OllieBray.com

Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning (3 of 5) – What does good learning with tablets look like?

Tim Scratcherd (the School House Partnership) and I were recently asked to write a report for the Oxford Education School Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The purpose of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report is aimed at school leaders and teachers in England but the ideas within the report are transferable to other parts of the world.

With permission from Oxford I’ll be duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over the next week. You can download the full report or order a paper copy over at the new Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help Centre.

 

_____________________________________________

 

Part Three - Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning – What does good learning with tablets look like?

There is no doubt that good technology integration has the potential to be transformational. This is particularly the case if you decide to go down the route of 1:1, where there is one Internet enabled device for each child in your class/school. It is important to note that technology integration of this scale and teaching with tablets will have an impact on models of learning and teaching.

It is also important that teachers and school leaders have thought about what this new type of pedagogy might look like within a tablet environment before any large-scale deployment. If you have not done this then the technology is more likely to become a distraction to learning rather than have the transformation impact that it deserves.

 

Tablets, teaching and learning

When we consider what teaching and learning might look like in a tablet environment it is important that we focus on what makes learning good and how technology can improve the learning and teaching process.

The concept of Exciting Learning from Microsoft captures some of the components that make learning engaging for young people.

For learning to be successful it needs to be:

• Culturally relevant
• Include real-time interaction
• Provide different learning pathways
• Showcase learning achievements through authentic audiences
• Accessible to all

 

The information below provides some further background on each of these principles and the full report outlines what these principals might look like when applied to a tablet and app learning environment. A major factor with Exciting Learning is that, because pupils are highly motivated, you get more learning. This idea is important to further justify the investment. 

• CULTURALLY RELEVANT: Learners learn best when they can see the point of what they are learning and how it relates to them. We can also help them engage with their learning more by using tools that they like to use.

• INCLUDE REAL-TIME INTERACTION: Learners like it when teachers use information that is current and up-to-date. They also like to engage with real people either face-to-face or via videoconference.

• PROVIDE DIFFERENT LEARNING PATHWAYS: Learners like to have a choice of output. Sometimes this choice of output can be incredibly motivating as it gives a more focused and personalised end point for children to aim towards.

• SHOWCASE LEARNING ACHIEVEMENTS THROUGH AUTHENTIC AUDIENCE: Learners like to have the work that they are proud of showcased to people who care about them. Authentic audience is an important aspect of motivation.

• ACCESSIBLE TO ALL: Learners need to be able to learn in a variety of places at a variety of times. This includes in school, at home and everywhere in between. Technology can also make learning accessible for learners who have additional support needs.

 

A few words about assessment

Good pupil assessment should use a combination of both summative and formative techniques. Tablet technology integrated in the right way offers opportunities for both.

For example, summative tests can be administered to learners individually through the use of multiple-choice tests and other assessment generators such as Quizlet, Google Forms (part of Google apps for Education) and SharePoint 2010 (part of Microsoft Office 365 for Education).

However the real power of tablet technology is the opportunity to build on current formative assessment practices and to provide learners with digital feedback on their work and progress.

For example, tablet technology, particularly in 1:1 environments, allows learners to quickly comment on other pupils’ digital work (such as using Google Docs, which are part of Google Apps for Education). It also allows pupils to quickly be able to record their achievements through digital learning logs and e-portfolio solutions (such as SharePoint Blogs, which are part of Microsoft 365 for Education).

 

In my next post I’ll discuss Choosing and using tablets? – you can download the full “Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning” report now for free over on the Oxford School Improvement Site.

 

Related articles

Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning (1 of 5) - The Big Picture

Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning - Introduction

1:1 Learning: Myth 5 - 1:1 is all about independent learning [nope, the impact on collaborative learning is far greater]

1:1 Learning: Myth 3 - 1:1 Computing Improves Standards [complete nonsense!]

Mike Matas: A next-generation digital book

I enjoyed this TED Video of Mike Matas talking about a next generation digital book for the iPad. Worth 4 minutes of your life if your interneted in that sort of thing. Looks like from the end of the video the company Mike is working for (Push Pop Press) are developing an SDK to make it easier produce very media rich content.

Interesting Infographics (5 of 5):

p>
This is part of a series of posts showcasing some interesting infographics that are available on the web. For more information on infographics have a look here and for some of the problems with using infographics graphics have a look here.

Today's infographic compares two Android phones to the iPhone Four (source):

Interesting Infographics (2 of 5): QR Codes (what are they & who is scanning them?)

This is part of a series of posts showcasing some interesting infographics that are available on the web. For more information on infographics have a look here and for some of the problems with using infographics graphics have a look here.

