Developing Learning Applications for PDAs and iPods

It's 10 AM and I'm attending the NECC session Developing Learning Applications for PDAs and iPods. Kitty Salinas tells us about a grant to the Alliance for Distance Education called MATRIX, Middle School Achievement Through Technology-Rich Interventions. Besides Kitty, Alan Amundsen, Mike Lawrence, Amy Murphy, Ed Hill, and Gail Tiemann are presenting. People are mobbing their booth to learn how iPods can help middle schoolers with math. Mike Lawrence says that he has always thought the iPod has so much more potential than for just listening to music.

The MATRIX project is developing a curriculum, resources, and applications that will be tested in the fall. They will be using Palms is Ohio, Pocket PCs in Kansas, and iPods in New Mexico and California. The students are from a remedial environment and below proficient academically. The MATRIX project is making lessons that are suitable for supplemental education services under No Child Left Behind.

In Ohio Ed Hill's project is using Palm Zire 72s and TXs. They are focused on value-added use of technology. He explains that they are investigating the motivation factor that they can't get with paper and pencil. Ed notes that Electronic Mobile Technology (EMT) has these features and benefits:

• Mobility (Wi-Fi, multimedia capture, beaming)
• Standard applications (MS Office)
• Input/output of content & information
• Control of learning in student's hands
• Tool for authentic performance/assessment

In Kansas, they are making games for Pocket PC to help students master math vocabulary. They are planning for professional development to help teachers use what they are developing. Their games are based on what you can find on 4kids.org. The products will be available there. It sounds like they are planning some interactive, engaging games.

Kitty notes that iPods have limitations compared to PDAs. Alan Amundsen talks about developing for iPods. They chose iPods because students ask for iPods for Christmas, so they decided to take that and make it fit to their goals to improve math skills. The problem with iPods are that they are a one-way delivery method. They start with the math concepts and then figure out how to get the technology to fit it. The lessons for iPods will include:

• Number Lines
• Ratios
• Proportions and scale changes
• Percents as special proportions
• Rates and ratios

It sounds like there will be video episodes with interactivity. I'm really curious to see how this will work in the real world on a real iPod--how do you make content on an iPod interactive? The lessons for the last 10-20 days of MATRIX's curriculum include

• Introduction to Ratios "The Eye of Power"
• Part:Part and Part:Whole
• Equivalent Ratios
• Scale Changes (including map reading)

Ok, they explained how to they are going to make the videos interactive. Once a student finish a video and answer questions correctly, he or she is given a code. The student will use this code to play the next video on the iPod. This means the videos all have coded titles in the playlists on the iPods. I guess students could just play any video, but then they wouldn't be played in the correct order.

The presenters showed "Intro to Ratios Episode 1.1: The Eye of Power." It was a very entertaining video! It had a great plot and has a math mystery at the end. Then they are told to proceed to the computer to answer the question and solve the mystery. It's shame that students cannot answer the question on the iPod [but that could be done on a Palm or Pocket PC and those same devices could play the video! Why bother with the iPods is what I'm thinking]. After answering the question on the computer, a student is given the coded titled of the next video to play. As part of the lesson, students will keep a blog/math journal and will participate in online chats. The MATRIX project's vision is to make the iPod portion interactive, like Choose Your Own Adventure books, using hyper linking. Currently, that's either not possible or very difficult to do on iPods [but I know that is very doable on Palm and Pocket PC devices].

Those involved in MAXTRIX are furiously writing for the videos, handheld games, and other software. This five-year project, is indeed a work in progress at this point. This presentation didn't have any solid, complete examples of that they are trying to do. However, I think what they are developing looks promising and I hope it will be freely available for others to use.

A PDF of the slide show for this session can be found here. The session concluded at 11 am.

Tags: necc06 necc

Beaming Across the Curriculum

I came in late to Debbie Lyles' NECC presentation, Beaming Across the Curriculum. You might know Debbie from her Palms for Patriots blog. She also has resources on her Palms for Patriots website. Although I missed her introduction, I really like how Debbie is showing what her high school students have done in combination with handhelds. She shared how using handhelds are integrated with Word and PowerPoint projects on desktop computers. She shared how the students' Zire 72s were used to track stocks, make blogs, produce videos, and record and listen to podcasts. Blending handheld computing with desktop computing is incredibly powerful.

