AlgebraHut.com Blog

I am pretty excited with my latest idea. As you may already know, I have an Interwrite Board in my classroom (1 full school year now). The Interwrite Board works with software on a computer to essentially allow you to write with a special pen to the computer.

The light bulb came on a little late for me, but if it writes it to the computer screen, then you can use it in a screencast. I tested out this idea for the 2nd time and it worked better than expected. I am really pleased with the simplicity and quality of it.

I used Screenr, which is free and requires NO download. Super convenient. Plus my computer in the classroom is frozen/locked down and it takes an executive command and a little luck for it be unfrozen to install new software.Screenr is a web app for recording a screen cast. It is tied closely with twitter, to the point in fact that you have to log in with Twitter to use Screenr and it prompts you to tweet a message when you complete a screencast.

I used a borrowed set of headphones with an extension cord so I could reach the Interwrite Board. I am considering getting a wireless headset, but I’m not sure of the sound quality.

If you don’t have money to spend on an Interwrite Board, you could opt for the Interwrite Pad, which I believe is in the neighborhood of $300. It takes some practice to get used to writing on the pad, but the functionality is all the same.

Anyway, here is the result. Let me know what you think.

Some more info on Screenr. There is a 5 minute limit. There are some math examples where I’m sure I could use more time. I haven’t tried Jing or screencast.com yet. There is a slight delay with using Screenr in the mouse movement. It isn’t much, but it is noticeable when you are quickly writing.

Also, with Screenr, you can directly upload your screencast to youtube, which I think is a really nice option.

Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think.

~Dylan Faullin

Here is yet another pencast from a session at the NADE 2010 Conference in Columbus, OH. This session was about the use of a Smart Board in the classroom. I actually use a smart board, but not the SmartBoard brand. The brand I have is InterWrite (and I use an InterWrite Board, rather than a SmartBoard, but it’s the same concept).

I really like using the InterWrite Board in my class. However, I feel as though there is more I could be doing with it. Currently, what makes using the InterWrite Board different than using a chalk board is that I can easily switch between colors (I hate using colored chalk and so I rarely did) and I save everything I write on the board as a pdf.

Thus, my students can access colorful lecture notes if they missed class or took poor notes (which most of them do). I also write my lecture notes directly on my lecture outlines (which I make available to the students). This keeps me on track and keeps things somewhat organized. Preparing for a lecture is easy enough now: I just pull up my lecture outline and fill it in!

But that’s it. Otherwise, it’s just like I would lecture on my chalkboard. I suppose I thought using an InterWrite Board might be more interactive for the students. I would like to have some math simulations or something that I could pull into my lecture and let the students play around with to really bring the math alive. However, I haven’t found much in the way of useful, interactive math tools, especially ones that can demonstrate what math can be used for.

Anyhow, I went to this session hoping to get some ideas of how I could go beyond what I was already doing. What I got was a demonstration of alot of the same things I was already doing. Disappointing? Not really. I am obviously at the leading edge of technology use in developmental education! Next year, I should go to NADE and present!

Seriously though, one thing I felt motivated by in this session was that these teachers were putting together the lectures ahead of time. I think that’s what I need to do. I do have my lecture outlines ready ahead of time, but the rest I just fill in as I go. I should have the whole thing created ahead of time. In that way, I could possibly incorporate some interactive tools, spend more time facing my class instead of facing the board, maybe even get one of my students to guide the board while I speak and walk around the classroom. As the presenters said in this session, ‘If you just use this as a whiteboard/chalkboard and you don’t prepare your lectures ahead of time, then you are not getting any benefit out of the technology.’ I’m paraphrasing.

Anyhow, enough of my thoughts. Here is the pencast:

Let me know what you think on Twitter: @faullindc3

~Dylan Faullin

I just returned from this year’s NADE conference, held in Columbus, OH.  Columbus is a fun city, laid back, lots of diversity, lots of things to do.  Among other things, I went to COSI, an excellent Science Museum for kids (at heart), an art museum (which was mostly under renovation but was still nice), the Big Bang - a dueling piano bar (I highly recommend going), the North Market, the German Village Book Loft, and several local restaurants.

In between all of that, there was a conference!  The conference gift bag was NICE, the nicest item being a 2GB flash drive, with conference material from the sessions preloaded (great idea!).  The meals served by the conference were also very good. 

The conference itself, however, I did not find as helpful as I had hoped.  I went to this conference 5 years ago in Philly.  At the time, I was a fresh-out-of-college teacher and the conference gave me lots of good ideas.  Now that I have 5 years of experience under my belt, I didn’t find the advice as helpful.  It is hard for me to tell if the quality of the sessions that I attended were less than 5 years ago or if I am just more wise than 5 years ago.  It seems to be a little of each.

The most shocking part of the conference was the complete lack of technology used by the attendees (me included).  When I went 5 years ago, it was before the Web 2.0 revolution.  In the time since, I have read about lots of conferences (mostly in other fields) where attendees were live-blogging, tweeting, and using other such real-time communication tools.  I saw almost none of this at NADE.  NONE!

