Mid-Season Form

The sun has (mostly) returned and the world is once again waking up following another winter, and we're into full swing at Turning Point. Spring is always an exciting time at Turning Point because graduation is getting closer and closer. If a student feels she/he is within striking distance a light may go on inside and push them across a line they never though possible - graduation!

At this point in the year we're also all in a pretty good groove - not a rut, but a confident place where we are comfortable with out systems and students (if we're ever brave enough to feel that - it will likely be now). At this point, lots of our students are using the English BLOG for assignments, and the iPads are being used everyday, by a growing group of students in class.

Currently we are trying to further develop our roster of pad friendly assignments and are planning a teacher training session within a month's time. We've booked a computer lab at our site and have invited a handful of alternative educators from other programs in the HWDSB. The day will hopefully be a building day for BLOGs for these teachers and their sites. We've assigned homework and teachers are now compiling resources they'd like to have on their own BLOGs.

It's been nice to receive some teacher feedback, and we look forward to more. We've also restarted our student surveys in order to get feedback from the students. It's nice to be able to generate assignments based on this feedback, and it's nice to hear "sir, can I do that assignment when I'm done this one?"

We still need to find a way to incorporate the iPads into student creations (word processing, slideshow creation, etc.) - it's new technology for them, and the touch screen may be a limiting factor keeping students from typing up assignments on the pad, but we still have a lot to learn with this.

The next step may be generating a BLOG (or a section in our current BLOGs) that is focused on student collaboration and dialogue. It is difficult to have discussions in a self-paced program - students are rarely in the classroom with a group of students studying the same assignment, so we're experimenting with a 'virtual disussion' concept that will utilize the BLOG platform. We'll let you know how it goes, but has anyone tried something like this?

We're always looking for wisdom from other educators more experienced in these matters - literally, all ears!

Problem or Opportunity?

I find that it's important for me to occasionally take a step back. I need to remember the nature of this program - we are an alternative program. To be considered for enrollment these young people need to be what our school board calls "early leavers" - when I went to school they would have been called "dropouts". Regardless of the name, the fact remains that my students are my students precisely because they have  not had success at school before.

Now granted, most Turning Point students have known success at school in the past, in that they were able to complete at least two-thirds of their diploma before coming to us. In generalities, a Turning Point student is not the most in need - most have moderately stable homes, most are not hungry or worried about where they're going to sleep tonight. But almost all of them have had problems coming to school for periods in their lives. Whether the cause was employment, family responsibilities, mental or physical health - a lot of my students have had and may still have difficulty attending school with regularity.

 Of course, our programming reflects this. Turning Point curriculum is delivered in chunks, and our learning environment is 'self-paced'. As long as students are progressing (attending regularly, or at least submitting work for assessment and meeting with teachers regularly) then how and where they do their work is not important to us.

And here's where I will finally make my point. One problem I've noticed with the tablet project is the inability for students to do any work on these assignments from home. Now, we're not a correspondence program, but we like to give the opportunity for some of our students to start an assignment with a teacher in class, and to have the option of finishing up at home (or wherever they choose). I didn't consider this until I asked a student why he never did any of the newer (iPad based) assignments. "Because I can't take it home to finish it" he said. Simple. He wanted portability in his assignment. Too bad? 21st century gone too far? Maybe. But our goal is to help this young man graduate, and these assignments likely won't be part of that effort.

Now, as the post's title accurately points out - this 'problem' could also be an opportunity. We are also a college preparation program, and the idea that sometimes school has to be a priority is an important lesson for these students to learn. Sometimes you have to go to school - if you want to be successful with it - and so, an assignment that not only demands, but perhaps even entices a reluctant attender to come to school, well that's something - isn't it?

I'm currently working on some HIGH INTEREST assignments using the pad, hoping to woo these would be truants to come to class. And if there are still too many barriers for some to make it in regularly, then we will tackle that problem another day.

Anyone else have stories about technology (or any other 'lure') successfully drawing non-attenders to school? I've had good results with food in the past as well.

