Quick Impressions of Mercy 2.0 and the iPad Deployment

Vector portrait credit to credit to Vectorportal.com

Here is a quick, narrow take on how Mercy 2.0 is going three days into the new school year:

The Good

* The iPads' mobility and battery life impress, but the connectivity throughout the school stands out as a biggest technical strength.

* We have experienced fewer mechanical and log-in issues than the past.

* Staff has been patient and collaborative about trouble-shooting.

* The Apple TVs allow the teachers untethered access to their projectors.

* Teachers from various departments have told me of terrific apps that they have found for their students.

* Two new teachers told me, today, that they love their iPads.

The Bad

*I can't believe that Apple provided us with cheap batteries in the wireless keyboards that came with our 26 iMacs.  They did not make it to the start of school!  

*I wish we had done more training on classroom workflow with the iPads, perhaps even if it meant we spent less time exploring apps.  Getting documents to Moodle is a bit tricky with the iPad.

*I am bewildered by how many of my seniors haven't even brought their HPs to my AP class even though the entire experience has been paperless thus far.  This goes to show that the we sometimes give the young a bit too much credit for being digital natives.

*I have had my own connection troubles with the Apple TV I am using.  But I attribute this to my own failure to test out the equipment more thoroughly.  I am really looking forward to taking advantage of the technology.  But like my colleagues I have found my own little stumbling block with Mercy 2.0.

The Ugly

* I am thinking some pretty dark thoughts about some of our digital publishers.  As we try eagerly to take advantage of their resources, some have put ridiculous technical and policy obstacles in the way of our families as they try to acquire instructional materials.  It is frustrating for IT, teachers, and especially our parents when we all try to get our students fully prepared for the beginning of school.  We've learned a couple of lessons about our own process of informing parents, but I truly can say that sone of our math and  science students have really been done wrong by the publishers.

Lightening Student Book Bags at Last

Today we took a long step toward lightening book bags.  This is a stealth feature of Mercy 2.0.  The textbook world has been one of the last hold outs against the movement toward digital media.  As more and more classroom resources become available in digital form, Mercy wants to bring it into our students' iPads and laptops.  Consequently, our talented Media Center technician, Cheryl Corte, took on the thankless task of collecting book information of all varieties from our academic departments.  Teachers contributed in a major way, researching the various formats of their assigned materials.  Cheryl took these submissions and combed through them, so that parents could have this information in a uniform, (somewhat) reader-friendly way.

Screen Capture of our Book Purchasing Web Page

We know that the information is a little overwhelming.  But we decided that the best favor we could do for families is supply them with information and let them decide which formats best suited their daughters and pocketbooks.  Just as our computing environment will be mixed (HP tablet & Apple iPad), so too will our book environment.  As the publishing industry evolves, Mercy will attempt to stay at the digital forefront of the change.

While we are frustrated that not all texts are available in digital form, a family that wants to leap forward in that direction (saving some money as they do!), will now be able to do so with considerable Mercy's assistant.

Some facts about this program:

- At Mercy, all incoming students purchase an iPad and their own books.  Of course the iPads do not come pre-loaded with books she needs for her unique schedule anymore than a computer purchase includes lots of your favorite free music and movies, preloaded.

- Mercy is platform neutral both in terms of device and books.  Teachers expect to work in mixed environments for the next three years.

- We are eager to go paperless, but not in ways that will be detrimental to learning.  However, we are continually looking for ways to use our technology to greater educational, social, and economic advantage.

Here is link to the Mercy Master Book List:     http://mhsmi.org/sites/default/files/curriculum/mercy_master_booklist_080112.pdf

Coming this Way Soon-- Lighter Student Bookbags!

Two disappointments related to books have accompanied our 1:1 computing program.  The first is a hopeful fantasy--

Traditional and iPad Kindle app versions of my text.

that books would be pre-loaded onto our laptops or iPads and included with the purchase of the device.  Since traditional textbooks are notoriously expensive, I have never quite understood why one might presume the digital version would be "free". but it is reasonable to hope that something made of bits and bytes would cost less than their print counterparts.


The second disappointment is more grounded in reality-- digital textbooks have to date been unavailable or inferior. The publishers have been incredibly slow to adapt to modernity.  So the students have lugged their books around our school along with a fairly heavy laptop.


