English	576
57	Art	570
58	Part time	532
59	Part time	507
60	Part time	291
61	Physical Education	240
62	Physical Education	179
63	Physical Education	149
64	Art	125
65	Physical Education	120

Another facepalm. Boys will be boys.

I was assisting a student with his work, and I noticed his IPad language was Japanese. Can you speak Japanese, I asked him (many of our students can).

"Nope." He replied.
"Then why is it Japanese?"
"Somebody changed it, and I don't know how to change it back."

Face, meet palm.

All kidding aside, though, this kind of a thing can be a problem. The students are often trying to sabotage their friend's IPads: changing the language, locking it, etc. They all use passwords, but they're not adept at keeping passwords a secret. To them, it's all good fun, but there are some potential problems. Learning could be disrupted, somebody might cross a line or provoke a reaction. More troublesome is some students disregard for personal space and property. Of course, the school has official guidelines and procedures for these issues. But, as we all know, boys will be boys.

There are some great parents, and then there are...

Class is just getting started, when a hand goes up.

"Yes"
"I don't have my IPad today."

I mentally prepare responses of why his excuse is lame.

"Why not?"
"My dad said he needed it for work."

The Great Paper Save

As I wrote in my previous post, Apps such as UPad are replacing paper handouts and notebooks in the classroom. So, just how much paper is being saved by UPad in my class? Well, quite a lot!

Last year, I had 52 grade 7 students, this year 50. And that's in 2 different classes, in case you're wondering.

In a typical week in a geography class there would be at minimum 4 sides of paper copied per student: one quiz double sided copy and one study guide also double sided copy. So, the minimum paper being saved is 50 students x (1 quiz + 1 study guide)  = 100 pieces of paper every week.

But that's the minimum. Now, with older students I use a lot less handouts, but with 12 and 13 year olds I do use more. And as it's a geography class we do a lot of map activities as well. This all adds up. I can't give an exact number, but we can make the assumption that there's at least one more handout every week, and up to three more on top of the quiz and study guide.

So, 50 students x (quiz + study guide + 1 to 3 additional handouts) = 150 to 250 pieces of paper a week, or 2 reams a month. Or, 1 ream / class a month. 10 reams/class over the school year. Of course, that's just their geography class. They also use IPads in mathematics and science, and in the future they'll be using it for all their classes. Add it all up, that's a lot of paper.

To the good people of Prince George, British Columbia: I'm sorry, but your stinky, job-creating pulp mills I passed every year on the way to visiting Nana and Papa are going to be a thing of the past one day.

App Review: UPad

I love UPad. I really do. It was when I first started playing around with it that I said to myself that these IPads and learning will work. Now, whether you use UPad, Notability, Penultimate or other similar programs is up to you and your school. This post isn't about comparing and contrasting these "note-taking" apps and making any recommendations. But you absolutely must use one of them. These are the apps that are tossing the paper and pens and pencils out the door.

In fact, I had presumed I would be using Notability, as it was the first one I was introduced to. I thought it was perfect. However, last year some of the first teachers using IPads used UPad, not Notability, and we feel it's essential to be consistent with App use, so UPad it is. Ah well.

Ah well, indeed. UPad is also great. So, what do these apps do? Well, think of it as notebooks combined with handouts, complete with erasable pens of any color/thickness, plus highlighter, and the function of adding photos, text, and shapes. It's also very easy to use, easy to share, and easy to organize.

Did I say I love this app?

So far, I use the app in one of three ways:

1. To read our textbook and highlight and annotate main ideas.
2. To complete handouts and summary frames/study guides
3. To create original material.

I don't think I've had a lesson I haven't used this app. Some examples:

This lesson was early in the school year. In one respect, this lesson was to learn about latitude and longitude, but at that early point in the school year I was more interested in the students learning how to use UPad and Google Earth.  Notice the different colors for text. It's easy to move both text and pictures around. You can also rotate pictures.The students grabbed screenshots, but when you add photos you can take one then and there, add from your own library, or copy & paste from online.

An example of a study guide, which is downloaded as a PDF into UPad. Students then upload it, either as a PNG or PDF file. Now, this is very old-school teaching just being done in a different way. Students are still reading their text, summarizing and making notes. The difference is they're doing it in a cooler way. Also, a positive change from the past is that students are summarizing more in their own words as it is more difficult to copy the textbook verbatim, as they need to switch back and forth between their textbook and study guide.