Debbie also mentioned that her students used these Palm programs: eReader, Angles, Dropairs, MyCheckbook, Superlist, Quizzler, and Sketchy.

Debbie shares a valuable piece of advice: when you don't understand how to use an application, just ask! She had a hard time figuring out how to use MIT's Participating Simulations, so she emailed a question to them. Within 30 minutes she checked her email and the answer to her question was in her inbox waiting for her!

The session ended at 12:15 Pacific Time.

Tags: necc06 necc

Stylus Poster

Through Bloglines, I've subscribed to photos tagged NECC in the photo-sharing service Flickr. Flickr user prof_derekeb is at NECC and posted a photo of the poster below...

Update: After noting how iPods were the stars of the show at NECC, I edited the poster to express my feelings...

Tags: necc06 necc

A MegaVCR in Your Pocket

I walked into Hal Davidson's NECC session titled The MegaVCR: Media in Your Pocket. He had an iPod hooked up to the projector and he was already playing clips. The clips are VCR quality and would look fine on a television screen, not so pristine on a computer screen or projector (but still very useable). He demonstrated playing and pausing video, just like a VCR. Over 4,000 United Streaming video clips fit on a 30 GB iPod. (that's 250 of hours of video--not that you'd want to really have that many). The videos can be organized in playlists. Videos, PowerPoints, Flash, Music, Photos, and Animated GIFs will work on an iPod.

To connect an iPod to a TV you need a special cord ($19 from Apple). If your television if old, you may need to connect the red, yellow, and white cords into a VCR connected to a TV.

Hal then showed a PowerPoint with video playing of the iPod. Hal recommends that you get QuickTime Pro ($30) if you want to edit video clips--you can just highlight portions and delete. QuickTime Pro also lets you download movies from the web to your hard drive more easily.

When you download videos on the web to put on your iPod, you need to download as a file QuickTime can open. Remember, QuickTime works on Windows, not just Mac, and there is a free version. If it runs in QuickTime, you can get it to run on the iPod. To do that, launch iTunes and choose File > Import. iTunes will suck the video in. Once it's in the Library, it won't necessary go onto an iPod. Right click (or Control-Click) the video and choose "Convert Selection for iPod" from the pop-up menu. Hal says that sometimes this doesn't work, but tends to work 90% of the time. Then in your Library you'll have two versions with the same name. Drag the version that is in mv4 into an iTunes playlist (choose File > Get Info to see which one is which) for transfer to an iPod. Sync your 'pod and it should be ready for viewing on the device.

Hal showed how to convert a PowerPoint to view on an iPod. First, in PowerPoint, choose "Save As" and select JPEG. Choose a location in a folder on the desktop. Then in QuickTime, choose File > Open Image Sequence.. Open the first JPEG and then it will ask you how long you want each slide to appear on screen. It will turn this into a video you can import into iTunes for playback on iPods. With QuickTime Pro you can paste a video inside the already-converted movie. However, if you are a Mac user, you can just go to File > Make Movie... Doing this will play embedded videos for these lucky Mac users. This option isn't in PowerPoint for Windows. Remember to follow the steps in my fourth paragraph above for playback on iPods.

Hal's PowerPoint will be posted on this website: www.haldavidson.net. I'm disappointed that the session focused on iPods with no mention of other players like Palm or Windows Mobile handhelds. I will tell you that TCPMP is a free player that can play most all formats on a Palm or Pocket PC from an SD card--no need to covert the video like you do for the iPod. In addition to other devices, I would have also liked to learn sources with free videos for education (but there was barely time to cover getting video on iPods).

The session began at 2:00 and ended at 3:00 Pacific Time.

Tags: necc06 necc

Research Study Results on Handheld Computing!

Just in time for NECC, GoKnow Learning released scientifically-based research that demonstrates handheld computer use in K-12 classrooms leads to student achievement gains. The research will help schools nationwide secure funding for handheld computing!

Two research studies were conducted by the University of Michigan. One looked at simple recall of math facts in two third grade classrooms. The University of Michigan developed a game called Skills Arena for GameBoy where students practice basic math facts. One class used the handheld games while the other used flashcards. And the results?