The good news is that change is at hand.  The Kindle, Nook and iPad have made digital reading for enjoyment commonplace.  And the number of titles available for these devices has exploded. What's more, consumers pay significantly less for the digital books.  Finally, we are seeing many of our textbooks appear in outstanding digital formats (and for less cost than their print counterparts).  With the iPad, it is easily imaginable that members of the class of 2016 will have significantly lightened those book bags by the time they graduate.


Since we are in the midst of a sea change, a universal standard for texts has not been established.  Parents will discover that some books might be available from Apple, Google, or Amazon, etc.   Consequently, Mercy has resolved to be as helpful as possible under these circumstances.  We are asking teachers to identify all available forms of their books to the the best of their abilities.  Then we will publish this information for parents.  Personally, I have a strong preference for my Kindle texts (which I read on my iPad).  However, teachers like me will not be forcing our preferences on students and parents.  We will give them the information and let them choose.


But, oh, how nice it is to have a choice!

Why Aren't Students Using E-books? (and other Links)

joyoftech.com

Why Aren't Students Using E-books? 
The slow adoption of digital textbooks by students doesn’t necessarily mean that textbooks will be the last bastion of print. But it does highlight the ways in which students’ needs aren’t being met yet by digital content providers. That means there’s still a huge opportunity here to reshape what the textbooks of the future look like. Openly licensed content, for example, could address students’ concerns about sharing. Better social tools could help meet their needs for social reading and learning.
http://bit.ly/vInDXp


22 Filmmaking Apps for the iPad and iPhone
The iPad and iPhone have taken the world by storm. Only very recently have filmmakers started to see their potential in a production environment. The iPad has only been out a few months and we are already seeing it used in some very creative ways.
http://bit.ly/u7fobQ

Don't Get Caught with Your Paradigm Down

Now let’s look at teacher training in the digital age. For about 200 years, since the introduction of the blackboard in 1801, education in America has been relatively static and so has professional development. Phases come and go and we all attended professional development workshops which were promptly forgotten. Does everyone remember going to Cooperative Learning workshops? How about Whole Language seminars or Total Quality Management applied to education? Old ways of continuing teacher education just won’t do. We can’t be effective educators in the exponential times we live in unless we develop a new paradigm of professional development.

http://bit.ly/vNgISS


The New Nook Aims at Amazon's Kindle Fire, but the iPad is Still Safe
Whereas Amazon launched a completely new product when it revealed the Fire, Barnes and Noble is really just upgrading its existing Nook Color and finally adding the word "tablet" to its name. In the launch presentation, CEO William Lynch Jr could hardly have made it more obvious who the company is gunning for here. He made several direct references to Amazon and the Kindle Fire, which he unsurprisingly dismissed as an inferior product.

http://rww.to/snpNxY

Redefining Our Value

There is an urgency now to redefine our value. We cannot be about passing the test. We cannot be about content to the extent we are today because content is everywhere. We cannot be about a curriculum that’s a mile wide and an inch deep. Something else can do that now, and in some ways, that’s a good thing. We have to be about the thing that technology cannot and will not be able to do, and that’s care deeply for our kids as humans, help them develop passions to learn, solve problems that are uniquely important to them, understand beauty and meaning in the world, help them play and create and apply knowledge in ways that add to the richness of life, and develop empathy and deep contextual understanding of the world. And more.

http://bit.ly/tdZLnB 

An Amazing Social Network (Comic)

http://dthin.gs/s1Lb3i

Ebooks on the Brain

Flickr CC Photo by kariek

I got myself worked up into a bit of a lather about ebooks last week.  I won't bother you with the details about what exactly triggered it, but I can say in general that I discovered the paucity of ebooks has been a continuing disappointment to the parents at our school.  I think all of us were hopeful that once all of our students purchased laptops they would save money on books and not have to lug their heavy bags around.

Of course, initially, this was pretty much out of our hands.  Digital texts simply were unavailable and those which were offered few advantages.

But due to what I call the "Kindling of America" the landscape has changed.  The notion of a digital text seems less strange and  more and more digital texts are available (Shoot, Project Gutenberg and Google Books now offers thousands of classics for free).  The ground is surely shifting.  In fact I just learned of a projection that 26% of textbook sales will be digital by the year 2015.

