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Good with Tech

June 3, 2018 / Troy / 0 Comments

This phrase seems to be coming up a lot these days.

Kids are all “good with tech”.
The new teachers are all “good with tech”.
Principal so and so is “good with tech”.

All are very well meaning. But what does “good with tech” really mean?

Let’s start with kids. Are all kids “good with tech”. No. (All kids aren’t good just about anything). Are some kids “good with tech”. Absolutely. But let’s define what “good with tech” means.

Mostly kids aren’t afraid to push buttons. They do “stuff” on technology items. Some of them have worked extremely hard and put in lots of time to understand varies technologies or skills. This background can be very advantageous and useful. However, this doesn’t make all kids “good with tech”.

So, how about those recent college graduates? Certainly, they must all be “good with tech”. Recent college grads grew up completely within the time frame of readily available technology. (We’re going to partially ignore those non-traditional college grads who had gaps between high school completion and finishing college). After all, these college grads grew up after the Internet was widely available. They don’t know of a time when computers were NOT readily available. They grew up with the iPhone. They grew up with the Internet already available and moving into every home. Thus, they do have a grasp of what technology can do.

How about Principal “so and so”? Well, just like above, Principal “so and so” may not be afraid of pushing buttons. Principal “so and so” may use more technology than his/her/they peers.

And one could argue that all of these nice folks similarly lack a fear of pushing buttons. These things do not, however, make one “good with tech”.

To be perfectly honest, we are still figuring out tech. We know what a lot of the research says. We know that technology is not a magic savior by itself in its current form.

There is one of the pillars of “good with tech” for me. To be “good with tech”, one should have a firm grasp of what tech can and can not do. One should intimately understand many of the basics of technology. To be “good with tech” means that one doesn’t use the phrase “can’t you just…” when talking about technology. To be “good with tech” means understanding some of the unintended consequences. To be “good with tech” means considering how something is used and implemented. To be “good with tech” means that one considers whether the problem is best solved by technology or not. To be “good with tech” means to not try to rely on technology solve problems that are best solved by humans.

Are you “good with tech”?

#GoOpen

May 8, 2018 / Troy

Michigan, like several other states, is adopting the #GoOpen movement. Michigan is planning on rolling out their #GoOpen site in June of 2018.
I think that this is great news. I’ve long been an open source advocate. I believe that you are investing in yourself or investing in someone else. Teachers have long created a wide variety of materials. Many of these excellent materials could be shared and utilized across the state (nation, world).

Challenge

Quite frankly, I’d like to call on Michigan to really #GoOpen. Let’s have school districts across Michigan utilize open source and share those resources. Let’s see Michigan start developing (or coordinating the sharing from districts) of a wide variety of open source projects.
Most school districts have similar concerns. We have similar needs. Let’s start with some curriculum resources. Michigan is doing that with the development of Michigan #GoOpen hub on OER Commons (or see OER Commons).

Kudos

This is a great start (at least it will be when unveiled in June of 2018). But why stop there? Why not work with great educators around the state (and maybe even some college students who are studying programming at some of our fine colleges) to develop resources for teachers? For example, many students learning programming need a real world project to help them learn and refine their skills. Why not take some of the open source projects and specifically adapt them for educational use in Michigan?
Michigan has adopted the Ed-Fi platform for sharing information. According to what I’ve been told, this has resulted in improvements and sharing between Michigan and at least one other state.
Michigan has also developed some textbooks that are OER. The Michigan Open Book Project is great. This project has created some good social studies materials.
However, Michigan chose not to use open source software to provide professional development (instead going with a vendor who gave them a “great deal” for a couple of years – a vendor that has a history of losing money to gain customers).
Anyone who reads this knows that I’m a big supporter of Moodle. It’s open source, free and can be pretty and effective.
However, there really are a lot more open source options that Michigan could lead the way on implementing.