Keynote

Just learning the Keynote application for the iPad. This appears to be the best presentation app for the iPad. Easy to learn and use for staff and students. As well, the ability to save presentations to the cloud for use on all devices is a great bonus.

We've noticed that there have been a few issues around using the iPad and a projector for in class presentations. This, we believe has been remedied by using Apple TV as the interface between the iPad and the projector.

Very interesting to watch a class full of kids using keynote, the iPad and the projector. Things can get lively! But a noisy, engaged class is a good class.

Cost-effective Protections with My iBallz

I have to admit that I had some fears related to releasing the iPads to the students. We worked together to co-create iPad use and safety procedures.  However, I know 9 and 10 year-olds.  They might have the absolute best intentions, but in every classroom, things happen.

I was looking for an inexpensive alternative to the hard cases on the market.  My principal had a set of iBallz to show me.  I was intrigued with the design but further struck with the expense.  

iBallz official site

The company states that the iBallz are versatile and work with other popular tablets and other cases.

I found some examples of people dropping the iPad.

One test

I tried my own test, albeit tentatively, a few times.  The iPad simply hit the ground, had a slight upward 1cm bounce, then rested easily for the next test.

I am more confident in releasing more responsibility to my students now.

Issues

Just a quick note on some of the issues we've had with our project.

The biggest issue to date for us has been the inability to get supply teachers. A combination of the job action, a low supply teacher pool, and our unique location has resulted in a shortage of supply teachers for release time. We've had to do internal coverage which hurts the group dynamic as well as leaving the bulk of our release money untouched. Frustrating to say the least.

As well, it is not easy to get fellow teachers to use the technology. Sometimes we have to step back and realize some teachers are just not comfortable with technology. We will continue to work around this issue in hopes that we can encourage the use of this innovative technology.

Find my iPad!

Well it goes without saying that our biggest fear is having a student misplace or steal one of our iPads. We've turned on the " find my iPad" function on all of our iPads. This should be the first thing that is done when you bring the iPads to your classroom. Technology is a prized possession in the classroom and needs to be protected at all times.

The other day we thought we had lost one of the iPads, which sets all parties into a state of panic. We used the "find my iPad" function and in no time our frayed nerves were put to rest as we realized the teacher had left it at home. The find my iPad function showed us on a map the street location, which just happened to be the teachers house. All ends well!

Changing Culture

So we're about one full month into this experiment - and for the most part things are going well. We haven't 'lost' any, they're all working properly, and there are fewer student complaints than usual about our technology. However, things are not going as well as some may have expected.

To be honest, I am experiencing a little difficulty simply getting some students to use the iPads! I know - it's strange. I assumed I'd need to entice students off of them to allow others to use them, but rarely do we have more than 4-6 out at one time. I think there are a few reasons for this.

For one, the iPads (and all of the technology we're using this year) is a pretty large step from where we were last year. For some context, Turning Point is an alternative program designed to help early leavers graduate - we employ self-paced learning and are very flexible, allowing students to complete assignments around their job/family commitments. A common question is "do you use booklets"? - these are a staple of the self-paced educator as they allow students to come and go and provide a unified platform for credit delivery. Our students don't necessarily like them, but they know them (most have been in alternative education programs for some time) - and I think it is this familiarity that is keeping them from embracing the tablets completely.

Other reasons why students may not be embracing the tablets right away likely has to do with their inability to take them home (they'd rather start an assignment that they can take home) or they are not confident generating their work on the tablets (they'd rather use paper or the desktops - again, it's a known technology). I will deal with how we are hoping to tackle these dilemmas in later posts.

Also, in an effort to help expedite this slow uptake we are working to put more and more high-interest content on the iPads as well as assuring that each course has enough assignments to work on with the iPads. A "The Walking Dead" assignment using the first volume of the e-graphic novel was just added to the senior English courses and it has been very popular!

Hopefully, with time, these devices will become part of our school environment, like the pencil sharpener and the desktop computer.

Any tips on changing a culture?