Today I've posted two infographics both looking at QR Codes. I've been playing with QR Codes since 2008 (which even made an entry in the 2009 Horizon Report!). Anyway, the first infographic looks at what are QR Codes (source) and the second (keep scolling down!) looks at who is really scanning all those QR codes (source).

What are QR Codes? (source):

Who is scanning QR Codes? (source):

UK youth communications company Dubit has completed a country wide survey on teenage QR Code awareness. 72% of 11-18 year olds did not have or were unaware of QR Code scanning apps. When shown an image of a QR code only 43% correctly identified that it could be read by a mobile phone while 19% admitted they didn’t know what it was. 33% of those questioned correctly identified the image as a QR code, with 22% believing it was called an RFID tag and 12% labeling it as an infograph. Of the 19% of teens that had scanned QR Codes 74% said it was worth doing so.

World Lens Instant Translation [iPhone App]

World Lens is a really interesting iPhone App from Quest Visual.

“Word Lens can instantly translates printed words from one language to another using the video camera on your iPhone. No network delay, no roaming fees, and no reception problems.

Word Lens is a dictionary -- evolved. It looks up words for you, and shows them in context. You can use Word Lens on your vacations to translate restaurant menus, street signs, and other things that have clearly printed words.

Word Lens has its limits. Sometimes the translation will have mistakes, and may be hard to understand, but it usually gets the point across. If a translation fails, there is a way to manually look up words by typing them in”.

The problem is it’s not as free as it says it is. Anyone tried this and does it work? It’s a great idea – particularly because it doesn’t rely on data charges once it is downloaded.

I’ve embedded the promotion video below:

Free audio books for schools (...and anyone else!)

I’ve been listening to Alice in Wonderland on my iPod – in fact I’ve downloaded a load of audio books just recently when I came across thoughtaudio.com.

It’s a website that takes out of copyright text and turns them into audio books that you can download and listen too. I think a lot of people forget that lots of books are out of copyright and turning them into audio books really seems to give them a breath of fresh air.

So far I have downloaded:

• Alice in Wonderland
• Around the World in 80 Days
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Quotations of Mahatma Gandhi

All in all, another great resource for schools – particularly those with students who are required to teach classical texts.

The thoughtaudio.com website if definitely worth exploring.

New Technology and Outdoor Learning (3 of 8): Using Mobile Phones

This is the third of eight posts where I discuss some of the things that I talked about at the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor learning Regional Events

I am a huge advocate for allowing children to use mobile phones in the classroom as long as they use them responsibly and that the school / teacher has some sort of technology policy.  If your interested in this particular area then you might also be interested in the Times Educational Supplement magazine article that I was heavily quoted in “Mobile Phones Friends or Foe”.

Anyway, as I am a huge advocate for mobile phones in classrooms it should come as no surprise to readers of this website that I am also a huge advocate of mobile phones when it comes to outdoor learning.

I first spoke about some of these ideas at the Royal Geographical Society last November. There are lots of Apps for the iPhone, Windows 7 Phone and Android that are appropriate for use within outdoor learning.

Some of the iPhone Apps that I mentioned at the Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor Learning Regional Events were:

• iPhone notebook (built in)

• Google Maps and Satellite View (built in)

• Ordnance Survey Maps (I use OSBrowserR2)

• Built in GPS for Google Earth Exports (I use GPS recorder)

• Evernote – The ultimate electronic fieldwork notebook!

• Mobile blogging Apps – Including Typepad, Blogger and Wordpress

• Other fieldwork apps that night be appropriate for children (clinometer, compass etc…)

• AudioBoo – Great because people can subscribe to your 'Boos' through iTunes

• Speak and Spell – a letter game with a difference

Many of the Apps that I mentioned give children a real chance to send data back from the field and write their fieldwork reports as they go. The strength of both Evernote and AudioBoo is that it also gives us a real opportunity to help geo-locate children’s learning.

The GPS function of the phone should also not be under estimated and you can also buy a geocaching.com App.

Augmented Reality also has a huge amount of potential for its use in Outdoor Learning. I have recently been absolutely blow away by the Museum of London Street Museum App.

This App allows you to go to certain parts of London and the App augments pictures for the 1940s or historical artwork over real-time images of London. I’ve not had a chance to check this out personally yet but the demos look absolutely amazing.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that we should use the Street Museum App as part of our normal outdoor learning experience in schools. Although, I think it has huge scope here. Where I think the Street Museum App becomes really valuable is when we start to think about it in the context of children using it by choice themselves to extend their own learning and to make them independent learners because they have develped an interent in landscape and history.

