Author: apapaseit

When implementing technology in schools, something that we often do is use an immense amount of resources to achieve certain capabilities or goals. But this sort of creates this unfortunate situation where sometimes only a tiny fraction of the world can actually benefit from a new high-end technology.

What gets me really excited about implementing technology in schools on a tight budget is when I see simple opportunities to drastically change this tendency and make technology accessible to a much wider percentage of the population.

Interactive boards

I’ve never been a huge fan of Smartboards for several reasons. One of them is that I see Smartboards as essentially a computer projected onto a touch screen, (you can touch the screen to move forward a presentation, make annotations, highlight text and make annotations). Of course I would love my white boards and projector screens to have these features, but not at this outrageous cost that can go from $2500 to 10000 – OUCH! And with the current state of the world economy, such an investment is ridiculous and cost prohibitive for many schools.

Despite all, who wouldn’t like to be able to save what you write on your whiteboard and then share it with your students? Or just point at a spot on the screen and zip to the slide you want? Or access the Internet and annotate on websites without having to move from the front of the room? I’d still like to have these capabilities on my board although not at the cost of a few thousand dollars.

Philosophy statement: All for inexpensive alternatives

I am all for inexpensive open source alternatives and I always advocate for freeware solutions as much as possible. What if I told you that you could have all of the functionality above for about $40 (assuming you already have a projector and a computer) by using the technology inside a Nintendo Wii’s Wiimote? If you don’t know about this, keep reading!!!!!

The original idea behind this project comes from Johnny Chung Lee, a Carnegie Mellon graduate student who has found several interesting applications for the Wiimote.

The basic idea behind this is as simple as brilliant:

The Wii Remote (aka Wiimote) is the primary controller for the popular Nintendo’s Wii console. Aside of its motion sensing capability, which allows users to interact with and manipulate items on screen via gesture recognition, it contains a pretty high-end additional piece of hardware, an infrared camera. This tiny infrared camera, allows the interaction with the Wii sensor bar in the console. The infrared camera reads the location of the infrared lights within the sensor bar, and that is how the wii console can track the Wiimote position.

Johnny Lee figured out that he could do pretty much the same thing but, instead of moving the infrared camera build in the remote control, he would move the infrared light, keeping the wiimote static.

The bottom line is that since the Wiimote infrared camera can track sources of infrared (IR) light, it can also track pens that have an IR led in the tip. Thus, by pointing a wiimote connected to a computer via Bluetooth at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create a very low-cost interactive whiteboard.

WARNING: It’s not rocket science

Putting all this to work is actually pretty simple assuming that you have some basic technical background. The graphic below shows how simple the principle is:

Note: I created this simple graph with Google SketchUp by drawing directly on my projector screen with an IR pen…cool!

This is everything you need to create an 50 USD interactive whiteboard in your class…and it is portable!!!!:

1. Infra red light pen: Some people have been making their own infra red pens, however, not having access to soldering iron and other equipment, I decided that I would go for a commercial option. I got mine online and shipped to Beijing from Tianjin for about 30 RMB (less that 5 USD)
2. Standard Nintendo Wii Remote: I got mine for 290 RMB in Beijing. Be careful with fake Nintendo wiimotes, although they do the job, you won’t get the same tracking utilization. I learned this the hard way.
3. Computer with Bluetooth capabilities(If your computer doesn’t have integrated Bluetooth, you can purchase an inexpensive Bluetooth dongle to provide the same capabilities.). I am using my MacBook pro built in Bluetooth and it works sweet.
4. Data projector: I assume that we all have access to one of these  🙂
5. Projector Screen: Obviously you need a surface to project your data projector output. But you can actually run your lessons on the floor, on desktops and on walls…yeah boys…you can write on your desks!!!
6. Smoothboard Software: To track the wiimote’s position. This is a development of the original software written by Johnny Lee, which gives the system additional annotation features such as pen, highlighters, drawing tools, backgrounds, etc. In my experience, this interactive whiteboard software created by BoonJin is right now the best free application for this alternative interactive board. BoonJin has recently launched the Mac version of the Smoothboard software. This software is open source and free of charge, however, there are broad ranges of products that allow you to outfit most rooms with a Wiimote Whiteboard.

I have piloted the system at the library/media center by mounting the Wiimote so that it can see the projector screen and used an infrared light attached to a pen pointing on the projector screen. I have tried with several applications and its works great with some of the major applications that teachers and students are using at BISS such as PowerPoint, Google Earth, Google SketchUp and iMovie.

