Writing iPad Inspired Lessons

This is an excellent post written by Lisa Johnson on May 18, 2011 on her blog Techchef4u. Make sure you check out her blog. This is what the rest of us have been waiting for. Lisa has put in a lot of time, energy and hard work creating some really clever lessons that incorporate ipad apps. She has obviously thought long and hard about the outcomes of each of the lessons and therefore selected apps that were appropriate to the type of learning that was required for each. Lisa has done this not just for her own subject area but across a range of areas.

How much easier is it to formulate your own ideas for lessons once someone else has shown you how they do it. Sometimes it is like a light goes on. All it takes is the visual and cognitive cues of seeing how someone else sets out their ideas. Our special thanks to Lisa for sharing her processes and examples. They are beautifully crafted. These are the types of well designed resources that we all need to start sharing. Enjoy!

ipad Lesson Process:

After writing a series of iPad lessons, I wanted to share my process in creating the lessons:

• Theme/Topic/Content Focus: While I try to choose a theme or topic (graphic novels, government, poetry) or locate an inspiring app to build my lesson around to make the lesson general enough that it can be used/adapted by various grade levels, teachers may want to ask themselves some more specific questions as they begin the planning process:
• What TEK(S) do you plan to cover, focus on, support?
• What is the purpose of the lesson (pre-activity, review, formative/summative assessment)?
• How long do I have for the activity?
• What background information should the students have prior to the lesson?
• How will I differentiate or provide scaffolding to meet the needs of all learners?
• How will the lesson be delivered (individual, pairs, small groups, stations, whole class)
• Should activities within the lesson be completed in a certain order?
• How will the activities be assessed (questions, lab, oral discussion, project/product, blog/online post)?
• Supporting Apps & Resources: Find more apps like it or to support it (also consider what materials & resources you already have: websites, PDF’s, movies, podcasts, etc…). If you do not have supporting content already created, consider creating an ePub or interactive PDF.
• Similar Lessons: Find similar topic/theme lessons online
• Apps Mirror Interactive Sites: Find similar sites (virtual/interactive/Web 2.0) as apps (for teachers who do not have an iPad to use the same lesson)
• Projects/Assessment: Compile project ideas/suggestions/products that can be created using Web 2.0 tools, interactive sites, or peripherals (assessment and student products/projects)
• Resources & Extensions: Gather links to resources used, lessons, extension ideas, etc…

Here is a publication that Lisa put together to showcase her lesson ideas.

http://techchef4u.wordpress.com

10 Everyday Math Skills

Click Here to see the full article on Mommy Moment!

The Saddest Tweet of Them All

Updated May 30, 2011--and again June 1

I've been watching as UW Madison moves into the post-NBP phase of life (wait, there is life after NBP?). In particularly, I'm finding the (re)framing of recent events by NBP proponents both fascinating, and disturbing.

Spin is, to some degree, expected. We can't blame Chancellor Martin for trying to save face, or Governor Walker for that matter.

What I didn't expect, and what upsets me most, is the self-righteousness evident in those who proclaim "we accomplished something here." Something, they claim, UW System did not. Could not. Would not.

Sad and short-sighted, perhaps, but not surprising. On the other hand, a recent tweet from a Madison student stopped me in my tracks. On Saturday he wrote, "No #UWNBP. Disappointing. Looks like we have to be tied to the poor decisions #UWSystem makes." Surprised at his statement, I responded, "Ever been to System? Ever met anyone there? Why do you follow blindly what u r told? #UWNBP #UWSystem." To which he replied "It's fun to make assumptions."

Well, that's sorta what I figured-- the majority of people claiming failure on the part of UW System and lauding the achievements of Chancellor Martin have never interacted with System. It's not that System is perfect -- far from it. But by degrading the capabilities of the governing body of our sister institutions, one casts dispersions on the quality of education received by other students. It's incredibly unproductive. It's also unfair. Of course, maybe people just don't care. I worried about that, so I wrote: "Fun, but destructive to students at other universities."

A moment later, I got a reply: "It isn't my job to be concerned with students at other universities." And a few minutes after that, he added: "It was my job to maximize my education and the value of this university, if that benefits other universities too, great!"

