Classroom tools

[david at lang.hm]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008, Wade Brainerd wrote:

> My mother-in-law is an 8th grade teacher in Nobleboro, ME.  Maine has had an
> Apple laptop program for the past few years in which all 8th graders receive
> personal iBooks that they can take home with them.
>
> She has a feature where she can silently watch a single student's screen at
> a time via a VNC connection (a simplified Apple Remote Desktop). She uses it
> when kids look distracted, and simply calls across the room to ask them if
> what they're doing is "appropriate" after checking out their screen.  Plus,
> the child's knowledge that they *can* be watched at any time is generally
> enough to prevent them from doing anything really bad during class time.
>
> A secure remote screenshot utility should be considered essential for
> teachers to maintain control of their classrooms (IMO).  A "TV wall" view
> showing a number of kids screens would be even better.  I'm not sure if
> remote control is needed, as this would be a much greater security risk.
>
> I'm not an educator, but I think the idea of a room full of kids looking
> down at their screens waiting to be "called on" virtually seems a little
> strange when you can just look up and talk.

I think the thought is to replace the useual situation where the teacher 
asks a question and then calls on a single student to answer with one 
where the teacher asks a question and then everyone provides an answer, 
and the teacher then picks an answer to proceed with.

David Lang

> Perhaps if you guys are
> thinking about much larger classrooms and/or remote education it would be
> worthwhile, but these things can be accomplished through chat as well.  The
> question / answer idea does seem useful though, perhaps a Pop Quiz activity
> where the teacher's instance shows a different interface from the student.
>
> BTW, if you haven't already, I think it's absolutely worth studying these
> existing US programs to determine how a classroom is run with this kind of
> technology present before designing systems around usage patterns.  If you
> would like to talk with her (or other teachers) I'd be happy to try and set
> something up!
>
> Best regards,
>
> -Wade
>
> 2008/1/14 Jameson Chema Quinn <jquinn at cs.oberlin.edu>:
>
>> The idea of activity sharing supports several important forms of classroom
>> interaction, and can be stretched to accommodate many more. However the
>> focus on constructionism means there's a lack of support for teacher-centric
>> interactions, even ones which are useful in constructionist learning. Raising
>> hands
>>
>> The fundamental model that's missing is the idea of questions or
>> assignments, posed by the teacher and answered separately by each student or
>> team of students. It is possible to accomplish this 'manually', but the
>> technical shuffling makes it impractical to do so in a real-time, classroom
>> situation, especially if it is desirable to keep data for later.
>>
>> For instance, I as a teacher want to be able to pose a question and have
>> each student individually type a response. I could see, and record for
>> later, who responded what and who didn't respond. After giving a brief
>> interval, I could 'call on' a student either by my choice or randomly, and
>> continue the discussion based on their answer. There are several obvious
>> variations on this pattern - for instance, instead of typing a complete
>> answer they could just indicate whether they have an answer, ie, 'raise
>> their hands'; teams could present shared answers; etc. The software would
>> help the teacher to keep track of each student's participation and to 'call
>> on' students in a systematic manner.
>>
>> This type of interaction is so fundamental that it would be great to have
>> it available independent of the currently shared activity. The obvious place
>> to put it, therefore, would be in the bulletin board. This means the
>> bulletin board would have to have some support for active logic. There are 3
>> ways to do this that I can see: somehow using AJAX for the bulletin board
>> (advantages: highly flexible, tools exist; disadvantages: memory and
>> processor hog, needs some server technology on the teacher's side);
>> hard-coding this one case into the bulletin board (advantage: can be
>> optimized better; disadvantage: inflexible); or somehow making a plugin
>> system for the bulletin board (advantage: flexible; disadvantage: security
>> issues, the world doesn't need yet another plugin architecture)
>>
>> (One disadvantage of using the bulletin board is that it could perpetuate
>> the UI chasm between on-line and off-line communication. In-class questions
>> are no more then small versions of out-of-class assignments, and the
>> interface should be as similar as possible. But that is a bigger problem,
>> one which permeates the XO, and deserves a separate discussion.)
>>
>> Homnq <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Homunq> 08:12, 14 January 2008 (EST)
>>
>> [edit<http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=Software_ideas&action=edit&section=16>
>> ] Classroom management
>>
>> Motivation and interest are the best ways to achieve engagement, but
>> social pressure and good examples are also a part of the picture, and these
>> are impossible without transparency. If there is no easy way for teachers
>> (or, for that matter, other students) to tell the difference between a
>> student who is working on the laptop, and one who is playing DOOM, bad
>> things happen.
>>
>> Intel/Microsoft's "Classmate" competitor is rumored to have tools for the
>> teacher to freeze or take over the student's laptop, "to guide them through
>> the interface". Regardless of whether this is a desirable relationship, it
>> would be hard to accomplish within the security model and memory constraints
>> of the XO.
>>
>> However, it would be good to have tools for all members of a shared
>> activity to see the current state and recent history of all other current
>> members. This protects privacy (after all, you can just quit the shared
>> activity for privacy) while creating transparency. For it to be useful, it
>> has to be simple and fast. Useful things to see are which activities have
>> been used, and whether out-of-band communication has happened, over the last
>> minute.
>>
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>>
>>
>
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