Tags: facebook, guide, teaching

by: Dimitris Tzouris

One of the most common questions I get asked by teachers is how to include video in their online resources. Whether it’s including video clips in Moodle or embedding a video into a wiki or blog, the use of video can be a powerful tool for helping students learn. As someone once said to me “Give me 3 minutes and the right piece of video, and I can teach you almost anything”.

Working with video has a reputation for being complicated. I remember doing an online video project about 13 years ago with a school in Japan and we were literally air-mailing VHS cassettes to each other each because it was the “simplest” way to get the job done. Indeed, it’s true that even just a few years ago, working with video was still relatively difficult… the file sizes are huge, the editing process can be complex, and storing video files for playback on the web has traditionally involved a bewildering array of codecs and other technical-sounding choices. It’s all too much for many people.

Tools like Moodle can handle the inclusion of video in a course. If you can edit your video and get it in the right format, Moodle will usually handle the storage playback for you. Or not. It can be a bit of a lucky dip, and it often requires a disproportionate amount of work that many teachers simply don’t have the time or skills to do.

Enter YouTube.  YouTube celebrates its 10th birthday this week, and it would be an understatement to say that it has totally changed the way that regular non-techie people publish video. Thanks to YouTube’s massive backend infrastructure, much of the hard work of uploading, hosting and sharing video online is no longer difficult. I heard recently that there is currently over 100 HOURS of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, so the amount of content you have access to is truly mind boggling.The fact that so much content is being added to YouTube every minute of every day is testament to just how straightforward it is for “normal” people to manage.

Most people have used YouTube to watch videos. Whether it’s to learn something new by watching a TED Talk, or just to have a giggle at a cute cat video, YouTube has become a repository of just about any piece of video content you can imagine. The thing you should know is that YouTube lets you take just about any piece of video, in just about any format, and when you upload it, the YouTube servers do all the hard work of converting, transcoding, storing and publishing that clip.  That’s all the really hard stuff that for so long was the part that made working with video way too hard for many people. Now, if you can click the Upload button, you can publish a video to the world.

But did you know that there are a whole lot of other things that you can do on YouTube?

If you go to www.youtube.com/editor you will find a reasonably capable online video editor at your disposal. Sure, it’s not Premiere Pro or Final Cut, it’s not even iMovie, but for a completely free video editing tool that runs in nothing but your web browser, it’s surprisingly functional. Best of all, you have direct access to ANY video on YouTube marked with a Creative Commons license. And that means millions of videos, on just about any subject. While it’s a great thing for students to be able to capture their own footage, there is an awful lot of useful production you can do with access to the enormous library of YouTube videos without any need for a camera at all. Just search for what you want and drag it to the timeline, then use the trim bars to isolate just the part you want. Or click on the clip to get the scissors tool to split the clip at any point. Or click the magic wand tool to add all sorts of video effects, including image stabilization. Creating a video from the work of others is as simple as dragging the desired clips into place, trimming them down, getting them in the right order and even adding transitions, titles and music. It’s all right there on the webpage. Oh, and of course if you’ve uploaded clips to YouTube previously, you can edit your own videos as well.

For anyone who has been editing video for a while, this is jaw dropping stuff. While it’s a relatively simple editor right now, there’s little doubt that it will get better and better over time. Worth noting is that, because it’s using the massive resources of YouTube’s server farm, the computer you’re editing on does not have to be especially powerful. The servers are doing all the heavy lifting at the other end.

Once you finish editing, you can then publish your work back to YouTube and share it with the world. It’s just ridiculously easy.  Once your completed video is back on YouTube you can share it in all the usual ways, including embed code. This brings us back to where we began with this article, with the ability to easily grab the embed code and drop it into Moodle, a wiki or blog, or any website that accepts embed code (and really, these days, that’s just about all of them)

So now you have a video that sits nicely on your blog, wiki or learning management system, powered by the resources of YouTube

What’s the bottom line?

If you want to use video in your teaching resources (and you should be!) then make sure you check out the creative options that YouTube offers. It’s more than just cute cats.