Smoothboard presentation at BISS, January 2012 (introduction and iMovie demo)

Smoothboard presentation at BISS, January 2012 (annotations on websites and Google SketchUp)

After presenting the system yesterday afternoon during our elementary faculty meeting, I got all the teachers excited about installing it in their classrooms. Paige, one of our Grade 5 teachers came early this morning with a wiimote “stolen” from her daughter, and after some trial and error, we got it working and ready to go in her classroom!

 Next week, I will present it during the Secondary School faculty meeting…Let’s see how it goes!

How deep the rabbit hole goes?

It seems to be that if you create an IR LED array around the Wiimote and wrap your finger tips with some reflective tape, your finger tips will reflect enough infrared light to be captured by the wiimote an you can actually interact with your screen by waving your hands in the air. I haven’t tried this yet, but linking our digital devices and our interactions with the physical world, opens up possibilities only seen in Sci-Fi movies (Remember Minority Report?)

Information has traditionally been stored on paper or in the past 50 years, digitally displayed through a screen. Being able to interact with information from the digital world by using natural hand gestures is like blending both worlds…Bringing intangible assets to our tangible world.

“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” –Morpheus

Sheryl, our MYP design technology teacher and proud mum of one of the strongest wingbacks in my girls U14 soccer team just wrote a lovely article about last Saturday ISAC tournament…WE PLACED THIRD! Check it out!

One of the many advantages of teaching overseas is the opportunity to live and teach anywhere in the world. What makes this opportunity even more exciting is the uncertainty of not knowing where in the world will you end teaching and living once you have signed your letter of intent with your current school.

Last December I made the decision to leave Cebu International School and the Philippines after five years of teaching here. Of course the decision of moving does not mean that I was unhappy where I was. Anyone who knows me well will tell you how attached I became to the Filipino people and land in these five years and how grateful I am to Cebu International School for all the opportunities to grow professionally as an international educator.

However, being Cebu International School my first international post and seeing many of my colleagues over the years pursuing their professional careers in a new exciting place, Aurora and I decided that it was time to follow a new path, and to experience again the excitement and challenges of a new country and a new school. So we did, and just before the Christmas break, I accepted a double job position at Beijing BISS International School, as head of the library Media Center and technology integrator. Aurora and I couldn’t be more excited about our next move.

BISS has a strong reputation in Beijing for the strong emphasis on technology integration in education, pushed in great measure by Julie Lindsay, our e-learning coordinator. I feel so lucky to have the chance to work with this real innovator. In her two years at BISS she has managed to revolutionize the way teachers at BISS interact with each other and with students by integrating technology into the school at the macro and micro levels. Here are some highlights of our thriving technology environment:

Highlight 1: A one to one school where all staff and students have a laptop for their dedicated use at school and at home.

Highlight 2: Studywiz: An Online Learning Environment that our school uses to complement our 1:1 laptop program. I have to admit that for me this is a tough pill to swallow since I still believe in open source solutions as a viable, sustainable model for education, and I don’t see Studywiz being any better than Moodle.Only time will tell how things unfold. But pioneers are made in the dust of unknown not after the dust settles. In the meantime, I am slightly trying to convince our Admin Team that Moodle is the perfect alternative to Studywiz and I have already built our Media Center website on top of the Moodle 2.1 package an then installed it in one of our servers. It just takes SQL, PHP and Apache on an old webserver to make it run. Check it out! http://moodle.biss.com.cn

Highlight 3: Extensive use of Wikispaces as an integral part of our digital learning environment. BISS now has a ‘private label’ account with wikispaces.com. This means all teachers and students have the opportunity to create wikis for school projects or curriculum purposes under the BISS umbrella. Wikis are a great 2.0 tool for projects and for class-to-class collaborations in Beijing, including global interaction…despite all the challenges faced (hello!!!,..a school in China committed in transforming itself into a thriving digital learning environment????

Highlight 4: A media server which provides a fully searchable central archive of audio and video footage, a real “Video on Demand” facility. The system is capable of storing over 3 Terabytes of high quality video content, which comes from the school’s existing stock of videos. The system has the potential to deliver a different video stream to each computer in the school simultaneously. In addition, our students will soon be able to log in from home using their username and password, upload their school videos and embed them later on in their wikis and blogs. I am very excited by this new addition to our IT provision. This truly opens endless windows for the the library-media center. By the way, does anyone know of any open source solutions that would do such a thing?