• In the five-week instruction with the handheld, the handheld game group (HG) outperformed the flash card group (CG). The HG students performed 7 percent better than those of the CG group on the gain scores from pre-test to post-test.
• In the five-week instruction, the low-achieving students using the handheld performed 11 percent better than the flash card group. Thus, Skills Arena helped the low-achieving students; Skills Arena was a way for low-achieving students to succeed just like the high-achieving students.

The other study looked at science concepts and procedures in a two year study in three seventh grade classrooms in Detroit. The study looked at three different science units. The study had some students using handhelds with GoKnow's Handheld Learning Environment while others did not. However, the tasks were the same. For instance, handheld users would make a concept map in PiCoMap while the non-using class would make the map on paper. [Dr. Elliot Soloway talked about this research last week at the Lexington Handheld Computer Conference.] The results:

• In the first year of using handheld devices, the handheld groups performed 2 percent better than the paper and pencil groups did in combing all gains (%) of three units.
• In the second year of using handheld devices, the handheld groups performed 13 percent better than the paper and pencil groups did in the combined gain score (%) of three units.

If you are trying to convince someone to fund getting handhelds in the hands of your students, be sure to cite this research. In fact, GoKnow has one-page snapshots about each of these studies. While you're at it, read GoKnow's research results announcement.

Tags: necc06 necc

"Web 2.0" Discussion & More from NECC

I had the privilege of being part of panel with some great edtech thinkers: John Hendron, Thor Prichard, Will Richardson, and David Warlick. The focus of the panel discussion was "Web 2.0", which is a term to describe the next generation of services on the web. These services include blogs, podcasts, social bookmarks, online applications, and many more webby tools.

The panel discussion was part of the Special Interest Group for Technology Coordinators' (SIGTC) Member Breakfast. The notes for the discussion can be found on this wiki page. David Warlick, while sitting on the panel, live blogged the event. Or, if you have 58 minutes, you could listen to the MP3 recording of the panel discussion.

For more of what you are missing at this year's National Education Computing Conference , click here for up-to-the-minute blog posts and photos. It's all arranged in reverse chronological order and represents content from many different people and blogs--all aggregated in one place. How's that for "Web 2.0" for ya?

Tags: necc06 necc

NECC Session: Why Does Technology Work or Not Work?

Why Does Technology Work in Some Districts and Not Others? I had that same question, so I attended a session at NECC with that very title. Presenting is Cheryl Lemke, CEO of the Metiri Group, a consulting firm dedicated to advancing effective uses of technology in schools.

Cheryl says that districts should have a shared vision of 21st Century Learning. What is it that you are really trying to accomplish in your school? Instead of actually developing a technology plan, develop a vision statement about digital learning. Teachers at my school, Willowdale Elementary, have done this and the entire staff is on board with Willowdale's vision.

Cheryl lists 21st Century Skills:

• Digital-Age Literacy
• Inventive Thinking
• Effective Communication
• High Productivity

You've probably heard those people that say there is no research to say that technology does not improve achievement. Not so. The Metiri Group has research listed on what works, what's promising, and what they cannot recommend.

Research suggests that teachers who assign intellectually interesting work have students who make more grains in achievement. What does it mean to have intellectually stimulating work? There's relevance beyond the school day. Also, there's deep inquiry involved. The third is knowledge construction.

It takes a teacher 25 times before they put something into real practice in their classrooms. That takes a lot of leadership and professional development time!

One type of use of technology doesn't make for great integration. Technology should be used for a variety of tasks, simple to complex, and for a range of activities from drill/skill to constructivist.

Unfortunately, Cheryl does not yet have the web page for this presentation online. It will appear on the right side of this page.

Cheryl presented lots of tips and some real-world examples. She also shared some research collection that was over my head. I do think the question of why does technology work in some places and not others is an important one that everyone should consider. I wish I was able to take the ideas shared in this session and distill them into something easy for my blog readers to digest, but there were a lot of ideas coming at me. But, I'm left with something I already knew: it's not the technology, it's how you use it that makes a difference in learning. The session began at 3:30 ended at 4:30 Pacific Time.

Tags: necc06 necc

Soft Reset #14: Science

Soft Reset Episode #14 is now available! Tony and Mike share probeware, spreadsheets, participatory simulations, and reference programs for Palm and Windows Mobile that help with science instruction. Your hosts also share applications that teachers use for other subjects, but can also be used for learning science. The episode ends with audio from the U.S. Virgin Islands. Be sure to listen for the harsh consequence if a student in Miss Prince's school loses a stylus!

