Personalising Learning with the iPod Touch

There is always another retailer demonstrating the miracle of the latest student response device. (such as, for example CPS) I recall a session at BETT in the UK a few years ago when participants were seated in a small, mock classroom and handed the devices to interact with a quiz, to determine who would win a great bag full of ‘Clickers’ to take back to their school. I wondered, (if in the unlikely event that I won), how I would get these devices where they needed to go on the Tube and a plane trip back to Australia. What else could they do to make it worth my considerable effort? Luckily, I didn’t win, and not long after I found my self with a class of students with iPod touches.

I thought about the student response systems I had seen at BETT, what could the iPod touch do? Mobile Studywiz covers student response in a few ways, and with a little ingenuity, student response and feedback can be very personalised. The simplest way is to set up a vote on Studywiz, and then ask the students to access it on their iPod touch. Here is an example of a general knowledge ‘web celebrities’ vote I will be using with my year 10 class this week.

It only takes a minute to create the vote, and student responses can be seen instantly by viewing the results, thus clarifying the direction of further learning required. A fool-proof personalising learning feedback system. Studywiz mobile also allows students to access assessments that can include multiple choice responses. The assessments can include audio, image or video resources for the student to consider as part of the question posed.

If you don’t have an LMS such as Studywiz in your school, there are other options available in the iTunes app store for student response systems.  eClicker is a two part system that includes:

a paid host app ($AUD29.99)

and a free client app, for up to 32 users.

“eClicker is a personal response system (PRS) that allows teachers to poll their class during a lesson. It provides real time feedback so that teachers can be sure their messages are being received. Developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch, eClicker leverages the hardware already in the pockets of many students and thus provides a low cost alternative to the expensive infrared based systems on the market. All you need to get started is the eClicker software, a few iPhones and/or iPod Touches, and a Wi-Fi network.”

I have just installed the eClicker client on my Year 10 class set of iPod touches and the host on mine. (Sunday afternoon job!) The host and client connected easily on the school wi-fi and were visible to each other instantly.  I was easily able to create multiple choice questions on the host App and deliver them to the clients. I was able to add images directly from the photo gallery to the questions. The only thing that confused me was moving onto the second and sequential questions in the quiz, as you need to return to the question set at the end of each question. The forward arrow looks temptingly like the ‘next question’ button, but hitting this will only cycle the same question through again and again, leaving you scratching your head about what you are doing wrong. The forward arrow is there to deliver the current question to the clients.

Each client app can have a single user or a number of users to allow for group responses. Names are entered directly into to client App, so there is no need to worry about a school set of iPod touches that are used by many different students. A data log can be sent to an nominated email address for further analysis.

So why is a student response system of value in the classrom?

• To instantly assess the comprehension of your lesson
• To encourage participation from those without the loudest voice in the class
• Increased interactivity between teachers and students
• Instant feedback for students
• The engagement factor
• A means for group collaboration
• Ask all students a question simultaneously

This short video from Ohio University shows interviews with lecturers using response devices in higher education.

This week, I put this pedagogical theory to the test with eClicker in a secondary classroom. Come back next week to see the results…

We all know the size of the iPod touch screen. I remember last year sitting down to dinner with a group of people I didn’t know, and comment was passed about about how any learning was possible on such a tiny screen… Sometimes, a dinner party is not the place you feel like defending the size of the screen. (any smart comebacks on offer would be much appreciated). So, I thought it was time to draft a more substantial answer to that question than I gave at the time.

I promised @utzy I would review his lovely app,

Red Apple, from Winged Chariot. you can choose to read or listen to this multi-lingual story in English, Turkish,  Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, German and Japanese. Here is a screen shot.

The title page is so gentle and appealing, with softly falling snow and muted tones. My children would have loved this story when they were little, and I can imagine them listening to it over and over again. This story is suitable for ESL students and for learner’s of the foreign languages included. The story and appeal of the imagery are not at all compromised by the size of the screen, such a pocket sized treasure. Further titles are being released, including ‘The Surprise’, which is a picturebook with animations and sound.

This review of 30 tops Apps, by The Observer in the UK, lists Red Apple amongst its best picks. An addition to this App that I thought would enhance it even further, would be the ability to record a student’s voice alongside the pages of the story to be played back to listen to themselves reading. Voice recording is an issue of course with the iPod touch, as there is no built-in microphone. The Apple headset with mic is OK, but the mic is very sensitive to being moved in any way, and unless it is secured, there is often much interference sounding in the background. Not so with the SpeakEasy thumbtack mic I purchased this week. This fits neatly into the headphone port of the iPod touch and doesn’t move anywhere during the recording.

