Education Software

So have you heard about the iPad?  It's the Apple tablet that has been discussed for years and many thought was fully realized by the iPhone and iPod Touch.  The iPad is an additional device to accompany your phone and laptop computers (in the future, everyone owns a messenger bag).  It is supposed to define reading on the web, and by making multi-touch the primary input, it will push application development towards more natural interfaces.  But does it have a place in education?  There have been two very interesting arguments that I hear about the iPad.  

The first argument adamantly warns that the iPad is designed as a consumer device unfit for active-learning classrooms.  There's no camera, keyboard, or Flash support (things current netbooks and tablets do have).  You can have an amazing classroom without these things, yes, but you should choose your technology to support your pedagogy not the other way around.  This is an interesting argument, and one that I didn't anticipate being so frequently posted on Twitter and in the blogs I read.  It's hard to type on an on-screen keyboard.  Even when the keyboard is full screen, creating papers, blogs, and wikis (and all the other text-based projects) will be difficult.  Additionally, selecting text (a staple of formatting and editing) on the iPhone/iPod Touch is a slow error-prone process.  It is presumed that this will additionally be the case for the iPad.  So with all the beautiful video and great online reading experience, from a pure learning standpoint, aren't you back to some form of sage on a stage?  

The other interesting argument I hear about the iPad is somewhat of an answer to the first argument yet simultaneously the same answer.  The other argument is that the iPad will have a place in education but probably not in the first wave.  While the former crowd focuses on the now, this crowd hopes for a better tomorrow.  Many assume that the features we're wanting now will be in later versions, and that this initial iPad release is the tip of the iceberg for future innovation.  The iPad will force all computer manufacturers to produce beautiful, well-designed products, and the magic of multi-touch will create a new breed of easy to use applications by necessity.  For instance, check out Apple's demo of iWork during the presentation:  
(or here for the full Keynote)

What's interesting to me is the emphasis in the additional gestures and ease of use features highlighted in the keynote.  For example when discussing Numbers, Apple's spreadsheet program in iWork, there was a point where they emphasized how easy it is now to highlight a section of a pie chart by moving it out with your finger.  This action, in the past, has been an incredibly complicated series of actions that would have proven to be so unnatural and indiscoverable on a touch device that they would have essentially not existed.  My guess is that the same code that lets you move out the section with your finger could also let you move out the section with your mouse.  But the point is that the much simpler user experience was added because of the necessity to do it on the form factor.  The point is that yes maybe with current project editing paradigms, the iPad will not be a capable production machine.  On the other hand, it could mean that for that very reason new gesture-based editing paradigms will be created that are far easier and will make us more productive.  

I think both sides agree that we don't necessarily have that right now from the device and applications available.  In many ways, I assume the reason why the apps have not been written is because it seemed impractical to create them for the iPhone, given its small size.   It will be interesting to see what developers do with the new form factor.  Nonetheless, classroom change does not come from what developers do but instead what teachers and students do.  Time will indeed tell if the iPad will find its own place in education, if it will inspire other devices such as the One Laptop Per Child's XO3 (which they hope to price at $75) that will find a place in education, or if the device will not be the tool the classroom needs.

To be clear, this is my blog and I am responsible for my own content.  There are no inherent promises made by anything I say or talk about.  I am careful to talk about a feature I'm working on only after I know it's making it into the product, but this blog isn't a press release.  The point is, I'm going to talk about technology but it doesn't mean that DyKnow will be using that technology.  With that disclaimer in place, away we go.

When I started this blog, I chose the name "looking both ways" because I felt that was my primary role at DyKnow.  As a developer I spend a lot of professional development time keeping up with the latest technology, and as an edtech developer, I spend a lot of time keeping up with and understanding educational technology, classroom pedagogies, and learning.  Along with tutorials and DyKnow features, I have mostly blogged about the latter, so I thought I might share things of interest in the former for a change.

Firstly, there's been the eReader craze this past Christmas season.  This wasn't the invention of the eReader or creating digital copies of books, but this did seem to be the year that everyone started talking about it.  The debate goes back and forth between praising the "stuff"-less future and mourning the passing of true ownership as you can't sell someone else your eBook (not to mention the 1984 scandal).  When we first heard of the idea, my friends and I decided eReaders would take off once they entered the textbook market and drove prices down.

Secondly, there's a push toward mobile phone technology.  Culturally, in the US at least, "there's an app for that" is instantly recognized (even with the DVR crowd who skip commercials).  Google's Android phone OS is taking off as well with its many different flavors.  And now one of the big industry pushes is towards 3 screens (tv, computer, mobile).  This means there's going to be even more "apps" for, well, everything.  To me this is one of the most interesting tech subjects as it relates to education.  At first as I watched blog after blog and tweet after tweet discussing the plan of action for implementing smart phones and/or iTouches in the classroom, I couldn't quite place the underlying assumption.  Many people asserted mobile phone integration with the same sense of inevitability as 1-1 computing often uses.  Some people, however, have wisely noticed that an iTouch starts at $200 while netbooks start around double that.