During  the past  few years  I have  felt very  fortunate  to have a  fantastic admin  team at CIS  that has been extremely  supportive  in making sure the Educational Media Center grows as a learning center, not only in terms of resources but also facilities.
 
Last School year, in preparation for the upcoming renovation of our EMC, we had to start thinking and planning on the design of a space that would be conducive to the challenges of a 21st century  learning environment. Before getting hands on, we had to think about how  the EMC  could provide a  space  that  is engaging, creative, flexible, adaptable and  supportive  to new and more varied modes of learning.
 
While we were gathering information and suggestions, an idea hit me like a bolt of lightening:  

“We have to give students something special and inviting. The EMC has to offer a physical environment that is different from any other space in school that teachers and students regularly use.”
 
My point was, why would students and teachers use the EMC facilities, when they can continue to use their own classroom, a more private space that has been customized to their specific needs?

In our efforts to make a 21st century learning center, we had mistakenly tried to recreate a standard, formal library, with a space with tables and chairs at the very front of the EMC, assuming that teachers would want to use it as an expanded classroom.   

After months of discussions and drawing of design alternatives, we decided to  redesigned  the EMC space  to make  it more of a “movie theater”, as well as open up  the  shelving  to  spread  the  tables  throughout  the  library  to allow more privacy  in seating and better supervision:

Our  next  step was  to  renovate  the  “computer  lab” area  and  transform  it  into  a  multimedia  editing suite with 14 brand new desktop computers and a floating cart of laptops for students use.

Can you tell from the pictures that everything in the EMC  is on wheels now?   So we do have a lot of movement and flexibility. The EMC has become a multi-purpose  space  since  once you  remove  everything  on  wheels,  all  you have left is an open space ready to be rearrange for workshops, presentations, meetings, etc 

We  are  hoping  we  have  captured  the “something  different”  concept  with  these  major renovations. Is there any teacher at CIS who has a movie theatre  in his/her classroom with  comfortable  chairs  and  soft  seating areas?  (and wait until we install surround  sound  speakers…coming very soon). 

It  is working! We  are  seeing  changes  already! More students are coming on a daily basis. The atmosphere feels friendly but at the same time we can see that the MHS students are focusing on  their  tasks. There  is energy and purpose  in the EMC!

What other brain waves can you offer to help us continue what we have already started?

At the beginning of every school year, we are at CIS reminded of how important it is to build collaborative relationships among us. As a resource person, one of my biggest challenges this year is going to be becoming a true collaborative partner with classroom teachers, building on each others strengths and weaknesses and providing immediate support and modeling best practices for technology and 21^st century literacy skills use in the classroom.

During one of our first Middle/High School meetings we had our traditional discussion on cellphones use in School. A discussion that our former Head of Security and Social Studies teacher Warren Massey gave loud and clear: The kids cannot bring cellphones and electronics to the classroom, as stated in our Parent-Student handbook.

I have been having the same discussion with my friend Warren during the last three years and we never seem to get to a common understanding.

During that meeting I counted no less than three cell phones and a Walky Talky (Warren?) ringing. Teachers who dislike having students with their cell phones on in class, are not willing to turn theirs off when they are playing the role of a student….why?….because we don’t like to feel disconnected.

I wonder how many of us actually turned off our phones before entering that meeting. I bet that no more than a 5%… probably about the same amount of students who don’t bring cellphones, iphones and other kinds of communication devices to class.

During these two first weeks of School I spent part of my time working on the renovation works at the Media Center, and working with Graham (our IT manager) helping others getting connected. Graham’s e-mail in-box and until certain extent mine, had e-mails stating messages like the following:

• My computer won’t connect to the Internet and I need resources by Thursday.

• I need 7 laptops with internet connection set up in my classroom by Thursday

• When are you going to distribute the LCD projectors? I need one by Thursday

• Please have my Internet connected by Thursday, I can’t teach without it.

I see, technology is an essential tool for learning, but only when is on the teacher’s side…for students…just a distraction!

Then I say…so if technology is a distraction for students and needs to be put away…same goes for teachers!

 If we believe that we cannot teach without a computer connected to the Internet, how we dare saying that students can learn without it. How wonderful opportunities technology opens up to teaching and learning…Opportunities that only this generation has ever had access to!