It was like a punch in the gut, as I suddenly realized that the whole UWNBP situation is but a microcosm of the broader threat to public education.

Too many of our fellow Americans are downright compassionless.

As David Berliner wrote in The Manufactured Crisis, "true improvements in public education will not come about unless they are based on compassion...If we structure our public school system so that large groups of students are not provided equitable education, we create a host of problems....In Lincoln's words, it has always been clear that effective reform of education must begin 'with charity for all.'"

None other than David Brooks makes a similar statement in today's New York Times, where he loudly admonishes college graduates "It's not about you." The big mistake society has made is giving undergraduates the impression the goal in life is to find themselves. Not hardly. The goal is to "lose yourself", Brooks explain, by "look[ing] outside and find[ing] a problem, which summons [your] life."

I guess we can't really blame the students. After all, they are simply following the example set by people like the alumni backing The Badger Advocates. Given that I've already publicly called them "goons" I suppose it's worth the risk to go one step further and say straight up that their latest press release reveals them as plain ol' liars. Yes, I said that. They are lying. Take a look. According to their revised version of reality, Chancellor Martin spent the last year attempting to "educate" the state about the need for the New Badger Partnership (if by educate you mean tell people the version of the facts you prefer, alrighty then), working "closely and diligently" with the Legislature while UW System "fought the proposal," worked "hastily," opposed "real reform," and basically did whatever was possible to undermine the thoughtful, hard work of Martin. "And although Martin worked tirelessly on the NBP, at the end of the year-long tour, she is respectful and considerate of the Joint Finance Committee and the Legislature’s desire to draft their own plan for UW-Madison and the system." There are no words for the extent to which this is a lie, other than COME ON! (I'm not alone in saying this.) The only truth in the whole darned thing is that Martin was on a "year-long tour."

We have been sold a bill of goods-- one that paints UW Madison into a corner as an elitist, know-it-all flagship that bears no resemblance to the rest of the state. We at UW Madison should be furious that anyone--anyone--is spending money "on our behalf" to support the kinds of work The Badger Advocates are doing. That they are doing it at the behest of our leader is even more appalling. At this point, they are more than undermining our credibility with the Legislature, in fact they threaten to further smear the good name of Madison in the hearts and minds of the rest of Wisconsin. Not only have they -- and she-- not given up on Public Authority, they are pushing harder.

This state faces massive inequities in the provision of both k-12 and higher education. If we at UW-Madison cannot teach our undergraduates compassion for their fellow undergraduates-- at all public institutions throughout the state-- then we are doomed to a competitive race to the bottom. If the only route they can see to helping others is by helping themselves, we have not done our jobs.

That was the lesson I got from Twitter that day. We have failed to educate. We must do more.

Needs for Education: Multi User iPads

Greg Swanson @ Appsineducation


If Apple were truly serious about integrating iPads into education then they need to implement an overhaul of the iOS to incorporate multi user log-ins.

For the iPad to operate with ease across the board educationally then the attitude that the iPad is a purely personal device needs to be challenged.

On a personal level, I will customise my iPad, making it an extension of my personality and an indication of my personal workflow. I will try out, move and delete apps as they fit into the way I work, how I like to play and how I choose to be entertained.

As an educator I need a set of iPads that I can use with multiple students and even multiple classes. I need students to be able to to customise their own app selection to compliment their learning styles. I need a system where each student has a partitioned space that is their own.

I need them to be able to create, construct, present and then save their own work to their Dropbox or another cloud storage solution. I am aware you can set up more than one email account on an iPad and you can password protect the device so that student are unable to access it without your permission, but this now needs to go further.

I need secure user accounts that also address issues like resource and application sharing. I need to share apps between students and groups of students.

Can the iPad have multiple itunes accounts set up on a single machine or can a single itunes account have multiple users on multiple machines. Surely it is not impossible to have a class itunes account where each student personalises their learning tools to suit their preferred learning style from the collective apps. Each school could develop a library of appropriate apps for the units of work they are studying or even the teaching and learning styles they have decided to model to their students.

If we really want the iPad to revolutionalise the way that our students learn then the Apple juggernaut will need to relinquish some control of the infrastructure (I know this is unlikely but it needs to be said). 

