iPads or MacBooks?

I just posted this response to Jeff Utecht's post, Why I still want MS and HS to Have a Laptop.

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Currently, students in my classes have primary access to Windows machines, but they also have access to Mac computers and iPads. We are not currently a 1:1.

If I were offered a 1:1 with MacBooks or iPads and everything else were equal, I personally would definitely pick the MacBooks. However, if I could use the difference in funding to pay for additional professional learning community time (which includes curriculum redevelopment time) among those “teaching” with the iPads, I’d probably opt for the iPads. I would also choose the iPads over Windows XP machines. I’d have to think carefully between the iPads and Windows 7 machines. If I were choosing for the whole school, I might even choose the iPads over MacBooks even if everything else were equal.

Why? One reason is that I think your conclusion about iPads as consumption devices is inaccurate. (“At the end of the day the iPad is designed for the consumption of information.”) I do believe Apple designs them to be excellent consumption devices and those features may appear to stand out. But, they are also excellent production devices. In some cases, even better than MacBooks.

You mention wanting students to create apps, videos, and music. It is true that iPads cannot be used to create apps that run on iPads. (I’d add that they can’t run Scratch here too.) Related side question, what percentage of your students are coding apps on their MacBooks? But, iPads can be used to shoot and edit excellent videos with just the built in camera and iMovie or iStop motion. And, with GarageBand, among other apps, students can create excellent music or audio podcasts. In facts, my students often create better (technically) videos and audio recordings in less time on the iPad. Granted, they may not have all the special fx, but that’s rarely what makes video or audio go viral. It’s much more often about the content and a little less due to the quality of the original footage/audio. Here’s a link to an great example –http://www.ipadacademic.com/education/lesson-plans/animating-and-explaining-cell-division – though it might not go viral.

With their ease of use, stability and the ability of students to complete quality projects often in less time, I’ve seen teachers in my school and nationally during summer pd sessions take to these devices much more rapidly than laptops, even MacBooks. If teachers will get (allow) students to use iPads to produce more projects than with MacBooks, then I need to take the iPad over the more flexible and powerful MacBook.

That’s not to say I view iPads without their definite drawbacks, which I lay out in a little more detail here (draft). Link to Affordances & Constraints Chart –http://balancedtech.wikispaces.com/Affordances+%26+Constraints+-+iPad

We also need to make sure our PLCs are focusing on quality uses of either device. Working through the following activity with teachers is a start in that direction, whether using MacBooks, iPads, or other devices. Link to Apps Taskonomy Activity for Educators –http://balancedtech.wikispaces.com/Apps+Taskonomy

Check out iPad Creative to see how others are using iPads in phenomenal ways!http://www.ipadcreative.com/

Anti-Patterns - Avoid Focusing on the Tool

(This post the fifth in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.) 
How many tool based workshops or training seminars have you attended? How much of what you learn do you retain? How much of what you learn is easily translatable into students learning about your subject matter and methods? Focusing on the tool instead of focusing on the thing the user wants to do with the tool is common among technology companies and professional developers. Over the past years we have tried to spend less time on the tools and more on pedagogy, content, and the balance among the three. We try to put the direct instruction bits into problem-solving activities, exploration and self-teaching, and a few examples of what students can do with the tools in their classroom.

Yet, many teachers WANT, I mean demand, direct instruction in the step by step manner where they can write it down step by step. Are there ways to move teachers away from such a limiting habit? After all, how often does something occur in the exact same set of steps versus some variation on those steps? How will these teachers move on by themselves without the trainer their to hold their hand?

What will it take for the majority of teachers to get to the point where many of their students already are, comfortable with exploring the tool, using trial and error or other methods of problem-solving, or if all else fails asking a peer or searching Google for a screencast or tutorial?

As a half-way step. How can we get most teachers to at least see that their favored form of "learning" doesn't fit most of their students' favored forms of learning? This limits the possible growth of their students tremendously. Students' learning ends up happening far more outside of the classroom.

Failure, Success, and Motivation

(This post the fourth in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.) 

As a professional development facilitator, curriculum designer, mentor, or teacher, how do you motivate your "users." One of Kathy's points is to make the product they will actually use. She suggests to make the right things easy for people and the wrong things hard. Kathy was presenting in a certain style that makes it hard to get beyond the superficial, but that seems too simplistic. If we are aiming for intrinsic motivation, one element that seems extremely important is finding the right balance between failure and success. Making things too easy or too hard leads to frustration or disinterest. When you have learners (kids or adults) that all come in knowing different things and having had different experiences, how do you design a one-fits all that will balance failure and success?

Scientific American recently had an article related to this conundrum. The article presented findings from a study that found learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors. How many of us have created learning opportunities designed to avoid the problems and pitfalls students might encounter? 

A couple of other related resources:
On His Team, Would You Be a Solvent, or the Glue?
Famous Failures
Failure – The Secret to Success
F Is For Fail
Zone of Proximal Development

What's The One Thing You Can Do To Be Amazing?

(This post the third in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.) 

Have you ever attended one of those workshops where so many things are covered that you don't know where to start? Or, have you ever visited on of those sites that describe 100 Web 2.0 tools? Many professional developers seem to think that value comes from the quantity of tools, tips, slides, lesson ideas, etc. that they can cram into an hour, half-day, or whole day.