This is the philosophy for the 21^st century School….a connected School…

 Every student should have access to a computer and the Internet, just like they have access to a pencil and paper. It’s 2010 and it’s time we start realizing that students do a Google search before they borrow a book from the library and that they feel more comfortable dealing with digital information rather than print resources. Access to content has changed, and now connections are key, and creation of new ideas is the future for the 21^st century School and library/media center.

Cheers to another school year!

I have to admit that I usually have a hard time when working on embedding what we have traditionally come to call “library skills” into our core curriculum. And this is due to the fact that after years of hard work in moving from teaching isolated “library skills” to teaching integrated “information skills”, many media specialists have come to the conclusion that information literacy and tech literacy are a natural combination and that an integration of traditional library skills and computer skills need to be integrated into a single literacy skills process model.

Bridging the gap

The work of technology integrators and academic librarians/media specialists is rapidly merging on different levels: curriculum development, learning platforms, and teaching. And this reality is making more and more difficult to find out where is the burred line between library skills and technological skills. This is making me realize that may be we should move beyond obsessing about the terminology (and in particular about the technology), to accept that research, library and technology are crucial and critical aspects of our life, and that as such, they must be used as tools to better understand our world, and to search for solutions to the problems facing our global society. It is about move on from thinking IT is in its own box!

Some schools are calling this set of skills, 21^st century literacy skills, in an effort of finding the way to bring Library skills, technology skills and classroom together. Why then not bridging the educational technology team and the library team to form a new, wide-school alliance focused on 21st century learning? I truly believe that librarians/media specialists and tech facilitators are such a natural fit. It is clear to me that we have much to learn from each other – where one department is strong, the other may be weak, and what a perfect partnership that makes! However, this is not THE vision, just MY vision, and I hope it might serve as a model for next-generation library-IT staff organization.

The CIS Tech Committee (http://cistech.wikispaces.com)

Bridging the gap between the library and technology would need to strengthen collaboration between all two teams and, of course, with the classrooms. Although they may be a natural fit, I am still trying at CIS to find the way to highlight those connections, to bridge those gaps, and to bring library, technology and classroom together. I believe that our terrific Tech Committee can become the perfect venue for this. In the Tech committee we are focusing our professional discussions into really creating a common understanding about what is technology and what we want to achieve with all the resources available.

During our last meeting, we had a very fruitful discussion about what essential technology skills all of our students (and teachers) would need to know. This is an old question and I have to admit that I always have a hard tine coming out with a list of essential technology skills that all of our students (and teachers, and parents,…) would need to know. And I usually have a hard time with this idea because I often end creating a list of skills like:

• formulas in an excel document,
• animations in power point presentation,
• brochures in Microsoft publisher,
• Word Document,
• Photo Story, etc.

I truly believe that these sorts of skills (which would probably be appropriate ten years ago) will no longer get students very far and that we should de-emphasize them in favor of wider, bigger and more reaching concepts like:

• collaborating in a global society across distances,
• communicating ideas to multiple audiences,
• ability to compare technologies,
• ability to keep up with new ideas in technology, or
• creating something new by using known tools.

May be I am a bit too influenced by my last two years experiencing with web 2.0 tools like moodle, blogs, wikies and podcasts, but I believe that this is the way to go.

We really need to constantly adopt and adapt to the changing nature of information and communication in our web 2.0 world, and students should be taught 21^st century literacy skills in an authentic way, and this list of skills has changed dramatically in recent years…and keeps changing! There are many librarians, media specialists, and technology teachers/integrators who are now moving beyond the “stand alone, software based” skills into the world of Web 2.0, collaboration and multimedia.

We need to look at what we need to do to get there, and may be it requires a complete reorganization of our mindset. I would like to leave you with one question for reflection…can we as an organization do this, can we make it happen, and what we need to change to make it happen?

I don’t remember who, but someone told me a couple of years ago that the best approach to integrate technology into a library-media center is always trying to start small and see how things go. That as media specialists/librarians/technology integrators we should be trying to get into the difficult dynamic of going over about the culture of perfect. I’ve just realized that this is being a really hard one for me, as I believe it is in general for libraries and media centers.

When analyzing my professional career as an information specialist, I think I often used to suffer from analysis paralysis when I tried to create not just a blog…but the perfect blog….with the right software…and the right extension…and just the right theme… and have just the right post …but I didn’t even think about the fact that maybe nobody even wanted a blog. I simply could not move forward as I used to spend too much time working behind scenes trying to create the perfect product or service.