UPad is flawless, IMO. It costs 5 bucks American, 150 Taiwanese dollars. Considering that it becomes a notebook, binder, set of pens and highlighters, plus more and is so easy to use, that 5 bucks is a steal. And as I said, this isn't a comparison with their rivals, nor an endorsement of UPad over the other similar apps. But if you're a teacher soon to be using tablets in your classroom and you're concerned about the transition, then relax a little. Not only will you not have to re-invent the wheel, but you're going to have so many more options of how to do your lessons.

First assessment's in. So how do they compare to last year?

We've recently had our first major assessment, and I've been looking forward to seeing how this year's group did compared with last year's. Apart from using the IPad, all the other variables are the same: same curriculum, the exam was very similar, the population sizes are the same (50 this year, 52 last year), and the teacher's the same. So, how did they compare?

Here's the data:

	Fall 2012 No Ipads	Fall 2013 Ipads
AVERAGE	80.5	83.7
MEDIAN	84.5	89.5
STANDARD DEVIATION	16.6	13.8
P VALUE	0.2

As you can see, the IPad class performed better. They average higher, over half scored an A, and they're less scattered. However, we can't read too much into these numbers. That high p-value rules out any decisive conclusions. 

I was somewhat surprised by these results. As I wrote previously I thought that there was less focus on the actual content as we spent time "playing" with new apps, configuring dropbox and schoology, on top of technical issues. We also had less periods because of some holidays and other scheduling issues. So, it's good to see that the early glitches and lost classroom time did not have any negative effect on the learning.

No matter how crappy it is, it's still better than the previous generation

My previous post, "This patience is getting too bitter to eat" appears to be the nadir. Following that frustration I announced to my class that I would no longer answer "technical" questions. Wi-Fi doesn't work? Ok. Fix it. The file won't download? Alright, what else is new? As I said before, I can't be handling these situations when I should be focused on the lesson objectives. And it's not like I have any sage advice. My answer is typically "do it again".

Well, it seems to have worked. For the most part I think this is because the students have made the adjustments. But it is a relief that I'm no longer constantly harassed with technical questions,  and when I do get the technical questions they're real bafflers. I'm the one thinking WT*? That shouldn't be?

And we had another quiz. 0 problems. Well, except for the 2 students who didn't bother to submit. One I tracked down before the end of the day. The other one I discovered when I was showing my visiting retired-teacher mom the wonders of the IPad over the weekend on our trip down south. She had a rejoinder: "In my day..." Ya, I heard this one before. Carbon copies, blah blah blah. Anyways, as for the quiz NP, we fixed it on Monday. I suppose the concept of "submit" is new to some. But at least I didn't need to use the paper copies I printed out made carbon copies of..

Darn it, next time print carbon copy them out one-sided so at least you can re-use them as scrap paper. Another learned lesson. 

Learning, learning, learning. 

That patience is getting too bitter to eat

The honeymoon has now come to an end. We're a few weeks into the class, everything is set up with apps, workflow, and Schoology. It should all be now about the learning, but the problems keep popping up. Sometimes I feel I'm not teaching but playing one of those wack-a-mole games.

A typical example: we had our first quiz. Not a practice, not a dress rehearsal, but a real quiz on Schoology that assesses all our objectives and counts as a summative assessment. We're ready to start and....one kid can't log in. Another can't connect to Wi-Fi, and 3! come up to me and show me their screen showing they've already submitted the quiz! How can this be? What do I do? Do I hold off the whole quiz until we have 100% accessibility? Do I prepare paper copies in the event that this happens (seems like a damn good idea!) What about the ones who "submitted"? (still not sure how that happened).

The thing is, this situation is becoming all too common. The questions I'm getting are not the "I don't get this" kind of questions. They're the "I can't connect" "my IPad is too slow" "it won't work" kind of questions.  I can't be focusing on this kind of stuff, I need to be giving my attention to the students not getting the concepts, having problems comprehending the readings, etc.

Aaarggh.