Technologies that will change how we live, work, play and learn (4 of 5): Augmented reality combined with Facial Recognition

This is a fourth of five posts where I will talk about some technologies that may change how we live, work and play. They are personal opinions and I could very well be wrong. I mention them sometimes in conference presentations and workshops and wanted to describe my thinking more in this series of short posts.

The fourth technology that I think will change how we live, work, play and learn is augmented or layar technology when it is combined with facial recognition. I first talked about this in my Keynote to the Holyrood Internet Safety Conference in February 2010. Let me explain my thinking.

Augmented reality (or at least my understanding of it) is a way that we can lay virtual data or images on top of real images. It has been around for years but again has only recently become more robust and cost effective. I mentioned augmented reality recently in a post about how such technology may allow relatively unskilled people to easily do the jobs of people who currently need to be skilled.

Have a look at the BMW Research Concept Video (YouTube Video below) to see what I mean:


I think that this type of technology may be particularly appealing for some industries as it could be more cost effective but also safer and less of a risk for employees.

We are still a little way off Augmented Reality glasses – this doesn’t mean that they don’t exist (they do!) they are just a little bit expensive at the moment and normally have to be plugged into a computer to work robustly.

However many people have an augmented reality viewer already in their pocket – their mobile phone (a recurring theme of this mini series!).

Modem smart phones know exactly where they are because they have GPS in them. They know which way they are facing because they have an accelerometer and / or digital compass in them. They also have a camera and large viewing screen so you can easily see the world though them. Finally, as long as you have a 3G signal most modern smart phones are constantly connected to the Internet – making them very powerful mini computers.

There are already lots of augmented reality / layer apps available for the iPhone and for the android platform. The new Android commercial shows some of the possibilities of this technology (YouTube clip below).


The potential is huge. Imagine walking down the high street and you are looking for somewhere to eat, you walk past a restaurant, hold up your phone to the restaurant and the latest customer reviews appear around it.  Or, you go on a history field trip to a famous battle field and by holding up your phone you can actually see a re-enactment of the battle take place. Or, what about if you visited and extinct volcano (such as Arthurs Seat in Edinburgh) and you hold up your phone to see the geological information about the volcano or even what it might have looked at millions of years ago.

The potential for augmented reality in gaming is also huge. As part of out work at Learning and Teaching Scotland we have already put Sony Eye Pets for the Play Station 3 into a number of Early Years establishments (more about this in a separate post) and also have Invizimals and second sight for the PSP ready to go out to some partner schools early next session. The interesting thing about all of these games is that they use the ‘real world’ as the backdrop for immersive game play.

I’m convinced that these ‘real world’ augmented games will be the big thing of 2011 – 2012 and devices like the Parrot AR Helicopter will add to this new phase of game play. The Parrot helicopter is a hover helicopter with two cameras on it so that you can see what the helicopter sees. The amazing thing about the Parrot helicopter is that you control it over WiFi with your iPhone (and probably other devices as well).


All of these applications are interesting but the real point of my post is to think about what will happen when you combine augmented reality technology with facial recognition software.

Facial recognition software has been around for years and just like all technologies its got better and cheaper over the last few years as computing power has increased. If you’re a mac user facial recognition has been built into the last few versions of iPhone (that ships with all apple computers).

Google image search also now includes an option to search for just faces and Google Picassa allows you to do the same thing with your own photos that you have up-loaded.

In fact Google has had a real interest in facial recognition for years – this is one of the reasons why they bought Neven Vision back in 2006.

Now lets take all the parts and add them together to think about what will be possible in the not to distant future.

• There are lots of people globally up-load pictures of themselves to the Internet, these pictures are often associated and tagged with the persons first and last name.

• There are also a number of websites that allow web users to aggregate all of their social content to one place (Google Profile and Facebook are both good examples of this).

• There are already websites that can build a profile of you from an email address, depending on what you have published about yourself on-line. If you don’t believe me check out spokeo – it scares me!

Also, in the UK (and probably other parts of the world as well) unless you are ex-directory (which we recommend all teachers are) then your address and phone number (including your mobile phone number) are all stored online.

What is my point? Well, very soon you will be able to run an App on your phone , hold it up to a group of people in a room and facial recognition software will be able to recognize their face (cross checked against images that they have on-line) and augmented around the face on the phone screen will be links to the persons likely on-line presence. This will probably include things like Facebook profile, Slideshare account, Flickr page, newspaper reports, LinkedIN profile etc…

The data displayed might also include links to their home address and / or phone number. The App will be able to make educated guesses about some of these things because it will know where it is (eg: its geo-sensitive). For example, just because there are tens of ‘Ollie Bray’s’ living in the UK there is only one (to my knowledge) living in the Edinburgh / Lothian region of Scotland.