That seems contrary to Kathy's statement that we can help our "users" by giving them the one thing they can do to be amazing.  I didn't take that statement to mean that we should tell teachers we work with exactly which tool they should use and in which particular lesson. In fact, struggling to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of certain tools in certain situations may be the most important "problem" we can lead teachers to consider. Instead, Kathy's statement reminded me that we need to think very carefully about the number and order of tools, tips, activities, etc. we do present. Will they make the teachers (really, their students) amazing, or will they distract them from what's most important/beneficial/amazing? Would you rather have a teacher that has thought carefully about when and how to creatively and thoughtfully use one tool like a wiki throughout the year in their subject(s), or a teacher who has mastered a dozen tools, but can't achieve rigor or relevance with them? Less is probably more if teachers develop a nuanced understanding of their tool(s) and how they best fit with their pedagogy and subject. They can always add another tool later in the year or the next year.

Practice Eating Your Own Dog Food

(This post the second in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.)  

I know it sounds funny, but when Kathy mentioned practicing all the time, it connected with Guy Kawasaki's rule to "Eat Your Own Dog Food." Guy meant that statement in regards to technology developers using their own products. I connected Kathy's appeal to practice all the time and Guy's rule to use your own products to the typical paradox of professional development where new pedagogical methods are "taught" using old pedagogical methods. I realize there are many reasons that occurs, but this is why teachers need to use the same tools we want them using with their students. (I am definitely not advocating they need to use them so that they know them better than their students or before they let their students use them!) Teachers don't need to use the tools to complete the exact same sort of projects as the students. They need to use them in an authentic way for their own learning. When using the tools for their own learning, their understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the tools will grow as will the range of possible uses for these tools in learning activities. With time, the teachers will develop an intuitive feel for the tool.

Stuck in Program Mode

(This post the second in a series commenting on Kathy Sierra's presentation about creating passionate users.) 

One metaphor Kathy briefly made was having your camera stuck in Program Mode. Thinking about teachers, I took that equivalent of teaching the lesson as the textbook says to or if it is a lesson or project designed by the teacher, teaching it the same way every year. Getting the teachers out of P Mode means getting them to reflect on their lessons. They need to reflect on the TPC of the lesson, and who their students are so that they can modify it (or ditch it) for greater success.

One way curriculum designers can encourage this reflection is to design lessons with optional activities. I don't mean optional in take it or leave it, I mean optional as in a flow chart or a football option play, where depending on what is observed/experienced, the teacher makes a choice. If we add in reasons why they might choose different options, the teacher can make better choices, but also "hear" an expert's thinking. Who knows, they may even internalize it with time. Otherwise, we have merely created a new textbook for teachers to teach from.

A second way professional development and curriculum facilitators could lead teachers away from only using Program Mode, would be to build up their understanding of a wide variety of activity types. This would need to be accompanied by discussions of the affordances and constraints of these activity types as well as how each of those might be modified depending on the technology used to accomplish them. Teachers would then have myriad choices and a better feel for when to select one activity type or technology over another.

Listening in on Tangentially Related Conversations

One of my sources of food for thought is IT Conversations.  A presentation I listened to a month ago is still sparking thoughts. Kathy Sierra presented at an Ignite conference on creating passionate users. While she was talking about users of products, I first thought about "users" as my students and then as the teachers (adult learners) I work with. Over the next few posts I'll comment on where those thoughts led me.

Puzzling Professional Development

Most teachers recognize that much of what they teach cannot be done learned easily or quickly. Learning to read, write, reason, etc., all take years to learn, even at a superficial level. Mastery takes even longer. (Gladwell and others have posited that it takes 10,000 hours. Though others, like Godin, disagree about the exact amount of time.)

So, why is it that teachers and district administrators, most who once were teachers, keep planning professional development in a manner that fails to take this into account? Do they really expect more than a superficial understanding after a staff meeting, one day workshop, or even a four day training? Is it any wonder that most professional development has little effect in the classroom?

And that's not the only difficulty. Even if the teachers can see the theoretical value in a longer term development project, they feel as if whoever is facilitating the project should be able to communicate the whole even before they begin. If they don't, many teachers start to get frustrated. Donald Schön expressed this difficulty in Educating the Reflective Practitioner,

It’s as though the teacher said something like this: “I can tell you that there’s something you need to know and I can tell you that with my help you can probably learn it. But I cannot tell you what it is in a way that you will understand. You must be willing therefore, to undergo certain experiences as I direct you to undergo them, so that you can learn what it is that you need to know and what I mean by the words I use. Then and only then can you make an informed choice about whether you wish to learn this new competence. If you are unwilling to step into this new experience without knowing ahead of time what it will be like, then I cannot help you. You must trust me. (p.66)

Most adults are uncomfortable with such a proposition. Many teachers actually prefer the ineffectual one-hit wonder type of workshop. Interesting that they expect their students to be willing to live through just such a situation. (Or maybe they don't, and they only expect rote memorization and skill mastery.) The question is how to structure their adult learning in a way that can help them live through and eventually appreciate such a deep learning experience. If the school or district even considers such opportunities.