Inspired by various TEDtalks, a group of students in Grade 5 wanted to create their own animated talk to share their thoughts with 'G5 Expo of Learning' visitors.
They planned out their talk and decided on the visuals they would need before starting the project. Some students chose to draw on whiteboards while others used LEGO to tell their story.
We discussed the importance of finding a suitable space to work in, paying attention to lighting and shadows as well as comfort and safety. Using the area outside Margaret Chhoa’s classroom allowed all the students to fit in and work without disturbing each other. We began by setting up the Justands over the work area and got all of the equipment within arms reach.
We explored how the iMotion HD app worked and decided whether to use the manual or time-lapse capture option. Another interesting option is to use the microphone to listen for a clap or a sound from the user to take a picture. This, along with the time-lapse option, takes away the opportunity for movement of the iPad or for it to lose focus on the image below.
When the stop motion movies were complete the children exported them from the iPad via email. Once back on their laptops they imported the stop motion into iMovie to add finishing touches; an introduction slide, a voiceover and an end slide. The voiceovers really gave another dimension to the movie and they required the children to think carefully about how what they were saying supported the visuals on screen.
Many visitors to the G5 Expo of Learning were impressed by these videos and the children who produced them were proud of their work. From a teacher's point of view the children used a variety of skills and developed new ones through this project.
From a bucket of water to a bicycle, any tool can be used maliciously or marvellously, the same is true for screen time as it is for eating potatoes, they are both potentially very good for you, but not if that's all you do.
One big difference being that we don't see articles circulated from time to time on the web fretting about potatoes, framed in the frantic, panicked tones of a 21st Century crisis, which we do about screen time, articles like this*.
In the face of opinions like that, some would ask how on earth we can justify all the iPads we provide for our young learners in the Infant school, 2:1 in K1, and an iPad for every child in K2, Grade 1 to Grade 3, and a laptop for every child in Grades 4 and 5. The problem is these articles that expect us to 'ban' our students from screen use, generally make the mistake of burying alternative perspectives, and are usually founded on a dubious judgement back in the 20th Century (1999), by the American Academy of Pediatrics that discouraged television viewing for children younger than 2, citing research on brain development that showed this age group’s critical need for “direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers.” They have since (2015) updated their report, acknowledging that things have changed significantly since their original judgement, however they still unfortunately, and impractically uniformly discourage passive media use, on any type of screen, for young children.
What I'd like to do here is just to provide some balance to the argument, sure the AAP have their opinion, but there are plenty of other respected, and I would argue more reasonable and more practical perspectives regarding screen time out there, below I share just a handful. If you know of any others, please feel free to post them in the comments below.
Lumping all screens into one category is not helpful. "Screen time is a really enticing measure because it's simple – it's usually described as the number of hours a day using screen-based technology. But it's completely meaningless," says Pete Etchells at Bath Spa University, UK, who studies the effects of video games on behaviour. "It doesn't say anything about what you're using that time for."
The challenge for parents and teachers, Robb says, “is to select the videos, games, and devices that have a real, positive developmental impact—and use them in ways that promote growth.”
Children benefit from the right sort of screen time.
What is becoming clear is that it's not the technologies themselves we should be worried about, but how they are used and how people interact with them. The advantages seen in the school environment can be translated into the home – if you choose your children's digital distraction wisely.
A lot of it is common sense. Don't unthinkingly hand over your device. There are educational apps whose benefits are backed up by research.
Five hours sitting in front of the TV is not the same as 5 hours of some TV, a couple of hours playing on Dance Dance Revolution or some other kind of active game, followed by a Skype session with a grandparent.
This [The advice from the AAP] hard and fast two-hour policy, beaten into parents’ brains by their pediatricians, troubles me and many others partly because it was last updated in 2011 before the astounding boom of tablets, smartphones and touch screens among both kids and adults. The policy warnings had focused very reasonably on TV and its clear long-term harms to healthy development in kids under two—especially harmful when passively watching non-interactive, non-educational TV. But such traditional passive TV watching, while still the dominant form of media consumption for most children, is rapidly becoming meaningless for many. Clearly, an interactive video game that parents and toddlers are playing together or watching family vacation videos on a smartphone can have huge value compared to zombie-like staring at an episode of Spongebob—these kinds of shows are shown in studies to harm a young child’s executive functioning, a prefrontal brain skill set including memory, attention, and setting goals.
Not all screens are equal, and guidelines need to be updated to reflect these differences. The policy also doesn’t reflect the reality on the ground: a recent survey of parents by Common Sense Media shows that toddlers under two are spending almost one hour a day using screen media anyway.
I still generally agree with most of the AAP’s family media plan advice, especially no TV ever in bedrooms and no screens at certain times of the day, including during meals, and screen time limits depending on age. With children under two, I definitely believe that screen time should never be spent alone: kids always benefit more from any activity when parents are playing along.
The 2011 [AAP] report mentioned “smart cell phone” and “new screen” technologies, but did not address interactive apps. Nor did it broach the possibility that has likely occurred to those 90 percent of American parents, queasy though they might be: that some good might come from those little swiping fingers.
Technological competence and sophistication have not, for parents, translated into comfort and ease. They have merely created yet another sphere that parents feel they have to navigate in exactly the right way. On the one hand, parents want their children to swim expertly in the digital stream that they will have to navigate all their lives; on the other hand, they fear that too much digital media, too early, will sink them.
April 2010, when the iPad was released. iPhones had already been tempting young children, but the screens were a little small for pudgy toddler hands to navigate with ease and accuracy. Plus, parents tended to be more possessive of their phones, hiding them in pockets or purses. The iPad was big and bright, and a case could be made that it belonged to the family. Researchers who study children’s media immediately recognized it as a game changer.
The 2017 "The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a Digital World" report is a comprehensive look from UNICEF at the different ways digital technology is affecting children, identifying dangers as well as opportunities.