If the iPad is to make serious long term inroads into the classroom than serious consideration needs to be given to creating a reasonable solution for teachers who want to implement and integrate this type of technology.

I love my iPad

I’d love all my students to have the opportunity to use iPads

BUT

I need change first.

iPad Apps Capable of VGA Output

All apps are created equal but some are more equal than others.


I love the mirroring capabilities of the iPad 2. This means that a lot of prep work is taken out of the teacher's hands. They can just plug in the VGA adaptor and mirror their iPad screens on a data projector or HDTV.


But what of the guys who were early adaptors. The original iPad did not have this function and they have been trying to work around it since its release. Sometimes they spent an inordinate amount of time planning to present a lesson only to find out at the last minute that the Apps they wanted to use did not support the technology. Some apps can be displayed, mostly videos and slide presentation apps, but not many others. The following are a collection of Apps that all support VGA output. 


At least if we have a list of Apps that support the original iPad technology we can plan to incorporate them into our lesson plans from the beginning - and save some prep time.


It really was an oversight on the part of the developers not to have this code written into more of the education apps. We need to insist that as more apps are developed this is included so the original ipad owners get the benefits of the VGA out for video.

Adobe Ideas Atomic Web . DocumentsToGo   Frog Dissection iBrainstorm Meeting Pad    MindMeister Note Taker HD PaperDesk Lite   Perfect Web Browser Safari TVout Genie Unit Circle HD	Air Sketch Draft Notes eClicker Host GoodReader    iCab Mobile  Keynote  Neu.Notes Noterize PDF Notes for iPad Power Presenter  StreamToMe Tweet Banner Web2VGA	Alphabet Jungle HD Doceri      Expedition iAnnotate iCardSort       Map Projector Netflix Pages      Penultimate     Sadin's Whiteboard   Sundry Notes Pro TweetBoard YouTube

Create a Bibliography by Taking a Photo

Problem:
How many times have you had to send a student back to complete a proper bibliography for an assignment or project. How many of your struggling students do not understand the correct bibliography process. Students can not see the need for bibliographies but lose marks because it has not been done correctly. Many school even have a cover sheet that the students sign to say that the assignment is all their own work and that a correct bibliography has been provided.

Solution:

EasyBib:
Press Release: New York, May 24, 2011 – From the very beginning, EasyBib has worked to make the old, painstakingly complex bibliography process simple and easy. Now, with their brand new iOS application, citing references just got even easier!

Once the new app is downloaded, writers can use their iDevice camera to quickly scan the barcode of a book, or just type in the book's name and, within seconds, an accurate MLA, APA or Chicago style citation is created. After that, the user can add more citations, or email and export the citations to EasyBib.com's popular bibliography management service to be added to other citations being collected.

With the EasyBib app, writers, researcher and students can use their iPhone, iPod 4th Gen or iPad to quickly scan the barcode of a book, or just type it in and the bibliography is created for you. Either save it, include it in your research task or email back to your desktop. Nice little app that is very useful for education.

http://itunes.apple.com/app/easybib/id436768184?mt=8

Healigan has also suggested that their students like QuickCite

The Quick Cite app, available on both iOS and Android for US$0.99, will transform any book's barcode into a properly formatted citation. The user simply takes a photo of the book, magazine or journal's barcode, and the app automatically emails them a citation formatted in APA, MLA, Chicago, or IEEE format.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quick-cite/id405796616?mt=8

Our First Painted Lady, 2001

Notice the chrysalis in the background? The wings are visible! We are so excited. Today we are making some Hungry Caterpillar Necklaces :)

Teach For America: From Service Group to Industry

This is a long form piece I wrote quite a while ago and have been unable to find a home for. So be forewarned: It's long. I also want to take a moment to commend the TFA corps members who have stayed in the classroom and to acknowledge the many, many thoughtful and critical reflections I've read by former and current corps members. 