The post My Other Computer is a Data Centre appeared first on Betchablog.

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Amid the current school funding cyclone, Naplan, international comparisons of our schools performance and students grilling the PM on national television, too often, there has been little discussion on the role of the teacher in today’s world. I believe this discourse is central to school improvement.

I only wish that we could step back and look afresh at the work good teachers need to do in a knowledge age. I hope I’m not alone in believing that we need to re-think the role of the teacher.  

Socrates used the metaphor of teacher as the midwife at the birth of knowledge.  Is this metaphor still relevant?  If so, what happened in the industrial age when instead of overseeing the birth of knowledge, teachers became owners and transmitters of that information?

Or is this more a question of what value we place on information vs knowledge?  Have we come full circle from the attainment of knowledge in ancient Greece to the transmission of information in the industrial age to the creation of knowledge in today’s world?

Can the role of a teacher remain the same but the context change? Is everything old somehow new again?

Parker Palmer claims “good teachers are able to weave a complex web of connections between themselves, their subjects, and their students, so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves.”  This quote resonates with Elmore’s instructional core and the premise that good teaching is the relationship between the teacher, the student and the content.

There are two areas that I see as critical.  The first is what is the content and whose content?  The real learning lies not just in remembering content but applying and creating it. The concept that students and teacher work together in this process provides a  window into how we might see the work of a contemporary teacher. That students can construct their own learning is a bridge too far for some but this should be the end point.

The second is re-conceptualising the work of teaching.  It’s time to retire the old descriptors of teacher as sage on the stage, guide on the side, meddler in the middle etc.  These do little justice to the complexity of good teaching.

I have begun to think about re-defining teachers as entrepreneurs. In a recent Forbes article on re-defining entrepreneurship, the definition of entrepreneur is seen as the “ innate mindset of a person who sees opportunities and pursues them.”  This is what the role of a teacher in today’s world – they are professionals who take calculated risks using good data and research.  They understand that being professional means being accountable and responsible.  They create networks to build collective knowledge and are willing to share that knowledge with beginning teachers. Perhaps one of the most distinguishing features is an inherent understanding that learning and teaching is dynamic – it requires new sets of inter-dependencies and understandings of learners and their technology.  

Is this how you see the role of teachers in today’s world?

When: Tuesday, May 21st 4-5pm, Melbourne Australia time (gmt+10) See timeanddate for your day and timezone.

About this session: This is an ‘unconference’ style webinar where participants are encouraged to bring along some of the latest tools or apps that they are using or ‘playing’ with. Those who join us will have the chance to play with the tools, share what they have learnt and discuss how it could be used in the classroom or learning. Alternatively, come along with questions about some tools that you would like to use.To kickstart the session, I will share  fotor, a great online image editing tool and some of my favourite apps for twitter use.

Please join us by clicking on this link.  If you cannot join us, what tools or apps are you trialling or playing with? Please leave a comment below.

A fun dinosaur archaeologist themed coordinates game. Find the correct coordinates to uncover the dinosaur bones.

http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

See it on Scoop.it, via ICTmagic

This is a lovely downloadable programme to compose pieces of music on a digital stave which will play you creations back to you. Just drag the note and rests into the positions you want.

http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Music%2C+Sound+%26+Podcasts

See it on Scoop.it, via ICTmagic

I was reading a blog post by a university professor on the subject of adjunct faculty (Tenure-track’s untouchables) when I can across the statement that “the university has a disinclination to hire their own graduates.” This seemed weird to me. I teach at a high school that has a good number of their own alumni on the faculty. On a recent visit my my university alma mater I noted that there were a good number of graduates who had returned to teach there as well. I always saw this as a good thing.

I struggled to think of why a university would have this sort of disinclination and the only thing I could think of was a fear of becoming “in breed” in some way. The flip side of that is that it can also contribute to maintaining a mission, culture and environment. Maybe if you don’t like your mission, culture or environment you’d want to go outside for faculty but in general I’d think a mix of “old” and “new” would be closer to ideal.