Too many news articles share evidence from studies that are methodologically weak or exaggerate or misrepresent the evidence provided.
For most children, underlying issues – such as depression or problems at home – have a greater impact on health and happiness than screen time.
Without consensus on screen time, it is important for parents, policymakers, researchers and the media not to jump to conclusions about what is healthy or unhealthy digital use. Considering the full context of a child's life – together with an emphasis on content and experiences rather than screen time – may prove more useful for understanding the effects of digital connectivity on children's well-being.
Rather than restricting children’s digital media use, more attentive and supportive mediation by parents and educators holds the most promise for enabling children to draw maximum benefit and minimum risk from connectivity. More attention should be given to the content and activities of children’s digital experiences – what they are doing online and why – rather than strictly to how much time they spend in front of screens.
Considering the full context of a child’s life – together with an emphasis on content and experiences rather than screen time – may prove more useful for understanding the effects of digital connectivity on children’s well-being.
In a world where “screen time” is becoming simply “time,” our policies must evolve or become obsolete. The public needs to know that the Academy’s advice is science-driven, not based merely on the precautionary principle.
Media is just another environment. Children do the same things they have always done, only virtually. Like any environment, media can have positive and negative effects. Family participation with media facilitates social interactions and learning.
Content matters. The quality of content is more important than the platform or time spent with media. Prioritize how your child spends his time rather than just setting a timer.
The evidence base for a direct ‘toxic’ effect of screen time is contested, and the evidence of harm is often overstated. The majority of the literature that does exist looks only at television screen time.
Evidence is weak for a threshold to guide children and parents to the appropriate level of screen time, and we are unable to recommend a cut-off for children's screen time overall.
Many of the apparent connections between screen time and adverse effects may be mediated by lost opportunities for positive activities (socialising, exercise, sleep) that are displaced by screen time.
There is a little evidence that any specific intervention can be applied across the population to reduce screen time. We have developed four key questions for families to use as a guide to examine their screen time:
Is screen time in your household controlled?
Does screen use interfere with what your family want to do?
Does screen use interfere with sleep?
Are you able to control snacking during screen time?
If a family can ask themselves (or be asked by others) these questions, and are satisfied with the answers, then they can be reassured that they are likely to be doing as well as they can with this tricky issue.
Touch screens change everything...
Previously, young children had to be shown by their parents how to use a mouse or a remote, and the connection between what they were doing with their hand and what was happening on the screen took some time to grasp. But with the iPad, the connection is obvious, even to toddlers. Touch technology follows the same logic as shaking a rattle or knocking down a pile of blocks: the child swipes, and something immediately happens. A “rattle on steroids,” is what Buckleitner calls it. “All of a sudden a finger could move a bus or smush an insect or turn into a big wet gloopy paintbrush.” To a toddler, this is less magic than intuition. At a very young age, children become capable of what the psychologist Jerome Bruner called “enactive representation”; they classify objects in the world not by using words or symbols but by making gestures—say, holding an imaginary cup to their lips to signify that they want a drink. Their hands are a natural extension of their thoughts.
* If you're going to read that article, make sure you read these two responses to it as well:
Critical literacy will help readers navigate through broad claims that appear to be scientific in nature, but actually misrepresent facts and findings. Outlets such as The Huffington Post can provide important, accessible, and digestible information to parents as they try to navigate this complex world.
The research cited in the Rowan piece and the many other 'clickbait' articles like it is so unsupportive of her claims, it seems possible that the real motive behind these articles is to test the reader gullibility. If readers dig a little deeper, they'll find the truth.
The research focuses mainly on passive television consumption and video games that are either simple or for mature audiences. Much of it also is focused, not on pre-teens, but rather on teens and adults. The research shows a dearth of findings around the type of technology use in which the overwhelming majority of children engage.
Discerning educators and parents: Take a look at the research. Decide for yourself. I've collated over 60 articles here (and counting) which I update regularly, happy reading!
Alternatively the 'Their Own Devices' podcast has a very balanced take on this topic, there's bound to be an episode or two in there that will be of interest.
As part of our commitment to ensuring a broad and balanced range of ICT skills that facilitate true digital literacy, we introducing our children and their teachers to the wonderful world of spreadsheets on iPad using Google Sheets in Grade 3!
For some this may seems a little excessive, but that's because they probably suffer from a little known condition known as 'spreadsheetitus'—where individuals have an irrational reluctance to use a powerful digital tool for no other reason than they were never introduced to it when they were their age. But fear not, spreadsheets are easier to use than you might think...
Spreadsheets are wondertools, the calculators of the 21st Century, and like calculators they can do incredibly complex mathematics, or, as in this example very simple mathematics indeed.
Our approach to ensuring ICT skills are not neglected, while still using and learning these skills in an authentic, integrated learning environment is to look for opportunities within the curriculum to utilise tools where it makes sense. Finding an opportunity to integrate spreadsheets isn't too difficult. In this case our Grade 3 track their use of water over the course of a week, and use that guided enquiry as a basis for maths work, cue spreadsheets!
This example introduces the app and shows how to calculate the total of a column of figures using a Function (SUM) and how to perform a custom calculation (ie multiplying 2 numbers) by creating a Formula, which is really as simple as, "take whatever is in that cell, multiply it by whatever is in that cell, and put the answer here..."
Make a Graph/Chart
This is as simple as 'select to affect', but it doesn't work if you just select everything, you need to only select the data you need to use. The video below demonstrates how this works....
Why use an iPad in the classroom, if you can use a Mac?
OSx vs iOS
This is a question that has plagued me for some time, and behind it lies the assumption that if you are going to use an iPad, then you should make sure that you're using it to do something that you couldn't have just used a Mac for. Of course this assumes that you have the choice of using a Mac or an iPad, for the sake of this discussion I assume a context where the students would use an iPad in the classroom exclusively in place of a MacBook or an iMac. After some initial scepticism, I now believe that these devices do have a unique contribution to make to the classroom; below I will attempt to outline my reasoning as to why I believe this may be...