Although Teach For America began twenty years ago as a well-intentioned band-aid, it has morphed into what is essentially a jobs program for the privileged, funded by taxpayers and wealthy individuals. TFA was originally designed to serve a specific need: fill positions in high-poverty schools where there are teacher shortages. A non-profit organization that recruits college seniors primarily from elite institutions to teach for two-year stints in high-poverty schools, preceded by five weeks of training, TFA has grown from 500 teachers to more than 8,000 teachers in thirty-nine rural and urban areas. As TFA is expanding, it is no longer just filling positions in shortage areas; rather, it’s replacing experienced and traditionally educated teachers. To justify this encroachment, TFA claims that their teachers are more effective than more experienced and qualified teachers, and that training and experience are not factors in effective teaching. TFA supporters also defend the explosive growth of TFA as an indication that TFA is elevating the status of the teaching profession for ambitious high-achieving college students.  Unfortunately, while Teach for America has been very effective at elevating the status of Teach for America, it has not had a similar impact on the status of teaching as a profession.

When I was a college senior, back in 1995, I applied and was rejected for a position with Teach For America. Given how the interview went, I was expecting as much, and so much the better. By my senior year, I was successful academically, but that was at being a liberal arts student—I was hardly ready for the challenges of a teaching position. I had also landed interviews at several private schools that I blew off.  Seeking urban bustle and adventure, I headed for New York City, but instead discovered existential misery working as a paralegal. At the very least, though, I learned that I didn’t want to be a lawyer. The following year, newly re-interested in teaching, I took a job as an after school and substitute teacher at a Quaker school in Brooklyn. My existential angst lifted: I wanted to be a teacher! I returned to my hometown, saved up, and applied to graduate school. I ended up with a master’s degree in education and a teaching license in ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) and Social Studies. I went on to teach for almost ten years. Once my children are older and I grow tired of the writing life, I plan to return to it.

Another friend from high school, who went on to be a successful teacher and department chair in the state of New York, was also rejected by Teach For America. We used to joke with a twinge of bitterness about the irony of our rejections. One of my graduate school professors had criticized TFA for taking people who might become career teachers and burning them out. Despite my own disappointment and his insights, I didn’t question the mission or impact of TFA, thinking his attitude was sour grapes, and eventually I viewed my own rejection from TFA as a blessing in disguise My brief teaching experience in New York prepared me well for graduate school, and, in turn, my graduate school education and training prepared me well for a teaching position, better, I think, than almost zero training or experience did some of my future teacher colleagues. Once I graduated and started teaching in an inner-city high school, I worked with many TFA teachers. Most were wonderful colleagues and dear friends. All were dedicated, smart, and hard-working, but most seemed overwhelmed. More significantly, most of them left the classroom after a short time. I started to realize that the youngest people with the least amount of experience were being thrown in the deep end with the most challenging teaching positions, when they should have been started in the shallow end. I still didn’t give much thought, though, to the negatives of TFA as a mechanism to attract and place teachers and to improve the quality of education. Now I do.

According to New York Times education columnist Michael Winerip, Teach for America has become very popular in recent years. In 2010, Teach for America hired more seniors than any single employer at numerous colleges, including Wesleyan, Yale, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At Harvard, 293 seniors, or 18 percent of the class, applied, compared with 100 seniors in 2007. TFA’s acceptance rate is lower than that of Harvard University’s. The struggling economy and tight job market has probably boosted TFA’s popularity among graduates of selective colleges. Also, finance and business fields suffer from a tarnished reputation, and more idealistic undergrads are likely sensitive to this. Even so, TFA preserves the status of selectivity of industry and law jobs, but with the patina of altruism. TFA members gain access to a network of privileged and well-connected people with the added bonus of being perceived as “making a difference.” The program provides training in leadership skills, a notch on the resume, a social and professional network, and middle-income employment, almost all on the taxpayers’ dime and at the expense of the education of the most powerless of our society. 

TFA makes it possible for some corps members to put off pursuing jobs in corporate law and finance until after they have “made a difference” for two years; perhaps at that point corps members and their peers have more distance from undergrad idealism. Perhaps to ease the transition to jobs in the private sector, financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs, have established partnerships with TFA, to provide summer internships. Furthermore, TFA has partnerships with hundreds of graduate schools which offer TFA alumni benefits such as two-year deferrals, fellowship, course credits, and waived application fees. With education reform having become the new cause célèbre among hedge fund managers, Oprah, national journalists, and Hollywood types such as Davis Guggenheim, I can’t see TFA losing popularity any time soon. Many TFA applicants should indeed be applauded for their nobility, but I’m not so sure that is the beginning and end of all of their motivations. Is twenty-five percent of Harvard University’s graduating class so purely well-intentioned? 

