iMusic = iExcitement

It's the kind of moment that educators live for - when excitement and possibility suddenly fill a room. When there is the realization that what one is learning is a game-changer. The cliché "ah-hah" moment. And while I had no personal responsibility for that moment, I reveled in it nonetheless.

It happened last week among a small group of elementary music teachers in our district. An iPad for each of them had been purchased as means for storing and playing a recorded music series available only from the iTunes store. I had grudgingly gone along with upgrading the hardware from an iPod to an iPad for this project. Why spend $500 on a device, I asked, when one for less than $100 could do the job? Happily, I was over-ruled.

I attended the training led by members of my brilliant, young department mostly to see how issues of iPad management were being handled. Instead I learned that the original purpose of the iPad was the least exciting thing about using the device in elementary music classes.

The music teachers immediately saw the iPad as a powerful recording device for doing performance-based assessment. They were excited about using it to teach music composition and to use it as a musical instrument. Oh, and it could be used to play songs too.

In an educational era of test, test, test; Racing to the Top; Common Core; one right answer; fiit every kid in the same expectations mold; drill and kill and programmed computer instruction; disappearing libraries and disappearing art, music, PE and elective offerings, it's fun to see that creativity, innovation, and excitement have not been completely extinguished in the teaching profession. I don't think educational bureaucrats and politicians know just how damn tough teachers really are.

All teachers are back today in our district. This will be the best year of my 36 years in education. I just know it.

BFTP: Can we cheat-proof schools?

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post September 14, 2007. Some interesting responses to the original post worth reading.

"It's not the dumb kids who cheat," one Bay Area prep school student told me. "It's the kids with a 4.6 grade-point average who are under so much pressure to keep their grades up and get into the best colleges. They're the ones who are smart enough to figure out how to cheat without getting caught." from "Everybody Does It" by Regan McMahon, San Francisco Chronicle,Sept 9, 2007

It's time we made a serious effort in finding pedagogical means of ending cheating. When 90% of high school students admit to cheating, something is out of whack. And it is hard to point a finger an entire generation of kids.

I've addressed why kids might cheat and how one might plagiarize-proof research assignments. But can teachers help make tests and homework cheat-proof as well?

McMahon suggests Top 5 Ways to Curb Cheating

• Create an honor code with student input so they're invested in it
• Seriously punish cheaters according the academic integrity policy
• Create multiple versions of tests to make purloined answer keys useless
• Ban electronic devices in testing rooms
• Develop multiple modes of assessment so the grade is not determined primarily on tests

Of these, I would endorse last one. Ban electronic device? Why not ban pencils and paper that contain written cheats as well?

Here are Johnson's Top 5 Ways to Curb Cheating:

• Use performance-based assessments that require a personal application of or reaction to the topic
• Be very clear about what will be tested/assessed, eliminating "gotcha" testing
• Make every assignment a group assignment with expectations that the role of each group member be clearly defined
• Only make assignments that are actually meaningful and necessary (Alfie Kohn writes that there is little correlation between test scores and homework.)
• Make all tests open book - and open device

What's wrong with the honor code business? Nothing except it seems we are in a social values shift about cheating and about intellectual property rights if 90% of a population no longer holds an older value. (I've always said a thing not worth doing is not work doing well. The NetGen corrolary may be a thing not worth doing is not worth doing without cheating.) Given my Boomer sensitivities, I think kids who cheat are little weasels. But then the majority of US citizens, by generations usually, have also changed their views on things like slavery, women's rights, gay rights, seat belts, smoking, littering, the environment, and Michael Jackson from what they were at one time.

I'd like to bang a drum about the need for a society that places less emphasis on test scores, that has a better means of choosing kids for colleges, and that values non-testable attributes of people. But you wouldn't want to listen and it wouldn't do much good. So what, I think we should consider, is within the individual teacher's sphere of influence?

Anyway, read the article in the Chronicle and tell me how you would curb the cheating epidemic... 

Oh, I expect to get beat up on this entry. Have at it.

Tech abuse

Last Saturday I posted an old letter sent to teachers from a "tech's" POV, explaining why some of the security processes put in place are necessary. In response, I received the comment below that is sufficiently horrific that I am elevating it from comment to post status. My reaction in italics following.