Thirdly, there's a big advancement that, in my book, could never get as much love as it deserves: HTML5.  This techology will give rise to web applications with drag and drop, audio/video, and even 3d animations... only with a browser.  And when I say only with a browser, I mean without Flash, Java, or Silverlight installed in that browser (which you can't install on the iPhone/iTouch).  The standard is still being created (and is officially a couple years out still), but you can already see the more advanced browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera implementing many of the features, and this has led to some cool proof of concepts and full on web applications including Google Wave.  If you're using IE, you'll be in luck when IE9 comes out as at the last Professional Developer's Conference they announced HTML5 support.  So why would you want web applications without plug-ins?  Why is this cool?  Fewer moving parts (browser + plug-ins vs browser) means fewer updates you have to worry about, potentially simpler debugging, fewer bugs.... that is if all the browsers implement it correctly.  *sigh*

Speaking of web applications, Google is working on an operating system of their own that will run entirely on web applications.  In fact Chromium OS is essentially going to be Google Chrome acting as an operating system.  This will be another device you're not allowed to install plug-ins on.  Additionally, there are questions of how useful it will be when not connected to the Internet, often considered a prerequisite to viewing web sites.  I don't know if this one will really go anywhere, but I do find it very interesting and will be an excellent showcase of the power afforded by HTML5.

Third-point-fively, speaking of web applications, Amazon and now Microsoft have offered up cloud services where they worry about the IT and hosting pieces while allowing you to scale up or down your web services needs.  In short, lets say you have seasonal demand *cough* school year *cough*.  You need responsive servers during the busy season, but not really much if anything during the slow season.  It'd be nice if the IT you pay for is the same as your demand, and that's essentially the idea behind cloud computing.  Scale up or down as you will and you just pay for your usage.  

Finally, there's the iSlate rumors.  Apple is a closed book on the subject, but the speculation is fierce about the possibility of an Apple tablet.  The general consensus on purely speculative rumors is that it will be a larger iPhone.  I'm sure that everyone is missing something here as Apple doesn't usually just put out a product without something to talk about (ignoring Snow Leopard that is).  So there's still a lot to hear about this one.  Should I be the most surprised individual, I'd think the iSlate would be less of a tablet and more of a super eReader.  They already have a Kindle iPhone app, and I can't imagine they're not after that market.  I'd imagine there additionally will be some interesting notetaking capabilities built in with the readers.

So there's my current brain dump...  and there's a lot of it because I've gotten really behind in talking about these things.  In the future, I hope to be more timely.  Sorry about that.  Anyway, if you're interested in talking about these things comment away or if you have a different take, I'd be interested in hearing it.  The future looks to be an interesting place indeed.

It's the beginning of January and that means everyone is talking about their goals for starting a new leaf which obviously means that you have to take a big step back and see where you're going wrong.  Me?  I'm a bad blogger.  To be sure, I feel that I write quality posts, and I do write at least once a week.  That's not the problem I'm talking about.  My problem is that I don't comment on other blogs.

So why does this matter and why should I (or you) be better at commenting?  It basically becomes a question of "what is a blog" and "when is it useful."  One interpretation of a blog as expressed on Wikipedia is that a blog is a website that contains regular entries of "commentary, description of events, or other material such as graphics or video."  This leads into the "when is it useful" question.  To answer this question, I'm going to employ a few analogies (stick with me as I promise this has some relevance).

A blog can be used like a diary.  You can write up your personal thoughts and lock it away where no one but you can use it.  A blog can also be like a newspaper.  You can broadcast your thoughts and make them available for anyone to read.  The more people who read it the more valuable it becomes.  In the former case, the utility of your blog is limited to how much you personally can get out of the blog.  

In the latter case, the utility of your blog is limited by the number of people reached by your posts.  This value of the network is described by Metcalfe's Law (if you're interested).  
It's also intuitively understood when you think about how useful your phone is if you had the only phone in the world vs if there were two in the world vs if there were ten in the world etc.  But I must correct myself.  Above I said your blog is limited by the number of people reached by your posts, but I should have said can be.  

Can be?  I say this because we're living in the Web 2.0 world (guh, forgive the cliche).  A blog can be a newspaper but it can also be a gathering place thanks to the ability to comment, rework, and discuss.  As part of a social network, the blog reaches not only individuals but also groups (described by Reed's Law if you're interested).  