Noble intentions versus teaching-poor-children-as-social-climbing-and-resume-building yuck factors aside, the essential question is: Is TFA good for education? I used to think it was. Making the profession of teaching more attractive to high achievers is certainly a laudable goal and when the organization was started, there were indeed teacher shortages in high-poverty areas. As many national journalists, including New York Times columnists Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof, bemoan the state of our education system, they cite countries with highly rated education systems such as Finland and Singapore that recruit their teachers from the highest ranks of college graduates, while the Unites States doesn’t. What these journalists miss, though, is that Finland’s rigorous education and internship program for teacher candidates go far beyond TFA’s five-week training sessions. Most of these other countries have highly-professionalized teaching forces; TFA, however, de-professionalizes teaching by emphasizing talent over training. While Wendy Kopp and her supporters are in favor of increasing the numbers in teaching of graduates of more selective colleges, they are opposed to making teacher education and training more rigorous. Kopp says in her memoir, for example, that she is “baffled” that teachers are required to have professional training as doctors and lawyers are; teacher quality is a matter of talent and leadership. Selective colleges select talent, but due to admissions criteria biased towards students in wealthy school districts, they often perpetuate class privilege. To me, the idea that a person would inherently be a better teacher due to their privileged position in society smacks of elitism.

More seasoned and more rigorously trained teachers continue to be pushed out in favor of TFA teachers. This letter by such a teacher in Baltimore is just one example of a teacher who had a hard time finding a job in a district that has a high number of TFA teachers. According to Barbara Miner, whose journalism investigating Teach for America can be found in Rethinking Schools, Dallas, Boston, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and DC all laid off teachers while sparing TFA-ers. When ex-Chancellor Rhee declared a RIF (Reduction in Force) in October 2009 due to alleged budget shortages, 229 teachers total lost their jobs, but only six of them were from TFA. Seattle Public Schools recently signed a new contract with TFA, despite parent opposition and despite recent layoffs of veteran teachers. The state Education Board in South Carolina recently approved guidelines that would allow TFA recruits to apply for teaching positions, thirty percent of which would be for elementary school positions, where thousands of teachers have recently been laid off. The teachers' union in Kansas City, Missouri, supported Teach For America as a way to fill gaps, but teachers there recently protested the district's plan to fire 87 non-tenure teachers who have been deemed effective while brining in 150 Teach For America recruits. Teach For America's regional director Alicia Herald confirmed TFA's new mission: "We're no longer here to fill gaps. We're here to provide value."  

TFA claims on their website that their corps members are often more effective than other teachers, including certified and veteran teachers, yet according to this review of literature on TFA studies produced by Arizona State University’s Education Policy Research Unit and the University of Colorado’s Education and the Public Interest Center, the impact of TFA teachers is unclear. “Teach for America: A Review of the Evidence” does note, however, that many of the studies cited by TFA either haven’t been peer reviewed or have results that are statistically problematic. Furthermore, the review claims that TFA teachers don’t initially do better than teachers who are traditionally certified. In some cases they do about the same and in others they do worse. Only after two to three years do TFA teachers seem comparable to more experienced and traditionally trained teachers. These findings imply that even with TFA’s “talented” achievers, it’s experience and preparation that matters, not talent.

If the impact of TFA teachers is not entirely clear, their rates of attrition and financial costs are. According to the review of literature cited earlier, fifty percent of Teach for America teachers leave after two years and eighty percent leave after three. They don’t become lifelong teachers or even ten-year teachers. Their improved effectiveness would only come into play after they would have left. Since the corps members don’t stick around long enough for their students to benefit from their experience, TFA doesn’t, in fact, ultimately lead to higher teacher quality.