Cost
Cheaper than MacBooks at about a half to a third of the price (depending on the model you buy), this means that you can get double or triple the tech for the same cost, especially important if you're attempting to get as many devices per student as possible. This can be the difference between one computer shared between four, or the difference between a classroom that is 1:1 or 1:2 compared to a classroom that is 1:2 or 1:4. It has to be said that iPads in particular lend themselves to a 1:1 context, as sharing them is not as easy as sharing a Mac, as they do not support multiple user accounts.
There are 'hidden' costs to consider, you most likely need to include a case, (I don't believe in screen protectors) a trolley for syncing/storage, and don't underestimate the amount of tech support required to sync and keep them updated, and the cost of Apps which is most likely much greater that that required for laptops etc.
Simplicity & Efficacy
iOS is a much simpler operating system than OSX, this means, especially with younger students, the operating system gets out of the way and students instead can concentrate on actually using the tech to learn, which is the point, right? Simply put, this means that students do not need to navigate through menus, create folders, filenames, organise files and folders and navigate the many additional conventions like full screen/windows, desktop management, that would be expected by using a typical desktop operating system.
Apptasticicity (Is that word? It is now.)
The plethora of applications available for this device at a low cost or even zero cost makes for an extremely powerful learning tool. Yes, there are also plenty of Applications on the MacBook and iMac, but the Apps on the iPad are cheaper, and especially focused on doing very specific things. One App for spelling, one App for TimesTables, one App for drawing—the list is long, too long for this post, see my other post that summarises the apps that are game changers in the primary classroom, apps like Explain Everything and Shadow Puppet that are utterly transformative and have no equivalent on the MacBook, to apps like Seesaw and iMovie, and GarageBand that offer affordances on the iPad that are unavailable with their laptop counterparts, and that are remarkable in terms of the simplicity of design, moving digital tools from the realm of advanced users to that of literally child's play.
The power of iOS apps versus full on computer applications is another major benefit. These are generally much, much simpler versions of their big brothers. Even the Pages App on the iPad is a much simpler pared down version of the full Pages application on the Mac. Often it seems to me that when using the full version of Applications on the Mac etc., most people are using 10%, maybe 20% of the capability of a program but the Apps on the iPad appear to focus on just doing the 10 to 20% that most people actually need. This means from a teaching perspective, we focus on the use of the tools in a way that is very effective and avoid getting sidetracked by less relevant or less important features that are not required for the task at hand.
Apps & Distractions
Funnily enough many people leap to the assumption that iPads will be a greater temptation for kids in terms of playing games, but with any decent Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution, it is easy to control what apps are on any device, no apps that are games, no temptation. Any games there are on the device would have been installed by the institution, so of the educational variety, eg Squeebles, Khan Academy, Reflex.
On the other hand however, laptops present a much greater challenge in this regard. Not only are they capable of playing a wide range of high performance games (from platforms like Steam) but there are a plethora of Flash games accessible from any web browser, or/and through the installation of extensions, like Slither.io, Realm of the Mad God, Agario, Roblox, et cetera.
Control
Especially for younger students the freedom from having to control a mouse device to manipulate the cursor on the screen is a huge advantage, very few younger students have the necessary fine motor skills to control a device as (relatively) large as a mouse and often struggle to do so, especially managing left and right, and double clicking, never mind drag 'n drop. The iPad, by using a haptic touch interface completely bypasses all of these issues and is as easy for a three year old to control as for a 43 year old.
The iPad is a much more 'modal' device, that is, the user is focused on one 'mode' or application at a time, you don't have the problem (or some would say, the advantage) of having multiple Apps open and accessible and usable at the same time. With the iPad it is very much one thing at a time, better for teaching and learning.
Teacher have greater control; with Apple Classroom teachers can mute/lock/view all screens in the room at a glance or a tap. This is not a 'big brother' tool, but more of a ' teaching assistant', to help the teacher get a sense of the range of activity in the room, and to be able to intervene to assist students where necessary.
Tactility
Whether you choose to use a stylus or to use the digits that God gave you (no I'm not a big fan of stylii) it has to be said that it is a much more natural, authentic experience to 'draw' or ''paint' on an iPad and it has ever been or is on a Mac, even if you try to use the trackpad as a substitute surface. 'Screencasting' Apps in particular are absolutely revolutionary on this device; I really cannot see any App on the Mac that comes even close to offering the power of annotation combined with drawing and talking offered by apps like Explain Everything and Shadow Puppet et al. When this facility is applied to drawing, painting and image manipulation Apps, it takes on a completely new level of experience—with the ability to intuitively smudge and blur with tactile swipes and dabs there really is a sense of interaction with pixels which is almost is impressive.
Mobility
The portability of the device makes it particularly appropriate for capturing content with the on-board camera or capturing video, and then seamlessly knitting this content together in a meaningful way on the device with a minimum of hassle. Yes, this can be done with a MacBook, but trying to use a MacBook as a camera is something which would be impossible for small children to do and not advisable even for older students and adults. You have to bring the content to the MacBook whereas with the iPad you can bring the iPad to the content—particularly useful for field trips or subjects that are not portable, ie cannot be brought to the device.
Familiarity
Like it or not, many, if not most children these days, grow up interacting with touch screen devices. Whether this is an iPads shared by the family, or a Samsung Tablet/Phablet owned by them, or whether it's one of their parents' smartphones that keep them occupied on long journeys and in restaurants (guilty as charged), one thing is sure. By the time they arrive in your classroom, the vast majority will already be extremely confident, adept at controlling those devices, possibly more so than their teacher. This does come with a problem—teaching them that while these devices may be predominantly used purely for entertainment at home, at school they are primarily tools for teaching and learning. That lesson takes a while to learn...