Show Notes:

• Mike's Tip: Select more than one file to beam at once in Windows Mobile by tapping the Control key on the onscreen keyboard or by holding down the center button the five-way navigator while you tap the items you want to select. Use the shareware application BeamPro to beam more than one application on a Palm handheld.
• Tony's Tip: There are visual cues in the Palm Operating System to help you know where to tap. For instance, tapping the triangle icon usually activates a pop-up menu. Tapping inside of a box surrounded by a dotted line allows you to change whatever in the middle of that box. Tapping the "i" with a circle around it bring up a help or information screen. Windows Mobile doesn't have these kind of visual cues. To see if there is a context menu on a Pocket PC, tap and hold your stylus on the screen to see if anything pops up.
• Probeware: For Pocket PC & For Palm.
• Spreadsheets are great places to record data. The new Excel Mobile allows graphing on the handheld itself. For Palm, the bundled version of Documents To Go does not include graphing capabilities. Upgrading to the premium version opens up this possibility (at a price).
• Soft Reset Show #4: Participatory Simulations.
• Live Long & Prosper Participatory Simulation from MIT and a lesson plan for it.
• Geney is great, but doesn't work well with Palm OS 5. Palm's current handhelds run Palm OS 5.
• References on your handheld: Moon Phase (Palm) and ChemTable (Palm) or Packed Periodic Table (Windows Mobile).
• StyleTap lets you run Palm programs on a Pocket PC.
• Ecological Footprint Calculator (EFC for short) for Palm.
• Space Weight for Palm. Considering making a spreadsheet that can calculate weight on other planets. Use this page to help you.
• GoKnow's Sketchy contest science winners.
• Makes quizzes with the free Quizzler program for Palm or Windows Mobile.
• Use Contacts or the Address Book application to record vocabulary words.
• Beam students a Science-Question-of-the-Day. Beam the answers the following day with a new question.
• More applications for Palm and Windows Mobile.
• Mike brings us audio from the U.S. Virgin Islands. Click for some photos. Here's the contract Miss Prince uses along with other usage agreements.
• Visit Soft Reset's Discussion Forum to discuss the show!
• Leave a voicemail for us to play on the show! 206-333-1942
• Email Tony and Mike at softresetpodcast@gmail.com.

Enjoy the show! Click an icon below to listen or subscribe.

Tidbits from Lexington Handheld Conference

I'm at the Lexington One Second Annual Handheld Computer Conference in Lexington, South Carolina. I kicked off the conference with my keynote From Creative to Crazy. Cathie Norris & Elliot Soloway presented the luncheon speech, "Realizing the Benefits of Technology - Handheld Centric Classroom: What Are We Waiting For?" I've heard them speak numerous times, but this dynamic duo always offers me something new. Here are some tidbits I picked up after enjoying a delicious turkey sub:

• Computers haven't had an impact because students don't have access.
• 5 years ago the national computer to student ratio was 6:1. Today it's 5:1. It's going to take a while to get 1:1 at that rate.
• There are 55,000,000 kids in the United States. The only way to fund one-to-one is through low cost devices.
• Laptops and desktop computer have a 72 dots per inch resolution. Handhelds have 200 dots per inch, making for a very sharp screen.
• Many one-to-one laptop initiatives end up using the expensive machines as simple word processors.
• The problems with laptops are that they moving parts that can break and a large screen that sucks up battery life.
• The Fourier Nova 5000 handheld (starting at $399) with a 7 inch screen and the Windows CE operating system is finally starting to ship. It's being distributed by Dell.
• Cathie demonstrated GoKnow's Handheld Learning Environment (HLE for short). She showed how the software can contain all learning resources, including hyperlinks to web research, rubrics, documents, concept maps, eBooks, and animations. When a student syncs with PAAM, they receive all of their materials that the teacher selected for the project. When a students exits one of the resources on their handheld, they are taken back to HLE and the list of that project's resources.
• Can 1:1 handheld access lead to increased student achievement? First, Elliot asks the audience if they share their computers with other people. The tool must be ready at hand to be truly useful. Elliot tells about a rigorous three year study (at a cost of $600,000) in Detroit Schools. Some classes of students had handhelds and some did not. There was no difference the first year. But the second year when the teachers began to figure out how to harness the power of handheld computing, and the students did statistically significantly better. That second year there was a water unit where there was no difference in the two groups, but that was the first time any of the teachers taught that unit. Now, because of this is scientifically based research, the curriculum and basic tasks were the same. For instance, when asked to do an animation, the control group would draw a cartoon on paper while the handheld users used Sketchy. Dr. Soloway says that there is not scientifically-based research on laptops showing this kind of data.

