Jim Klein on Open Source Learning 2.0

Jim Klein from Saugus USD has been promoting open source technology for several years.  I caught his talk at CUE a couple of years ago and almost ditched our Mac server system (he uses virtualized linux servers running OpenLDAP), but didn't feel I had the chops.  He started rolling out a 1700-netbook 1:1 program for his 4th grade and is now expanding it.  His software images are being used by several other school districts nationwide.

What Is the Technology For?

Start with a shared District vision: The goal is not how to integrate technology in the classroom. Instead, we should be asking the question, "What does it mean to be well educated in the 21st century?"

Saugus shared vision: Educating for "Life 2.0"

Lots of expected elements of what that means, but something you don't usually hear about: Embracing failure (science fairs, LEGO competitions, etc. show you can fail, but learn from it). Today's schools are too high stakes.

Netbook Setup

• Laptops are too fragile. Make sure to get 5-6 hours battery life. SSD reduces problems from dropping.
• TCO goal: Eliminate repair, support and software cost, so all you have to pay for is the hardware. $100/year/machine.
• Ubuntu desktop image with 20-30 software titles installed.
• UnionFS to partition user's space, then a partition with a locked system, and unlocked user changes to the system.  Students have sudo access to experiment however they please.  UnionFS allows you to restore on reboot.
• iTALC for monitoring and screen sharing of lab computers (equivalent to Remote Desktop). Can also do timestamped screen captures.

Parent Purchase Option

• District buys netbooks. They stay at school. 
• Parents have option to purchase their own, in which case students can bring them home. 
• Netbooks should be a school supply.

Shared Space

• Netbooks need to have a shared space for student work.
• Developed public custom version of Elgg. Additions to Elgg 0.6 to permit fine-grained access and moderation controls.  Not thinking of porting changes to latest Elgg version. Tarball available.
• Home page shows all blog posts with the big button. Tag cloud and tag use strongly encouraged.
• Students have avatars and with first names only for privacy. Parents and teachers should are able to read and comment on posts. As much content as possible is kept open to internet without login, but visibility of posts can be restricted by teacher.  Comments are moderated.
• Student oriented. No "teacher pages", no "class pages". Widen the community as much as possible.
• Facebook is an anti-school space, but the Elgg space follows the Facebook model of community.
• Administration (principal, counselor) use of blogs not very high right now.  Different culture than teachers and students.

Imaging

• 5 minute image install via USB key.  
• Teachers typically use Windows on full laptops, but have ported versions of the linux applications, and even a modified desktop that looks as much as possible as the netbooks'.

How It's Being Used

• Use podcasts at elementary level. 2nd grade students will rehearse podcasts for an audience.
• Student peer-to-peer contributions.
• "Cry for help" from student. Teachers are reading blogs on the weekend and evenings.
• Cross-grade-level collaboration.
• Summer work by students ("self-assigned").
• Summer reading blogs.  Voluntary, but every student participated.
• Non-academic posts are permitted.
• K-6 is heavily moderated. 7-8 medium moderation. 9-12 open.
• No private messaging.
• Can lock down individual accounts. Teachers responsible for account management.

Resources

• http://twitter.com/jnetman1
• http://community.saugususd.org/jklein
• Click on "wiki pages" link from Jim's page. Acceptable use policies for netbooks, for Elgg on Social Networking wiki page.

Google Notes from CUE - Calendar and Google Apps

Google App Update!
For lots of great resources on Google Apps, see the materials posted by Kern Kelly at the Google Teacher Academy for Administrators: http://sites.google.com/site/gtaresources/events/2010-03-05/apps

This is Part 4 of my notes from the day-long Advanced Google Workshop for Educators at CUE 2010.  Part 1 of the workshop covered Google Search.  Part 2 covered Google Docs Spreadsheets and Forms. Part 3 covered Maps, Earth, SketchUp and Sites.

It was an exhausting eight hours at the Hilton, but I'm glad I did it.  Without the structure and context of one of these sessions, I doubt I would have been stimulated enough to find out about all these neat Google tricks and how they might be used in our school.  If you need a boot camp survey of a lot of technology I think these guys--@brumbaugh, @k_shelton, and @dowbiggin--do a really good job.

Google Calendar Stuff

• New feature - attach Google Doc to event.  Use this for agenda, etc.
• Create a calendar for each department, school, activity group, etc.  Aggregate them into a single calendar.
• I just found out how to do something I have been wanting to do - build an embed code that will show multiple calendars - in the Google Calendar How Do I? discussion.  Kyle covered it as well!
• Hook calendar alert to dedicated Gmail account.  Gmail account inbox filter forwards to TweetByMail.