Now here is the really interesting thing, this fictitious App that I am describing relies on their being a picture of you on the Internet and then linking data to other on-line sources. When I describe this to people the first reaction I often get is, ‘thank goodness there are no pictures of me on-line’. Of course, these reactions are normally from people who don’t actually have a clue if they have pictures of themselves on-line or not. What they mean is that they haven’t put any pictures of themselves on-line but that doesn’t mean that other people haven’t. You see privacy doesn’t really exist anymore (I’ll come back to this in a separate post).

The TAT Augmented Reality App concept gives a pretty good demonstration of how this might actually work (YouTube Video below).


Of course all of this is fictitious at the moment, but all of the peaces are in place so it won’t be long (I think 12 – 24 months maybe less?). In fact MIT already have a working prototype.


So what does this mean for schools and education? A few things I think.

First of all, more than ever, we need to make sure that we educate our children and young people about what they put on-line. This has to include very young children (I’m talking from 3-11 year olds) and most importantly the teachers that care for them. For far to long we have concentrated our efforts surrounding the Internet safety and responsible use agenda on children that are already too old to really have any worthwhile impact. In short, rightly or wrongly we have been far to reactive and now with the technologies like I have described above just around the corner we need to be far more pro-active to ensure our children remain safe and secure.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think we can stop the above. In fact I think there will be a whole generation of Young People who tick the box (or just ignore the box) on their social networking profile and volunteer their data to be given away in the in the way I have described above.

What ever we do we need to make sure that we raise awareness for both children and education professionals.

What do you think?

Technologies that will change how we live, work, play and learn (3 of 5): On-line translator tools

This is a third of five posts where I will talk about some technologies that may change how we live, work and play. They are personal opinion and I could very well be wrong. I mention them sometimes in conference presentations and workshops and wanted to describe my thinking more in this series of short posts.

The third technology that I think will change how we live, work, play and learn is on-line translator tools. I first talked about this in my keynote at the Aberdeenshire Glow Champion Event in May 2010. Let me explain my thinking.

Do you recognize this?

It’s a babel fish. You might remember it from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (I still think the original BBC radio show was best…. but I digress!). The babel fish was a fish that you could put into your ear and then when people spoke to you in a different language the fish would translate what ever they said into English (or your first language).

Anyway, software has been around for years that claims to translate between languages. But Google translate is a good example of a piece of free web based software that actually works and it works really well.

For example this is a screenshot of the Microsoft France website:


This is what it looks like when you run it though Google Translate:

It is almost 100% accurate. Now you might be thinking that Microsoft would just re-direct to their UK version of the page. So, I tried it again with an article on Julien Llanas blog that I was interested in reading (but it was in French).

The original article is here:

And the translated article is here:




Now I know that neither of the translations are perfect but they are good enough and they certainly make the text accessible to me as a non-French speaker (and reader!). It is not just Google who have on-line translator tools Bing Translate from Microsoft is also really good!

So where am I going with this? Well Google translate can translate English into 56 other languages (and this number continues to grow). The accuracy of the translations varies depending on the language but I would say that they are all at least 60% accurate. There will be some people that say that, ‘they are only 60% accurate’ but I would say that is still 60% of 56 languages that I couldn’t read or write before… It really is amazing when you think about it – what a tool!

But it doesn’t just stop there. What if you are in a restaurant in Germany and you want to find out what something is on the menu? Well from reading the above we know that you could type it into Google Translate but that takes a bit of time. If you had an Android powered phone you can take a picture of the menu and then using the Google Goggles App select the text on the photograph that you want to translate and Google will do the rest. It is very impressive and very quick.

Of course, if you read the second post in this series on voice input to text for the mobile you will already be thinking about what comes next.

We have the capacity to speak into a mobile device and for it to turn that into text, we have the capacity to turn the text into a near translation of (currently) 56 different languages, we have had screen reader software for years. How long will it be before I can speak into my mobile in English and you can listen to me in French?

The answer is not long. In fact you can already do it (see video from Microsoft Research Asia below) – its just a bit slow and not as accurate as it could be just yet. But, as I have tried to emphasize throughout this series the technology will get smaller, quicker and cheaper. The important thing about the technology is that as soon as it does become available and robust (6 – 18 months) everyone with a smart phone will have access to it for free.

What’s my point? Well first of all I am not trying to suggest that this will be the end to modern languages teaching in school. I still think there is a place for this and I still think that children should be given the opportunity to learn a different language if they want to. I am sure that some modern language teachers and other educators will agree on this point.