 After 4 years of professional career as an International educator I have started wondering whether it would be easier to kind of start simple and see where things go. It’s easier and more efficient in the long term to build on a simple, achievable idea, than it is to create an out of the chart tech monstrosity. With all our technologies we can’t expect to put something out there and just have it untouchable where we’ll never have to fix it again. I am still learning this lesson…as I said before, this is a constant process.

Podcasting in Foreign Languages

There is not a single week that I don’t find something that is really exciting. A new technology or a new application of technology that I could be using in my library/media center or in my teaching practice as a Spanish B teacher. I have been lately doing some research on podcasting for education. I didn’t have any previous experience with podcasts with academic purposes and at Cebu International School none of the teachers or students really had any previous experience podcasting (oops!).

However after some reading about the topic I got more and more excited about the perspective of embedding podcasts into my Foreign Languages experience, and, from there, sharing my experiences with other faculty members taking advantage of my double position as Head of Foreign Languages and Head of the Media Center.

I found out that there are lots of reasons why I should be podcasting:

• First, you are publishing to a potentially vast audience and using technology that gives you feedback. Podcasting is not necessarily a one-off – it can become a series of episodes and there is a great incentive to carry on.

• Second, it’s a great way of distributing learning materials, which can include sound, images and video. It’s publishing with a purpose and while with a VLE [virtual learning environment] like Moodle, you have to encourage people to visit it, with podcasting, once people have subscribed, they get the clips sent to them through RSS feed.

• Third, it’s a great communication tool. I was thinking this morning in the number of our school “News Flash” that never get read. Podcasting can be a great way to communicate with parents!

First steps

The first podcast I tried out was for my 11th graders. We were studying a unit on persuasive language and they were getting ready to put in practice their capacities as advisers. I recorded some podcasts where different characters where exposing their particular love issues. I used audacity as the audio recording tool and Aurora, my partner, performing the feminine roles. Students had to download the audio files and be prepared to give advise for the following class. I used our VLE set up in Moodle as means of distribution of the clips. I wanted to take advantage of the popularity of MP3 players among my students, so I created different episodes for each one of them to be downloaded and listened to.

 That was a good beginning and the activity was really engaging my students, so I wanted to go one step beyond. A few days ago, we were working on a unit on Personal Writing and I decided then to involve my students more into the creation process of the podcast by making them responsible for writing and recording a script of their personal diary. I posted a first chapter called “A teacher’s diary” and students had to comment on my podcast with their own “student’s diary”. The criteria that I gave them was, that their podcast needed to include the following:

• Minimum duration of 1 minute and a maximum of 1 minute and 30 seconds.

• You must speak spontaneously.

• The podcast must reflect a page in your diary about a day in school and about a relevant event that has happened to you during that day. The event can be fictional.

• Remember that this VoiceThread is an extension of your Spanish class, and as such, any School rule applies.

• Don’t post any personal information like phone numbers, personal email address, or last name. Use your nick name and your avatar instead.

I used for this project VoiceThread. VoiceThread is a web-based communications network that allow users to create and collaborate on digital stories, or participate in audio forums. With this VoiceThread I aimed to create an accountable environment where students connected to the network are known users, responsible for their content and behavior. Through the activity, students could show their speaking skills without feeling “on-the-spot” as they might sometimes in the class or group setting. VoiceThread is also easily embedded in any website or blog. Have a look to the activity!

I am glad to say that this activity proved to be very helpful to better engage some of my students who are not very inclined to participate in class. Furthermore, VoiceThread gave students more opportunity for more practice with speaking and writing than class time do often allow. Actually, I believe that through this activity, students gained a deeper and more engaging learning experience which hopefully will result in an increase in students’ oral fluency.

 What’s next?

After this smooth entry into podcasting, I have been thinking in other exciting ways podcasting could enrich the learning experience at CIS. How about working on a book review podcasting project where students could write book reviews scripts, record them and then post them on our Website?… This would be a first step into the creation of a book review database that kids can go to when they are looking for a good book to read. Or how about a weekly radio show with music and interviews to which visitors can subscribe to using an RSS feed?….or may be an audio edition of our weekly Newsflash for parents and students to download and listen to while driving, cooking, or jogging!

Although I have really just got started, I can already see how powerful this processes might be for our students. Since I’m a newbie at podcasting, any recommendation on what else should I be doing?