Category: Schools

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Finding New Things to do with an IWB

The following post was originally written as a reponse to a thread about interactive whiteboards on the www.iwbrevolution.com Ning.  One of the thread participants there made a statement about needing to see IWBs used in new ways.

I’m interested (read desperate) to see the revolutionary value adding aspects. I have an IWB, I love using my IWB, but I need to grasp the ideas and strategies that move people to describe it as a ‘revolution’ in learning. Show me an idea that is actually new!!!

While I appreciate where he’s coming from, I think the question is somewhat flawed. In responded to the post, I found myself “thinking out loud” about the value propsition of interactive whiteboards.  For what it may be worth, here’s the post. As always, your thoughts and feedback are welcome in the comments…

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I used to own a mobile phone, an iPod, a digital camera, a video camera, a GPS, and a voicerecorder, and I often carried many of them with me at any given moment. I also used to carry photos of my kids in my wallet. Gradually each of these devices has become subsumed into devices that could combine many of these functions – at first, my mobile phone gained a camera, and then my next phone had a camera, and a voice recorder. I still needed an iPod if I wanted to have my music with me, and I still needed a GPS if I wanted to know where I was going. I could maybe carry 3 or 4 photos of my kids at most.

My latest device is an iPhone, and it has finally merged all of these tools into a single pocketsized device. I now no longer carry all these things around with as individual tools, but I still have all these tools in my pocket. They are now just one device. The phone, the cameras, the voicerecorder, the GPS, the iPod with all my videos, music and photos accessable whereever I go, combined with mobile internet access and the dozens of amazing apps I have installed for doing just about anything you can think of, has fundamentally changed the experience of interacting with these devices individually.

I find my iPhone to be “revolutionary”, not because it allows me to do anything I could not do previously with all these individual devices, but rather because of the way it has combined all these tools into a single device. The revolution has been in the convergence, not in each the specific tools. I could do all this stuff before – I just had to carry a bag full of devices to do it! It’s also evident in the way these tools interact with each other… the maps can talk to the GPS, which in turn can access the web to look up an address, which in turn can let me make a phone call to that address. There’s nothing terribly “new” about the map, the GPS or the phone. Individually, these are all old, existing tools, but combine them together and they produce an overall experience that is new, different, and dare I say it, revolutionary.

The argument I hear that “an IWB does not let me do anything I couldn’t do with xxxx” – pieces of cardboard with words on them, sheets of butchers paper and blu-tack, an overhead projector, a pair of real dice, a big wooden protractor… you name it… is a complete piece of misdirection about the real value that an IWB can bring to a classroom. It is NOT about whether an IWB can “only” be used to do something that was already possible using a different technology. The real point is that the IWB, by converging so many classroom tools into a single, digital, point of contact on a large shared screen that every participant of the classroom can see, hear and engage with, fundamentally changes a whole lot of things.

There ARE great examples of how IWBs can reinvent what happens in classrooms, but if the onlookers want to constantly dismiss them because they might be able to be done in other ways with other tools, then they will never see the value that convergence brings to these tools.

You say you are desperate to see something “new”, but what do you need to see before you class it as “new”? There are very few new ideas under the sun… if people are waiting for that magical moment where they see an IWB being used to do something that is so unique and special it has never been done ever before by anyone in teaching history, they might be waiting a while. Few examples exist.

However, many examples exist of IWBs enabling teachers to bring digital media, online video, rich learning objects and realtime data into lessons. There are lots of examples of IWBs being used to bring disparate resources together in ways that were cumbersome and awkward using disparate technologies. If you’ve ever tried to show students specific scenes from a DVD – or heaven forbid, several DVDs – in a class, you will know that juggling disks in and out of the DVD player and trying to find specific places in the movie can take up most of the classtime. The same lesson, where the relevant video clips have been pre-prepared and embedded into a flipchart is a totally different experience.

Likewise, the ability to have an IWB as a “window to the world” where not only is the answer to so many random questions just a Google search away, the important thing is that it is only a Google search away in a shared, publicly viewable, social space of a classroom. I would argue that classroom participants using the shared digital space of a large screen connected to the internet and able to divert a lesson into unexpected directions at a moments notice is fundamentally different to traditional classrooms. The ability to do this is, in effect, new.