But what I do think we need to be thinking about is how will we explain to children that learning a second language is important? How will we motivate them when they can just pick up their phone and translate their own spoken word into a number of different languages? When does this technology become part of a business education or enterprise course?

Importantly, at what point will we start to use these wonderful tools in school to help get children and young people to not just learn another language but to learn about each other? At what point will we realize that conversation can reduce conflict for future generations and that language is currently a barrier to these important conversations, these important collaborations and probably solving some of the words most difficult problems.

As with the rest of this series – I may well be wrong.

What do you think?

Technologies that will change how we live, work, play and learn (2 of 5): Voice to text recognition (for mobile)

This is a second of five posts where I will talk about some technologies that may change how we live, work and play. They are personal opinion and I could very well be wrong. I mention them sometimes in conference presentations and workshops and wanted to describe my thinking more in this series of short posts.

The second technology that I think will change how we live, work, play and learn is voice to text software for mobile devices. I first talked about this in my Learning and Teaching Scotland Literacy Co-coordinators keynote presentation in February 2010. Let me explain my thinking.

If we consider the history of human communication it probably evolved something like this:

• We learned to communicate verbally
• We developed written language
• We developed electronic communication (with a keyboard)
• We developed smaller more ubiquitous forms of electronic communication with mobile (keyboard input changed)
• And now we are in a situation where mobile devices (computers) can be controlled by voice

Of course, technology manufacturers have been working on software that allows you to speak into a computer and then it turns your voice into text for years. I first started using it properly when I had my first Windows tablet PC back in 2005. I wrote a set of school reports by speaking into the software rather than typing them by hand. It took a long time because the software wasn’t particularly robust at the time – but in the end I eventually achieved my goal.

Speech to text software is not new to education it have been used in special educational needs for many years. The problem in the past with a lot of this software is that it is not always particularly reliable and it can also be very expensive. But like any technology it gets cheaper and more reliable over time.

For example, I first wrote about Google Voice Search for my iPhone back in November 2008 and now there are a number of apps that allow you to speak into your phone and they transcribe your words into text. Dragon Dictation for the iPhone (available in the US) is just one example of this.

Now, here is the interesting thing. Android powered mobile phones have voice to text recognition software already built in – this was first live demoed with the Nexus One mobile phone handset. Have a look at the video showing voice input for Android in action below:

Also, Android Powered Mobile phones outsold the iPhone OS in the US during the first quarter of 2010. One of the reasons for this is probably because Android phones are cheaper and they compare very well to the iPhone in terms of performance and functionality.

 

(Source)

I am quite sure that we will see a wide new range of Android mobile phones available for Christmas 2010 and all of them will have the built in voice input to text recognition.

 So what does this mean? Well, I’m not sure. But I know that very soon whether it is an android powered phone, an iPhone or a Windows phone most smart phones will have the capacity to translate the spoken word to text with a high degree of accuracy (in fact they can already do this).

If we accept that most mobile devices will be smart phones in the not to distant future and we also accept that most young people in Europe, North America, Australia, parts of Asia and a lots of other places in the world have mobile phones. Then we must also accept that it won’t be long until young people realize that they only have to speak into their devices to get them to write for them.

What’s my point – well if you’re a teacher and you currently struggle to get the children in your care to write with a pen or a pencil. Then it is going to be even harder post Christmas 2010 when lots more children have devices like I have described above and will be even less motivated to write with a pen or a pencil.

Technology like 'voice input' adds to the debate of why we get children to write with a pen or pencil in the first place. One of the reasons that we do in the United Kingdom, whether we like it or not, is because that is how we test children at the end of high school. They sit down and do written exams – but why else do we teach the process of writing with a pen or pencil and is this still as important as it once was?

What seems clear to me is that never before in the history of communication during the last 100 years has it been even more important than ever to make sure children have a real grasp of the spoken language. This is one of the reasons why I am delighted that our radical new curriculum in Scotland includes the spoken word as a type of ‘text’. Thank goodness it does as it is the only way, that I can think of, to really future proof language.

As with all of the posts in this series, I could be wrong about the above. I don’t know what the answer is and I don't think we can stop or should even want to stop this evolution in technology. But I do think we should, as educators, be thinking about how technology such as voice to text smart phones may impact on teaching and learning (in both a positive and negative way).

I think this will be a significant paradigm shift in the way children engage with text and we are within 12 months of the tipping point for secondary / high school students and maybe 24 – 36 months away from the tipping point for elementary / primary school children. Teachers and leaders in schools need to be ready embrace change and not be reactive to it or fight it (you will loose). Soon most children will have one of these devices and we can't stop it. Things are about to move very quickly, are you, your school and your authority ready?

What do you think?