The cynic in me wanted to ask “are the students you are turning out not good enough to teach at your school?” What does not wanting to hire your own graduates say about your program? After a bit of this sort of non-productive thinking I refocused on myself and my own teaching. If I were starting a new company or hiring for an existing company would I want to hire my former students? Am I preparing my students for the world they are entering after graduation?

Teaching high school I think mostly about if I am preparing them to succeed in university. I’m frankly less interested in what school they attend next as I am that they are prepared for what they find when there get there. I am also concerned about their ability to perform in industry jobs. Oh I know, I know. I hear it all the time No one gets a job in computer science right out of high school.

Bah, not true at all. Most do not of course but I have had a good number of students get great summer internships and even year round jobs while still in high school over the years. They have done well enough that the companies that hired them have returned with the question “any more like so and so?” It does happen.

So would I hire my graduates? Not all of them. At least not out of high school. But some of them? In a heart beat. I can think of several I would want to hire me if I were leaving the classroom again. While I wouldn’t think of taking full credit (or in some cases any credit other than not screwing things up) I like to think I have helped prepare a few students pretty well.

The goal should be to give students the knowledge and skills they need at a level were you would feel comfortable either hiring them yourself or at least giving them a strong recommendation for someone else to hire them. It’s not about passing time or giving them the minimum to get by but giving them, at least the opportunity to acquire, the knowledge to succeed either in industry or academia. If you would not recommend a student for an appropriate  job/university you should be able to answer the question “Did they not work hard enough or did you not give them enough opportunity to learn the right things?”

Yes, I want to turn out graduates I would like to hire.

Surely, you might assume, we cannot be alone in the universe. Exoplanets are found almost weekly.    

Smartphone owners will be able to pinpoint their locations with much greater accuracy in the next decade courtesy of a new robot.    

Researchers are closer to understanding what animals need to regrow body parts.    

Eva Brown @ebrownorama
is a highered teacherpreneur
who helps her classroom matter
by connecting teachers
to others throughout the
world.
(Listen to the interview.) Eva Brown @ebrownorama is a teacher educator from Canada.

We recently sat down to record another episode of Every Classroom Matters and she gave me 5 very clear ingredients for excellent preservice teacher education. For those of you not familiar with the term "preservice" (it is called different things in different countries) - this means, Eva teachers people how to be teachers before they enter the classroom.

1. Create Flat Learning Experiences (also called Tandem Learning) +Eva Brown  worked with +Barbara Morganfield  @blmteach to create a powerful learning experience for their students. They each had an expertise and a topic they were teaching. (Eva - ICT and Barbara - Discipline issues) Eva's students presented tools that would fit what Barbara's students were needing to use in their situations. Barbara's students provided feedback to Eva's students on what worked and didn't.

Teachers should graduate from college programs with ready-made connections between teachers in other parts of the world. This makes them more valuable to their schools and their students.

2. Connect with K-12 Classrooms There is no excuse. With the proliferation of online K-12 projects, preservice teachers can interact with students before they start their student teaching. This is ideal because they can learn about online learning platforms at all levels. I love how she and some of my other highered friends +Leigh Zeitz and +Eric Brunsell  do this as well.

3. Encourage Teachers to Master the Tools they always have Eva gives some of the most compelling reasons for mastering the tablet device I've heard. As she moves around working with teachers, she says that she needs to be "ready  to teach" all the time. She says if you can use the tablet and tools like Prezi and Haiku Deck then you can reduce the time to prepare and "get to the learning." Very compelling conversation about why she uses them as well.

4. Fit the Tools to the Task If I handed you a hammer and asked you to cut down a tree, you'd laugh at me. Eva works hard to fit the tools to the task. It is fascinating to me that when Eva covers keyboarding, they use virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft.

She continually points out different tools that fit a specific purpose. Like a mechanic working on high end automobiles, we've got an increasing toolset and need to start selecting wisely from that set. Paper and pencil are the hammer we used to use for everything, not any more.

5. Always moving forward She ends the show with such wise advice. I hope you'll listen to see what she says, but it comes down to this. Move forward.

In the south we say "when you're green you're growing, when you're ripe, you rot." It applies to crops and it applies to people.