Perhaps we should stop looking for these profound, earth shattering instances of how an IWB can be “revolutionary”, and instead see the whole picture. The convergence of tools into a shared space that can be instantly adapted into whatever digital tool that might be appropriate is a an incredibly fundamental difference. A large screen tool shared by the whole class that is a place to write, a spreadsheet, a video player, a photo album, a maths lab, a world map, a link to world libraries, an encyclopedia, a highlighter pen, a post-it note, a place to brainstorm, and so on and so on, is an incredibly valuable tool. The fact that these individual parts can be dynamic, realtime and interactive makes it even moreso.

Whenever I hear people saying that an IWB can’t add anything to a classroom, I ponder how they are using it. Are they using a narrow set of IWB tools or do they use it in a myriad of connected ways that build on each other to create a dynamic ecosystem of tools. Do they treat their IWB like a hammer or a Swiss Army Knife? Is it just an expensive highlighter pen, or is it an amazing pandora’s box of digital tools waiting to be combined in interesting ways by creative teachers and students?

That’s where you’ll find your new stuff.

The REAL trick to all this is to ensure that this potential is being realised by teachers who understand the world of possibilities their IWB offers. If a teacher cannot see the potential, then of course we will struggle to see genuine “newness” in the way the IWBs are being used. As always, it is the creativity and insight of a talented teacher that brings this potential to the surface. Let’s stop being so hung up about whether IWBs can add value to a classroom. They can. The real question is whether the teachers who work with them can make the most of that potential and use them to bring that “revolution” into their classrooms.

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Getting an Ad-Free Ning

Quite a few teachers at our school are starting to see the advantages that a Ning community can offer.  We have been using Nings this year with several classes, and I’m finding them a really good, really easy way to get teachers interacting with technology in ways they might not have done otherwise.  Ning provides a visually rich, yet secure, environment for students to collaborate and socialise in, with a range of tools that are both useful and fun to use.  Because Ning offers many of the same kinds of tools that Facebook offers – discussion, video, pictures, chat – students find it easy to adapt to.  It also provides a few things that Facebook doesn’t – blogs, music and page customisation – so it allows teachers to modify the Ning toolsets to meet their individual educational needs.

Although Nings are proving incredibly useful for educators, the Google ads that appear on the right-hand menu are problematic for many educational purposes.  As good as the Ning environment is, with the ads in place (and in a new Ning the ads are often for inappropriate things like weight loss, online dating, work from home schemes, etc) Nings become largely unsuitable for school use.  While it’s possible to pay to remove the ads, the cost and red-tape involved in doing this in a school setting also make it less likely that educators will pursue it as an option.

Realising this, the good folk at Ning very generously offer an ad-free option for k-12 educators.  Simply ask to have the ads removed, and they will remove them for you.

The problem is that the instructions for getting the ads removed are not obvious. They require you to write to them and ask for it; a nice personal approach, but not just a matter of clicking a simple checkbox in the same way that Wikispaces offers ad-free wikis for educators.  With Ning, you need to know where to direct your request for ad removal, and that information is not all that obvious.  If you Google “removing ads from a ning” you will find instructions to do it, but I’ve found that the instructions can be out-of-date or do not always match what you see on your screen… it can be a little confusing.

I just applied this morning to have a Ning made ad-free, and managed to work my way through the confusion. If it helps anyone else, here’s how I did it.

  1. Go to http://help2.ning.com/AskUsAQuestion
  2. Fill in the URL for the Ning you want made ad-free
  3. From the “Select a Topic” dropdown, choose “General Question”
  4. In the “Describe your Question” field, write a short request for your ads to be removed…  as an example, this is what I wrote…  “Hello, I’d like to request that the above Ning be made ad-free for education. Our school is doing a collaborative project with our sister school in Japan and would like to use the Ning environment for these exchanges. Our students are aged between 13 and 17 and the Ning will be used only for educational purposes. Thanks!“

They say it takes about 3-4 days to get approved.

Thanks Ning-guys!  Hope you get a great big serving of Internet karma as reward for your generosity!

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Copyright or Copywrong?

cspdcomics-1I was in a staff meeting at school last week where we were given a presentation outlining 10 common myths about copyright.  I thought it not a bad summary of what many teachers just assume to be true.  Ironically, I’m reproducing it below basically word for word as it was presented to me, but I’m told on good authority that the original creator has authorised its use for reposting.

The other thing I really would have liked to have had included in the conversation was a little more talk about what the alternatives are.  It’s one thing to talk about what you can’t do legally, but unless you provide a list of workable alternatives, simply making “though shalt not” pronouncements  is a bit pointless.  Copyright has a place, but in a digital world that place is changing dramatically.  There is an obvious tension between the inputs and the outputs of copyright… if you are a content creator, you want the output of your work to be protected so others don’t simply steal your stuff, however, unless you can borrow and remix content from others, you will have very little to work with in the first place.