Even for those TFAers who stay in teaching, it’s unlikely that they’ll continue on in the high-poverty areas where they were initially placed. One study cited in the review found that teachers are more likely to stay employed in schools that are close to where they attended school. How many Ivy League grads grew up in the Ninth Ward? How about the Bronx? Compton?

TFA teachers cost taxpayers more money than traditionally educated teachers. The afore-mentioned review  shows that the average cost of a TFA teacher is $70,000 per recruit. Public school districts are paying twice for recruiting: from $2,000 to $5,000 to TFA per recruit plus funding recruitment by their internal human resources departments. Recruitment costs should be one-time expenditures, but at the current rate of attrition, districts must pay anew every time a TFA teacher leaves. According to Barbara Miner’s investigations, on top of their school district-paid salaries, Teach for America candidates also receive taxpayer-funded Americorps stipends, plus because of their TFA member status, they qualify for funding that people who take traditional teacher training routes don’t. Finally, TFA receives millions in local, state, and federal dollars. TFA annual reports show that about a third of costs are borne by the public—add in a $50,000,000 grant they received from the Department of Education this past spring, and that share has probably risen. How can the federal government subsidize a jobs program for the privileged as it struggles to extend unemployment benefits for those who have lost their jobs?

Wendy Kopp and other TFA leaders counter that attrition and cost are not issues since the ultimate purpose of TFA is not to produce career teachers but to produce education professionals and philanthropists to fight educational inequity. I agree it’s beneficial for students of education policy to understand the realities of the public school classroom, but I don’t think it should be at the expense of knowledgeable teachers for our students. Many TFA alumni leave the classroom and enter into an echo chamber where the ideologies and industries of TFA, TFA alums, and like-minded individuals and organizations are promoted. This causes many of them to view education policy through a narrow lens and fail to recognize what causes the inequities in the first place: unequal distribution of resources, income inequality, and poverty. Furthermore, unlike jobs in teaching, many of the education sector jobs Kopp speaks of are very lucrative, for example being a charter school administrator in New York City, a superintendent in a mayoral takeover system, or a TFA executive, many of whom make $200,000 to $300,000 per year. One study even disputed the claim that TFA alums become civically engaged at relatively higher rates.

TFA claims not to be a political organization, but Barbara Miner reports on the lobbying organization founded by TFA, Leadership for Education Equity (LEE). LEE is a 501(c)4, a nonprofit that can engage in lobbying and political campaigning, which TFA as a 501(c)3 cannot. For example, LEE lobbies to water down teacher certification requirements. LEE is funded by big corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Visa, the Walton Family Foundation, Monsanto—parties who promote deregulation of the markets and in whose interest it is to break up the only viable unions left, those of the public sector. When a study done by Stanford University education academic Linda Darling-Hammond came out questioning the effectiveness of TFA teachers, Wendy Kopp called them “diatribes” and personally lobbied Governor Schwarzenegger to deny Darling-Hammond a position on the California’s State Teacher Credentialing Commission.

I agree that we need to augment our teaching force and that we need to make teaching a more desirable profession, but an oligarch and taxpayer-funded short-term jobs program for the elite is not the solution. Teacher education programs need to provide for more training and experience, not less. People work as paralegals before deciding to go to law school, why not have TFA candidates work as teachers’ aides and then fund their further education if they pledge to go on to teach in high-poverty schools? Why doesn't TFA start programs for top students such as this amazing one that is being phased out by Yale University? Why not have alternative certification programs that allow credit for non-traditional but still relevant and substantial experience? Why don’t we stop speaking disparagingly of our teachers from state and public universities, start recruiting them to teach in their home or high-poverty districts, and fund their teacher education and apprenticeships with loan forgiveness programs such as is offered by Sallie Mae?

It’s time to stop allowing achievement and privilege to masquerade as competence, dedication, and skill. It’s time for the grown-ups who promote TFA to acknowledge that the quality teaching that we all agree is so valuable comes from experience. It’s time to stop letting TFA stand in the way of the committed, skilled, and experienced teachers our kids so desperately need. 

And what do you say, Ivy grads, if we accept that you are talented with much to offer America's school children, would you accept that teaching is a profession? In other words, talent matters, but is worthless without practice. Would you still teach for America if it wasn’t in Teach For America?