Some other pocket stories I found in the iTunes store include:

‘The Smelly Sprout‘, based on a popular Christmas story in the UK.

A book of nonsense, by Edward Lear , a complete edition of his limericks formatted for the iPod touch.

Milly Molly , an interactive, read-along, digital colour picture book with touchable text and puzzles.

Jungle Drums – talkie book for kids. I bought this book for my daughter’s 9th birthday, it’s beautiful. This ‘inyerPocket’ version is filled with the sounds of the jungle and many opportunities for interaction by the reader.

And so next time I have the occasion to share a delightful picture book ‘in the field’ with a suitably appreciative audience, I know that if I can’t carry the paper versions about with me, I will have my iPod touch in my pocket. If you wish to further explore the wide range of picture book titles available in the iTunes store, enter a search for (you guessed it!), ‘picture books’.

It’s still hot outside, and cleaning the house is not motivating me…it is time to unleash the Lumens DC155 on my blog. In 2010, I would like to present you with more short demonstrations of the iPod touch in action. To this end, I have been lucky enough to acquire a Lumens DC155 visual presenter as I wrote about in an earlier post, here.

Well, it arrived on Wednesday, and as I have been back at school this week, it wasn’t until this morning that I had the time to set it up with the reverence it deserves. My only disappointment so far is that it is NOT RED (except for the remote control) as all the advertising suggests, but grey, oh well… Once I had the appropriate power supply and USB cable in place, here is how it looked.

Before connecting the DC155 to my MacBook, I had to download and install the latest version of the software ‘Queue’ from the Lumen’s support site. Here is what this software looks like.

Now, there were a few practicalities to consider before launching into my first production, but being so keen, I ignored all of these and went right ahead. I have included the result at the bottom of this post for posterity’s sake, but the process and the end product pointed to many improvements that could be made. A learning experience. Firstly, the contrast is important. This could be improved in a few ways, by placing a white background behind the iPod touch (as in the photo above), by reducing the brightness (thus glare) coming from the iPod touch itself and by adjusting the brightness, white balance and focus on the Lumens digital visualiser. Then next thing you notice is that the iPod slides about when you are trying to capture a sequence working with an App, surely this can be fixed with a couple of small blobs of bluetack? And my hands…grotesque after a summer of gardening, I wonder if I can claim the cost of manicures from my tax return now?

The DC155 itself was simple to use, and I have not as yet explored all the possibilities or am able to use all of the tools available such as zooming in and out, annotations, capturing still images in the flash memory of the DC155 for retrieval. The DC155 will also connect directly to a data projector for live demonstrations for students and colleagues.

One also needs to carefully consider some kind of script and workflow to follow on the iPod touch, not such a ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ approach, to produce a more professional effect. I have a new year 10 class  with 1- to – 1 iPod touches this year who will find producing these videos awesome.

Now, to publish the captured App review, the Lumens DC155 simply sends a .mov file (including sound) to the location of your choice on your computer. One way to share this, it to set yourself up a YouTube channel, which I did. The account can link into a Google account you already have. The suggested time and file size limits for YouTube are 2Gb and 1o minutes, I was well within these parameters. The result is embedded below, very amateur, but achieved!

There are so many video hosting websites now, as attested by this Wikipedia entry, ‘List of video hosting websites‘. This YouTube channel is a great starting point, but being blocked in my school might be an issue. Look out for more video reviews of increasing polish here on my blog during 2010, from me and my kids. The slide2learn team will also select the best sharing option to share content from our mobile event in July. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

The Slide2Learn mobile event to be held in the Personal Learning Centre at Shepparton High School, Victoria, on July 1st and 2nd this year, will be a collaboration between a group of teachers who have discovered a shared passion for mobile learning with the iPod touch.

These teachers come from different systems, states of Australia and across K-12. We are:

Jenny Ashby – eLearning leader, Epsom Primary School, DEECD Victoria

Louise Duncan – eLearning leader, Shepparton High School, DEECD Victoria

Megan Iemma – ADE, music and technology consultant, Victoria

Stacey Kelly – Rural and Distance Education Officer, DET NSW

Kate Maccoll – Smart Classrooms Co-ordinator, Hambledon Primary School, Education Queensland

Jonathan Nalder – ADE, Support Teacher (Literacy and Numeracy), Smart Classrooms Mentor, Education Queensland

Deon Scanlon – St Aloysius Catholic College, Tasmania

We have not all met in person yet, but have been able to effectively harness the powers of web 2.0 to create a lively PLN to share our experiences with each other. Now we have decided to come together to share our collective knowledge with the wider educational community in Australia and beyond.

