Getting Social

Social bookmarking—it sounds like some sort of friendly numbers racket, but the odds of winning with social bookmarking are much better than betting on the lottery. Everyone who uses a web browser has a list of bookmarks (Favorites in Internet Explorer parlance). These are the URLs (uniform resource locators; i.e. web addresses) of websites that you've visited and want to save for future access. It's sort of a name-and-address book of websites. Normally, this list of bookmarks resides on your computer. Move to a different computer; lose access to your bookmarks.

Social bookmarking software solves that problem by putting your bookmarks on the web, so you can access them from any computer. You get an account that allows you to add and organize your bookmarks. That's already pretty good; that's the "bookmarking" part. But it's the "social" part that shifts the concept into higher gear. Not only can you add to, change, and access your bookmarks, but others can see them too (unless you choose to make them private). And, more to the point, you can see theirs.

The real power, though, is that you can organize your bookmarks by keyword (sometimes called "tags," or "labels"). The tags are like the keywords that librarians use to catalog books. But whereas librarians work from a fixed, clearly organized, hierarchical arrangement (that takes a lot of time to learn,) you can create your own tags, on the fly, and apply them to your bookmarks. This may sound a bit like anarchy-on-the-Internet. And it is, but the trade-off is that everyone instantly becomes a librarian. Collective wisdom isn't always 100% accurate, but it's fast.

Now suppose, for example, you've got a list of bookmarks all related to Apple's iPod. As you save them with the social bookmarking software (I'll get to some specific programs in a moment), you tag each one with "iPod". If I google "iPod", I'll get 245 million hits (really). But they're not necessarily ranked in an order than makes sense. At least not to me. But if I search all of the bookmarks that others have tagged with "iPod", I can get a list of what other people think is important about the iPod rather than what Google thinks is important. Plus I can see how many people have saved that URL and maybe a brief description of the website. All for free.

It's not a perfect system as you may have already figured out. If I call it an "iPod" and you call it an "MP3 Player", we won't see each other's bookmarks because we've used different tags. That's where a librarian's years of training and experience would come in handy. But I can't wait for that, so I'm willing to live with an imperfect but fast system. Anyway, if it looks like a duck and squawks like a duck, most people will call it a duck rather than a goose.

There are several excellent social bookmarking services. Two of the most popular are del.icio.us and Furl. I like del.icio.us because the interface is so clean and straightforward. Plus the online help is well organized. My tenth graders were able to figure it out in no time. Furl has its champions, some differences, and advantages (One of which is that you can export your bookmarks to MLA format. That can be advantageous when students are doing a research project).

Try them both and pick one. It's like religion—there's more than one way to get to heaven. All of the services are free. You can get an account in a couple of minutes and be up and running immediately thereafter. If you're paranoid that a service might go under (del.icio.us is now owned by Yahoo, so it's not likely to happen any time soon), you can export all of your bookmarks to your computer to save for future business disasters.

Here are two ways that I've used del.icio.us in the classroom. First have every student get a del.icio.us account and agree on a standard naming convention for the logins. Our school's initials are "CIC", so every student's login is in the format "cicFirstNameLastInitial. For example, John Doe's login would be "CICjohnd". The "CIC" in the front just about guarantees that no one has used that ID before. An additional advantage is that you and every other student can see who saved a particular link (because everyone knows everyone else's name.)

Now suppose you've got a topic that you want your 10th grade history class to research. Let's say it's "human rights in the British colonies in the 19th century." Student conduct their research on the web, maybe in class or as a homework assignment. When they find a website that's appropriate, they save the link to their own del.icio.us account, but they assign as one of the tags as "cic10hrbrit". Again the "cic10" makes in unlikely to have been used before by someone (unlike "iPod" or "duck".) They can add other tags that might be appropriate as well, say, "colonialism".

Now that the students have done the research and tagged their sites, everyone can search del.icio.us for the tag "cic10hrbrit". The individual contributions (and research) of each student are now available to the whole class. Continue with the project as you wish—write a paper, make a presentation. As the teacher, you can search del.icio.us for that same tag and see the logins of each of the students. This helps you evaluate the quality of their work. No doubt some took the top three Google hits while others really checked out the contents. Because del.icio.us also allows you to put a comment on links you save, you can also ask students to write those comments. Now you've got more information with which to evaluate their work.

As the teacher you can join in to the research process too making it a real group effort. If you find a site that's appropriate to the topic, just tag it with the previously agreed up tag. The students will be able to see the links that you think are relevant.

There are other applications of social bookmarking software, but I'll stop here. Try this one and see how easy it is to use. Then go to the help section of del.icio.us (or Furl or whatever you've chosen to use) and explore other possibilities. Try searching del.icio.us for the tag "del.icio.us", and you'll find blogs and other sites that describe creative ways that others have found for social bookmarking software.

Social bookmarking software is another great application in which the technology quickly disappears, so that you and your students can get on with your work.

Next: To blog or not to blog?