If you’ve not seen it, take a look at an amazing comic book produced by the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University.  Issue 1, entitled Bound By Law, looks at the copyright issues faced by documentary filmmakers, and is an extremely insightful look at the pros and cons of copyright and how it can often unintentionally stifle the very same creativity it is supposed to be protecting.  I think it explains it very well, and it should be read by all high school students (and teachers!).  You can download a copy (Under a Creative Commons licence of course) from www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics.

For another lucid overview of the real issues behind copyright law, you really can’t go past the TED Talk by Larry Lessig (founder of Creative Commons) called How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law.  His final summation of the tensions that exist between the extremist viewpoints of “Let’s protect everything” vs “Everything should be free” is excellent, and he makes it very clear that, while the law might not be the ass we sometimes think it is, the notion of copyright certainly needs a good injection of balance and common sense if it is to remain relevant and workable.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, here are the 10 myths about copyright, as presented by my school last week (and specifically applied to Australian copyright law)

1.  It’s OK – I found it on the net

The fact that something is on the internet doesn’t mean that it’s not protected by copyright or that you can use it as you wish.  Material on the net is protected to the same extent as anything on paper or in any other type of format. In many cases, however, copyright owners put a statement on to websites stating how people can use the material – the permission they give can often be quite extensive, but don’t assume that it will cover what you are planning to do with the material.

2.  We can use it – it doesn’t have a copyright notice on it

While it is recommended copyright owners should put copyright notices on their material, it is not compulsory, and it doesn’t affect whether or not something is protected. We will have a compliance issue to deal with whether or not the material has a copyright notice on it.

3.  We’re non-profit so it’s OK

In some narrow cases, the non-profit statues of an organisation can affect its ability to rely on exceptions. However, there is no general rule to the effect that it’s OK to use copyright material for non-profit purposes.

4.  It’s all right we’re attributing the creator

If you’re using copyright material, you do generally have to attribute the person or people who created the material. This is a general moral rights obligation. However, you’ll still have copyright issues to consider; attributing the creator doesn’t change this.

5.  We only need to worry about copyright if we’re charging money

In some narrow cases, the fact that an organisation is charging money can affect its ability to rely on exception to the general rule that you need permission if you want to use copyright material in one of the ways reserved to the copyright owner.  However, there is no general rule to the effect that you don’t have to worry about copyright if you’re not charging people for the material you are using.

6.  The copyright owner should see this as good promotion

Whether or not a copyright owner sees your use of their material as good promotion is their decision, not yours, and you can never be sure they’ll see the situation in the same light as you do.  Also, even if the copyright owner does see your use of the material as good publicity, don’t assume that this means that they’ll give you permission to use it for free. Many copyright owners make their living from the licence fees they charge, and they will often want to know beforehand how you want to use the material. If you don’t get a clearance when you’re supposed to, you’ve still infringed copyright – which may, for the College, work out as bad publicity.

7.  It’s OK – I’m using less than 10%

There is no general rule that you can use less than 10% without permission.  If you’re using any ‘substantial’ part of a copyright owner’s material – whether you’ve made changes to it or not – you’ll have to deal with the copyright issue. In the context, a ‘substantial’ part is any part that is important, distinctive or essential. It doesn’t have to be a large part to be ‘substantial’ in a copyright sense.

8. It’s all right – I’ve changed it

There are two common, but wrong, beliefs in this area.  First, there is no general rule to the effect that it’s OK to use copyright material if you change it by 10% or more.  Second, there is no general rule to the effect that you can use copyright material if you make five or more changes.  As noted above, if you’re using any part that is important, distinctive or essential, you have to deal with copyright issues.

9. It’s OK – we paid for it

The fact that the College paid a contractor for something – such as a report or a series of photos – will have a bearing on how we can use it. However, this is not by itself a guarantee that we own copyright in it, and can use it as we like.  Similarly, the fact that we own a physical item – such as a painting or photograph or a DVD – does not mean you can use it as you like (such as copying it or screening it).

10. No one will ever find out

If you know, and your colleagues know, why mightn’t the copyright owner – or the collecting society that represents them – get to find out too?  Organisations that infringe copyright are always at risk from disgruntled employees, let alone the other people they come in contact with.  Also, copyright owners have six years to take action for an infringement – that’s a long time for information to come to light.