iPads and Swimming?!?

As a technology director, I am in the habit of strongly discouraging the use of technology equipment anywhere near water. So when Deb Bossingham, the Aquatics Director at the Oregon Swimming Pool, told me that they were using iPads during swimming classes, I was a bit nervous. I was also intrigued, so I decided to see this odd case of digital learning in action.

Deb explained to me that when swimming teachers tell students that they need to improve a certain technique, the students often respond with "But I am doing that!" There is a disconnect between what children think they are doing, and what their bodies are actually doing. No amount of verbal instruction seems to convince them otherwise.


That's where the iPads come in. Many other sports use video to record the actions of an athlete so they can be analyzed later. However, a traditional video camera has some limitations in the pool setting. Bossingham and her instructors use the iPad to take a movie of the children as they are swimming. She walks along the deck of the pool to get a sideways shot of the student's stroke. When the student gets to the end of the lane, the instructor plays the video back for them to show them precisely what their bodies are actually doing. The large screen size of the iPad makes it easier for the student to watch the video while keeping the iPad a safe distance from the water (which relieves me immensely).


Once students see the video of their own swimming, they realize that what they think they are doing is not what they are actually doing, and they can adjust their technique accordingly. The instant feedback means they can make improvements on the very next lap.

"The results have been phenomenal!" says Bossingham of the video-feedback process. "You can tell the kids they aren't lifting their arm enough a thousand times, but when they actually see themselves doing it, then they can make an improvement."


Bossingham has found another benefit to the digital video technique as well. She emails a student's video to his or her parents with a note explaining what they worked on. This allows parents to stay informed about their child's progress, and lets them see improvement over time. An unexpected bonus is that parents forward the videos to grandparents, who enjoy seeing their grandchildren in action.


Hats off to Deb Bossingham and her instructors for an effective, creative way to combine swimming and digital learning!

[Cross-posted at the Wisconsin Digital Learning blog]

Schools are Essentially Custodial- and we may want to market that

Alvin Toffler, author of the groundbreaking 1970 book Future Shock, stated in a recent Edutopia interview:

"The schools of today are essentially custodial: They're taking care of kids in work hours that are essentially nine to five -- when the whole society was assumed to work. Clearly, that's changing in our society. So should the timing. We're individualizing time; we're personalizing time. We're not having everyone arrive at the same time, leave at the same time. Why should kids arrive at the same time and leave at the same time?"

It is an interesting perspective which underscores the changing nature of work in modern society and juxtaposes the logistics of school which are still mimicking the work model of the industrial revolution. This was the main point of his statement.

I see an opportunity here, though. Setting aside the logistical concerns of having students come and go at different times, I think Toffler's idea underscores how important the custodial nature of schools really is. I wrote about this in a blog post a while back when I asked if we were in the "Post-School Era."

"One important distinction between traditional K-12 schools and our online counterparts is the custodial function of K-12 schools. Much of the instructional function can be digitized and delivered online, asynchronously, but K-12 schools still have a custodial responsibility to care for children while their parents work. I think that in the past, we have seen this as a "degredation" of our profession, as if parents think we are primarily babysitters who happen to teach kids some stuff. (This feeling is reinforced whenever we call a snow day that parents think we shouldn't have called. 

"I propose that we focus on our custodial function as a strength that we can use to market ourselves. In an era when education can be provided easily without a physical school building, we will be hard pressed to compete with virtual charter schools who can hire anybody with a bachelor's degree to deliver canned content online. However, they cannot supervise students or take care of their physical needs online. Our facilities and qualified staff, which are our greatest expenses, must also be our greatest assets."

I cringe as I read my comments above, because they seem to accept the idea of virtual charter schools as being as good as highly qualified teachers and the rich resources of traditional schools. I don't believe that, but I also need to remind myself that not all of our customers (parents and students) value qualified teachers and rich resources as much as I do. (And I'm always mindful of Clayton Christensen's warning that disruptive innovations start out as inferior products.) The more competition we (educators) face in our marketplace, the more we need to be attuned and responsive to customer demands. If highly qualified traditional teachers and nice facilities are not highly desired, then we can't bank on them alone to keep us "in business."

Of course, we can inform our customers about why these are good things, the same way that any company informs its customers why their product's features are important. But we also need to be responsive to the other desires of consumers.

As we design schools learning environments, we need to market the value of schools, even if the value to the parents is not the same as what we value! This is difficult for us educators, since we are proud of our knowledge, our skills, and our qualifications. After all, we value education, so we are proud of the education and training we have received. But we should acknowledge that in the new world of competition, caring for children is just as important as teaching them.

Texas Instruments finally takes my advice- TI calculator coming to iPad

I don't know if this has been officially announced yet, but Texas Instruments is going to finally release their TI calculator software as an app for iPods and iPads. This is an obvious move, which I predicted back in 2007 ("The Calculatorization of Computers").

It should come as no surprise, since the value of the TI calculator is the software, not the hardware. Yet they kept charging a premium price for virtually identical hardware, as comically illustrated in this XKCD strip. 

The only reason TI has been able to keep charging for their calculators is because they have the entrenched standard model of calculator in the education industry, most importantly with textbook publishers and the College Board.

So, even though it took them five years to figure out an obvious idea, I'm glad they are doing it.

Chromebook Pilot - Initial impressions

We (Oregon, WI) are in the third month of a Chromebook pilot right now with a single class (22 students) of 3rd graders.

They are Samsung wifi-only. Instead of paying $20/unit/month, we purchased them up front for $720/unit.

Pros:

• Instant on
• 8 hour battery
• No moving parts except for keyboard
• Almost no initial configuration (just have to enroll the 'books into the GApps domain)
• Management in GApps console is fully integrated
• Centrally managed Chrome Extensions and a veritable plethora of config options.
• Cost is comparable to iPad once you figure in the extra costs for iPad warranty, keyboard, and VGA adapter
• No iOS-VPP mess
  
• No AV or anti-malware installation and config
• They are inherently multi-user, unlike most tablets and all iOS devices, so each user's stuff stays safe

Cons:

• No Java, so not suitable for a teacher computer (our gradebook is Java-based)
• Not specifically kid-proof (not that we've had an issue, but I expect eventually we will, since we gave them to 3rd graders)
• Cannot "push" Chrome application, only extensions, from the management console.
• Procedure for managing extensions requires finding the Extension ID and URL, which looks like this: hcifofgaphfkfdcjbdogpamghiihilkl;https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx, and is not always easy to find unless you actually install it first.

Overall, the Pros outweigh the Cons, but you have to make sure you know the answer to "What do we want students to be able to do?" and "Why are we doing this?"

If you want to do video editing, then these will not do the trick- get an iPad and iMovie. If you want an all-day netbook, these are great!