If this is your first visit to Teaching in Tallahassee, let me make one thing clear from the start - This is not a math blog! As most of my readers know, I'm a history teacher and I blog about both edtech issues and, on occasion, history topics. That being said, I believe that the appearance on the scene of a new math app raises some important questions about what constitutes cheating in our tech-infused world.
PhotoMath, which bills itself as a "smart camera calculator," is a new app for iOS and Windows smartphones (coming to Android in early 2015) that utilizes the phone's camera to solve math problems for users. I don't often get overly excited about new apps these days, but this thing is truly amazing. My immediate reaction was, of course, to lament over why this tool wasn't available as I struggled through high school math.
Once you get past the coolness factor, PhotoMath should force us to deal with some fundamental questions about the use of tools like this in our schools. I shared the app with a group of my 11th grade students this morning and their immediate reaction was elation over how easy their homework would be from now on. But once we talked about the apps potential for a little while, students began to appreciate PhotoMath as a tool that could help them learn. You see, in addition to providing the user with a solution, PhotoMath also provides all of the steps that go into solving a problem. That could be extremely powerful for struggling students, if used correctly.
So how do we define that fine line between cheating and proper use of the tools that emerging technologies provide? I think that can be answered in the same way that I would answer questions about many tech tools that students are using, whether or not we as educators approve. We can either shut our classroom door to the tool (as many have done with smartphones), or we can embrace the tool, incorporate it into what we are doing, and teach students how to use the tool in a responsible and productive way. One thing is for sure, kids are going to use PhotoMath. The question is: How will we as educators adapt?
I would love to hear your ideas in the comments.
Here is a video from the PhotoMath website that shows how this app works.
Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books from the 1980s? They were the ingenious creation Edward Packard, and put you, the reader, in the story. At the end of a chapter, the reader would choose how the story would proceed from among a couple of plot options. I was not a prolific reader in my youth (something that I regret now) but I do remember how engaging these books were. The web application Inklewriter puts the power of creating this kind of interactive story at your fingertips.
Inklewriter allows writers to focus on their writing, while the application takes care of the challenging task of organizing the various plot twists. I believe that this kind of application has the potential to revolutionize creative writing classes. I teach history, and I know that there is an application for this product in the history classroom - I just haven't figured it out yet.
Here is a promo video put together by Inklestudios:
Over the past couple of years, the educational texting application Remind101 has become one of the most important communication tools in my arsenal. As a simple blast-text tool, Remind101 gave me reason enough to put it to use with my classes. But this small start-up has not rested on its laurels. They have continued to make improvements, broadening the scope while maintaining the tool's simplicity.
Remind101 owes a lot of its success to the fact that they continue to seek out advice and feedback from real teachers. They are not the company at edtech conferences wining and dining school district folks with $30,000 events. They are the guys and gals wearing the cool t-shirts and picking teachers' brains around a pint at the small pubs. This grassroots market research has led to several improvements and new features, such as small-group texting and others.
Remind101's newest feature, released just a day or so ago, allows teachers to attach files to their text messages. This is exciting news. Many of the messages that I send through Remind101 points students to resources that I have posted on my class website or Edmodo. Now I can simply attach those files to the message. The attachment does use up 20 characters, leaving me 120 characters for the body of my message. A small price for this great feature, but something to keep in mind. I have not yet encountered a file-size limit.
What kind of stuff would you attach to text messages to students? Homework assignments, reading packets, pics of the class whiteboard, fun pics of class activities. The possibilities are exciting. So, how would you use this new feature? Remind101 is running a contest of best practices. Come up with some great ideas to share, and you could win an iPad. If you have still not given Remind101 a test run, I urge to go there right now and try it out.
Here is a short promo video on Remind101's new attachment feature.
This is probably the most excited that I've been about a new tool in a long time. Once in while a tool comes along that sends my mind reeling about its possible applications in the classroom. Postach.io is just that kind of tool. It is built around the idea of publishing blog posts directly from Evernote by simply adding the tag "published" to any note. It's that simple!
To get started, just visit Postach.io and setup a new account using your Evernote credentials. There is acollection of super clean themes from which to choose. Postach.io will auto-create your first post which provides you with a simple set of instructions to get you started.
Because posts are created within Evernote, you can post from wherever you access your Evernote account. This immediately gets me thinking about students posting from their smart phones, from wherever they happen to be - journaling from a museum field trip, live-blogging a science experiment, or sharing lecture notes. The possibilities are almost endless.
You can take a look at a blog that I created on Postach.io to highlight history resources. I plan on experimenting with it as a live-blogging platform from FETC in January. Stay tuned.
Three days (four for some), 7,500 attendees, over 200 concurrent sessions, 75 paid workshops, and an exhibit floor featuring more than 500 companies. The 2011 edition of the Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) is now in the books. It always takes a few days to recover from the marathon PD experience, and now it's time to sit down and reflect.
Now what? Millions of dollars spent by school districts, education-minded organization, and individuals just to get to the annual edtech conference in Orlando, FL, not to mention the millions in sales generated by the massive exhibit hall, and single most important question that comes to mind is: "What will all of this mean for American students?" How much of the professional development that took place will result in real changes by real teachers, for real students, in real schools? How much of that new technology showcased on the exhibit floor will be used to transform classrooms into 21st century learning laboratories?
This was my first year presenting at FETC - a three hour hands-on workshop on transforming the classroom with web 2.0 tools - and my hope is that each of the 15 teachers that attended my workshop would take at least one tool discussed and integrated into their curriculum before the end of this school year. Is that a realistic goal?
The more interesting question is, I think, how many teachers attend conferences (any conference) purely for the professional development or as all expense paid mini-vacations? I hope that the number assigned to the latter is small, but I know that it isn't zero. How are schools or school districts deciding who to send to conferences? How does your school or school district decide? In the lean economic days, the process is probably worth taking a hard look at in many schools/districts.
iDevices Take Center-Stage The technology that stole the show this year was definitely Apple's iPad. I've already devoted an entire post from this year's conference to the iPad, and it was the one gadget that seemed to be on everyone's mind. The two most lively sessions that I attended this year both featured the iPad and its potential as a learning tool. Look around at any session and ipads were as ubiquitous this year as laptops were in 2010. While I think that most would agree that iDevices are game-changers in education, most probably left with more questions than answers about how to put them into widespread use. This should making the coming months/years an exciting time to be in education.
A Time to Connect As always, one of the most rewarding things about FETC is that it gives attendees an opportunity to connect face-to-face with members of their PLNs, as well as add to it. Since last year's inaugural TGI Friday's tweet-up, I've looked forward to spending time with colleagues that have become friends. Though I applaud FETC for embracing social media this year (Edmodo served as the official social network), their opening night tweet-up on the exhibit floor ran contrary to the spirit of what these meetings should be about - unscripted, spontaneous, and member-driven affairs. I will give them an A for effort for embracing the idea.
The Big Take-Aways
Mobile devices will drive edtech innovation in the coming years.
Despite the promotion of Edmodo as the official session back-channeling application, Twitter remains the app of choice.
How school districts can safely engage in social media remains a BIG question.
Web 2.0 tools are still a big draw for concurrent session presenters.
If the size of a company's presence on the exhibit floor is indicative of their position in the marketplace, Promethean is putting distance on the rest of the field. I wonder if the numbers bear that out.
Do you agree? Disagree? Have some take-aways of your own?
Once again, I look forward to next year. The call for speakers for FETC 2012 will open on March 1.