How the iPod Changed My Life

To say that the iPod changed my life is both hyperbole and true. Hyperbole in the sense that my life is essentially the same as it was before I got my first iPod (that was four iPods ago). And true because Apple's elegant music player has dramatically altered how I think about audio and video content. And it has offered some interesting opportunities in the classroom which is why I'm writing about it in TeachingTech.

My interest in recorded music goes back at least to my high school days. I now have a collection of 900 CDs. Back in 1999 or so I purchased one of the then-popular Diamond Rio MP3 players. I think it had 64 MB of storage. I remember at the time thinking how remarkable it was to carry around several CDs worth of music in my shirt pocket. I also remember around that time reading that a music player with more than a gigabyte of storage was in the works somewhere in the world. What would that mean? I did a rough calculation. I would be able to carry the equivalent of nearly 20 CDs in my shirt pocket.

Fast forward to today. I can now put my entire CD collection on an iPod, plus videos, still photographs, audio books, and podcasts. I carry all of those around with me and access them in various combinations daily. And I still have room for more. It's not the capacity of the iPod that makes it important, however. What Apple has done is more than just create a big container. It has created a new way of thinking about audio and video content. It's now compact, portable, instantly accessible. Apple has now sold more than 2 billion songs on it's online store. One billion of those in the last year. Obviously someone out there likes the idea buying music online. Now they're selling audio books, TV shows, and full-length movies. There are thousands of free podcast episodes. For me part of the fun is the sheer enjoyment of reading about a new release, listening to all of those thirty-second clips on the iTunes Store, choosing the album, watching it download, copying it to my iPod, and then walking off with some music that I didn't even know existed ten minutes ago.

What does any of this have to do with education? Well, just as Apple, iTunes, and the iPod changed the way we try, buy, and listen to music, they also changed how we can use audio files. Apple didn't invent the podcast (If you're unfamiliar with the term, there is a good article on Wikipedia here.), but it wasn't until Apple began listing podcasts in the iTunes Store that they really took off. All of the sudden, many people realized that they could create an audio file, upload to some server somewhere, create the feed, and post that to iTunes. And anyone in the world could search iTunes, subscribe, and download it for free. We all became instant radio stations.

Here's an example of good podcast project that I've used: Students conduct an interview of some person (a teacher, parent, or friend). The project would follow these steps (I've listed software that I've used, but there are many other possibilities):

• Students listen to some podcast episodes (there are many free ones listed on iTunes).
• Class discusses what makes a good interview and podcast.
  
• Students decide on a subject for the interview.
• Students write interview questions and a script.
• Student practice recording their own voices and performing simple edits. Audacity is a great, free recording and editing program that runs on Windows, Macs, and Linux. Get it here. Students can learn the basics in a few minutes. Mac users can get great results with Apple's GarageBand. It comes free with all Macs as part of the iLife software suite.
• Classes discusses some technical issues such as file size, file format (e.g. MP3, AAC, WAV), podcast feed, microphone.
  
• Students schedule a time for the interview.
• Students record the interview using Audacity and a laptop or desktop computer.
  
• Students edit the audio file to clean up errors, equalize volume, add intro and outro using Audacity.
  
• Students convert the audio file to MP3 or AAC format using iTunes. iTunes has various options for mono, stereo, and bandwidth that allows good control of file size.
• Students upload the audio files to a web server. I use our school's website.
• Students create the feed for iTunes. This is actually the most technically complicated part, but Apple has good instructions here. A Google search will also give you plenty of answers.
• Students subscribe to your podcast through iTunes and download to a computer and/or iPod.
  
• Now anyone can search the iTunes Store, and your podcast will show up in the directory. Try a search for the ones I've done at my school. Search the iTunes Store for "CIC Podcasts".
  

There are many alternatives and variations to all of this. All accessible to students and teachers with very little technical background. Some example. Students can write and record a radio play. They can record musical performances. Students can recite stories and/or poems that they have written. There are even more possibilities. Include photos and chapters in a podcast episode. Go another step and try a video podcast.

These are great learning opportunities for students and teachers that go beyond the technological aspect. What I particularly like is that the technology isn't so overpowering that only the real geek teachers and students get it. After a bit of practice the technology fades into the background, and you can stay focused on the content.

So the iPod changed my life as a teacher, and it can change yours too. Enjoy.

Next: Social bookmarking in the classroom

I Can't Think of a LowerPoint

So, what better place to start a discussion of technology and education than with the program that is my personal bête noire. And it should be every teacher's bête noire. It's not that there are no good uses in the classroom for PowerPoint; it's just that there are so many poor ones. Edward Tufte has written extensively on the misuse of PowerPoint. His essay, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, is well-worth the $7 purchase price. Google "bad powerpoint", and you'll soon realize this is fertile terrain that is being frequently plowed.

My personal favorite example is Peter Norvig's, The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation. It's a Civil War reenactment of the presentation Abraham Lincoln might have given in 1863 had he been so unlucky as to have had today's technology available. There are many others. Unfortunately, too many of them aren't parodies of famous speeches; they are someone's attempt at presenting information in a logical, clear manner and failing.