Organisation
The ability to group apps into folders very easily very much assists the pedagogical process as teachers can direct students to a group of apps that are focused on a particular skill, this is not often the case with a typical computer operating system.
No desktop. This saves a lot of trouble for the teacher, as the desktop paradigm leads to many problems, with a plethora of icons scattered across that virtual space - trust me this is the bane of my tech integration life. Students and teachers alike struggle with the organisation of files and folders and this often leads to work that is hard to locate or difficult to save in a way that allows the same files to be easily retrieved. Of course the question that follows this is, "When do we teach students how to use these operating systems? Surely that is also a important consideration?"
I would argue the older they are the more developmentally capable they will be. But it is clear with a even a fleeting glance at the desktops of most adults, that the complexity of managing and organising a laptop extremely challenging, so why would we impose this burden on children before they absolutely need to?
Sharing of student work is easy, utilising the Reflection App on a Mac (or using a classroom Apple TV). Sharing iPad content with students using AirPlay is as easy as a couple of clicks, and then the content of the student's iPad is beamed onto the board for the whole class to see.
So why would you ever use a Mac?
Using an iPad is often very much about working around the limitations, although it has to be said that what a techie person might call "limitations" is what an ordinary student or teacher might call a welcome relief from complexity. Put bluntly, a full powered computer offers so many options that it easily becomes overwhelming - the simplicity of the iPad very much restricts what is capable of being done, but for most ordinary people this restriction is a relief rather than a frustration. But, no the Mac is not dead, not for more 'demanding' users anyway. There are times when you really need to use the other 80% of features left out of iPad Apps. Here are a few of the aspects of an iPad classroom that require some patience:
Professional/advanced Applications
If you are one of those few people, (especially High School/FE teachers/students) who actually need to use more advanced applications, I'm thinking particularly here of high end video editing, production, design, VFX, 3D modelling, CAD CAM, and applications that can that model dynamic simulations like SketchUp, then using an iPad is far from satisfactory. All of these require a 'proper' fully featured operating system like that afforded by an iMac or Macbook, or even a PC! But, in my experience, that puts you in the bracket of the few people who know how to use the 80% of the capabilities of a professional app that are ignored by 80% of 'normal' computer users.
Less Robust Web 2.0 support
Web 2.0 sites like Prezi and MindMeister are arguably one of the foundational elements of what is commonly called "21st century learning" and due to the kind of cutting edge web technology these websites require, many Web 2.0 sites will will not function as effectively (if at all) on an iPad - although this is changing everyday. It should be noted that many of these sites (including the two mentioned) provide App versions of their content, albeit usually scaled down. The Google suite of Apps are definitely more iPad friendly than ever, but they still have frustrating restrictions, but these limitations wane with each passing year. If you really want to utilise Web 2.0 (bear in mind that most require students to be at least 13 years of age) you are still almost certainly better off using a Mac rather than an iPad.
iPads make it more difficult for users to share their content on third party platforms, eg, Google Apps, Sites or Picasa etc., most of these platforms cannot be exported to directly from an iPad and requires a mediating device, eg a laptop or desktop computer.
User Accounts
There is no support for multiple user accounts; this means that in practice sharing an iPad is much more tricky than sharing for example, a MacBook. Because all of the content created by users is shared on the same device this mean they will need to be particularly careful about respecting work created by others and not deleting content that does not belong to themselves.
No Flash support
While this is rarely an issue as more and more website shift over to content like HTML 5 etc, it is still an occasional problem, mainly on old (10-20 years) educational websites that have never been updated and so still rely on Flash as their media tool of choice. It is possible to get around this issue by using for example the Puffin Browser App, but it is still far from satisfactory.
Caveat Emptor
All of these devices are changing, fast. For for all I know the next release of iOS could well make all of my concerns history—the next App update could make a tool that was a fiddly frustration into a dynamic delight; the Google suite of Apps comes to mind, although these are still far from being as effective as their equivalents on a desktop operating system.
The bottom line to me is sometimes less is more (more often in my experience less is just less) and that is often the case with the choice of an iPad over a MacBook or an iMac - for the kind of things that we want our students to use these devices for, we need LESS - we rarely need a state-of-the-art computer, a state-of-the-art tablet may well be much a more appropriate choice.
Using an iMac or MacBook for just web browsing and word processing really is just using a Ferrari to deliver milk.
Thanks to Shaun Kirkwood @shaunyk for providing the impetus for this post and some great feedback.
Spelling has never been more important, as my example above attempts to illustrate. In an age dominated by screens, misspelling is tantamount to an admission of idiocy—but the way we teach spelling needs to evolve to take advantage of the unique affordances and challenges of spelling in a screen environment. Please note that none of the words in the title are actually misspellings, but mistakes they are, and a right twazzock you will look if you spell in a way that is overly reliant on proofreading tools as a safety net. It's time we took account of the fact that in a world where screens are ubiquitous, the ways we teach spelling needs to evolve to take advantage of the unique affordances and challenges of spelling in a screen environment.
These days the likelihood of interacting via text with others in a digital environment is commonplace. Even more critical, people who misspell in these environments are generally assumed to be less intelligent, less articulate, and despite their possible intelligence/experience, any perspective they offer is then likely to be dismissed or demeaned if it is littered with misspellings.
It has never been more important to master the ability to spell correctly.
Unfortunately most schools, despite the criticality of spelling in the 21st-century, still rely on 19th century strategies to teach spelling. This really does need to change. So, with that in mind...
Critical considerations:
Children (and adults) can only spell words they know, sounds obvious, but so many of the spelling lists that are used with students contain words they do not know, so could not possibly be able to spell, other than through guesswork, which leads us to... The corollary to this is the simple fact that the skill of knowing or suspecting that a spelling is wrong is an essential aspect of learning how to spell, especially in a world where checking a spelling is as easy as 'searching it up' in Google, or just asking your smartphone to spell it for you.