If you have considered the possibilities for learning with the iPod touch in your school, but weren’t sure where mobile learning fits into your school’s eLearning plans, this is the event for you.

This will be a series of hands-on workshops, keynote presentations and break out sessions from which you can choose, to access this once only opportunity to find these inspirational educators working together.

Planning is in its early stages. A number of strands have been described to ensure our participants a complete experience in mobile learning. These are:

Showcase – sessions offer a range of examples of current practice around Australia and the world
Personalise – these devices offer lots of options for personalised learning
Create – sessions offer ways to create with/for the iPod Touch eg Podcasts, multimedia, creation using apps;
Manage - sessions offer advice/ideas on management – personal and program/school management, using iPods for productivity;
Connect – using the iPod touch to connect to the internet, contact with others and collaborate;
Learn - sessions showcasing the fact that it is not the iPods that offer the learning but rather the way they support good effective pedagogy that enhances the learning. Sessions would show how iPods are embedded in good pedagogy and context.

The kind of workshops you can expect include:
Meet the iPod touch
Literacy and numeracy with the iPod touch
Implementation planning for school leaders
Personalising Learning with iPod touch
Improving staff productivity
The iPod touch and music
The iPod touch for higher order thinking
Creativity with the iPod touch
Digital storytelling
School Showcases
Creating simple podcasts
1 – to – 1 iPod touch

And also, as of January 28th, the iPad!

Some workshops will have the capacity to join in virtually using Elluminate.

We also have some very special guest presenters confirmed from the US. Tony Vincent from Learning in Hand, an internationally recognised expert in creativity with mobile learning, and Susan Wells and her team from Culbreth Middle School in North Carolina, where they have gone 1 – to – 1 with the iPod touch this year.

The event will run over two days in the first week of the Victorian school holidays in July. There will be many resources made available on our Ning for participants to be able to connect both before and after the event.

To join our Ning, go to Slide2Learn and sign up! Click on the ‘Meet the team’ tab when you have joined our Ning to read a short biography of all those presenting.

While you are there, complete the expression of interest form to have some input into the planning of the event.

I didn’t order my paper teacher’s chronicle at the close of 2009. So, what tools can I find to manage my work recording student progress on my iPod touch? I thought I’d have a look, and here’s what I found.

1. HotSeat for teachers : There is a simple description to remind us of the questioning process in the classroom along with this app. This application selects random students for questioning, and can include a photo of the student, which is perfect at the start of the year when there are so many unfamiliar faces. High-order thinking responses, wait time, scaffolding questions can all be revisited using this app to make us better questioners as teachers.
2. Educate : Track and import / export student attendance and progress data via Google Docs. I think this will be the back pages of my teachers chronicle for 2010. I can keep my timetable in here too.
3. GradePad : This tracks assessment data in a similar way to Educate, but I like the slider screen layout of the GradePad rubrics with criteria you can enter. I can see this being very useful when assessing student oral presentations. I can send the data via email for further analysis. I will let you know how it performs.
4. Teacher’s Pick : This app allows you to easily select random students in the same way as Hot Seat, but whereas HotSeat resets after five selections, Teacher’s Pick allows you to track the ongoing participation of your students over the period of a day or a week. Student’s can be assigned an active or an inactive status, which be be useful when students are away.
5. Awards : I mentioned this App in an earlier post, but I believe it’s important to track those small deeds, unnoticed achievements, kindness, initiative and general cleverness displayed by students. Sometimes as teachers, we are so intent on tracking all the misbehaviours ( our school certainly has a system for that) that we neglect the positives. I think this can create a vicious circle, that using ‘Awards’ will help to break. I am looking forward to creating many new award categories to suit my classes this year. Who knows what I might learn…
6. iCreate Podcasts : Another wonderful tweet-up on Friday with Megan Iemma brought great discussions about music with the iPod touch and creativity with the Mac. She introduced me to a publication produced in the UK, iCreate. There are some podcasts available on iTunes to supplement the magazine, but it certainly should be high on your subscription list if you are interested in creating with the iPod touch. Megan’s expertise with the combination of music and technology and mobile learning with the iPod touch is inspirational.
7. The iCreate magazine is also now available for digital download for the iPod touch. The latest issue comes packaged as part of the download and back issues can be purchased through the App. The iCreate magazine features in depth Apple tutorials.