Misconceptions about digital books persist based on their rocky start.  I also know first-hand that teenagers in my own classes have shown a reluctance to switch to ebooks even when give a less expensive option, like my AP Government and Politics text.

So, as I said at the top, circumstances have led me to start charging full bore into promoting ebook adoption at our school.  But a couple of colleagues stopped me in my tracks, pointing out to me the difficulties in offering online ebook options to parents.  We have a third party virtual bookstore and it doesn't offer digital editions.  So what do I expect parents to do?  Visit several publishers web sites, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. to round up a school year's worth of books.  The very inconvenience of acquiring the digital editions would undermine any efforts to adopt them.

Imagine my delight then when I discovered at least one vendor which has fashioned "agreements with major publishers to continually add new" ebooks.  I've made contact with them to see how their operations could fit with ours.  Even if they don't, it's a great sign that a technology which has become so popular with consumers may also come out of the closet into our students' hands. 

Royalty Free Music and Other Great Links

Flickr CC Photo by Joost J. Bakker IJ Muiden Photostream

E-book Publishing Upends a Publishing Course

 In the past year, e-books have skyrocketed in popularity, especially in genre fiction like romance and thrillers. For some new releases, the first week has brought more sales of electronic copies than of print copies.

 http://nyti.ms/nUDpqr 

A Great Video To Get Students To Think More Carefully About Their Writing

Based on the fact this video has over nine million views on YouTube, I may be the last person who has seen it, but it’s still a great video to get students to think more carefully about their writing


http://bit.ly/rpdsES

Amazon Rolls out Textbook Rentals for Kindle

The option is already available on "tens of thousands" of textbooks from a number of publishers including John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. What's more, you can also rest assured that all of your annotations will be saved even after the rental has expired

http://engt.co/nbEjVv

Tablets Continue to Dent PC Sales

Tablet computers, mostly the Apple iPad at this point, have diverted spending from the PC and laptop. But clearly the competition is affecting computer sales . . .two reports concluded.

http://nyti.ms/o26SQz

Incompetech

Royalty Free Music 2000+ Royalty Free Music Tracks. Downloads or Audio CDs. All Styles http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/ Why Are We Using Standardized Tests to Justify Technology? Why are some people celebrating the fact that the iPad is being shown to raise test scores?  To me, this seems incongruous and counterproductive.  If we all want to eradicate these dysfunctional assessments because we believe they are faulty measures of learning, then why are we celebrating their ability to measure learning once technology enters into the equation?  http://bit.ly/pJX3Tf

Instructional Tech at Our School

Two nights ago, with a colleague,  I made a presentation to the parents of our ninth graders about our 1 to 1 computing program.

Once again I have found that I learn quite a bit by making a presentation on a subject.  Since our 1 to 1 computing program is six years old, we can now point to some very significant elements of technology that are now commonplace in our curriculum:

* Coursework and activities delivered online.

* Group Collaboration through shared documents and wikis.

* Multimedia presentations by students and teachers.

Without question, the one area which lags behind expectations would be ebooks.  While a couple of the courses have gone bookless altogether, our students still carry enormous book bags full of texts.  Primarily this is due to the  publishers dragging their heels. As ebooks become more commonplace we can move toward less expensive devices and enter a new phase of digital learning.

Here are some slides from my presentation:

Parent Night Slides

Recent Reads

Over the Christmas holidays I took some flack from my family for-- as an English major and teacher-- not having read recent fiction.  But I have been reading and wish to recommend that you check in on a few articles.

Rethinking Advanced Placement - NYTimes.com
Fewer facts to memorize and more critical thinking?  It's about time-- the AP Biology and AP U.S. History exams are getting a makeover.

Review of Comparing Survey Applications
I have been using Zoomerang.  But based on this comparison I think I'll give SurveyMonkey a try.

After Strong Holiday Sales for E-Readers, E-Books Outselling Print - NYTimes.com
As I write this blog in a coffee shop, I see a couple of customers with e-readers.  But the only books I see are text books.  Ironically, these only made-of paper books I'd really like to see disappear, and they have the most staying power.

