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.