The cursed iOS 7 update

This past weekend was a nice 4 holiday in Taiwan, as the annual Moon Festival fell on a Thursday, and the government was kind enough to give us the Friday off as well, in fair exchange for the country having to work the previous Saturday. I took the opportunity to upgrade to iOS 7, as did most students.

I like the slick new look, but the transition to the classroom was hardly slick. Upon Monday morning's early arrival there greeted me an update reminder for Airserver, specifically for compatibility with iOS7. Better get that.

What I didn't count on was standing in front of 25 kids, ready to show them something drastically important, and only to find myself completely ignorant as to how to connect to Airserver. The new OS has a whole new look and new way to connect. I should have foreseen this, but it was a Monday. After a long, long weekend. What do I do? Fortunately for me, there were about 25 people, give or take, on hand to tell me how to do so.

The lessons:

1. when upgrading your operating system, re-learn everything at the expense of your long-weekend.
2. relax. Your students know how to do it.

Quizzes on Schoology

Before the school year began, all us IPading teachers got together to test out the quiz functions on Edmodo and Schoology. We knew that as a school we had to pick one online platform that would be consistent for all students and teachers; some had used Edmodo, others touted Schoology. It came down to the quiz function. Our tech savvy admin prepared a quiz for us (Star Wars trivia. Nailed it) and we ran it on both platforms.

Without a doubt, Schoology won out. It was smoother and cleaner and Schoology already had a couple of other upsides over Edmodo. So, it was a pretty easy decision.

This week, I ran my first quiz with my students. Actually, it was the second, but the first one was done more as a practice activity and didn't go over well. Some students couldn't enter the course, and there were problems with everybody submitting at once. Not to mention that though I had made the quiz available, I hadn't actually published it yet. This second time, it went great and I can tell I - and they - are going to like it.

The quiz didn't count for a grade, it was still practice, but this one felt more like opening eve dress rehearsal. I conducted it like a quiz. Desks apart, IPad up, no talking. I stood at the back where I could see all the IPads and had everybody get to the point where the begin the quiz button was visible. We had learned that Schoology chokes up with 5 requests within 5 seconds, so I asked them to begin one row of students at a time.

   
Once done, students could see their results right away. As a class, we saw the questions that were troublesome and I was able to re-teach to those and clarify misunderstandings. No grading for me and instant formative and summative assessment. Though I have to re-make all my quizzes into the platform, the time saved grading is enormous, not to mention plugging in those scores onto excel, which I won't have to do. The best part, however, is the instant feedback the students get.

Quizzes on Schoology are a win-win-win.

The Tedious Task of Setting up the Dropbox

Before the school year had begun I decided I would use a combination of UPad and Dropbox as the primary means of work-flow, or the handing out and retrieving of assignments. But this created a question for me: do I want each individual student to create a folder on Dropbox and then share it with me and their parents? Or, do I want to make the folders myself and then share with them. The bonus for me making and sharing the folders is that I gain extra storage space for every new Dropbox account that comes from my referral. On the other hand, it's extremely tedious sharing folders over and over and over again. There's 50 students combined in my two IPad classes; that's a lot of copying and pasting of e-mail addresses.

But, I'm a sucker for free stuff. I went the tedious route. Now, we'll see if people actually check their e-mails, and how many of the emails from Dropbox end up in spam folders.

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet

Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that, and in what context I do not know. But it's apt (appt?) for my first week using the IPad. I can see that the learning fruit will be sweet, but patience is a must for week one, especially when your students are 12 years old! After five periods, there were frozen pages, students missing from the Schoology roll, students who didn't bring the IPad!, others who didn't have the juice to go, and question after question after question.

Fortunately, I'm a zen master, at least with seventh graders.

In grade seven, our students learn geography (my fave subject) and I love the first few weeks. I've got loads of fun activities and we run a fast learning clip early on. But this year, we gotta slow down, but I know it'll be worth it. A week in, and I'm a week behind. Welcome to the new school year. Anyways, some advice for the first week:

Let them "play" with the Apps you'll be using often. For me, that was UPad and Google Earth. There were tasks to be completed, but essentially it was about getting them familiar with them.

If you're going to use an App like Schoology or Edmodo for quizzes, do a practice quiz first. Trust me on this.

Next week, play time is over, we gotta learn some geography.