More Schools Embrace the iPad as a Learning Tool - NYTimes.com
The Detroit Public Schools just purchased $49 million of "computers" for students.  I'd feel much better if they had invested in iPads.  They could have more of them and the students and staff could figure out uses for them in minutes.


Research: The Educational BS Repellent | Connected Principals
This article reviews a book which convincingly challenges a number of common assumptions about education.

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"BeBook" Flickr CC photo by Nimages DR

Digital Anthology update

Last year, my major project for the summer was for my AP American Government and Politics class. I posted this plan at that time:

I am using Google Docs to collate my materials. The hyperlink feature (see Hyperlink Heaven) allows me to pull all the resources into one space. After seven years I have a pretty clear idea of the kinds of topics I want to include for my students. As I pull together the resources, I also compose critical thinking topics, which I compose in a different color text)

Next school year, besides saving my students fifty dollars, I will break by anthology into course packs which correspond to each unit. Students will have direct links to the resources with attendant topics to write, vlog, blog about (according to instructions).

The plan succeeded in nearly every respect, and I promoted the concept at MAME 36 and to our school staff on in-service day.

But since the strength of the anthology is its ability to stay current with events, it was time for an update. While I did add materials on the fly during the school year, I usually just bookmarked them for later consideration. By last month the bookmarks had accumulated to over fifty, and I felt like a slacker. But I'm glad that I procrastinated. As I sifted through the bookmarks last week, I found that many of the articles which had seemed very interesting a few months ago, already had lost their zest.

The anthology is organized into seventeen chapters which correspond to our text (available as an ebook of course!). I added material to eight of the chapters and deleted many old pieces, so I am pleased with the new level of currency. But I also have two regrets:

1) I could sense as I was adding some interesting sources to the later chapters of the anthology that they would probably not seem so great when we are finally ready for them in 2011. But the day to day time-consuming tasks of classroom teaching make it pretty difficult to freshen the anthology a priority during the school year.

2) I only added two multi-media resources to the updated anthology. This was also due to very practical reasons-- it is much easier to browse an article than a chunk of television program or a podcast.

Despite these regrets I am happy to share a slice of the 2010-11 Digital Anthology. (The red text describe the assignments which correspond to the resources.)

Chapters 8-10 of Baker's Digital Anthology for AP Gov

Feedback is welcome!

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Screen Capture from MAME 36 "Digital Anthology" presentation.

iPads and Red Herrings

My wife and I love our new iPad. I use the word, "our," loosely since the iPad is in Barb's possession about 95% of the time. She strongly preferred to read the New York Times on my MacBook Pro instead of her corporate issue P.C. Since I am not good at sharing my toys, she bought the iPad with the primary intent of using it for reading, passing on the Kindle because she wanted color.

The iPad is a terrific media player. And as I'm sure you know, its release stirred up a bit of a frenzy in the press-- lots of feature articles about the Kindle and iPad signaling the end of books. This in turn has created great anxiety, anger and even despondency from book lovers. It's been a bit extreme.

Now look, I come from a family of book lovers. I am an English major with a Masters in English Ed. I have taught lit classes for thirty-five years. I don't hate books. And it's not like they are going to disappear, tomorrow. The ebook police will not be raiding homes, seizing paper books, and tossing them into giant bonfires like something out of a Ray Bradbury story.

I also get it that many readers have strong emotional attachments to their tattered copies of Hamlet or The Great Gatsby. I have a few keepsakes like those on my shelves. For that matter, I prefer paperbacks to ebooks if I'm taking lots of notes or need to thumb through for a passages. Nevertheless, my book reading has picked up since Amazon came up with their Kindle App for my MacBook Pro. (No more headaches from that tiny paperback type).

But I'm hearing and reading a lot of rubbish from the nostalgic supposed book lovers. Some are behaving as though these media players are an assault on the very essence of literature. Can't they see that ebooks will do as much to save books as to kill them? Ebooks don't go "out of print." And since forests don't have to be felled, lumber pulped, paper printed, bound, shipped, etc.; the economics and the ecology of the new model is sounder, isn't it? Those who wax nostalgic about browsing through shelves at book stores, should temper such sentiments with memories of calling or driving all over town for a copy of this or that.

