Tedious tech

I accidentally clicked on an old Parallels Edubuntu virtual machine instead of Windows, and thought, okay, might as well update it -- it was several hundred days (over 800? is that possible? not launched since I played around with setting up an Edubuntu server at the school in late 2008? Which never went anywhere.)

Several hours later, after downloading and installing all of the packages, cleaning up, rebooting -- oops, the X server wouldn't load, so no GUI. It was probably to be expected -- I have held off on upgrading the Parallels Desktop client -- I felt Nova was just randomly changing the product to keep a cash stream flowing. But this update might actually be necessary to get the latest Edubuntu to work.

So the new Parallels finally finished downloading, but before I upgrade it, I'm thinking I should back up the Windows disk images, just in case. So I do that backup, and twenty minutes later, I'm ready to install Parallels 6, but the installer informs me that an update is available, and I should download that.

And at the same time, I have been trying to get my tweets -- which I don't do very often -- to automatically show up on my Facebook page. The Twitter app for Facebook (which has a useless and ambiguous interface) is supposed to do that, but for some reason it stopped working. Sorting out problems with Twitter and Facebook seems like a hopeless cause. I found another Facebook app called Selective Tweet which only posts tweets that end with #fb. That seems to work, and the help page is, well, helpful.

While trying to write this, the Google search widget on this blog has stopped showing search results. Not a Firefox 4.0 issue, as it happens with Safari too. Finding help on Google products is a tedious process, sifting through Google Search results, with no date filter (the blogger search widget seems to have a history of problems).

I tried to make this post as boring as the process that it documents. But it is also a test to see if the change I made to Twitterfeed, to post these blog updates to both Twitter and Facebook, works. Because every word is precious.

jd

Diane Ravitch in Chicago

Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education and frequent critic of what she refers to as "corporate education reform" spoke to over 400 people on Saturday (March 12, 2011) at the UIC Forum. The event was sponsored by the Chicago Teachers Union.

An iPhone is not the easiest thing to take notes on, but here is an assortment of what I was able to take down. The bits below end up sounding like tweets, and it so happens Ravitch is a prolific tweeter ("I am not on Facebook").

"Is this an age of insanity or an age of stupidity?"

"[Corporate education reformers are ] standing on children to push agenda. School reform as a front to destroy public sector unions."

Referring to events unfolding in Wisconsin and there potential impact on education there, "Where is Arne Duncan? Will Arne Duncan meet me in Madison? Where is President Obama?" And "Money was not the point. -- killing collective bargaining was the real goal.

"We can't let the corporate reformers destroy public education."

"The NCLB mandate [that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014] is utopian. It can't be met. No country has done it. NCLB is a timetable for the destruction of public education. Private entrepreneurs are waiting in the wings." By analogy, if NCLB was extended to police departments: "If the United States is not crime-free by 2014, close all of the police departments, and give a badge to anyone who wants one."

"The future of public education is in the balance. It is the cornerstone of democracy. It should not be privatized."

Synonyms for Race to the Top:

• NCLB 2.0
• Race to the Trough
• Dash to the Cash

On testing:

• "Testing is not the same thing as instruction."
• "Take test scores with a box of salt."
• "Testing is not a science." Testing is a social construction.
• "Data is just a representation of reality, it is not reality."
• "How can you evaluate teachers on data that is meaningless."
• "We need a broader vision of education. We need tests for diagnostic purposes. But high stakes testing is a corruption of the test."

Poverty is the the problem, not teachers. Where the Harlem Children's Zone (Geoffrey Canada, hero of Waiting for Superman) succeeds, it is because it is an antipoverty program. Poor children arrive at school with an achievement gap already in place. Teachers had nothing to do with that. Education in the United States as a whole is not failing, only poor peoples' schooling.

"Merit pay makes no difference." See work by Daniel Pink and Edwards Deming.

See http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/

jd

Solving math word problems

A teacher asked me a question re: strategies for solving word problems. This is what came to mind:

1. Consider the popular 4-step problem-solving strategy (adapted from Michael Polayi, appears in the MathThematics text; there is a good description on the this Scholastic.com page) as an overall approach. The basic steps are:

1. Understand the problem
2. Make a plan (there are lists of basic strategies like "guess and check", "use a formula", "draw a picture"; see the Scholastic link above for a longer list).
3. Carry out the plan
4. Look back (review, reflect, evaluate)

2. As part of step 1, understanding the problem, Ms. Schumacher at our school has students mark the problem text in different ways to isolate the key parts of the problem. She has her students underline the portion of the problem that says what to do, or what the question is asking for. They circle numbers or number words that are important to the problem. And they draw boxes around the actions they need to perform on the numbers (see next point). Reading math problems is a kind of literacy, and this deconstruction of the text can help comprehend the problem.

