Twitter + cell phone = FREE Classroom Response System

I've posted before about embracing cell phones in education. That idea is coming closer to reality. I just know that I'm throwing my million dollar idea out the window. I also know that the edublogger community has a MUCH greater chance of pulling this together.

If you've been following the NECC chatter you've certainly read about how Twitter was the "rookie of the year" application. See posts from Jeff Utecht and Ryan Bretag.

David also has ideas churning about educational applications of Twitter.

Here's what's on my mind and I hope that the programmers out there can help.

As I visited the NECC exhibit hall, the "clicker" vendors were very popular. You know the ones where teacher posts a question and student use a $50 remote control unit to respond. A classroom set can be had for ONLY $2500-$3000.

So here's the alternative:

1. Teacher and students establish Twitter or Jaiku accounts.
2. Teacher adds students as friends.
3. Teacher poses a question on Twitter as part of the lesson being delivered.
   
4. Students respond using Twitter. The answer could be a simple ABCD or could be short answer.
5. Responses come filing in on the teacher's screen.

So there are privacy concerns with this. There are equity concerns (not all have phones, not all have text plan, etc.) I'm certain there are concerns with policy as well. Many schools have banned cell phones.

The idea here is that we're not far from a $3000 system for effectively ZERO.

I'm not ready to discuss the educational value of the clicker systems. That's an animal of its own. Fact is, classroom response systems can help to engage students in the learning process, even if it's only the first step.

So what do you think? Can a Twitter-like app be tweaked to create a classroom response system using a browser and cell-phones? Why not? What about those one-to-one classrooms?

Tags: Twitter, CPS, NECC07, paccio, education

EduBloggerCon from Atlanta 2007

The first annual EduBloggerCon took place on Saturday, June 23, 2007. Education technology bloggers from around the globe gathered for conversation in an "unconference" format. I arrived in the mid-afternoon.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is moderating a discussion about virtual learning communities. Why are some successful and others not so?

It was suggested that a "watchdog" was needed to head-off the community members who attack participants who express differing opinions.

If members have a common interest there seems to be a higher possibility of success.

The discussion turned to Second Life. David Warlick notes that SL users invest a lot of time in creating their environment and therefore work hard to cultivate that environment for a comfortable learning opportunities.

Others noted that it was challenging to establish trust in an SL environment.

• How do you know who to trust?
• The whole "anonymousness" of the site is a bit scary.
• CL of SLA suggested that we don't know what to do with SL. He has trouble with the trust element lacking within.
• CL expressed concern about anonymity in many applications... iChat is an example. Anonymous harassment and cyberbullying is a concern.
  
• In a virtual/online learning community, where is the authority? In a school we know where the authority is. But in an open community the authority is unclear.

Has anyone created a "grass roots" learning community and turned the access over to students and let the community grow from students to teachers rather than the other way around.
Interesting thought.

With our Classrooms for the Future program the carts, and therefore access to the technology, are under the control of the teacher.

My feeling is that the technology tools are coming. We have a professional responsibility to help ALL teachers to embrace it and leverage the power and engagement factors. I often use the example that I wouldn't take my children to a physician who was using antiquated techniques. The same applies to school. Let's begin together, today.

I enjoyed putting some faces to names. Chris Craft, Vicki Davis, and Steve Hargadon were very welcoming. (I'll insert links soon.)

Good session, good conversation, great people.

KP

Tags: edubloggercon, edubloggercon07, edubloggercon2007, paccio

Open Source Alternatives

Tight budgets mean that education technology directors must make wise use of the dollars allocated to technology. I have found success investing the dollars in quality hardware and infrastructure. I like to save money by using high-quality open source alternatives to commercial software.

One example is creating PDFs. Granted Adobe Acrobat is MUCH, MUCH more than a pdf creator. In my experience most office staff and many teachers simply use Adobe Acrobat to convert documents to pdf format. There are several web-based and open source alternatives for that simple task. At a savings of $30 to $50 per workstation, that's significant.

You can find open source alternatives at Open Source Alternatives. Be sure to add their news page to your RSS reader.

KP

Tags: opensource, open-source, paccio

OLPC Program Featured on 60 Minutes

Last evening on CBS television show "60 Minutes" featured Nicholas Negroponte and the One Laptop per Child program.

At one moment in the show Leslie Stahl asks about the students who don't know how to use a computer. Negroponte suggests that perhaps the teacher is optional.

Negroponte’s idea was that kids don’t need teachers to learn the how to use the computer. They can pick it up by experimenting on their own – with help from a friend.

"That is what we are doing… is that that kid is showing this kid – that is key," he says.

"They get it instantly. It takes a 10-year-old child about three minutes."

When Stahl asks if he means children who have never used any computer before, Negroponte responds, "Children who’ve never, in some cases, seen electricity."

Many educators would have trouble with some of those statements. I'll just add a few questions.
1. Who is teaching 100 million people to create MySpace pages?
2. Who is teaching the tens of millions of text messengers who vote on American Idol?

I believe that people can learn to use a device if there is a need or desire to do so. Can they learn to use it effectively as a learning tool? There is certainly a need for a well-trained, inspired educator to help students use a computer as an effective learning tool.

We all know that the most important element in learning is an excellent teacher. In addition to an excellent teacher, what one thing, one resource, one device would you like to provide to every single student? I think the answer is clear.

All aboard!!

KP

Tags: OLPC, laptop, one-to-one, paccio

Multimedia Apps are the Latest Web 2.0 Victim

I'm going to date myself with this post. Of the two or three blog subscribers I have, I know of one other who can say they were a fan of HyperCard. Remember HyperCard. What COULDN'T you do with that application??

HyperCard then faded with the rise of HyperStudio. HyperStudio was a cool application too. Students really loved to create multimedia projects. The one drawback was sharing the projects. Posting to the web was always cumbersome in that you needed a browser plug-in.

Zoho Notebook caught my eye a few months ago. They've really done a nice job with it. Today Miguel sheds some light on Scrapblog. Watch the Scrapblog tour. I now have a new favorite web 2.0 application.

Scrapblog looks well on it's way to digital storytelling where the technology is nearly transparent. NICE!

KP

Tags: multimedia, web 2.0, paccio

Web-based Presentation Application

How has this web 2.0 application flown under our radar for so long?? Two of the web-based presentation tools (Zoho Show, Slideshare.net) have shared the spotlight. The primary element that is missing from those two applications (at least they were missing when I last tried them) was slide animations.

Anyone who has incorporated presentation projects into their classroom knows how students use slide animations. (OK, so OVERUSE is probably a better term.) They are disappointed when the animations don't work in the online versions mentioned above.

Spresent.com is a web-based flash application that allows users to build presentations online. The presentations can incorporate pictures from Flickr or Bubbleshare, movies from YouTube, Vimeo, and much more.

I don't see a way to import an existing PowerPoint but I'm sure that's on the radar.

Check out some sample presentations created with Spresent.
Car show example
Features example