Monday, January 30, 2012

iTunesU

Briefly.

I had a first glimpse of what lies under the very sleek bonnet of iTunesU this week.

I suppose I have been slightly apathetic towards 'U' in past years as I saw it mainly as the domain of US universities who could upload course materials so that everyone could follow the Stanford course on 'App Development' for example. I couldn't see that, beyond being an interesting tool for sharing such content, it would shake up life in a smaller institution like ours.

What we really want is a way of delivering our course material to the students who pay to come here. We want to be able to deliver them in such a way as to make the practical business of teaching and administering a course simpler for both student and teacher.

iTunesU has now revealed itself to be just this.

Simple, smooth mechanisms for gathering course materials, sharing assignments and accessing files, linked seamlessly with iBooks store and iTunes and readable on any iOS device. It offers teachers the chance to do things better and easier than before.

The impact remains to be seen but we start to see what all the fuss is really about surrounding the recent Apple edu announcements.

Exciting times.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Monday, January 23, 2012

The Times Are They A'Changing

I speak as a teacher of upper primary and sometimes lower secondary school students.

So we have the big education announcement from Apple, a revolution in textbooks, a way of authoring high quality books for iOS devices from your Mac and iTunes U becoming a way of distributing our courses.
So what to make of it all.

On the face of it, slick and beautiful interactive textbooks, an intuitive and powerful way of creating the super resources and a very handy environment for sharing them with students and the world.

Very nice.

I'll be the first to compliment some of the new tools and I'll certainly be using them. My student report card, for example, this year will be written entirely in iBooks Author and include video and audio of myself and true students.

I am left, however, with an ever-so-slightly sour aftertaste.

Textbooks?

Is this where the revolution is headed? Have we challenged the old ways and methods only to create new electronic digital versions?

Did anyone else notice that in the promo videos last week all the teachers featured were in classrooms of individual desks in rows with interactive whiteboards at the front from which they taught. A sort of digital 'chalk and talk'.

Sorry, but if all the genius of the iPad is reduced to a screen for an interactive textbook that is using a mallet to crack a nut.

My esteemed colleague, Fraser Speirs, sees the marketing genius of Apple behind much of my objections. The people who hold the purse strings of education are the 55+ generation who value the textbook as the zenith of educational materials and to such people, the demo of last week may finally convince them that the iPad is indeed worthy of significant investment for todays youth. If so, Apple, I salute you, and hope that this is indeed the key that will open the door to 1:1 programmes that will put this magical device in the hands of kids all over the country and the world.

But for those of us who are fortunate enough to teach with it. Please do not tame it to a meek textbook reader, however beautiful those textbooks may be.

Friday, January 6, 2012

'Friends, Romans, Countrymen...' Julius Caesar, Great Teaching and the iPad

I loved Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar'.

 I used to study it in school aged 15. The classroom was so dull, we sat in rows, the walls were bare and the desks were unsteady and spotted underneath from the chewing gum of thousands of kids that had been there before.

The time I spent in that classroom was some of the happiest hours I ever spent in school.

The play soared through epic themes of betrayal, love and friendship and as we read and debated the ebbs and flows of the plot and the relevance of the themes, the time just flew. I was disappointed when the lunch bell rang.

The reason was a great teacher.

She knew her subject and was so passionate about it that it was infectious. She ran a debate masterfully, allowed us to grapple with the big questions and directed us so subtly that I'm sure we all felt we were discovering the ideas that came into our heads for ourselves and what a powerful feeling that was.

 I suppose my point is that the teacher made it. Not the environment, not the space, not the adherence to any sort of 'magic' formula. She did not, for example, share with us our learning goals at the outset of the lesson, adhere to a strict time frame or use any 'active-learning' strategies. And there were only the well-thumbed scripts - no technology.

 She stands out, in my memory, above almost all the teachers I ever had or saw. A great teacher.

So should we all, can we all be great teachers?

I shall speak only for myself. I do not think that I am a great teacher in this way but I do aspire to be great - surely all teachers should?

 I am enthusiastic, I feel I am a good communicator, passionate about much of the content I teach and good, after 15 years, at reading and responding to the children in my class. I am interested in current ideas, love co-operative and active learning and perhaps best of all, I teach in a 1:1 iPad classroom, with the vast resources that that brings to the fingertips of every child in front of me.

I do strive to be my best and would love to be great. But strip all of my super ideas, cool tech and modern strategies away would I be so great? I'm not so sure.

 At Cedars we get requests all the time:

 'Can you give us a list of the apps you guys use in Cedars?' 'What apps do you use?' 'Can I just make a note of the app you are using?'

 Even though we frequently tell people not to bother trying to make furtive notes of apps they see being used on their tour of the school, we'll give them a list at the end of the day, they still feel the need to make scribbled notes in notebooks or on iPhones.

So here's my point:

 After over a year of teaching with 1:1 iPad, I am convinced of this, the iPad can impact teaching and learning in a transformational way, but it is not a substitute for great teaching.
It has to be there to help, to explain, to help create and bring to life. It is not there to teach.

 So, may 2012 be the year where schools everywhere, teachers great and aspiring to be great have the joy of 1:1 technology. May we be blessed with iPad filled classrooms.

 Not to take the place of great teaching but to enhance and help great teaching and learning for 2012.