3. Again related to step 1: Since reading math problems is a kind of literacy, students need to understand the vocabulary of math. There are addition words, subtraction words, and so on for each basic math operation. For example, addition words are words like "sum", "plus", "add", "increased by". Subtraction words are words like "less", "difference", "decreased by". Being able to recognize key math words, and what operations they are calling for (as well as what order to put the operands in) is important. Purplemath has a table of "key words". Here is a link to a table students and I put together last year. (It is also important to be able to determine what is important information for solving the problem, and what is extraneous or irrelevant information).

4. Students have different skill levels when it comes to what strategies they might use, but it might be useful to reinforce that a strategy that works is a good strategy, the main trade-off being effort to arrive at a solution. Guess-and-check (or using "brute force") is okay if you have the time and patience; algebraic methods are very flexible and powerful but may be prone to error if the student isn't comfortable with them. It is also important I think that students recognize that a combination of strategies is frequently used (e.g., I find it useful to first draw a picture or diagram, or make a table, to understand the problem before thinking of an algebraic solution).

5. The last step is very important. Is the answer reasonable? Does it actually solve the problem? Was there an easier way to tackle it? Will it work for other problems?

6. Regarding teaching strategies:

• Whatever can be done to help students de-code the problem can help. I am thinking of comprehension strategies used with other kinds of texts.
  
• A think-aloud of how the teacher might approach the problem could model the problem-solving strategy for the students.
  
• After students have highlighted the key parts of the problem (what the problem is asking for, the key numbers, the operations), modeling how to put the pieces together can help.
  
• A KWL chart might structure the process, especially if students are familiar with the format. The Know part, "what do we know already?" = the numbers and operations that the students have highlighted. The Want to know part = what the problem is asking for. The Learned part is the problem solution.
• Having students make up their own word problems for other students might help them understand the structure or genre of math word problems.
• Writing in a math journal about what they did to solve a problem might help gel the process for them.
• Re: thinking about general problem-solving strategies, posing practical problems for the students might build their confidence in their problem-solving abilities and connect with strategies they already use, but don't think of them as such ("activating prior knowledge"). For example, a million dollars is waiting for you at the Lincoln Park Zoo -- how are you going to get it?
• Having a context for understanding a word problem is important. If the problem deals with things the students don't know anything about, it is hard to understand what the problem is asking. This starts to slide into the area of math and social justice -- presenting math in terms that connect in deep ways with the lives of the students. Students need to be engaged enough with the material to want to solve the problem.
• There are lots of other words that have math meanings, separate from different ways of referring to the basic operations and relations. See the ISBE Math Frameworks Glossary for words and definitions that are important to know when approaching word problems.
• Being able to talk to students about how they solved or didn't solve a problem can be very useful for understanding their thinking and the source of possible misunderstandings.
  

This just touches on some strategies. Any comments are welcome. Literacy Strategies for Improving Mathematics Instruction, by Joan M. Kenney et al. (an ASCD book) has insights into different aspects of math and literacy.

Since most real-world problems that require math present themselves as word problems, I think it is important that students are fluent in translating them into math terms, and using math tools for finding solutions. It is one of the important ways that math becomes meaningful.

jd

The Best Classrooms

I saw a reference to the article below in a mailing from The Alliance for Childhood (more play!):

Brilliance in a Box: What do the best classrooms in the world look like?

The title of the article (by Amanda Ripley, and appeared in Slate) pretty much sums it up, but there are a couple of stand-out lines:

"Classrooms in countries with the highest-performing students contain very little tech wizardry, generally speaking."

"'In most of the highest-performing systems, technology is remarkably absent from classrooms,' says Andreas Schleicher, a veteran education analyst for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development who spends much of his time visiting schools around the world to find out what they are doing right (or wrong). 'I have no explanation why that is the case, but it does seem that those systems place their efforts primarily on pedagogical practice rather than digital gadgets.'"

"But the most innovative schools around the world do not tend to be the ones with the most innovative technology inside them."

There are other observations about what may be making schools successful -- pedagogical skill, parent involvement, length of school day -- no great surprises there. The technology aspect, though, was the standout for me.

jd

Making Khan Academy-type lessons on the iPad

I like, very much, the spirit of the Khan Academy videos (free!), and the content too (1800+ per the website, and growing). They are also available on the iPhone and iPad. If you have never seen them, they are basically screen captures of Sal Khan writing on a computer screen, with narration of what the instructor is doing. According to the site, this is how he does it:

I use Camtasia Recorder ($200) + SmoothDraw3(Free) + a Wacom Bamboo Tablet ($80) on a PC. I used to use ScreenVideoRecorder($20) and Microsoft Paint (Free).

I wanted to see if I could make the same -- creating something specific to my class, using my Mac, without buying anything new. I have an iPad, a MacBook, and am playing around with Apple's relatively new Magic Trackpad. Seems simple enough, right?