Even though I teach in a 1:1 school, my students drag enormous, bookbags laden with tons of texts from class to class. You can't tell me that if their texts were available on an iPad or Kindle that this would be a wonderful improvement. I require one textbook myself, and it is available as an ebook. Alas, most of my students have preferred the traditional text because they have to do so much scrolling on their HP Tablets. I get that too.

But the folks who deplore the ebook really do need to recognize that the joy they received from reading did not come from the smell of decaying paper or lugging their dog-earred paperbacks around. The iPad and Kindle do not presage the end of literature or even book lovers.

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"Red Herring" Frickr Creative Commons photo by "No Matter" Project on our iPad

Rewritable Textbooks

I was excited to read* in the New York Times "Textbooks that Professors Can Rewrite Digitally". It describes a new plan by Macmillan to introduce DynamicBooks:

- "Professors will be able to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations."

- DynamicBooks gives instructors the power to alter individual sentences and paragraphs without consulting the original authors or publisher.

- "The DynamicBooks editions — which can be reached online or downloaded — can be read on laptops and the iPhone from Apple. Clancy Marshall, general manager of DynamicBooks, said the company planned to negotiate agreements with Apple so the electronic books could be read on the iPad."

- "The modifiable e-book editions will be much cheaper than traditional print textbooks."

I have already replaced two of my traditional texts with my own digital curriculum (see ...Bookless Course and A Digital Anthology..., but I would be the first to admit that replacing an entire text for a course is a very labor-intensive task. How much better, to offer the students a semester-specific text with supplementary materials added and extraneous material removed. The reduced cost of this e-book would be an added incentive to go in that direction.

Of course, a teacher planning a new prep would not want this, but I think many course veterans would love the chance to customize their texts. Think of the slides that the textbook publishers provide as an ancillary. I'm sure most teachers customize these. They provide a nice foundation of information upon which the teacher can build a customized presentation.

I hope Macmillan and other publishers move in this direction, soon. I'm guessing I'll have this option for my A.P. class in the very near future.

*Thanks to Barb for spotting this article for me.

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Screen shot from home page of DynamicBooks.

Ten Techno Ironies

*At the ADE Summer Institute our moderator continually requested us to shut our Macbooks (ADE's still peeked at their iPhones).

*Despite her skepticism, I convinced Lynn to open a Twitter account and try out our in-service hashtag. When we sat down to try it all out, Twitter was on the fritz.

*I am usually quite positive and upbeat in this blog, but when I go negative, readership and comments almost always spikes.

*I had my knuckles rapped for NOT notifying the book store that I would NOT be using a book AGAIN this year. (There is a don't-order-a-book form?).

* Our ADE summer institute project group had chemistry problems, particularly with a bossy, tone-deaf member. We also jumped at solutions too quickly, which created misunderstandings. I'm seeing the same thing dynamics in my student groups.

*Generally, I get more face-to-face comments about my blog than online commentary.

*I stood on my head making it possible for my AP students to conveniently order the ebook version of our text for half price. I believe four of twenty-eight did so.

* After my ten minute presentation on Parent Night, one mom went off on me, saying her daughter could not learn without a book. She could not give me an idea of what a book might have that my online resources lacked. When I suggested that she just print all the stuff out and bind it, she stormed out. (Made sense to me).

*My friend, Ann, almost always sees the the weaknesses in technology schemes, yet she is the most likely person I know to try them out.

*I asked my Apple EDE if she had any knick-knacks I could give out at my in-service. Yes-- ink pens!

* And speaking of the in-service Kathy assured my at Curriculum Council that of the four presentations I will be giving over the next three weeks, the staff at my own school will be the toughest audience. (oh, joy).

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Enjoyed the mammoth letters in "Fine Arts". Once again thankful for Yahoo Image sSearch and Flickr Creative Commons. "Irony?" Flickr CC photo by Cucumber 77

Whistling a New Tune on ebooks

When my school first took the plunge into a 1:1 laptop program, the thought of going to ebooks scared the bejabbers out of me. Of course at that time, most publishers (and still many) simply offered pdf versions of the books-- lacking agility and even readability. Often the cost of these electronic versions matched their paper siblings.