There is a much greater validity to the skill of being able "guesstimate" in a TELE (technology enhanced learning environment), and ‘phonological awareness’ is more essential than ever, as an accurate phonetical estimation is relied on by computers to substitute for a correct spelling. A student who cannot phonetically 'approach' a word is unlikely to be able to approximate something that a computer can correct. Related to this is the critical importance of being able to spell the first half of a word correctly, most modern computing devices can now auto complete a word if a student is able to spell the first half of it correctly. Apple's 'QuickType' in iOS 8, and apps like "SwiftKey" utilise this approach very effectively, and the power of Dictation (speech to text) has never been greater, but it will still struggle with homophones (same sound different spelling and meaning). An alternative approach in a traditional 'spelling test' context is to award 2 marks to each word, one mark for being able to spell the word phonetically correctly, or for spelling the first half correctly, and 2 marks if the word is perfect.
Stop using spelling tests for whole classes with lists of words, this is a nonsensical approach, considering the sheer quantity of words in the typical English dictionary, somewhere in excess of 400,000 words. The words that children learn should be unique and curated from their own literacy life, related to their own writing, reading and speaking, and viewing and listening experiences, or related to specific vocabulary that they are using/used will need to use.
Wordlists curated by students should be seen as a source of vocabulary expansion, not just for spelling. Becoming a personal thesaurus/glossary that they should review regularly when writing to enhance the richness of their prose; use it or lose it.
Listening matters just as much than looking (Riesenhuber, 2013). If you can see the word before you spell it, then you're not learning how to spell, you're practising short term recall. Listening is also essential for checking spelling, now computers have the option to speak any word you can type, select the word and have the computer read it out loud, is this the word you were trying to spell?
Less reliance upon "spelling rules" which are very rarely consistent, and in many cases can lead to a great deal of confusion. Like when students are asked to note the position of a certain vowel in a word and its impact upon other vowels or consonants within that word, also using acrostics like 'big elephants can always understand...' you get the idea, and of course they only work for one word… Instead focus on more reliance on building familiarity with the way words look and the way words sound, so 'look say cover write check' still works well as a useful skill/drill practice, (or better still: listen say type look) but with fewer words, more often. This is strongly related to the student's reading life as a synergetic enabler in their spelling life. This becomes a context where students are encouraged to see words as 'friends' and building a large community of 'familiar faces' ie, the more they see these words the more likely they are to be able to spell them, or arguably just as important in the 21st-century, to recognise when the word is not spelt properly, ‘it just doesn't look right'. We see words like faces? Yes, believe it or not, this is exactly what neuroscience (McCandliss et al, 2003) has taught us, more on that phenomenon below...
Skill drill tasks (practise makes permanent) should also be related to an activity that reinforces their comprehension of the meaning of the word, so ideally students should also invent (not copy) a sentence that uses the word, or even better, more than one of the words in the same sentence, that clearly demonstrates that they can use the word/s with an understanding of it/them. After all, what is the point of learning how to spell a word if you don't know how to use it? For some students it might be better for them to make an oral recording of them speaking the sentence rather than writing a sentence, if the writing is a challenge to reluctant writers, as the focus is on understanding meaning, and oral recall can be just as effective for building meaning, this is especially important with homophones.
More recognition of the kinds of spellings that are particularly tricky in a screen centred writing environment, this means a greater emphasis on distinguishing between words with similar sounds and different patterns, homophones, homonyms, homographs and heteronyms.
Making smarter use of digital tools to facilitate this kind of practice, while spelling games that are built on skill drill using pre-set wordlists are useful, but you should also encourage spelling drills that are built on individually curated wordlists. However these kinds of Apps are not very common, but at least one that does this very well is Squeebles SP, more on this below...
Use any text app or word processor to spell check, before using a teacher. This could be a simple as a notes app on a mobile device, this will enable students to check spellings without the tedium of using a dictionary. Then a far more appropriate use of teacher time is to review spellings for careless mistakes, or more likely mistakes resulting from misconceptions about phonetics/word structure, especially spellings that alter the meaning of a sentence. Students need to be empowered to build habits of capturing/collecting words that they know, but cannot spell in their curated lists. The point is, it is better for the student to attempt to type the word in a text application and have the computer suggest corrections than it is for them to try and search for it in a dictionary. While the latter is still helpful, the former is a better cognitive process for learning the spelling of a word, and is also more relevant/likely as an activity or skill set in the 21st-century. Very few adults look up words in a dictionary, most rely on the prompt given by the computer in a word processing environment. Even better, if this list is 'situated' or cloud synced (Google Doc, iCloud Notes) they can access, add to and augment that list from home or school.
Encourage students to learn how to use the "define:" search term in Google, effectively turning any Google search window into a handy Dictionary, eg - define:magnificent
Digital technologies are changing which words are traditionally understood to be "tricky" words/sneaky spellings… so for example any word typed in a text environment will automatically switch the 'ie' in a word like receive. These old-fashioned spelling rules just further complicate matters. “I before e except after c” works for only a handful of words. It has so many exceptions (like the words “science”, “sufficient”, “seize”, “weird” or “vein”) it is another rule and laborious chore we could do without.
Don't teach, facilitate
Neuroscience over the past decade* reveals fascinating insights into the way our brains learn words. Studies indicate that we use the same parts of brain (both left and right) to process face recognition that we use to process word recognition. So much so in fact, that as we move from early childhood into adulthood and become more proficient in word recognition, our capacity to recognise and process faces is diminished—such is the veracity of the connection.
The parts of our brain (The Visual Word Form Area) that recognise and process faces are the same parts that recognise and process words. This emphasises the fact that spelling is primarily visual and aural, so a rote learning, rule based model is less effective than building an awareness of the unique formation of every word through familiarity, not drilling lists.
Even more fascinating, the VWFA area, "when volunteers listened to spoken sentences, all their brains showed similar responses." When we read, we recognise words as pictures and hear them spoken aloud, we literally “hear” written words in our head (Dehaene & Cohen, 2011).