Focus on your students as you prepare to end the school year. Today I'll run focus groups with my students as they give me feedback about what they learned, where they struggled, and what needs to be improved for next year. Over the summer, I tweak what we're doing. It is about my students and maximizing the all-to-short time we have together.

Eva is an example of a teacherpreneur at the college level who is pushing her students to be globally connected and social media savvy. I hope you'll dig into what she has to say because her classroom matters and yours does too. It is my dream that by featuring classrooms at all levels from around the world that it will foster conversations that need to happen about excellence in the classroom. I don't care where you teach, you are important. We can learn from each other as we work to be our best for our students.


LISTEN TO Eva Brown talk about how she teaches teachers with technology Click here to listen:
Tactics and Tools: Teaching Teachers with Technology with Eva Brown

Eva Brown is a teacher educator at Red River College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She is a Flat Classroom Certified Teacher and a Microsoft Innovative Teacher. Eva's website: https://sites.google.com/site/ebrownorama/ 
Do you want to nominate someone to be on the show? 
Fill out the nomination form.
If you already nominated someone, once school gets out, I'll be looking through the nominations and reviewing their work. I do want to reach out to unsung heroes who might not be blogging or tweeting a lot but are doing great work. Thanks for taking time to nominate the rock star teachers among us, particularly those who are articulate and interesting.

Want to know more about Every Classroom matters and how to subscribe?
Read "The Every Classroom Matters Show and a tutorial on how to subscribe using iCatcher"


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Endang and students asking questions of native speaker

Endang Palupi is an amazing Indonesian educator in Western Java and despite poor infrastructure and working in a developing country. As Endang is well connected, she then connects students she works with to classes and educators across the world. She is studying for a doctorate and her thesis is based Talking with a Native Speaker. Using skype and facebook groups, Endang looks for people who may be available to work with Indonesian students who are learning English and speak it as their second or third language.

One question they consistently ask is “what  is your age?”. I respond truthfully and can see that they understand that as there is some element of surprise, as I could be their grandmother!!! “What is your hobby?” is the second most common question. My response is gardening and arranging flowers but I am never sure whether they fully understand that response. Usually I key that response into the txt chat area to help understanding.  On the weekend,  I took a photograph of some of my flower arrangements so that I can quickly share my screen in skype or ghangouts and show them my hobby as well as tell them.

Images will become increasingly important as we become more globally connected. How do you ensure understanding when working with people from other countries? What tips would you give?

Sharing my hobby in an image

In case you missed the announcement last week the CSTA Election results are announced. Thank you very much to those of you who voted for me. I’ve really looking forward to helping out on this board. The school year is nearing an end. The school I teach at had their senior prom over the weekend. I hope to see pictures today. I’m also starting to think about how I am teaching next year. We’re creating two new courses to replace some existing but dated courses. Some of the links below will play into my thinking.

I’ve been working a lot more with TouchDevelop lately. I really want to use it with students. I’ve posted one of the bits of code I’m playing with as a web app at https://www.touchdevelop.com/users/AlfredTwo/spinWP/   I’ve also been experimenting with TouchDevelop Presenter. Presenter lets me display want I do on my phone on a wi-fi connected computer. I understand it currently only works with the Windows Phone 7 app. It was developed before the web based version of TouchDevelop was created. I’m hoping to upgrade to a Windows Phone 8 soon so I will probably use the web version for demos with students. 

Microsoft Touch Develop is looking for adventurous Windows Phone 8 mobile app creators for a beta of the WP 8 app of TouchDevelop. Yep, this is one more reason I want to upgrade my phone.

Ray Chambers in the UK has developed a Touch Develop - Scheme Of Work for teaching. I’m taking a good look at it for my own use.

Doug Peterson wrote a very thoughtful response to one of my posts at Life in a Browser. It was in response to my little rant Why Web Apps? 

Washington State passed a bill that gives students graduation credit for AP Computer Science. This is a great thing and now 10 states allow this sort of credit. Still a long way to go though. But there continues to be discussion of this sort of thing in the media.