I did see lots cell phones, but these were clearly not being used in regards to the conference and live-blogging.  Very few laptops, at least at the sessions.  The couple of sessions about technology that I happened to attend were very basic.  In one technology, twitter and facebook were introduced but nothing of the way in which this technology could be used in an educational way was demonstrated or discussed.  The discussion was mostly about privacy issues.  That certainly has its place, but then the description of the talk should have been concerning privacy issues instead of tricking me into thinking I was actually going to learn something.

This lacking embrace of technology is worrying to me.  We saw this with the music industry.  We are seeing this with the print media industry.  This will be a problem for the education industry.  The way people accessed and consumed music changed.  The music industry tried to ignore it.  They tried to scare and guilt people away from it.  They tried to tightly control it.  None of these things worked.  The technology had to be embraced and leveraged to the benefit of the music industry, not ignored, squashed, or controlled.

The print media industry tried many (and are currently trying many) of the same things.  Things will not begin to turn around until the print media industry embraces and then tries to leverage it to their benefit.  The difficulty is knowing how to do that.  And you may not make as much profit as you used to, at least initially.  That just means what you are offering is not as valuable to your consumers as it used to be.  Instead of trying to hold on to the same outmoded business model and expect to make the same amount of money, you have to change with the times and offer your consumers value-added products.

Relating this back to education, we are heading down the same path.  We are currently in the ‘ignore’ phase.  We have adopted some technology to some extent, but, on the whole, we certainly are not making any fundamental changes in the way we do things that embraces the technology and then leverages it.  Education has been happy to use email and youtube and powerpoint, but that’s about it.  And none of these things are being used in very innovative ways. 

And no technology is being embraced at any fundamental level to change the way we educate.  The powerpoint just supplements the lecture.  Youtube is just being used to show videos instead of having to use DVD.  Email is just another way to communicate (which many of the younger crowd find inconvenient).

Some teachers are experimenting within individual classrooms and doing some great things, but that isn’t enough.  If it’s anything like at my institution, they are the only one.  They have no support or collaboration, which makes their pioneering activities mostly futile.  There needs to be some industry-wide change at the administration level, in the way education is administered AND in the way education is offered up for consumption. 

To give you an idea of how radical this may need to be, we need to consider that the idea of ‘classroom’ may be outmoded!  Think about it!  Why did the internet cause so much grief to the music industry and the print media industry?  Because those things which once required a physical object to be consumed were no longer necessary. 

To consume music, you had to buy a CD.  To read the news, you had to buy a paper or magazine.  It was through that physical object that these industries exercised control of their products and made billions in profit for years.  The internet changed that.  You no longer had to buy a CD to listen to your favorite songs from the radio.  You no longer had to buy a magazine to read about your favorite topic.

(It was possible to borrow from a friend and make a copy.  But this was never convenient before the internet.  Besides, the Internet doesn’t just allow your friend to make a copy, it allows you to distribute material to the public at large.  That is a huge difference.)

With the loss of this necessary physical object to consume a product, the industries could no longer leverage that physical object to make money.  No longer were you forced to buy a CD or borrow one from a friend who had to buy it in order to listen to the music you liked.  You could just get on the Internet and download a copy of the song from a complete stranger.  The floor fell from underneath them. 

The SAME thing is happening in education.  The physical object that the education industry leverages to make money is the classroom (and textbooks, but that is a whole other industry that could have collapsed because it is education AND print media; however, many textbook companies are adapting quite nicely by offereing ebooks, online homework systems, class management systems, etc.).  It is through the control of classrooms that institutions of higher education have had leverage, deciding what classes the students had to take, what would be taught in those classes, how many classes were required for a particular degree, how much the student would have to pay for these classes and all the other incidentals.

With the internet, the classroom may now be unnecessary in the delivery of education.  Anything that I could lecture about in class could easily be recorded and uploaded to youtube for consumption.  Lectures can easily be moved outside the classroom.  Interaction with the teacher and fellow students can now take place outside of the classroom, in real time, conventiently from a cell phone. 

Is there anything that takes place in a classroom that could not take place outside the classroom via the internet?  The only thing I can think of are labs.  Labs will still have leverage.

Classes are no longer needed to learn.  I think I have gotten pretty good at using javascript and I have never taken a class on javascript or bought a book on javascript.  I just use the internet.  Anytime there is something I want to do that I don’t know how to do in javascript, I search Google.  It usually doesn’t take long to find the answer.

What happens when schools lose their leverage and the classroom is no longer seen as necessary in the learning process (and hence no longer carries value)?  They will no longer be able to make money from the sole fact of owning the access to the classroom, because people will stop paying for it.  Schools will need to have something else of value to sell, where the classroom is not the central mode of delivery or the central selling point.

Online classes, in their current incarnation, do not seem promising to me, because they basically take the same old format for education and *try* to move it online.  It is still centered on a classroom, lecture-style format (at least the online classes I’ve seen).  Online classes are not “open” enough.  It doesn’t seem very innovative or different from the way we do things now, just online instead of in a physical classroom.

That was a much longer detour than I was expecting to take on education and technology.  I recorded the sessions that I attended at NADE using my Pulse SmartPen.  I will be posting my pencast online soon and will update the blog to let you know when it is available.

Thanks for reading.

~Dylan Faullin