BTW, I was thinking about these comments a lot as our department selected a new building technician. One of my core beliefs is that one can always teach a new employee tech skills, but it's nearly impossible to change a person's fundamental human relations skills. We offered the job to a fellow who reported receiving 4.9 out of 5 rating on customer satisfaction surveys in his last job.'Nuff said.

Comments from Kimberly

I understand what you are saying. Here are my problems

5.[Numbers reference items in original post.] I am told, by the tech department to use an app that controls my computer/whiteboard. The app requires an install on the desktop. I don't have permissions to install. My Campus Instruction Technology Specialist can install it but not so that it works under my log in. So I have to put in a work order that takes weeks. 

5. and 10. I have IPADS, I am REQUIRED to set up my own account to download apps. I pay for the apps. I have to haul them home and use my bandwidth to update, back up and install apps sometimes because the filter gets cranky and won't let me get to the app store. Then I get yelled at for using amazon to look up a book I want for the classroom, or checking that my direct deposit actually got into my bank account - and wasn't delayed 3 days like it was a couple of months ago.

7. I put in a work order about a computer that the fan is making a loud wheezing sound and I specify that
      A. I tried shutting it down making sure the air vents were clear.
      B. That I timed it and the sound starts after the computer has been on for 45 min.
      C. That the case is hot to the touch so I'm turning it off. If they call me before the tech heads out I'll turn it on.

Tech comes in turns it on, boots it up, waits 5 minutes, and I kid you NOT pats me on the head (in front of students) and tells me he knows woomenn don't understand machines and it is fine. I registered my complaint with my principal, HR, and the help desk on that one. They had a different tech back at our school in about 30 minutes. He took it back and there was a blasted RECALL on that brand and model for over heating.

5. During an "emergency" (drill and kill software not working) I am given permissions to install some software and fix a bug. I spend my conference period, and time before and after school fixing this and get yelled at for the time it takes. I know of 4 other people that could help, they volunteered, but I'm told no they can't help. (Some of these people hold degrees in computer science and switched over to teaching. My degree is in Poli Sci and I added on teaching)

10. I would add it is NOT your e-mail. Honestly this is the first election since I started teaching that I haven't had to tell multiple coworkers to stop e-mailing me political stuff - they put it on facebook. I don't have to see it. Win Win

Bonus - social networks - This one is on my principal not our tech department. Last year it was you are all fools for being on facebook, you can't friend any student not even your own kid or their friends until they are 18) (Turns out he was wrong if know the kid outside of school you can friend them.) If you post something negative about our school I can fire you.

This year it is you have to join facebook, you have to like our page, you have to vote so we get target gift cards, you have to let us post pictures of you and Tag them (I don't allow pictures of myself to be taken much lest posted), you have to friend parents. HELL NO - facebook is for me, my family, and my friends. I am not going to friend a student's parent and risk them coming unglued because my university aged relatives post something stupid. they did. I'm not going to defriend my niece or her cousins because of what they might post. I'm the sort of cool cousin/aunt. I will come pull you out of the fire, give you 24 hours to fess up your stupidity to your parents before I do. I'm not cutting that contact. What about my political friends and family. It is a political year what if the parents don't like family members' positions. As for parents they have edmodo, the class blog, school e-mail, school phone, and mobile phone* to contact me they don't need facebook.

*I have always given it out with guidelines. Never been abused. During a weather emergency I had parents from that year and the year before calling me because our IP phone system couldn't handle the volume.

Kimberly, 

I hear echos of your concerns from frustrated teachers in our district and each time I do, I wince. I have no defense for unprofessional behavior in any tech department staff member.

Your district's technology departmnt sounds desparately understaffed and poorly managed. And while I hope it is an exception to the rule, it may be typical of many, many districts.

On the Facebook/social networking thing, cut your admins a little slack. Everyone is still trying to figure out if and how these new resources are used in education. I keep hoping Facebook will allow the creation of both personal and professional accounts, simplifying a great many things. 

Cut us a little slack on iPads too. These devices were designed for personal, not institutional, use so we are all figuring out how to manage them. My sense is the desire to select and add apps immediately will increase personal responsibility for managing these devices. 

Thanks again for the wake-up call.

Mordoc Doug

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