Words are fundamentally processed and catalogued by their basic sounds and shapes, through visual and aural practice. Think of the way we learn to recognise faces, and pronounce words—certainly not by processing and practising lists of them, we learned them through exposure, and continued feedback, and it just so happens that screens are ideal for immediate, context specific feedback, in way that spelling on paper can never hope to provide. Provide lots of opportunities for students to learn how to spell through this kind of exposure, not through drilling them in lists that have little or no relevance to their own reading, writing, listening or speaking experiences.
Squeebles Showcase
Squeebles Spelling - multimodal drill and practice
I'm not usually one to emphasise a tool, but from time to time a tool emerges that has affordances that are ridiculous to ignore, Squeebles Spelling is one of those. Digital tools like Squeebles can transform spelling practice by making traditional equivalents pale in comparison, consider the following:
Kids can 'masquerade' as a parent or teacher to curate their own lists, careless errors are mitigated by the built in spell check—obviously this feature is not activated when they are actually practising! Alternatively, there are a wide range of built in word lists to choose from that cater to all skill levels.
Multimodality and meaning
It's not enough to spell a word, they need to know how it sounds and understand the meaning. In Squeebles kids can record the sound of the word, as well place it in a sentence, eg "Pear. I like the taste of a pear better than an apple. Pear." Better still make it fun by having the kids make up silly sentences, as long as it shows they understand the meaning anything goes! This makes the activity aural and oral - this way the kids say the word, hear the word, and see the word.
Immediate feedback - differentiated
No need to wait for a teacher to collect in all the spelling tests, then wait a few days to get them all back, even then, actually acting on the spelling errors is a chore, never mind tracking these over time. Squeebles provides immediate feedback, but even better keeps a record of any errors in a collection called 'Tricky Words' that reflect the words that this individual is struggling with.
Motivation
Last and maybe least, Squeebles 'gamifies' the successes into mini games, so kids feels a tangible sense of reward, over and above the real reward—improved spelling.
A summary of the neuroscientific research is available here, with links to the original sources.
Chevillet, M. A., Jiang, X., Rauschecker, J. P., & Riesenhuber, M. (2013). Automatic phoneme category selectivity in the dorsal auditory stream. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(12), 5208-5215. Dehaene, S., & Cohen, L. (2011). The unique role of the visual word form area in reading. Trends in cognitive sciences, 15(6), 254-262.
McCandliss, B. D., Cohen, L., & Dehaene, S. (2003). The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus. Trends in cognitive sciences, 7(7), 293-299.
From time to time articles or videos appear with alarming headlines that connect mobile devices with harmful effects on children. It is of course completely understandable that parents become concerned when they see these things. The College places the safety and well being of our students above all other considerations and we monitor official advice around all aspects of safety that affect our students. Most recently, a video has been circulating among our parents about the possible harmful effects of radiation from mobile devices like iPads.
When looking at any health or safety issue we need to make careful decisions about where we gather our data from. In this day and age it is an easy process for an individual to present a specific viewpoint and to easily spread that message via the Internet. We also need to bear in mind that there are reasons for people and organisations to do this other than a genuine concern for public welfare. An article with a dramatic headline or video with lurid claims, attracts traffic and that traffic can generate revenue from advertising for example.
As an example of how individual sources can easily contradict each other, consider this Forbes article and this article from Wired Science, which both offer a strong counterpoint to the video mentioned previously.
The underlying issue here is, given that individual representations or newspaper articles are not necessarily reliable or often contradictory, where does the College look for direction?
Two places:
Large bodies of collated research, generally called meta-analyses
Expert advice from leading health authorities such as Ministries of Health and the World Health Organisation
We are not aware of any large body of research that shows a causal link between mobile device usage and radiation that result in any negative impact on people’s health. Furthermore there is currently no advice from any world health body that we are aware of that advises that children be protected from such radiation emitted by wireless devices such as iPads.
We take this issue seriously and monitor the medical advice from recognised institutions around this issue. The welfare of the children in our care is paramount to us and we will respond appropriately in the event that the advice from the leading health authorities changes at any point.
As a college we understand why parents might have concerns about the potential negative effects of using mobile devices after watching videos like the one linked above. A parent's concern for their children's welfare is of course understandable, but please rest assured that we take this issue seriously and monitor the medical advice from recognised institutions around this issue. The welfare of the children in our care is paramount to us and we will respond appropriately in the event that the advice from the leading health authorities changes at any point.
Here are some further points that may be helpful in setting the overall context:
Screen time
The actual percentage of the school day our students use these devices is relatively small. A common misconception is that the provision of a device per child increased the amount of time our children spend using a device, but that is not why we have 1:1 devices. We use 1:1 devices so it is easier to manage student content, and so students don't accidentally delete the work of other students, for more about this please see this post.
Students certainly never use the devices in close proximity to their heads, which is one basis of the research that makes claims about damaging radiation from mobile devices, nor do our iPads contain mobile SIMs that generate GSM frequencies.
Airplane Mode
Having the College iPads in Airplane mode is not practical. We rely on wireless connectivity to manage and monitor these devices, as well as to share children's learning with parents via platforms like Seesaw. This will also have a minimal impact on the overall amount of waves in the air, given the large number of services being beamed around the island to support mobile phones, wireless, television, etc.
Using Explain Everything with Google Drive on the iPad is an incredible combination. It's not always a great idea to ask students to work from blank screens, it's often useful to give them all a head start by setting up a slide or two for them.
This way they focus on the learning intention, rather than wasting time faffing about with finding the right image, or typing in text that you've just written on the board.
Here's a short video to show you the process:
As you can see from the video the steps are as follows:
On your iPad in Explain Everything, set up the slides you want your class to start with.
When it's ready, export the project to your Google Drive as a project (not as a video), it will be an xpl file.