Options

Here is a quick list of open source software that I’ve used:

Moodle– powerful, efficient, pretty learning management system.
WordPress – powers about 30% of the web. Give every teacher the power of a blog.
Anki – powerful, intelligent flashcards. A great tool that supports retrieval practice (spaced retrieval).
LimeSurvey – survey software
Scribus – desktop publishing. Schools need to do a variety of desktop publishing. Some of these revolve around security.
Linux – operating system. Lots of tools.
OpenBoard – Interactive whiteboard software. Can be used with a variety of interactive projectors/boards.
H5P – creates interactive tools to use within Moodle.
GIMP – Image manipulation. This is powerful, but training is important.
Mahara – ePortfolio solution. We have ours integrate with Moodle for a wonderful user experience for students. Imagine students being able to create portfolios and “take them with them”.
Pressbooks – create books that can be shared and repuposed.
Hypothes.is– annotate the web. Also bookmark and share the web.
VUE – mindmapping and non-linear presentation software.
Blender – 3D creation suite. Give students the power to create.
OpenShot Video Editor – video editor.
Minetest – game creation engine (developed in conjunction with MineCraft).

Potential Projects

Just about every school district will have some needs that open source software can help address. Things like HelpDesk software and approval processes. Michigan could lead the way in coordinating options for schools. This could be high leverage, low cost for Michigan.

Final Thoughts

I’m sure that I’ve missed some software that I use frequently. Not every school district would want to implement that same options. Different schools have different needs. However, our needs are close enough that opening up these options and creating these resources could open up a great wealth of money for schools to use in other ways.
Come on Michigan, Let’s Truly #GoOpen!

WordSelect

April 24, 2018 / Troy / 1 Comment

I’m sure that you’ve heard of the 15 minutes of fame. Part of my 15 minutes of fame goes to GitHub (is there a thing such as GitHub famous?). I chatted with Mr. Green about the icon for WordSelect. I made a couple of suggestions on a different icon. Even though I did very little, he still nicely placed a “shout out” to me in the GitHub notes.

New [w] icon with a hint of red. Added an svg vector version so no pixelation on zoom. Credit to Troy Patterson for ideas and inspiration on the icon

Marcus Green does some really great work. He has developed the Gapfill plugin, which I really like, as well as some others. (Gapfill is a very thoughtful implementation of a Cloze activity).

His latest plugin is WordSelect. This is another terrific plugin for Moodle. WordSelect allows you to do exactly what it says, select words. The teacher simply notes the words that will be the correct answer by putting square brackets around the word.

There are several ways to use this new plug in. Teachers could use this for grammar (have students select all of the verbs for example). Teachers could use this to have students identify the correct entries on a table (find all of the mammals listed below). Teachers could also add a number to each sentence and ask students to identify the sentence that is the topic sentence (or which sentence supports a specific idea).

Anyway, Marcus Green is fine human who has done some great work supporting student learning. We need more people like Mr. Green. Now go install the plugin and get to creating.

Padlet

April 15, 2018 / Troy / 0 Comments

Padlet has apparently changed their plans. According to Richard Byrne, Padlet is now limiting free tier users to three boards. Now, I’m not a really big Padlet user. Ever since I a teacher contact me because the kids were swearing on her Padlet and she wanted to know who did it (no way to tell as it is anonymous), I’ve not been really big on it. For what the teacher was doing (short book reviews), Moodle worked so much better (and there was accountability for the students).

But I do understand that some like the easy of use and the visual presentation of Padlet. I get that. I also know that ultimately things are not free. Padlet has expenses. They have bills to pay. It is important to know how sites are paying their costs. Padlet has a paid tier. Obviously, they need “enough” people on the paid tier to pay for the free stuff.

Padlet’s paid plans are $8.95/ month or $99/ year. The paid plans will give you unlimited Padlet walls in your account. It’s also worth noting that the free plan will display advertising.

I guess I have a tough time seeing why people are upset. Padlet seems to be doing the “right” thing, each user gets three Boards added to their total. Padlet isn’t taking anything away from users. They are making a business decision. Remember, you are always investing in someone else or investing in yourself.

For me, I’ll continue to utilize Moodle. Moodle provides a safe, attractive place of students to collaborate. The skills that I’ve learned in using Moodle continue to serve me well. My investment in me is a good long term investment.

For collaborating with the rest of the world, I’ll keep on using this blog.