• Giving Students Credit for Programming Classes – the New York Times
• "Why High Schools Should Treat Computer Programming Like Algebra” by Jordan Weissmann in The Atlantic
• STEM graduate shortage? Computer science is where the future jobs are an opinion piece on The Seattle Times

Dear Learn to Code Startup is a great post with words of advice for all those companies what think they are going to “solve” the problem of not enough computer science students written by Laura Blankenship (@lblanken)

Do you remember the Incredible Machine? It was a great game all about problem solving/ Well it looks like The Incredible Machine Is Back, Spiritually at least. Read about it in Wired.

Why teachers do what we do is a recent post by Doug Berman  @dougbergmanUSA that you should read.

Post videos, text, images or more to a public or private online wall. It's simple to use and can be used to post homework, collect resources or create projects. You can give your pupils usernames and passwords to edit the wall. Then embed the wall on your website.

http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

See it on Scoop.it, via ICTmagic

Just a quick announcement that I will be running the Google Apps for Education (GAFE) course over the summer for those who are interested in learning more about Google Apps.

The second cohort is about a week away from finishing and it has been great to learn with people on this journey into Google Apps. It really is a love/hate relationship. I love all that I learn from people and things they teach me as Google moves so fast. Also I hate it as it makes it hard to keep the content up to date. I’ll be going back and redoing the Google+ videos with the new announcements for sure.

You can head over to gafeclass.com and check out the projects from past participants in the course and see how they are using Google Apps in their classroom and what you learn in this 8 weeks online course.

Also check out the about page to learn about the pedagogy used in the course. This really is a course that takes advantage of the Internet and living in a connected world.

I also allow you to decide what your final project looks like. Giving you as many options as possible and of course I’m always open to your own suggestions.

Final Project (50% of overall grade)

Well you have made it to the end of the GAFE course now time to put what you have learned into action. There are a couple different options you have for completing your final project. I have outlined them below. If you have an idea that better fits your situation please message me and we’ll talk through it to make sure it fits with the outcome of this course.

Option 1 Use Google Apps with your Students/Staff

Presentation/Project:
You will use Google Apps for Education in your class to enhance the learning experience for students. The outcomes should be student learning focused and age appropriate. You will share the project with the rest of the participants in this course so they can offer feedback and learn from you. You must also “try out” your project with your students and get their feedback on its use.

Final Presentation:
You will create a video no longer than 10 minutes using Google Presentation, Google Hangout, or YouTube that answers the following questions.

• What were your goals for your Google Project?
• What tools did you use? Why did you choose these tools for this/these task(s)?
• How did you go about introducing your project to the students?
• How did the students react?
• Outcome? Did you meet your goals?
• Evidence of student learning?
• What would you do differently next time? What did you learn?
• How do you plan to share this with your school colleagues?
• What was your greatest learning in this course?

Option 2 Update or create a video for the GAFE Course

Similar to option 1 except your audience would be other people taking the GAFE course and the public at large. You would create a video similar to the ones I created except adding your own learning and showing examples of how you have used that specific tool/topic with students/staff in a learning environment.

 

Option 3 Complete the application for the Google Certified Trainer Program

Sign up and take the test and complete the application for the Google Certified Trainer Program

http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/resources/training-programs.html

 

Option 4 Taking on the Google Ninja Program

Help me by creating content and setting up a very similar system to this for the Ninjaprogram.com website so students around the world can become google ninjas. It would mean creating study materials or pointing kids in the direction of resources, coming up with activities, and maybe even making a video or two.

