teaching/technology

Encouraging students to use email

Posted on by Mark Isero

faviconIn my experience, I’ve noticed that one of the biggest indicators of the digital divide is how often and how (un)comfortably students use email.

Show me a urban ninth grader of color who has an email account and checks email more than once a week, and I’ll show you a college-bound student.

(One condition: The student’s inbox must include messages other than hundreds of MySpace notifications.)

At my school, the opposite is true. The majority of my students, particularly those who struggle academically, look at me weird when I tell them to check their email.

I worry about the email gap because it correlates with academic achievement, job opportunities, and college acceptance rates.

Part of the problem, of course, is access. Students without computers at home have less chance of having an email account.

But at my school, despite racial and socioeconomic demographics, most students have Internet at home. So what’s the real problem?

Email is passe
In my opinion, for my students, email is passe. When you have a cell phone, Facebook, texting and instant messaging, the medium has become too slow for my never-at-home students.

Although shocking to 30-somethings like me, it’s entirely possible that my students have never heard of email because it’s too old.

In addition, email is just too formal for my students. There’s a big blank page where you can write real sentences and paragraphs. It’s like a block paragraph formal business letter. Might as well write an essay.

That’s the point, though. Email has become the standard communication method of dominant culture, business culture, college-educated culture, and that’s precisely why I need to teach email to my students.

In previous years, I made sure all my students had an email account on Yahoo. Then last year, when we moved to Google Apps, all students got a professional, slick-sounding account at our domain. I could rest assured that students would represent themselves well on a resume.

But despite those advances, students still are not using their email accounts very much except to notify their friends that they’ve shared a Google Doc.

Therefore, I must do a better job this year at incorporating email into my curriculum. And it can’t be how I’ve done it before. I have to figure out ways to engage my students and encourage them to use email. I need to figure out why email would be useful to my students, why they would care. I’ll keep you posted about my attempts, and please let me know if you have ideas. favicon

teaching

Why teachers like me like Diigo

Posted on by Mark Isero

faviconDiigo may be hard to pronounce, but pretty soon, everyone will be using it.

If you haven’t heard of Diigo (DEE-go), it’s an application that mixes web highlighting with social bookmarking.

Yeah, I know: That’s still confusing. Let me try again.

Have you ever wanted to show your students a great website and then highlight crucial parts? With Diigo, you can do that. Better yet, you can share your thoughts with your students and have them respond, all on the same website. It’s like a chat room based in online text. That’s the web highlighting part of Diigo.

How about this: Have you ever wanted to share with your students a collection of online resources for their research? How about asking your students to keep track of their own research and be able to cite their sources? Yep, that’s Diigo, too, the social bookmarking part.

I won’t lie, it seems confusing, but let me tell you, it’s worth it. Here’s a video that might help:

I plan on piloting Diigo with my students this year, and I can’t wait for the possibilities. Here are a couple ideas I have for early in the year:

  • Interactive assignment sheet. When my students get a new assignment sheet and rubric, I rarely know if they understand what’s expected. After all, they don’t always take notes or ask questions. But what if students had to share their thoughts and concerns about an assignment? With an assignment online via Google Docs, I’ll make my students identify important or confusing passages from the assignment sheet and to add sticky notes with comments and questions. My hope is that the online conversation will lead to better understanding.
  • Interactive Reading Assignment. All reading teachers say that we must do a better of teaching students to interact with what they’re reading. I already teach my ninth graders concrete ways they can mark up their texts, but because there’s no Elmo in my classroom, there’s not an easy way to display my students’ thinking. So I plan on uploading a reading to Google Docs and having students make annotations online. It’ll be great to see how different students tackled the reading and what different interpretations materalized.

Yes, I’m pretty excited. No, Diigo is not perfect — the user interface is not pretty as, say, SimplyBox, but it’s a powerful resource. I’ll keep you updated about Diigo as the year progresses. I hope it all works out. favicon

technology

Google Apps, one colleague at a time

Posted on by Mark Isero

faviconWhen I started teaching, one of my colleagues told me, “If you want to start a revolution, make sure you’ve got the office staff on your side.”

That wisdom has come in handy as I try to make Google Apps the standard office suite on the campus.

After all, one of the most frustrating things is knowing you have a good idea and wishing others would quickly realize it for themselves. I mean, come on, already!

It’s not that progress has been bad. After our first year, about 75 percent of students prefer Google Apps to create documents, although most still haven’t migrated over to their new Gmail account. Students love that they don’t have to worry about losing their work and that they can collaborate with others much more easily than with Microsoft Office.

Predictably, however, the adults have been less open to switching. Despite workshops, encouragement, and fanfare for those who try Google Docs, the majority of staff have remained Office users.

It takes time to break bad habits, right?

So my latest effort has been with the office staff. After all, the people in the school who control all the information control how people access that information.

I’m happy to report that today, there were two epiphanies:

  • The Registrar uploaded the student directory, up until now on Excel, to Google Docs. Now teachers can view the spreadsheet but only she can make changes. No more mailing and remailing attachments to teachers over email!
  • The School Secretary converted the principal’s parent letter to Google Docs. She was giddy with excitement. “There’s only one copy! There’s only one copy!” Indeed.

These stories may sound small to a serious Google Apps user, but it’s this kind of progress — bit by bit — that makes something spread across a campus. Besides, if I have the office staff on board, anything’s possible.

