Digital Convergence

Save Money ... Give Them All iPads

Want to save money? … Give every student an iPad?  This statement is at the very least a stretch but at Croswell-Lexington High School our one to one iPad initiative has seen some indirect savings.  

Two years ago each of our 750 students were issued an iPad with their textbooks loaded on them.  Slowly but surely paper tests and worksheets began to evolve digitally.  Class newsletters and notes home morphed into high powered class websites and emails. Some classes are now totally paperless and a few completely online.   Although still used, our teachers are simply not dependent on the copy machine. With this comes savings.

Three important thoughts:

* ensure your copy machine is able to scan PDFs - this was essential to our faculty’s digital shift

* we have not had to replace a lost nor rebind a damaged textbook in two years - how much do you spend?

* we do not send home paper midterm reports - grades can be access 24/7 in real time

The graphs below show roughly 30 % in apple to apple copy savings.  Note: our faculty had already utilized Tate's 20 instructional strategies in her book Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites, so your school may see even more of a drop.  In dollars, combined with textbook and binding savings  this equates to nearly $80 000 a year.  We anticipate even more.  Does this cover the cost of going one to one … NO ... but it surely takes a lot of the sting out of doing what’s right for kids.

Five Stones and Social Media in Your School

As Principals, we are often forced into no-win situations, against all odds, backs against the wall … or are we?  

Lately, technology has brought new expectations to our already full plates.  When I first entered educational administration (15 years ago), the line between the school’s responsibility and the family’s was clearly drawn at the bus stop.  Today, we are asked to reach further into our students’ lives through social media.  Our “watch” now includes the 24/7 never-ending realm of Facebook and Twitter.  It is impossible to ask school officials to deal with our kids’ digital worlds … or is it?

Malcom Gladwell’s new book David and Goliath shares complex and surprising ways in which the small beat the odds and defeat the large.  We all know the story.  Young David (later to be King of Israel), with a sling and five stones, accepts and defeats the challenge of the 6-foot-9 Philistine warrior in the Valley of Elah.  He beat the odds … or did he?  Gladwell will argue the odds were in David’s favor.  A “slinger” has a huge advantage in hand-to-hand combat, and Goliath was the actual underdog.  He was slow, clunky with armor and needed his opponent within an arm’s reach to win.  David, on the other hand, never had to get within 40 feet of Goliath for victory.  

David saw the fight differently than everyone else.  Size didn’t matter.  Some 21st-century educators see interacting with their students online differently as well.  Most see Facebook as Goliath and too enormous to monitor.  How could we ask a principal to watch all of his/her student’s Twitter accounts and enforce school policy.  Obviously we can’t, but there are some Davids out there looking at social media differently.  

These educational Davids are embracing social media and seeing results. By getting on Twitter, they are killing two birds with one stone (yes, pun intended).  Many schools have thriving Facebook pages with thousands of followers.  Not only is information shared instantly with their communities but also a culture of common ground is created.  Students at school districts like this understand that adults (educators and community members alike) will see what they post and react to it.  Teachers tweet out assignments.  Families sit down to classroom Facebook pages to review the day’s activities.  Young people email their counselors for schedule advice.  Students text school hotlines alerting officials of a crisis.  Our kids obviously think more before they “click” in this kind of environment when they know adults are fully engaged in it.

As our schools become more digital, our districts and legislators are slowly reacting.  A federal framework based on COPPA and CIPA is in place.  Most districts have created walls attempting to  block certain access.  Most would agree this has to be done but is very ineffective.  Students quickly find ways around these barriers (even between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.).  We have taught them to be creative … right?  By only blocking access, these districts are creating an online free-for-all with very little adult presence. If young people don’t think anyone is watching, what do you think they will do?

Will school officials ever cut the head off social media as David did to Goliath? … Probably not.  Maybe, just maybe, victory looks different in this battle.  Consider a school district where we embrace virtual citizenship and adults teach young people the implications of their digital footprints as the WIN.  Social media is here to stay, and engaging adults and young people together in it may be your “five stones.”  Watch out Goliath.

Cut and Pasting our High School Diplomas

In college I always had someone’s paper notes from the previous semester.  We would share them.  I often would read essays from friends who had already taken the class.  I would even meet friends for a coffee and find out what the professor’s expectations were before even sitting in his/her class.  Oh the SHAME!  

In today’s virtual world of education where students can collaborate and share at light speed we have demonized much of what we all did in class 20 years ago.  In the pre-Google years our teachers tried to force us to collaborate and now good intentioned educators are closing the doors on these very skills due to our lack of control.  The students are ahead of us and it's time to catch up. They have everything and everyone right at their fingertips … more than we will probably ever know :)  How do we handle this?

In an instant a group of students (and anyone else that wants to help) can form a #hashtag and tweet out all the geographic features that define places in California, or join a Google Hangout and work together on a quadratic function presentation, or create a facebook page sharing everything needed for success in Psych 101 … GREAT!  

The challenge is that as a 21st Century teacher, we need to be ahead of this collaboration.  Our policies and class structures need to not only control digital collaboration but to embrace it.  Here are strategies to help empower our virtual teachers so that students are not simply cutting and pasting their diplomas:

*Teacher explains ahead of time what parts of an assignment students are expected to work on together and which parts must be a student's own individual work (Corsetti).

*Create a mechanism for other students to anonymously self-report the plagiarism of others - like a hotline or a Google form.  Make it very public to all students that this ability is out there.

*Good virtual teachers keep a digital copy of everything ever submitted by previous students to compare to present student work and make it well known that this process is in place (private websites expand this like turnitun.com)

*Teachers change the mechanics used for assessments (ie poetry or personification) allowing for more creativity and limiting the ability to copy and paste.  Consider these two prompt examples: “In your own words explain five differences between photosynthesis and cellular respiration” vs. “Become your favorite plant or animal and please defend five reasons why photosynthesis is better than cellular respiration or vice versa”

*Even though systems usually timestamp when students turn in work the expectation is for the student to contact the teacher telling him/her that it is complete.  This gives them ownership in the process and allows the teacher a better feel for when multiple students are turning things in (Ruiz).

*It is imperative to set expectations in your virtual class, both in your syllabus and on your individual assignments.  If you have a face-to-face meeting at the beginning of your class ensure to discuss this.  Give examples of what virtual plagiarism is, why it is wrong, and when they may get tempted to do it.

*Teachers have students complete writing assignments (instead of multiple choice, fill in blank, etc.), thus encouraging individual pieces to demonstrate their understanding of course material (Reinowski).

*Teacher changes the media used for the assessment (ie ShowMe, ExplainEverything, or video) allowing for more creativity and limiting the ability to plagiarize.

Please feel free to share your ideas with me at this link so I can add them to this list.

https://docs.google.com/a/croslex.org/forms/d/1tlFJTBlBMv9B9Nof5KuRJreo2HllvE5g5VQATOwkCsQ/viewform