• Bikes & Bullets - YouTube

  This YouTube channel is an example of how parents MUST sign off on genius project. The final video "go Pro hero" is the only "officially submiited" video for this student's genius project. But he runs a youtube channel that has a bit of a cult following. I don't approve of the stunts, etc. but the child's mother does. He also did all the work at home except for the final. This is one of those challenging ones and is something to be aware that you can deal with when you have genius projects. I have parent sign off on anything students do.

  tags: education news passion_project

• Wix.com AwesomeMadi created by Tucker2015 based on my-gallery | Wix.com

  This efolio is by far one of the best. I love on the homepage. She says "Hello my name is madison and I'm an artist." yes, you are, my dear.

  tags: education news passion_project geniushour

• Edits

  I enjoy what this student did with learning to edit in Photoshop.

  tags: education news photoshop passion_project

• EbookBelle - Home

  Here's the website where Merritt compiled all her book reviews on Kindle Nation Daily.

  tags: education news ebooks passion_project edu_news

• Psst Parents And YA Authors, This Post is For You - An Interview With a 10th Grade YA eBook Reader - Recommendations, Current Trends And Advice From a Member of The YA Audience | Kindle Kids' Corner

  Another one of my students has been writing and sharing on the Kindle Kids Corner. Here's an interview she did about trends in Young Adult fiction and I agree with so much of what she's written. This is another example of how authentic projects can transform a student. This happened to come out of one of my favorite kindle book sites - Kindle Nation Daily and an email conversation I had with the author Steven Windwalker (penname.) 

  tags: education learning news books ebook

• Flat Classroom - Brandon B

  Another beautiful site and student work. Students update these and use them as they apply for scholarships. As I type this, I'm listening to this student's CD. He and his friends decided to cut a CD for his passion project. I love how this project gets students to do the things they want to do. Things that are important but don't get done move up the list when they are getting a grade - especially for your strong students. I think of the beautiful music that has been recorded on CD as part of these projects and it means a lot. I wish you can hear it, but likely they will release it soon. ;-)

  tags: education news passion_project passionbasedlearning

• Learning with 'e's: 10 characteristics of authentic learning

  An important read as we work to reinvent schools and make sure we measure authentic learning with more authentic measures than bubble trouble. ;-)

  tags: education news edreform authentic learning assessment edu_trends edu_news

• Videos - Softball with Sage

  Another passion project from a student who loves softball.

  tags: education news geniushour

• What happens during a general checkup? - YouTube

  This a general overview video that my student Riya made as part of her passion project. She wanted to help kids be unafraid of going to the pediatrician's office and she wants to be a pediatrician herself. She now has a youtube channel complete with videos to help children. I'm very proud of what she's done. This is just one example of the kind of learning that can happen. click on her name to view the other videos in the series. It is so interesting to see how much her little brother has grown in the 2 years she's been making the videos.

  tags: education news passionproject passionbasedlearning

• www.medtechfortots.com - Home

  I love this project created by one of my students to help children be unafraid to go to the doctor. She has a youtube channel called Pediatric Videos with one video having more than 50,000 views (the one on CT scanning.) Her dad is a pediatrician and filmed everything while supervising her and helping her write the script. Her little brother was the patient. This is a fantastic example of a passion based project.

  tags: education news passionbasedlearning geniushour passion_project

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Comments:

• A website where you can type in some text and it will turn it into a shape of choice - Rhondda Powling

Tags: text, writing, layout, generator, tools, free

by: Rhondda Powling

Carolyn Cameron, one of the most open and progressive principals I have ever known (she was also my former boss), shared the following video regarding student expectations for school.  The first point was that it was important to build relationships and know students as individuals.  The nine other points are things that I really believe in, but it was great hearing it from a student perspective.

Although this is a video that will bring attention to a book that is being sold, I think that it is a great conversation starter with faculty and students.  Interestingly enough, it was released around the same time the Jeff Bliss video was being shared.  Perhaps a much more positive way to start the conversation not only on what students look for in the classroom, but also may give some thoughts on how to give students this voice and take action based on what they have said.

Student voice is important but it is essential that if we ask them to take the time to share their thoughts, that we also show progress in what they have asked.

• September 2, 2011 -- Mobile Devices and Mindset; My Visit to Greystone
• February 24, 2013 -- 3 Things That Show Strength, Not Weakness
• March 7, 2013 -- Learning to Care
• February 21, 2013 -- (Central) Office Hours
• March 24, 2013 -- Engaging Parents in the Learning Process

Now I have admitted before that I am a google fan boy. I love Google, I love their products, I love the way they take risks in development, I love the future they are trying to make a reality. So it should be no surprise that on Wednesday I prepared myself for the 3 hour Keynote that kicked off Google I/O Developers Conference this year. The conference has now ended and it is time to write my own reflection on the event and how I think this all relates to education.