Managing Google Apps Accounts

• To set up student accounts in bulk, generate a CSV file with Last Name, First Name, Graduation Year, Student ID for each student.  Build up the username like this:
• Grad Year
• Last Name
• First Initial
• Last 2 digits of student ID added in case of username collision
• Example: "2012smithj03". Then import into Apps.  This username schema makes it easy to remove stale accounts after graduation.  Suspend accounts first, then delete about a year after graduation.
• Use same domain for students and staff, staff usernames don't have the prefix.
• Set up groups for each class section.
• Let students self-sign up for class section groups - don't need to force this on teachers or tech staff.

Google Notes from CUE - Maps Earth SketchUp and Sites

This is Part 3 of my notes from the day-long Advanced Google Workshop for Educators at CUE 2010.  Part 1 of the workshop covered Google Search.  Part 2 covered Google Docs Spreadsheets and Forms.

KML works with Maps now.  So you don't need to download Earth (and avoid speed, bandwidth and installation problems) to work with KML.

Lack of a Digitial Divide

• "Some of our students don't have internet access" is not an excuse.
• Kyle has the facts: 74% internet access in homes nationwide.  Urban areas have McDonald's Starbucks and Panera.
• There is surprising penetration of smartphone access even in areas underserved by conventional access.

Collaborating with and Customizing Google Maps

• We used an example of "where in the world would you go on vacation" to drop placemarks on a shared world map.
• Hint: Use first name (of your students, for example) in the title so you can track who has contributed which placemark.
• You can add images or other HTML stuff to your placemark's description by using the Rich Text option.  Images must be URLs (uploaded to Picasa or gotten from the web).  Hint: Keep images in a Picasa album so they won't become broken links if they are pulled down.  Click "Done" and then click on the placemark to make sure the image got inserted correctly.
• You can embed videos by using the Edit HTML option when editing the placemark.  You may have to adjust the YouTube embed code's width and height parameters (in two places) to get the embedded video to fit nicely in the placemark pop-up window.  Don't forget to click Save and Done after editing before trying it out.

Curriculum Ideas

• Cataloguing the travels of St. Paul for religion studies.
• Embed Vocaroo lessons recorded in foreign languages on placemarks in foreign countries.  Note to self: learn more about school uses of Vocaroo!
• Use draw line, draw shape and then measure the distances between places.  You can measure your own school, and use a trundle wheel (in the real world!) to verify.  Discuss accuracy issues.
• Start with your school and move out to nearby and then farther places.

Map Creation and Sharing

• Search for a map already created before building your own!
• Import KML, KMZ or GeoRSS data when you create a new map to bring in information from another map.
• When creating a new classroom map for you - save as Unlisted.  You can still share the map and allow your students to colloborate, but it will not be searchable.
• You can subscribe to a map's RSS feed to find out to track changes and change authors.  Show students how this works so they are aware of how to track collaborators' changes.

SketchUp

• Not enough time in the preso to discuss this terrific application, but here are a few leads:
• Get students to teach teachers how to use it.  Students can submit designs to Building Maker, great motivator to see your building on Google Earth!
• Use Aidan Chopra's SketchUp YouTube channel.  Another reason not to block YouTube.
• See anything by Bonnie Roskes.
• You can get SketchUp Pro free for educators, but not necessary for most applications.

Google Sites Ideas, Tips and Tricks

• Go paperless!
• ePortfolios, especially using Google Apps.  Dr Helen Barrett has a ton of information on how to set this up.  Set up templates with self-assessment rubrics.  Apply to be in Dr Barrett's Using Google Apps for ePortfolios discussion group.
• Ken has a nice graphic he uses to let students know exactly what the organization and content of their ePortfolios should be.
• Have students host all of their presentations in a Site.  Then link to students' Sites from your classroom Site.  No more thumb drives, wondering where documents are stored.
• Hint: Keep your syllabus in a Google Doc, then link to it from your Site.  Automatically kept up to date if you check "automatically publish."
• When creating new Sites, you can specify the users who can view your Site.  In Google Apps, you can also limit visibility to domain users.
• Sites Insert menu is integrated with your Docs, Maps, and other Google content.
• Be careful to "Put page under" rather than at top level when you create a new page.
• Avoid Sites size limits by putting your content into Docs and embedding them, rather than putting the content right into the Site.

Google Notes from CUE - Docs and Forms

This is Part 2 of my notes from the all-day Advanced Google Workshop for Educators at CUE 2010.  Part 1 covered Google Search.  This part is about using Google Docs Spreadsheets and Forms in your school.

Quote of the day: "I'm going to be less sage on the stage; more guide on the side." - Diane Main

Diane is having the group contribute ideas via shared Google Docs.  Each doc reveals the group's ideas for using Docs in subject areas and grade levels.  This will be a great activity to replicate in curriculum mapping and planning back at our school District.