Hypothesis

April 4, 2018 / Troy / 2 Comments

I’ve been playing around with Hypothes.is lately. Partly, this is because I was using the free version of Diigo, but ran into some limits. I have a couple of different groups that I created in Diigo. I went to add a fourth person to one of the groups and discovered that I had tripped over the free account restrictions. Being over the limit (didn’t really know this limit was coming), meant that one of the people that I wanted to collaborate with couldn’t be involved.

Now, it’s only fair that for profit companies make money. But it is also up to each one of us to determine the value and worth of each opportunity that we have. I like Diigo. It is a good service. It allows for bookmarking that isn’t tied to a single browser. It allows one to share bookmarks with a group (but, apparently there are limits on that one).

So, I started looking around for alternatives. I love open source software. Partly, this is because it is usually maintained by someone who has a specific need.

My research led me to Hypothes.is. Hypothes.is is slightly different from Diigo, but really fits a need for me. It still allows me to create groups. It allows me to bookmark sites and share those. It also allows me to Annotate web pages (this is actually the main purpose of Hypothes.is).

We’re a nonprofit on a mission to bring an open conversation over the whole web. Use Hypothesis right now to hold discussions, read socially, organize your research, and take personal notes.

I added the Hypothes.is extension into Google Chrome. One of the nice things about the extension is that you have to turn it on per page. It is not always running until you turn it on. In Safari, or FireFox, it is a bookmarklet. Either way, it is easy to use. One click and it is ready to go. (This also works very smoothly on an iPad, Chromebook, heck, it even works on my phone).

The workflow goes like this.

Turn on the Extension (or bookmarklet, depending on the browser that I’m currently using).
Select the group that I’m bookmarking to in tool bar in the top right hand side of the page.
Highlight the title of the page (usually) and click on the little Highlight button that pops up.
Click on the edit button (a pencil icon) in the Annotation and add a tag (I tend to tag just about everything). This way, I can find things quickly later. Click the Post button so that the others can see my notes. (You can also post only to yourself).

There are just a couple of current shortcomings.

There seems to be no way to remove someone from a group that you’ve created. It is easy enough to add people. I’m just concerned that someone could join a group and then turn out to be a “bad actor” (yep, I’ve been on the Internet for a while now).
There are no settings to receive an email when others in the group have bookmarked or annotated items. (The only notification is when “someone replies to one of my annotations”).

That’s it. I really like Hypothes.is. I’m not sure if they will heed my call for the two improvements for my use case, but I hope so. Check out Hypothes.is and let me know if you like it too.

Passion

March 24, 2018 / Troy / 1 Comment

I love to listen to people who are passionate. Elizabeth Stanny is obviously one of those people. I don’t know Dr. Stanny at all. However, she has a blog post (Why SSU should continue with Moodle), that is filled with passion.

She also makes some really great points:

Why switch from an open source learning management system to a proprietary one while switching from proprietary textbooks to open source textbooks?
Why spend time evaluating an alternative to Moodle when 80% of the faculty are satisfied with it?
Why redo connections (that may not be able to be redone) that work?
What are the attributes of a “next-generation” Learning Management System?

She makes some excellent and passionate points. She has done her homework on Canvas. Part of that homework was reviewing some of Canvas’ financial reports. Part of that homework was reviewing a presentation to Investors (you know the people that give Canvas money).

A few excerpts, (please do go read her post):

Canvas executives have no experience in the educational market, but lots of experience marketing.
Concern about stricter privacy laws in the EU relative to the US
For every $1 of revenue, there are 63¢ of Sales and Marketing expense
Large losses now for future profit
Only Canvas can host

All great points. I’ve talked about how you are either investing in yourself or investing in someone else. With Canvas, it is pretty clear that you are investing in Canvas and that bill will come due someday.

So, I did say that Dr. Stanny was passionate. She uses Moodle in conjunction with r-exams. She has obviously invested quite a bit in this workflow. So much so, that she states

If SSU continues with Moodle, I will offer free training and support to anyone that wants to learn how to use r-exams. (emphasis mine).

It is also noteworthy that Canvas is not even an option for r-exams output.

All in all, an excellent write up from a passionate fellow Moodler. Go give it a read.