I am whistling a different tune these days, offering my AP American Government students the option of purchasing an ebook version of our new text, American Politics Today by Bianco & Canon. The publisher, W.W. Norton charges half price for a year's license to this online text. Its reader merely requires an up to date browser and Adobe Flash Player plug in. It has an atractive and highly readable screen presentation. I enjoy magnifying the text on my computer screen and incurring far less eye strain than the paper counterpart. There are printing restrictions and the inconvenience of needing an online connection. But advantages include "highlighting" and note taking on the pages. I love it, and look forward to getting my students' reactions, which you can be sure I will share in a later post.

I recently read with interest that McGraw-Hill and Cengage are now experimenting with offering rental text books for the coming semester. Perhaps this has been spurred by the Recession, but it seems like a stop-gap measure. It's clear to me that most students will soon be downloading textbooks on Kindles, Sony Readers, iPod Touches and the like. If someone like me, initially so biased toward ebooks, can be converted so easily, I'm predicting that the textbook switch to ebooks-- at least at the college level-- could occur as quickly as consumers went from VHS to DVD.

P.S. Click to sample an ebook chapter of my new text.
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Screen Capture of American Politics Today (W.W. Norton ebook reader).

If It's not Broke .... FIX IT! (The Digital Anthology)

I have finished my digital anthology, but of course this is just a manner of speaking, since one of the advantages of going digital is that, unlike a printed text, it will never be "finished." It is always updatable, which means I may very well add content before I actually start drawing from my new resource.

As you may recall (see A Digital Anthology. . . .), I decided to replace the $50 reader for my AP American Government & Politics class with a free, multi-media resource which could be entirely up-to-date.

I have now found material that corresponds to each chapter in our text (an ebook, by the way). Granted, I have far less material than the traditional readers , but this is not really an issue since I only used about half the reader, anyway.

Please, be my guest and take a peek at a sample of my D.A.

You'll notice that I have tapped a variety of sources for this sample. In addition to text, I have edited a podcast from iTunes U and linked to some excellent PBS videos. I have found the Stanford University podcasts* to be particularly useful for political science, but they are quite long, and I have reviewed fewer of them than I thought I might (I usually listen to them in the car). Additionally, I have also found some outstanding outstanding video for my anthology at New York Times Video, Academic Earth, and The Museum of the Moving Image.

Unsurprisingly, my anthology is still dominated by text sources. Most of these I come across in my daily reading (though family members have forwarded a couple of gems). I have also researched some subjects. For this, I have primarily used our Media Center's subscription to Gale Student Resource Center . Since all my students are licensed to use this resource, it is fairly easy to share articles.

You may wonder why I have only given you a slice of my anthology. Well, it will be sliced off to students in small portions as well. There is no reason to assign from it weeks ahead. After all, something more interesting and pertinent may appear on the scene in the mean time. The anthology fits perfectly into my scheme of the Tinker Toy Curriculum of modules that can be connected then reassembled from semester to semester.

As I've mentioned in this space before, I think anthologies like these could be constructed with ease by members of academic departments, or interdepartmentally for that matter. I would enjoy your reactions to my sample, and welcome links that I might put into my "book."

I'll be making a presentation on the Digital Anthology to the Michigan Association for Media in Education at Grand Traverse Resort on October 23.

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*visit this link and download 30 free songs from iTunes!

Education "Suicide Watch" (with apologies to Frank Rich)

Dramatic blog title? It's not totally off the wall. As a resident of Southeastern Michigan I have been following the wrenching decline, diminution, and possible deaths of GM and Chrysler with anxiety and fascination. When an acquaintance from Massachusetts referred to this process as "creative destruction", I considered it callous, even offensive.

On the other hand, I think I have been guilty of the same emotional distance as I have followed the Newspaper Death Watch. I spoke often and openly with the journalism students in my AP Government classes about their pursuit of a rapidly evaporating dream.

I was jolted out of my emotional disconnect from old media death-throes when the Ann Arbor News suddenly announced it would cease publication in July. Grandfather Baker worked for Booth newspapers his entire career and ultimately became editor of the Ann Arbor News. The end of the paper seems a slight against his memory.

But the problem seems so obvious, doesn't it? How could the a business model based on the processing and physical delivery of ink-on-tree-pulp to the nation's doorsteps be sustainable? The high-speed internet kicks the traditional newspaper's butt on the all important issues of immediacy and cost. But naturally, many of us are concerned real journalism will die along with the old media. Might this not have dire consequences for our democracy?

