Widgets, Cogs, and Flipping the Syllabus

Bored with the traditional first day syllabus and icebreaker routine, this year I figured out how to spend the first day incorporating a simulation while walking on tables and watching Pink Floyd videos instead.

Emotionally Intelligent Classroom Maxims

Inspired by Dan Pink’s emotionally intelligent signage posts, I replaced my classroom rules that nobody (including me) pays attention to with a set of 3 maxims. Knowing that my maxims would lack concreteness and be equally as worthless as the old rules unless I could attach meaning to them I came up with a set of lessons to drive home the point.

Widgets and Cogs

For the first lesson I was able to repurpose an old assembly line simulation that I used to do during my Industrial Revolution unit. As I was mulling over ideas for the first maxim I came across the video for Another Brick in the Wall. The crazy scene where the faceless kids are marching into the grinder has always stuck in my mind and I got the idea to create a widget that looked like the grinder and have students make it piece by piece in assembly line fashion.

When students came in the tables in my room were arranged in three long rows and I had taped instructions for each students construction station on the opposite side from where they were sitting. I started by asking them what the most important innovation in American history was. I fielded their responses for while (some were really quite good) and told them they were all wrong. After a few minutes of this fun, I pulled out my completed widget and told them that I had devised it over the summer and it was in fact the most important American innovation ever.

Of course they then asked what it did and I had a lot of fun playing a wealthy self-important industrialist. I told them I could not possibly explain it to them because they were all just lowly cogs who lacked my genius abilities. I told them that a cog was a cheap easily replaceable part just like they were and they could not possibly figure out what it did but that I could teach them to build one. That’s when I introduced the assembly line as the second most important American innovation and shared some photos with them to show how they worked.

They were all ordered to stand up and take their places on the line. I came around and gave them the materials and simple tools they would need at each station. I had a few students left over that became “scrap monkeys” and were ordered to walk around picking up the scraps. They then worked the line as I walked around as the industrialist character and examined their work with a ruler chastising them for minor flaws in cutting or folding. I walked back and forth on table tops doing this making faces at the frightened 6th graders who happened to look into my room while passing in the hall.

At the end we debriefed and talked about the lowly level of skills and the negative emotions involved in such work. Nobody raised a hand when I asked if they wanted to ever work on an assembly line in real life. I told them that was good because those jobs had largely been replaced by robots or overseas laborers and were no longer common in America and that higher order thinking skills were now needed for most jobs. Maxim #1 was then revealed:

This is not a widget factory; you are not a cog

We discussed what it meant and I told them that I would never treat them as cogs but that meant that they were never to come into the class and act like cogs. I then told them that I would refuse to grade any work that looked like it was made by cogs in a widget factory. We finished by watching Another Brick in the Wall to see if the could spot where the idea for the widget came from. One girl said she was going to have nightmares.

Flipping the Syllabus

All of the syllabus information was moved to my website in video form and students were given the first day homework assignment of watching the videos with their parents and taking a simple Google Form quiz as they watched.  

The tedium of the first day was not completely removed since I wound up doing the same lesson five times. However, I did have much more fun and got to know the students on a different level. They also saw me in a different light and I was able to build excitement for the class. I had asked the students to view the flipped syllabus videos with their parents and while it is not something that they all did, my intent had been to engage them as well. So far the feedback from both students and parents has been positive with one girl even telling me, “my dad thinks you’re cool.” Considering the fact that nobody in any situation has ever referred to me as cool- I’ll chalk it up as a first day success.  

The New (2013) Nexus 7: A Review for Educators

This week I got the opportunity to try out a set of new Nexus 7 tablets to evaluate their potential for use in school. I run a 1:1 classroom with Chromebooks which I have found ideal for school use but I also use an iPad and a MacBook Pro so I have no particular allegiance to one system or another; just an interest in what works.

Overview

The new Nexus 7 is an Android based tablet from Google. Is has a 7” inch screen with amazing display performance and audio that is superior to the iPad. It has front and rear facing cameras that take both stills and video. I was initially worried that I would be put off by its small size but I did not miss the extra real estate after using it for a few minutes. Its size and light weight make it exceptionally portable. The specs claim a 6-7 hour battery life which is less than an iPad or Chromebook but still adequate to get through the school day on a charge.

Account Management

The Nexus 7 allows up to 8 user accounts to be set up on each device. One of the new options is to create restricted accounts where the primary user can restrict access to certain apps. This was designed for parents to use with kids and not necessarily for schools but it could come in handy especially at the elementary level when you only want to offer a few options. One negative aspect to using it with students would be that those who sign in to restricted accounts aren’t synced to their own Google Apps accounts but they can still access them through the browser.