3 Ways to Stop Blended Learning

February 20, 2018 / Troy / 0 Comments

The wonderful Mr. Chris Kenniburg has authored a great post called Top 3 Ways to Stop Blended Learning. I love his take on this. This is done firmly with tongue in cheek.

His Top 3 ways:

Blame the Current LMS for Lack of Adoption with Staff
Technology Makes Teaching and Learning Easy
Change…Because What You Have Isn’t Working

Plus, a Bonus Tip:

Let Each Teacher Decide What Tool to Use

Seriously, go check out the article, then come back. I’ll wait.

Next, he provide three ways to help break the cycle and actually develop technology tools and skills that make a difference with real teachers and students.

Keep It Simple
Be Consistent
Do the Work

Now, I was lucky enough to have some discussions with Chris about the post. He drafted the post and shared an early version with me. He did a great job with the post. It is right on and well worth a read.

I especially love the parts about investing in yourself. It is crucial that educators do the work to learn and implement effective methods of teaching and learning.

Seriously, go read the article.

Student Presentation Feedback

February 1, 2018 / Troy / 0 Comments

I was asked by a teacher if Moodle would allow students to grade other students presentations. That is, the teacher has assigned students to give a classroom presentations. This teacher wanted the students in the class to grade the presentations in a simple, easy way.

I’ve previously written up how a teacher can grade oral presentations in Moodle quickly and efficiently. I thought that was absolutely brilliant. This teacher is asking for something similar, but, yet, very different. Instead of just the teacher doing the grading, every student would provide feedback.

I believe that this is good pedagogy. Having students involved in the assessment of their work is important. By assessing the work of their peers, each student also gets a good opportunity to deal with the criteria and learn the expectations.

So, how to do this in Moodle? Well, this seems like a great opportunity for the Workshop Module. The Workshop Module is designed to be student assessment based. In its most popular use case, the Workshop Module is peer editing.

Now, let’s take a look back at what I was asked. Each student will get up in front of the class and present on a topic. The teacher has already developed and shared a rubric with the class. The teacher would like each student to complete a rubric for each presentation.

Although the Workshop Module is not specifically designed for this, it will do a wonderful job. The students will need to “submit” their presentation prior to the starting of the delivery of those presentations. (Workshop module must have all the students at the same point in the process). Thus, I would have the students enter the title of their presentation and a short synopsis (a slightly tricky way to get them to write more and practice writing). Then, the other students will have a rubric and can provide feedback.

First of all, each student will receive feedback from many students. This will give them a good overall picture of how the presentation went. The students will also receive a grade for how closely they graded to the rest of the class. So the students who are listening to the presentation will also receive a grade for how they graded that presentation.

The teacher will get a wealth of data. Knowing how each student graded the presentation (and this is presented in a simple view) can give the teacher a nice broad overview of the class.

The teacher can then grade the same presentation and release this back to the students.

I’m working on a full write up to post over on Master Moodle. If you are interested in how to do this, please let me know.

Moodle Lesson Plans

January 24, 2018 / Troy / 0 Comments

I’ve been meaning to develop and post some Moodle Lesson Plans for a while now. I’ve decided that it is time to stop meaning and start posting. So, I’ve posted a couple (Say “Hi” in Moodle and Picture to Story. Say “Hi” in Moodle is a way for students to introduce themselves to the class. Picture to Story is a creative writing assignment.

I would really appreciate feedback on the posts, the Master Moodle Site, and the concept. If you find it useful, please let me know. Have an idea to make it better, let me know. A particular lesson that you would like to see implemented in Moodle, let me know.

Aw shucks

January 23, 2018 / Troy / 0 Comments

I received a “shout out” on Twitter from the EduPaths folks.

Check out this reflection from @Smhearty about the @EduPathsMDE MOOC! http://troypatterson.me/edupaths-mooc-2017-final-project/ … Are you looking at ed cert renewal in June? A new MOOC starts January 29 for 20+SCECHs. Register here – https://www.smore.com/x5qz1 @MichiganASCD@MEMSPA@MEMSPAchat@MAISA_ISDs

Glad to have been part of the project.

If you are a Michigan teacher looking to earn SCECH’s for FREE, check out the course.

Troy Patterson