Let’s start with the educational announcements:

Facts from the above video:

Google Apps

• 25 Million educational users all around the world
• In the US, 74 of the top 100 Universities use Google Apps and 7 of the 8 Ivy League Universities use Google Apps.

Love that they released these figures as just two weeks ago I had an IT Director tell me students still needed to know how to use Word as that was the standard. According to Google itself over 5 million businesses use Google Apps. What this tells me is platform no longer should be the focus. Wordprocessing the skill should be.

It’s Google’s Job to Fix It

Now I understand that this is Google trying to sell a product. But really isn’t that exactly what we hear educational institutions say? If only it was easier, faster and of course cheaper. What I love is Google is taking on those challenges and is continuing to try and knock down the barriers of technology in the classroom. At some point educational institutions will run out of reasons not to fully integrate technology. The only reason that will be left is fear….and fear is no way to run a school.

Google Play Store for Education

Two things here that make this a game changer:

1) The easy of use to volume purchase an app for a school/district or classroom.

2) No syncing of devices or management needed. The next time the device connects to wifi the new app, books or the video is instantly downloaded to the device. This is HUGE and those of you who are in charge of managing iPads in schools know just how huge this is. No need to sync, no need for one computer to manage all the iPads. Just buy and done. WOW!

Of coures this is a direct shot at the iPad. The question I have is, are they too late? No school that has invested in iPads is going to change to Android. Not for a long while anyway so I am left wondering just how much effect this will have. There are some schools that are going with Nexus 7 tablets and for them this is a big announcement for sure. But we’ll have to wait and see if this actually brings new schools to the Android platform.

I will say though that you put a ChromeBook with a Nexus 10 device and you are in a 2 to 1 situation for about $650 per student. That is very very tempting. If I am starting a new school tomorrow I would have to seriously way this against the MacBook Air and iPad combination that is about $1400. There is a huge savings cost there. That along might put Google in the game of education.

Google Search

If you haven’t seen the demonstration of what is coming to the Chrome Browser than you need to watch this. How does this change the classroom?

Honestly this to me was the biggest announcement of the three hour keynote. One of the big things I focus on in all my talks is how search is THE skill of our time. If there is one thing that everyone should know how to do today it is to know how to search. Not “find stuff” but really search the web for meaningful information. What they showed of course is pretty basic but this is just the beginning for sure. This is going to be a game changer.

If I were a 4th grade teacher today (which if I went back into the classroom is where I would go) I would start next school year by buying a ChromeBook setting it up in my classroom and would have it be always open to Chrome. Over the computer would be a sign that says “Ask Me Anything”. We would use the computer throughout the day to answer our questions, to see if we could stump it, to see what information we could “find” and what information did we need to “search” for. How would the classroom change if Google was your teaching partner? How would your teaching change? How does learning change?

Lastly…something that I’m still working through, is over the last two days I have listened to some of the other presentations and more than once developers have been talking about the “On Demand Generation“. That this generation (meaning all of us living right now) are more and more expecting things to happen when we want them to. We want our TV shows when we want to watch them, we want our music when we want to listen, we want our information when we want it, and we want directions now and based on the latest traffic information available. What about weather and my ability last week to know exactly when to quit playing golf for a 30 minute rain delay as the storm passed overhead. We are expecting it as a society and developers are focusing on it. This is what is coming; the ability to get anything we want “On Demand”.

I keep thinking about this and how does this change everything about education? An education system that was built over a hundred years ago on the premise of “Just in Case”? If we can literally learn anything “On Demand” then education has to change. It can not survive a world where there is no “Just in Case”. We need new skills, we need new knowledge. We need to be able to learn, unlearn and relearn quickly and we need to be comfortable always being a beginner.

What are your thoughts? What does school look like if we are preparing an “On Demand Generation” for their future?

The most powerful meteor strike on the moon ever observed has just been announced by NASA.