The account management feature that I really liked was that when I signed in as the primary account holder on multiple devices all of the apps that I had downloaded were automatically set up on each new device that  I set up. This is a much better setup than the iPad offers since multiple accounts on each device is virtually impossible and syncing apps across devices is a headache.

App Quality

The selection of Android apps is not as great as the selection that has been built up in the Apple ecosystem. Key iPad apps such as iMovie and GarageBand are missing but there are still many that work almost as well in the Android environment. I tested out many educational apps and found a lot of free ones that would be very well suited to the elementary level. Google also recently announced that a Google Play Education store is in the works for this fall. This focus promises to offer more to teachers in the near future.

Some apps of particular interest:

• Video/Photo Editing -WeVideo is a cloud based video/slideshow editor that has been upgraded consistently over the past year. It syncs automatically to Google drive and has become the go to video tool for my students. The android version lacks some of the capability of the browser version but I found it to still be highly functional especially when combined with Animoto and Aviary for photo editing.

• Note Taking -Evernote, and my new favorite Springpad both allow students to take notes and organize their work. Both can also be used to capture audio, photos, and video which would make them ideal for capturing what is happening in class. Springboard was also very easy to use to capture web resources and other media that would very helpful in tracking research. Simplemind is a good tool for mind mapping and StudyBlue works for making and sharing notecards.

• Socrative- Teachers can use this app to pose questions and have students reply via their device. Questions can be multiple choice or open ended and responses can be tracked in real time on the teachers screen which can also be projected. Socrative recently received $750k from investors for improvements and this has the potential to be an even more killer app that would replace stand alone classroom clickers.

• Splashtop Whiteboard- This was the only paid ($9.99) app that I took a look at. It allows teachers to use the tablet as an interactive whiteboard with annotating capabilities in the classroom.

Collaboration Potential

Collaboration should be a key component in a 21st century classroom so any devices used need to be able to support it. Google Drive has always been my go to solution and I was disappointed to find limited abilities to use it in the Android operating system. Documents and spreadsheets can be created, edited, and shared but presentations and drawings can only be viewed. I frequently have students collaborate on presentations and I have not yet found a solution that would support that.

That being said it still has seamless resource sharing functions. Apps and the browser are all synced so that resources can be shared across a variety of social media and note taking :

Creative Potential

One of my concerns about tablets has been that they make great consumption devices but are less than desirable when it comes time to creating robust content. Some of my go to options such as Glogster, Voicethread, and Prezi, are not supported on the Nexus 7 but there are enough app options available through the Android store that students can still make and share high quality videos, slideshows, and podcasts.

WeVideo student work example:

Other Considerations

• No Flash- Android no longer supports Flash so this unfortunately puts it in the same league as the iPad. Many educational resources including the iCivics and Mission U.S. games that my students play would not be accessible. There are workarounds to this that I found but the average teacher would not be willing to go to such lengths.  

• No Projector Output- There is no output feature that would allow a projector to be attached. However this should not really be a factor at this point, videos created with apps such as WeVideo are cloud based and can even be synced to Google accounts. Students would just have to sign in from a classroom computer hooked to a projector and go from there. Additionally, the new Chromecast could eventually have potential for sharing screens in the classroom. Right now Chromecast only supports a few different apps but that is bound to grow with the attention it has been getting.

• Testing Software and Textbooks-They are not going to run your PARCC or FAIR tests. Shame on you if that is what you are checking these out for anyway. Textbook support would be variable by publisher but there are many free digital textbook options available out there and intrepid teachers can make there own digital texts fairly easily.

• Lacks the Cool Factor- Many teachers are familiar with iOS and may not want to give a tablet other than an iPad a second look. They will have to invest some time getting to know a new operating system but I found the learning curve to be minimal.

Bottom Line

Except for having a better system for managing user profiles, the Nexus 7 will not do anything that an iPad cannot. That being said, I think it can stand toe to toe with the iPad for most uses and is a tremendous value for schools at $230. With the new iPads still priced at $499 and the the minis starting at $329 the Nexus 7 blows them out of the water for the cost. My school has been purchasing both Kindle readers and classroom clickers but you could get a tablet that does both of those things and much more for a little bit more of an investment. Looking at it another way,  you could get a new Chromebook for $249 AND a new tablet for the same price as one new iPad.

Tablets haven’t yet superseded other solutions for a true paperless classroom but are great for most 1:1 initiatives. If the solution that you are seeking is a tablet I would highly recommend checking out the Nexus 7 as a true competitor to the iPad.

Size Comparison: RAZR, Nexus 7, iPad