In Sunday's New York Times (which I read online of course) Frank Rich reflects on these very issues. In a piece entitled "The American Press on Suicide Watch" he chronicles the industry's "self-destructive retreat from innovation" and suggests that newspapers might survive this technological revolution, just as the movies adjusted to tv and music evolved in a post-Napster world. His darkest concerns focus on the future of investigative journalism and the inability of "blogs" to substitute for true reporting:

Opinions, however insightful or provocative and whether expressed online or in print or in prime time, are cheap. Reporting the news can be expensive. Some of it — monitoring the local school board, say — can and is being done by voluntary “citizen journalists” with time on their hands, integrity and a Web site. But we can’t have serious opinions about America’s role in combating the Taliban in Pakistan unless brave and knowledgeable correspondents (with security to protect them) tell us in real time what is actually going on there. We can’t know what is happening behind closed doors at corrupt, hard-to-penetrate institutions in Washington or Wall Street unless teams of reporters armed with the appropriate technical expertise and assiduously developed contacts are digging night and day.

Personally, I think the best chance of something like our old newspapers surviving is Kindle. Last week Amazon introduced the Kindle DX, which may set the standard for newspapers, magazines, and books the way iTunes has done for digital music.

What does any of this have to do with education? Much. In the short term, teachers can enjoy the tremendous windfall of free information being provided by old media as it offers free content online in order to lure advertising . Without this free-for-all my digital anthology project would be much more difficult.

But how different is the education "old school" mind set from "old mainstream media" titans who steered their industry into the rocks. "Old school"continues to privilege ink-on-paper, brick and mortar, one teacher to 30 students. Administrators treat school calendars and schedules as sacredly as the old-time newspaper editors treated "deadlines".

But news doesn't stop happening at deadlines and learning doesn't stop when the bell rings. Most in the ed establishment still conceive of teaching as something that happens when an old guy like me stands in front of students at desks and delivers lectures from the podium. For them, "technology" means the old guys does death-by-PowerPoint instead of death by chalkboard.

Since education is so heavily subsidized by public funds, it's not on the verge of dying as my teaser implies. But how can we suppose that a process so stale and outmoded can contribute to a thriving society which competes in a flat world of rapid change? We risk a great deal by clinging to the old ways.

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"Old Man with Newspaper" Flickr Creative Commons photo by andreas.plesnik

Teaching Literature Unbound

Teachers' Lounge Series, part 2 of 4

Mike and I have been close English Department and personal friends for over thirty years. I also teach social studies, and recently was sharing one of my new tech adventures in American Government class. Mike remarked that tech suited social studies as a discipline better than English. I automatically agreed. After all, one of the reasons that I chose to redesign gov' as a bookless course was because information was so readily available on the Web. Not that I have kept my English classes tech-free. In January, I presented an in-service to the department on the wonders of using hyperlinks in study guides and suggested uses for Google Docs/Sites with English classes. Since then Fran has launched a very cool collaborative project for her Women in Lit class.

But a recent experience has caused me to reconsider my agreement with Mike. While I was sitting in an airport over spring break, I noticed that I had a new Twitter "follower." When I checked the profile I discovered Jim Burke's treasure trove of Web 2.0 resources, not the least being his English Companion Ning (Join!). Days later, I read a simple tweet by Jim: "Is this the future of book?" By clicking the link he provided, I came upon a vision that could provide succor to our department, chronically troubled by book availability, and now vexed by curriculum corseting. Jim's Weekly Reader-- A Digital Anthology points the way for English lit teachers to more freely choose literature and free themselves from a dying medium (see Book End). What if our freshmen or sophomore team teachers collaborated on digital anthologies? The collections would grow, stay fresh, and become wonderfully diverse. Too much "work?" Not for the voracious readers in my department!

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Diigo is a little more futuristic as a classroom application, but it signals the end of research as most of us learned it. It will knock your socks off. In addition to allowing collaboration on bookmarks in a wild variety of ways, Diigo allows its users to share highlighting and annotations. This has tremendous possibilities for student research.

As Phil Butler points out,

Diigo allows users to add, gather or extract from pages of information and then share or work with others to further refine knowledge. . . . At Diigo . . . the atmosphere is a “thinking” one rather than a reactive one. Diigo takes all the standard Web 2.0 user tools and focuses them on connecting people with knowledge and then community.