You should be able to save it straight into any folder in your Google Drive, like a folder you've already shared with your class.*
Now you can just ask your students to open the file in their Google Drive app, when they do, they'll have the choice to open it with an app, they choose Explain Everything,
That's it, now they have their own copy in Explain Everything, ready to learn.
Method #2
Unfortunately (at time of typing) an update from Google Drive has rendered the above steps redundant... :(
The good news is that the good folks at Explain Everything have provided an alternative workflow that is not very different:
On your iPad in Explain Everything, set up the slides you want your class to start with.
When it's ready, export the project to your Google Drive as a project (not as a video), it will be an xpl file.
You should be able to save it straight into any folder in your Google Drive, like a folder you've already shared with your class.*
Go to the Explain Everything home screen and choose the 'document' icon from the top left corner.
Select GDrive and they can find the project in the shared folder.
That's it, now they have their own copy in Explain Everything, ready to learn.
*It doesn't have to go in a folder, if you want you can just share the project file directly with the class, just as you would any other file/Google doc.
What happens if you take 180 Grade 3 students, 2 magnificent Art Teachers, 24 iPad (Justand) stands, clamps and 24 iPads?
Well, you achieve a level of creativity that is truly inspiring—and that is the only word to describe the fever pitch that has been Grade 3 Art classes this past month, the synergy between 'real life' art work (paper, scissors, paint) and the literal bringing to LIFE of these creations using the stop motion animation via the iPad app - Stop Motion Studio was exactly that, INSPIRING. You don't need to look any further than this is to see the true embodiment of the '4 Cs' of '21st Century Learning' described by UWCSEA profile in action.
Creativity | Collaboration | Communication | Critical Thinking
Creative and innovative
Collaborative; and Communicators
Critical thinker and problem solvers
A brief look at Caroline and Siân's learning intentions for this unit reveals how powerful this kind of activity is in providing experiences that facilitate this kind of learning:
How to use animation software to retell a story.
How the creative preparation for an animation differs from other forms of art
How to use mixed media to create scenes and characters.
Look critically at their animation and consider how it can be changed.
Video compiled by Caroline Sebunya
Watching the students in action it also became quickly evident that there was a great deal of 'Critical Thinking and Problem Solving' happening—not something the teachers had expected or consciously planned for but, I can assure you, if you ask them now they will tell you that this became a very powerful aspect of the students' learning - from assembling and adjusting the stands, to the realisation that they need to storyboard their animation to troubleshooting issues with the App, to making judicious choices about the kinds of materials that would help them to tell their stories—even logical mathematical reasoning as they wrestled with frame rates per second!
So the question is, how do we really teach creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration? These are right brain skills, those that are most difficult to teach in a codified, regimented way. With most school systems now fixated on measurable outcomes (usually test scores), how do we make these 'soft skills' a genuine priority when they are so hard to measure? Well ... one way is through Digital Art.
Explain Everything & Doodlecast Pro - Fantastic Screencasting Apps
Screencasts are amongst some of the most powerful and potentially transformational digital tools we have, and it's great to seeing them being used regularly, whether on the Mac with Quicktime, or arguably more easily, on an iPad with one of the plethora of screencasting Apps that are available.
A digital recording of activity displayed on a screen
Screencasts are also a powerful way to get students to articulate their thinking, even if the only person who ever gets to see the screencast is themselves, their parents, or maybe a friend.
"students learn more deeply from reading a science text if they are prompted to explain the material to themselves aloud as they read." p162 (My emphasis)
Pellegrino J W, & Hilton M L (Eds) (2013). Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century. National Academies Press.
Reflection is critical
Cited in Black & Wiliam's pivotal 'Assessment and Classroom Learning' (1998), a review of European research by Elshout-Mohr (1994) pointed out both that students are often unwilling to give up misunderstandings—they need to be convinced through discussion which promotes their own reflection on their thinking—and also that if a student cannot plan and carry out systematic remedial learning work for himself, he or she will not be able to make use of good formative feedback. Both of these indicate that the kind of self-assessment fundamental to reflection is essential. Similarly, Hattie et al (1996) argue that direct teaching of study skills to students without attention to reflective, meta-cognitive, development may well be pointless. Pointless.
A more recent study entitled 'Learning by Thinking' (Stefano et al, 2014) focuses on the importance of reflection as one of critical components of learning; reflection as "the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience". In short, if you want your students to retain what they have learned long term, you have make time for students to reflect on what they have learned (not just what they have done) in fact far from bring a 'maybe if there's time' option, this is something you can't afford for your student's NOT to do.
"... individual learning is enhanced by deliberately focusing on thinking about what one has been doing. [...] Further, we find that the effect of reflection on learning is mediated by greater perceived self-efficacy. Together, our results reveal reflection to be a powerful mechanism behind learning, confirming the words of American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer John Dewey: “We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience.” (p29)
But,
Yes, you knew there was a but coming.
I see them used only for summative and not formative assessment, where the student creates a wonderful screencast that demonstrates mastery of the content... Which just leaves me wondering, well where was the learning? Did they already know how to do this? If not, where is the 'journey', you see I find teachers habitually orient to capturing summative demonstrations but rarely, if ever formative ones, specifically capturing mistakes, misconceptions, errors. This seems to 'run against the grain' of teaching instinct.
Worse still, if a student 'gets it wrong' the tendency is it to ask them to scrap it and try again.
The truth is, misconceptions are a fantastic opportunity for a great lesson using a two stage screencast, stage one, the misconception, duplicate to another and overwrite with a correction. As John Hattie explains:
"A safe environment for the learner (and for the teacher) is an environment where error is welcomed and fostered – because we learn so much from errors and from the feedback that then accrues from going in the wrong direction or not going sufficiently fluently in the right direction." p23 (My emphasis)
Hattie J (2013). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.