How you can help improve Google's tools.  Join GWEN (Google Workshop for Educators Network) and participated in discussions!  You probably need to attend a Google Workshop (and these workshops seem to be one of the few things in Google land that cost money) to be admitted to GWEN, but you are guaranteed learn something in these workshops!  Discussions on GWEN might be able to trigger feature ideas.  Cristin Frodella (Classroom 2.0 link) is the lead education specialist at Google to get ideas to.

Examples of Docs with Students

• Grammar review
• Student surveys
• Take notes in spreadsheet during class on iPod Touch
• D.C. field trips - build agenda and projects, post pictures, then use Google Presentations

Organizing Docs in Folders for Your Students

• Create a folder one time to a section.  Then anytime you want to add an assignment, drag it in, and it's automatically shared to your students.
• Create a hand-in folder within your section's folder.
• Create a template (or ask your tech staff) and share it with your school or with your students (or use one of the built in templates). File > New > From Template...

Revisions and Comments

• In peer writing among students, show the shared document on the screen and discuss verbally in class. File > See Revision History.  Check boxes in Revision History and click Compare Checked to see color-coded comparison.
• Show students the Revision History once.  They will quickly understand the accountability issues involved!
• There's a commenting tool you can use to add comments to other's work or todo's in a shared document.
• You can take edit permissions away from students after the document is "finalized".
• You can also turn on and off email notifications (might be only a Spreadsheets features).

Docs Goodies

• Tools > Word Count has with readability indices.  Discuss what these statistics mean with your students, but be careful (in science papers, words like "photosynthesis" can skew the the statistics).
• "Mail Merge" with data from spreadsheets is not a Docs feature yet, but assuming that it will be some day. 

Google Forms

• Diane has her students create frequent quick surveys as classroom assignments.  Each students is responsible for making sure that the survey has enough responses. When complete the student sends the results URL to her, and the links get posted on a classroom Google Sites page.  
• Hint: Always have "First Name" and "Last Name" text question as the first two questions in a survey.  
• Hint: Make all questions required, but tell users they can just put a dot "." in the answer if they don't have time to answer.
• Hint: Use the automatic Timestamp (and show students that you see it) to make sure that students do work on time.
• Use graphing summary (Form > Show Summary of Responses) as a way to help analyze results, also has daily response graph.

The 13 and Under Problem (COPPA)

• With Google Apps it's "not a problem".  But I'm a little confused.  See this discussion on the Google Apps help site.  It implies that it's the school's problem, not Google's.
• Basically, in the school's agreement with Google, the school assumes the responsibility for complying with COPPA and the information that students submit. When offering online services to children under 13, schools must be cognizant of COPPA, which requires parental consent for the online collection of information about users under 13.
• Diane's school created an Acceptable Use Aggreement, with a separate Google AUA (where?) that parents sign and return.

Google Notes from CUE

I am attending the Advanced Google Workshop for Educators at CUE 2010. Here are the tools, techniques and general knowledge that I'm taking away from the workshop and from other sessions and discussions at CUE.

Google Forms / Spreadsheets

• Has a word cloud gadget. (Didn't even know about spreadsheet gadgets). This gives you an instant word cloud from a selection.
• Rushton Hurley also showed us the googlelookup formula "=googlelookup(entity; attribute)" that will return the highest hit search result for the terms that are in the formula (results come from wikipedia or other sources).

Google Search

• goodies: "define", formulas, currency, time, general conversions
• Check out the "15 second search tip" YouTube videos. Look for one about configuring your browser for SafeSearch.
• Search options > Timeline graph as a current events tool
• Search options > Wonder wheel shows related searches in hub-and-spoke system
• Google image swirl (labs): Hub-and-spoke image results
• Google squared (labs): Spreadsheet view of results, with suggested additions (or add from table). Best part is that results can be saved to spreadsheet or shared as a link
• Advanced search filter terms: "-", link:, site:, filetype: No shortcut for usage rights (need to use the Advanced search screen).
• Google books: Can create personal or school library bookshelf, by importing ISBN lists.
• Google scholar: Results include cites.
• Translate

Custom Search Engine

• Can limit search range to specific domains or even a collection of specific pages.
• As an example, Ken built snipr.com/customimagesearch as an example of a copyright-free photos that are appropriate for K12.
• You can make "cse"s ad-free. Re-open the search settings after creating a custom search engine and look at the bottom of the settings for the option to not display ads.
• A custom search engine also has a blog embed tag and an "add to your Google homepage" button on the front page.
• To learn more about using this in education watch digitalroberto's screencast

Google Search in an Information Literacy Curriculum

• There's a great curriculum on search (with lesson plans, teacher kits, etc.) designed by GCTs.