I have already started highlighting and annotating electronic documents with Diigo. I wonder how long it will be before our students will begin building and sharing their own research databases of documents and annotations for their "papers." A video overview is posted at Diigo's site, but I prefer the one created by Liz B Davis. Checking out the demonstration of Diigo which she created with Jing will provide the bonus of allowing you to see the instructional potential of screencasting.

I know that my resourceful colleague, Lynn, hopes to explore Jing soon. The idea that one of my colleagues might soon create a Jing tutorial for students on how to to use Diigo with digital Readers puts me in Web 2.0 nirvana.


Part 3 of this series will be posted Wednesday-- Transcending Words (and copyright!)

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"The Teacher's Desk" Flick Creative Commons Photo courtesy of bitzcelt

We Have Ignition! (Rocketing AP Gov into Cyberspace)

I am preparing to rocket my AP Government and Politics course into cyberspace. A number of factors have converged to make this possible and desirable:

* This year's group has just completed its experience blogging on vlogs. I think the results have been terrific. Students were allowed to produce 3-5 minute videos on a political opinion or observation. Then classmates blogged on the vlog. (If they posted at least five blogs they were allowed drop one of their 2 page analyses). My Flip Mino camera was used to produce the video and iWeb created the vlog/blog pages. We completed seven of these, second semester. A representative group of the girls (and their parents) gave permission to me to share a small slice of our activity with you: Click to visit.

* In an upcoming post I will describe my second fling with podcast/blogging mini-project. It produced excellent results last year and is even more tightly organized with the help of iWeb, this go-round.

*I just discovered that David Canon, the marvelous professor at Wisconsin-Madison, who co-moderated the AP conference that initiated me into this course, has published a text with an impressive ebook option. Additionally a very cool blog serves as a companion to the text.

*Next year, all the students in the course (seniors) will have laptops, meaning they can more reasonably do online collaborations and use the money-saving ebook at school.

*I'm embarrassed to admit that on recently have I begun foraging in the political science section of iTunes University. I will definitely dip into the free lectures provided by Stanford for some aspect of my curriculum.

My ambition to send the AP course into full cyber-launch is contingent on having my preps reduced from four to three as I have requested. (Big "if" at this point). Regardless, I intend to continue designing curriculum that employs blogs-on-vlogs and podcasts for my studetns and the ALI. As always, I welcome your suggestions and reactions!

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Screen capture of Emily's vlog page.

At Long Last . . . . ebook Joy!

Ebooks have probably ranked as one of the biggest disappointments of my school's laptop initiative. It was imagined that the cost students leasing computers would be offset by reduced book costs and the back-breaking inconvenience of book bags.

Unfortunately such hopes collided with the unavailability of etext substitutes and student/teacher preference for books with paper pages. Case in point, when I was asked to review a new text this fall, the publisher offered to send me the 800 pages as a pdf. This sounded awful, and I insisted that paper masters be shipped to me despite expense, paper "waste", etc. (So sue me).

But I recently experienced an ebook miracle. Years ago I inherited a family heirloom-- a book written by my great-grandfather (pictured here), containing material about his unit's service with General Custer. Pretty cool, but when I examined it as a kid, I got the impression that it was some kind of reunion book with a neat dedication to Grandma. I subsequently stored it on a remote shelf.

My brother has been doing genealogy research with ancestry.com and during one of his updates about the family tree, he mentioned my great grandfather's book. I turns out that he came across it in digital form through google book searches. He told me that it is a fascinating set of civil war remembrances and was flabbergasted to learn that I had a hard copy.

After I checked Google, I discovered that other hard copies exist in such interesting places as the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library , West Point , Gettysburg College, the US Army Military History Institute, and most Ivy League Colleges. In fact the book had been scanned through the Harvard College collection. It turns out that the book is a valuable history of the war.

Most gratifying, however, is the thought that my great-grandfather's contribution to an understanding about the Civil War has been preserved and truly reborn online as an ebook. In fact, I invite you to glance at it: Seventh Michigan Volunteer Cavalry 1862-1865 by William O. Lee.

Its continued existence does not depend on slacker descendants like myself taking proper care of the aging paper copies.