There are are number of reasons that I believe PowerPoint is the wrong tool for just about all uses in the classroom. And actually, they apply to just about every other setting as well. The single, most important one--the one I'll focus on here--is software bloat. PowerPoint just has too many features that are unnecessary in most situations.

A software sales brochure might describe PowerPoint as a fully-featured tool designed for making effective presentations when, in fact, it's a program that focuses on appearance at the expense of content. Just about every presentation you would need to give could be done effectively with one template, one font, and one transition. Why is that a problem in the classroom? Because when designing a presentation, students and teachers tend to get caught up in hundreds of decisions over which transition, sound effect, shade of green, et al. that they want to use. They try out every transition (wasting a lot of time in the process) and then include ten different ones (rather than choosing one and sticking with it.) All of this is at the expense of the content.

I continually remind students that the more flash their presentation has, the less likely their audience is to remember the content. I tell them, "Do you want your audience to remember the neat way one slide twirled into the next, complete with computer generated sound effects, or the subject of your presentation?" As student presenters it's unlikely that the audience will remember both. And as our MTV culture proves again and again, flash trumps content every time.

I've seen students waste an entire period just deciding which background color and template to use for a presentation. Ask them at the end of class what they did, and they'll say, "I was working on my presentation." In reality they were practicing work-avoidance. Looking busy so as to avoid the hard work of developing the content of their presentation.

Of course my students then ask, "Why are all those features there if we shouldn't use them?" Good question. Here's my answer. Microsoft (and other developers of the latest bloat-ware) aren't interested in effective presentations per se. They are interested in selling software. Here's what I think happens. Microsoft develops a good presentation program, PowerPoint 1.0, with basic tools for making content look attractive. They sell a bunch of copies. About a year later Bill Gates tells his developers, "Sales are flat; we need a new version of PowerPoint." So the developers dream up some neat, new features--ten new templates, eight extra transitions, more sound effects. Voilà. PowerPoint 2.0.

A year later and sales are flat again and Bill Gates meets with his developers. You get the idea. By the time we're up to version 5.0 we've got a Swiss Army knife on steroids. (Does anyone actually use that toothpick, anyway?) What the developers neglected to realize was that most of what they added wasn't needed in the first place. Except for selling software, that is.

Take a clue from the print media. The New York Times publishes a newspaper with the same color paper, same font, and same layout every day. They know that too much variability is distracting. If they've got good news stories, they'll sell papers. The same goes for visual media. Watch a commercial or movie and notice the transitions. Most are simple cuts. Occasionally there will be a dissolve or fade. The fact that the audience isn't conscious of these means that they are following the story. The transitions support the story, they don't distract from it.

But, you might say, for better or worse, we are stuck with PowerPoint on all of the computers in the lab. What to do? Here are some guidelines that I give to students and teachers when they've got a presentation assignment.

To paraphrase Hippocrates, "First, do no PowerPoint." Challenge your students to make a presentation without any technology at all. Some of the most memorable ones I've attended consisted of a speaker and a white board. If the students know their material, they're well on their way toward making an effective presentation. If they don't know their material, no one will be fooled no matter what they do. Of course, this may make the teacher's job more difficult. It takes more effort to really evaluate the content of a presentation than it does to count numbers of slides and length of sound clips.

Consider using some other, more appropriate tech tool. You can do great presentations with a Word document set in a large point size. Try Microsoft's free PhotoStory 2. It's a great tool for combining text, audio, and graphics. Have students publish their content to a blog, and let other students comment on the blog. My point is not to provide an exhaustive list here, but to challenge students and teachers to ask themselves, "What would be a more effective method of getting my message across to my audience?"

If you must use PowerPoint (and there are some good uses that I'll discuss in a subsequent post), keep it simple. I limit my students to one template, one font, one transition (with extra consideration for "None"), and I don't even let them start PowerPoint until they've done their research and written some content. Then I make them sketch out what's to be put on each slide. Only then can they actually start PowerPoint. I make it clear that they can add other effects to their presentations if they'd like, but these additions will in no way have a positive effect on the final evaluation. At best they will be neutral, and if they are distracting, they will be judged to reduce the effectiveness of the presentation.

There is much more, pro and con, that I could write about using PowerPoint in the classroom. I'll take up some of it in a later post. For now though, it's worth reminding ourselves that we've all attended way too many poor presentations by students and colleagues most of which were done in PowerPoint. Ask yourself if they would have been better or even worse had they been done without PowerPoint?

Next: How the iPod changed my life.

Welcome

Welcome to TeachingTech, a blog about technology and education. Specifically, I'll be writing about how technology is used, not used, and overused in K-12 schools. As a Technology Coordinator at a K-12 school with experience teaching technology subjects from grades 6-12, I have lots of opinions. My goal is not to proselytize about technology. I'm more interested in discussing the current trends (as I see them) in using technology in education as well has some of the specifics of how I've used technology. I'll also have the odd post that seems to suit this area even though the connections may seem tenuous. If you're a teacher of any subject or just someone with an interest in technology, I think you'll find something here with which to learn, agree, or disagree. Or maybe all three.