The Magic Trackpad didn't work very well as a drawing tablet. The Pogo stylus I have required a lot of pressure to draw with. Fingers were okay but it seemed unnatural, and difficult to simulate the click-drag combination required to draw with a mouse (which I find equally difficult to use to write legibly). The trackpad works well as a mouse replacement, but it really isn't a drawing tablet.

The iPad is a great tablet platform. Adobe Ideas, for example, has nice line-smoothing drawing ability, and with a stylus, it is very easy to draw legible handwriting (like Khan!). Plus, the iPad has the audio recording hardware, and an app like PaperDesk includes both drawing tools and recording tools. However, there is no sanctioned way to capture video of the iPad screen from what I can tell (single frame captures are part of the iPad OS, press the home and power buttons at the same time). There is software for jail-broken iPads (ScreenRecorder + FullForce) to record the screen, but I'm not ready to jail-break my iPad.

Another approach is to display the iPad screen on the Mac. You can use something like Veency on the iPad (a VNC server), and record that portion of the Mac screen, but again, this requires a jail-broken iPad. Another way to get the iPad video signal to the Mac, without jail-breaking is to use a converter from Epiphan, but it lists for $299.

An app like Whiteboard, which allows you to share whiteboards with other iPad users, would probably work if there was a Mac version of Whiteboard (and so capture the Mac version of the Whiteboard using screen recording software on the Mac).

My current, albeit crude, solution, is to use a web-based whiteboard-sharing software, GroupBoard (free for up to five collaborators). Groupboard has an iPad app (free). I created a shared online whiteboard by creating a page on a site I manage, and included the one line of HTML that Groupboard provides. On the iPad, I logged on to the Groupboard whiteboard I set up. I did the same using my browser (Firefox) on the Mac. On the Mac, I used iShowU HD ($29.95) to record the activity on the screen, in this case capturing what showed in Firefox. I used the built-in microphone on the Mac to record the narration (the sound recording was handled by iShowU as it recorded the screen activity). I used my Pogo stylus to draw on the iPad, and narrated as I drew. Here is the result:

Khan Experiment 1 from James Davis on Vimeo.

It worked pretty well. The handwriting is rather blocky on the shared whiteboard, but passable. Groupboard has a text tool which I used for the title. Unfortunately, the controls for the Groupboard app are on the bottom of the screen, so it is easy to rest my palm on the buttons when drawing and accidentally select the settings options (but this doesn't show on the video because only whiteboard drawing is shared to the Mac). The Groupboard app crashed when I tried to change the text size and line width, so I just avoided those.

The challenge of talking coherently while drawing at the same time and managing the drawing application tools is a real skill, and makes me appreciate all the more what Sal Khan has achieved. I blather on a bit at the beginning, before drawing anything, so patience.

jd

P.S. I would love to hear of other ways people have done this on the Mac, and especially with an iPad.

Playing around, web tools and teaching math

Big surprise. A blog titled "Technology and Education", and here is a posting that is actually about technology used in education.

Here is an embedded Brainshark presentation on using wikis for math instruction. Brainshark allows you to upload a PowerPoint presentation (also supports OpenOffice presentations), and then record audio for each slide. The audio-enhanced presentation can then be shared using embedded HTML (as is the case here).



And here is a short video experiment with students to portray math concepts. The video is extremely rough -- I made a big mistake in shooting the video that made it very difficult to get the exact special effect I wanted. It's close, but not quite right: next time, shoot each student separately. I shot the student who appears twice separately, but included the middle student, the one holding the equals sign, in both clips. It was difficult to get rid of one of her, so I finally ended up just shifting the video position slightly so one clip overlayed the other. Just don't look too closely. And our green screen is a bit ratty. Editing was done in Adobe Premiere (CS4). It is mainly proof of concept, to give the kids an idea of what to do when we get to the project. The video is shared via Vimeo. As you can see, I didn't get the still frame right.

The Symmetric Property from James Davis on Vimeo.

And here is a comic strip (again an example for the students), using MakeBeliefsComix.com. I like the MakeBeliefsComix simplicity of creating comics with the site -- no logins; and easy to use, intuitive tools. The downside is students can't save comics and go back to edit them, and there is no jpg export. Students need to either print the comic to a PDF file, and convert, or do a screen grab of the comic on the web page. Students can also email a link to the comic to the teacher.




The classroom wiki is barely getting started, but here is a link:

Dvorak Algebra 2010

jd

Technology portfolio

I suppose this is ready enough for release into the wild. This is totally self-promotion, but ...

Here is a link to the portfolio I put together for the Technology in Education Masters program I am in at National Louis University. We are nearing the end of the program, the portfolio is meant to demonstrate some understanding of the Illinois State Board of Education's Technology Specialist requirements and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) technology facilitator standards:

A Technology in Education Portfolio

It does include a personal philosophy on technology in education, as well as a list of resources and readings that I have found useful and/or important.

Comments welcome, either on the portfolio discussion pages (requirse a Wikispaces account), or here.

jd