All you need is to set an activity that is focused on a common misconception that you know students often have, here's an example adapted from a recent article by Jan Chappuis Adapted from "Thoughtful Assessment with the Learner in Mind" (Educational Leadership, March 2014)
"The challenge with misconceptions is to correctly identify them and then plan lessons to dislodge them. Misconceptions are stubborn: They can't be corrected by papering over them. To illustrate, let's look at a misconception that's common in middle school science. Newton's first law of motion states that a force is not needed to keep an object in motion, yet many students (and adults) will tell you that if an object is in motion, it will require a force to stay in motion, which seems like common sense. (Aristotle thought this, by the way.) Memorizing the principles of the first law—“an object at rest will stay at rest” and “an object will continue with constant velocity unless acted on by an unbalanced force”—is generally not enough to counter what our senses tell us about force and motion: If you want a book to keep moving across a table, you have to keep pushing it."
So, having given the class Newton's first law of motion, the teacher could ask the students to create a screencast that explains the forces that are in motion in order for them to, for example, make a ball roll slowly along a floor, and to describe the forces are that in action that could affect it and why...
While the students are engaged in this activity, the teacher is actively monitoring, as a keen observer, the teacher is constantly watching what students do, looking for clues about their learning progress, and asking for input from students about their status, what have they learned, and more importantly what do they need to unlearn. The teacher walks among their students as they work, listening for clues about their understanding, asking questions that probe their thinking... Looking for any evidence of misconceptions that will fuel the next intervention or episode of teaching. Having established the extent of understanding, the next steps will be to teach to correct. Depending on the extent of the misunderstanding, correcting this could be a 10 minute clarification, or maybe require a series of lessons and activities designed to explore this issue thoroughly.
Following this, the teacher asks the students, to continue their screencast, not to delete or amend the initial misunderstanding, but to continue the learning 'story', to identify the misconception and contrast it with the correct interpretation.
"Finally, when students are able to do so, have them explain why the misconception is incorrect. Misconceptions, whether in science, social studies, mathematics, language arts, or any other discipline, require an intentional approach tailored to the nature of the misconception because the teaching challenge is to cause conceptual change—to have students give up the inaccurate conception they currently hold in favor of an accurate one." p24
Another but...
But this leaves another problem; what do you do with the 20 to 30 short videos?
Watching them all could take maybe an hour, and that's without feedback, that could be time worth spending considering the richness of the data it contains, arguably a better way to spend your time than 'marking'. Alternatives include, peer assessment, or 'P2P' (Pupil 2 Pupil). Name stick random checkups, choose 5 to view carefully (don't tell them who it will be, use name sticks near the end of the lesson).
What do you do with the kids who on the first attempt were able to show that they understood the situation well, no misconceptions evident?
Well the short answer is differentiate, other suggestions could include... Promote them to 'teacher assistants', as 'assistants' they are invaluable in helping determine whether the 'corrected' screencasts of the other students are actually really correct. Challenge them to find another misconception to set the class (in the same area of learning) see if it can 'trick' the class? Create another screencast to explain why the misconception exists?
7 powerful ways to use screencasts
Black and Wiliam describe 7 indicators of understanding in their seminal work, Assessment and Classroom Learning (1998), and it just so happens these exact same indicators are fantastic ways to focus the ways you ask your students to make screencasts.
These indicators of understanding are especially relevant in terms of the kinds of evidence that screencasting is uniquely equipped to capture, ask students to use screencasts to make their learning visible - explicit by creating a screencast that models the following: extension, modification, pattern finding, shortcuts, explanation.
Tacit indicators will be persistence and enthusiasm.
"After studying and discussing video extracts and transcripts of lessons, seven 'indicators of understanding' emerged [...] as a series of potential clues to the level of the student's understanding,
extension of a concept: students who have understood something often take the idea further on their own initiative;
making modifications to a pattern: students who understand, spontaneously start making their own modifications, while those who don't understand imitate or follow rules;
using processes in a different context: students who have understood a particular idea often start seeing the same patterns elsewhere;
using shortcuts: only students who are sure of the 'big picture' can short-cut a procedure so that thinking up or using a short-cut is taken as evidence of understanding;
ability to explain: students who have understood something are usually able to explain it;
Tacit indicators
ability to focus attention: persistence on a task is taken as a sign of understanding."
changes in demeanour: students who had understood were 'bright-eyed' while those who had not appeared half-hearted;
(p 57)
I'd argue that the reverse is true as well, namely, if a student does not show any of these indications, then it is likely they don't understand it, so capture their attempt, teach into their struggle, and then get them to capture a later more successful attempt.
SAMMS - Transformation with Tech Social: A great way to manage a class load of videos such as those generated by a class full of students creating screencasts is to ask the students to post them on a class online platform, such as a Google Site or blog.
Access: They can search for clarification on specific elements they find confusing, maybe particular vocabulary, or inspiration for their demonstration.
Mutability: In response to feedback, students can easily duplicate and revise their screencast and post a second screencast that shows clear evidence that relevant criticisms have been resolved.
Multimodality: Of course this entire medium is multimodal, combining image, drawing, audio and video.
Socially Network & Situate: Now it is online, you can facilitate a P2P homelearn* activity. Assign assessment buddies to feedback on each others screencasts at home, of course the teacher can now easily monitor the quality of these online interactions, and interject, support, clarify, redirect as necessary.
Looking for inspiration for misconceptions? Google it... "common misconceptions students have" or something similar, will give you plenty of material to get you started.
Paul Black & Dylan Wiliam (1998): Assessment and Classroom Learning, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5:1, 7-74
Elshout-Mohr M (1994). Feedback in self-instruction, European Education, 26, pp. 58-73.
Hattie J, Biggs J, & Purdie N (1996). Effects of learning skills interventions on student learning: a meta-analysis, Review of Educational Research, 66, pp. 99—13 Di Stefano, G., Gino, F., Pisano, G. P., & Staats, B. R. (2014). Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance. Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper, (14-093), 14-093. Chicago