After Elliot and Cathie's energetic presentation, I presented a two-hour session on podcasting and differentiated instruction. I shared how to listen to podcasts on handhelds and important technical and instructional strategies. Participants listened to a collection of audio about planets from this sample RSS feed. Also, I demonstrated how to set up your own RSS feed that contains only the specific podcast episodes you want students to have. The conference was a great time and I look forward to next year's Lexington One Annual Handheld Computer Conference!

Tic Tac 15

Elementary math teachers will love Tic Tac 15, freeware for Palm handhelds from Nick Robins Software. It's a game that combines Tic Tac Toe, addition, and probability.

The objective of the game is to complete a column, row, or diagonal so that three numbers add to 15. Play can be against the computer or against another person (on one handheld). Players take turns revealing a random number 1-9 and then placing that number on the grid. Since each number is used only once, smart players take note at what numbers have already been used and consider what numbers remain.

Students get to practice plenty of mental math as they calculate the various possibilities before placing their numbers on the grid. Of course, there's also the luck of the draw since the numbers are generated randomly. Tapping the Show button displays the sums of each row, column, and diagonal. With sums showing, there's not as much mental math involved, but subtraction then becomes the skill players practice.

A tally along the right side of the screen keeps track of how many games are won by each player. To keep things fair, Tic Tac 15 players must take turns going first each new game. I suggest posing this question to students: Is Tic Tac 15 a fair game if the same player always goes first? In order to test this, players will need to use "Start Over" from the Options menu after each game. They will also need to keep track of their own wins, as Tic Tac 15's tally count will be reset each time "Start Over" is selected.

Handhelds Worth the Money

Shepard School in Missouri has used 94 Palm handheld computers and keyboards for three years and Columbia Public Schools is spending $20,000 to replace them. Parents, teachers, and students support the purchase, but school board member Michelle Gadbois isn't so supportive. Michelle claims the money could be spent in better ways. This purchase is one of the reasons she voted against the district's $207 million dollar budget. Michelle claims to have seen "all of the information on this program" and she remains "unconvinced that this money would not be better spent improving teacher/student ratios in our classrooms."

My guess is that Michelle has not stepped foot in a handheld-using classroom. I bet she has not sat down with any of those students to see what they actually do on a handheld. And, although $20,000 sounds like a lot of money, divide it by 94 students and 3 years, and it's about $70 per student per year. Columbia Public Schools spends about $7,600 per pupil per year. $70 is less than one percent of the per pupil spending. That one percent can make a large different in students' attitudes, motivation, and learning.

Janese Heavin wrote an article about Michelle's opposition to handheld computing for the Columbia Daily Tribune titled Handheld Computers Worth the Money, Teachers Say. In contrast to the school board member, Columbia educators certainly have lots positives to say about handhelds. Though the article makes it sound like handhelds are only used for word processing, we know there are dozens of educational applications (most of them free) that really make handhelds a valuable learning tool.

HTML Tags

When you use a blogging service like Blogger, you may want to know some basic HTML codes so that your posts can contain text formatting, hyperlinks, and images. HTML codes contain a beginning tag and a closing tag that are enclosed in greater than and less than symbols.

Bold Text
To make text bold, you'll type:
I <b>really</b> love my handheld.
And this is what is displayed:
I really love me handheld.

Hyperlinked Text
To make hyperlinked text, you'll enter:
<a href="http://learninginhand.com">Tony's website</a> is helpful.
And this is what is displayed:
Tony's website is helpful.

Read Basic HTML Tags for lots more tags you could use in a blog post. If you are a Windows user, you can download the free Blogger for Word add-in. Format your entry in Word and send it to your Blogger account. Personally, I compose my blog post in Dreamweaver (the web editor I use for learninginhand.com). I then copy and paste the code generated by Dreamweaver into a new Blogger post. On the other hand, I could email that code to Blogger and my post will be made for me (this works well for blogging from a handheld). Many of these same tricks work for other blogging services as well.