Although Google Docs by no means has gone “viral” — whatever that means — I’m happy to say that we’re getting there, and I’m hoping big things will happen this school year. favicon

teaching/technology

How I might use Edmodo this year

Posted on by Mark Isero

faviconSummers are best for trying new things and figuring out whether they’ll work in my classroom.

This summer, I’ve played with Edmodo, a microblogging site geared for students and teachers.

Think of Edmodo as a little bit Twitter, a little bit Facebook…and a lot safer than both. Like Twitter, you can post notes and alerts (of any length). Like Facebook, you can add files, links, and events. You can even give out assignments and collect work. But because of Edmodo’s privacy features, it’s safe enough that most school filters don’t block it.

On Edmodo, teachers create and control groups. For example, you can make a group for one of your classes and then invite your students to join it. But they can’t make their own groups or message each other privately without posting an update to the entire group. This makes mean cyberbullying impossible. Another privacy benefit is that Edmodo makes no contact with students at all. Students don’t even need an email address to join.

The best part of Edmodo is how beautiful and easy-to-use it is. When you go to the site, you say, “This is how Twitter should be.” It’s big, airy, and colorful, and I’m thinking students will enjoy the interface.

Another great thing about Edmodo is that you can choose to have your updates sent to your email or phone. And because Edmodo is more elegant and complex than Twitter, it’s not all-or nothing. For example, you can tell students to subscribe to alerts on their phone but leave regular updates on the online group feed.

But the worst part of Edmodo makes me wonder how I’ll use it in my classroom next year. Unlike Twitter, Edmodo does not allow updates through SMS. This means that students cannot use their phones to send a note; they have to use a computer or a smartphone instead. Jeff O’Hara, co-founder  of Edmodo, says that this functionality costs a lot of money and that it’s not part of their upcoming plans.

This kills Edmodo-as-a-communication-tool. Let’s say I send a direct message to a student. They can’t text me back. Or let’s say I send out a mass alert on an important assignment. It’s great that students will get that information, but the only way students can add to the conversation is by going to the Edmodo site. This is not how kids work. They want to text their update right then and there, not wait until later. Therefore, Edmodo is not perfect for communication. I’ll stick to texting through email distribution lists.

But as a teaching tool, Edmodo will come in handy. You can think of Edmodo as an informal class blog. It’s a great way for students to get their questions, ideas, and opinions out in the public. For example, students can post their reactions to a reading for homework, and the next day, we can use their responses as a springboard for discussion.

If you have a lot of computers in your classroom (or a 1:1 solution), Edmodo’s usefulness skyrockets. It would be a great way to get student feedback, do exit tickets, and conduct formative assessments.

Yet another use for Edmodo is that it lets students and teachers communicate with each other through direct messages. Sure, you could do this over email or text (or in person!), but through Edmodo, you don’t need to remember an email address or phone number. Plus, Edmodo will save all of your replies, so you can have one thread per student to record your communication and to chart their progress. For example, this year I plan on moving my weekly written student check-ins from Google Docs to Edmodo.

It’ll be fun to figure out how Edmodo works out for me this year. It certainly won’t replace my existing communication structures, but it’ll definitely come in handy to promote learning and get students’ ideas out in the open.favicon

technology

PrinterShare is a winner for teachers

Posted on by Mark Isero

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Before Google Docs, the No. 1 thing excuse my students gave me on due dates was, “My printer didn’t work.” Or: “My printer ran out of ink.” Or: “I don’t have a printer and didn’t have time to go to my friend’s house.”

As teachers, we know that some of those excuses are just that: excuses. But for some students, it’s a legitimate concern.

No matter how much I replied, “If you don’t have a printer at home, it’s your responsibility to print it here before class begins,” I found that the same (underperforming) students would inevitably come in the next due date (late or right on time) with the same excuse.

Instead of repeating that teacher-y refrain, I looked for a solution to this mess. And I think I found it: PrinterShare. Although Google Docs is still the best answer, if you’re not on Google yet or still prefer a hard copy of students’ final drafts, PrinterShare is a strong alternative.

PrinterShare lets you share the printer in your room so that students can print to it from anywhere with an Internet connection. This means they can print from their house, their friend’s house, the library, or even from their iPhone!

PrinterShare requires a quick download (Windows, Apple, and Linux are supported). Once you do that, the PrinterShare console comes up on your desktop. From there, you can name your printer and share it with your students.

The only hard part is that your students have to download the program at home. (This seems easy, but I’ve found that unless it’s LimeWire, some of my students struggle with this part.) Then, when they go to print their document on Microsoft Word, PrinterShare comes up as one of the available printers! All they have to do is search for your printer and press OK.

PrinterShare comes with some great options. For example, you can require that you approve requests before printing, which will decrease wasted paper from students who like to print their documents 100 times. On the other hand, the free version prints a cover page (like a fax) before the actual document, which is annoying.

One more annoying feature: In order for you to share your printer, your computer needs to be on all the time with PrinterShare running. (This might bother environmental folks.) You can choose to have it always running in the background, but then you run into possibly slowing down your computer.

Despite those problems, PrinterShare is still a great choice to offer your students. Instead of racing to school early to print their essay right at the last second, students can get some extra sleep knowing that their document will get to you safely.