Think of a group you're actively involved in and how each person brings a unique set of perspectives to that group.  This person in many ways is acting as a link to other groups.  But imagine how sad it would be if no one in your group ever talked.  Imagine if the group never engaged each other.  This is me.  This is why I'm a bad blogger.

I am a follower of many blogs, but I'm a commenter on almost none of them.  I do this because I feel a bit out of my league or that as a software developer and not a teacher/school administrator my experience and ideas are not welcome.  Sometimes it's to avoid sounding ignorant or amateurish.  All of these are bad reasons to withhold.  By not engaging, I'm not only hurting myself but I'm decreasing the value of the blogs I follow.  Plus, we're all learners regardless and chances are if they're freely sharing their blog posts with the world, they're there to help.  So this year, I want to do a better job engaging and challenge you to do the same.  There's a lot going on in technology, education, and in the DyKnow community and it's important we all do what we can to keep each other up to date and growing.  If you have a question, ask.  If you have a perspective, share.  After all, the least we can do for students is to model the engaged classroom with our own learning.

My old high school, where my dad still works, has jumped straight into Project Based Learning (PBL) by adopting the New Technology High School model. Each time I come home, I make sure to get the latest scoop on how they're adapting to this vastly different teaching model. In PBL content and standards are learned by students as they are necessary to accomplish the project at hand. Teachers must design projects that will challenge and engage students as well as cover the subject matter necessary, but after the planning stages they spend less time as instructors and more time as advisors for student projects.

My educational background has been filled with the traditional lecture and exercise models where classtime is centered around topics, content, and discussion. In this environment, I feel that DyKnow Vision absolutely thrives providing features for collaborative note taking, quick assessments, backchannel discussions, and lecture capture. Work Groups encourages group exercises and provides tools for students to collaboratively work together, but this is still centered around the DyKnow panel which may not be appropriate for every project. So from my silo (and I encourage anyone who knows better to prove me wrong), DyKnow Vision can be somewhat of a clunky fit for PBL. Yes, even in PBL the lecture is not dead, and there are going to be many times where a replayable example or class discussion would benefit the students' project objectives, but it is definitely not the everyday class tool that I used in college.

But I think Monitor is coming into a unique situation.  I've mentioned before that Monitor is not the favored son in my book, but many of the newer interactive features we have been and are currently adding to Monitor (including remote control, screen broadcast, and chat) are uniquely suited to providing this advisory role.  By switching the chat mode to be to moderator only, students can be working in their groups and can quickly chat you a question that only you see.  You can then send a quick reply back.  If there are technology questions, you can view the student's screen and even take control to show them what to do.  All of this can quickly and easily be done from your desk.  This means that the easy problems can be fixed easily, so you'll have more time to focus on more complicated matters (the kinds of problems where you really need to walk over and talk things through).  

As the year comes to an end, I believe it's important to look at all of the great things that occurred in the past 12 months for DyKnow, for our customers, and for education, in general.

• Stimulus Money -- there was a lot of hype about extra dollars for educational technology and for keeping teachers in the classroom.  A lot of that money has gone out to states and, hopefully, to individual schools and districts.  Integrating technology in the classroom is important when trying to provide students with learning experience that promotes 21st century learning.
• Netbooks -- These "mini-laptops" continue to be very desired by the k12 community.  With these lower cost machines, large public districts are starting to implement 1:1 computing on a larger level.  Teaching strategies are really starting to focus on the use of technology in the classroom.
• Addition of numerous International Schools -- It seems that an endless number of International schools are embracing classroom technology at an astounding rate.  Many are moving to a 1:1 computing program and are implementing DyKnow as a part of that program as well.  We're glad to count them as customers and we love hearing about all of the great things they are doing (for example, when school is closed because of H1N1, classes continued to meet virtually with DyKnow).
• The release of 5.2 -- it's amazing what our software can do and the enhancements get better every year (for example, the PowerPoint Plug-In).  Here's a synopsis of what was new in 5.2...and there are a lot of things to look forward to in 2010 with 5.3.  Three cheers to our development team!

These are just a few of the many highlights from 2009 -- I can't wait to see what 2010 brings!

As I've mentioned before, it's important for us here at DyKnow to recognize educators for their outstanding teaching strategies and integration of classroom technology.

This month we're recognizing Dr. Jean Adams of York University (Ontario, Canada).  I personally had the pleasure of working with Jean and her colleagues as they evaluated DyKnow to determine if the product would meet the needs of her and other business school  classrooms.  You can read her profile and why she is our Educator of the Month, but I want to discuss some of the specific uses of the software in her class.

• Engaging Every Student with Content Transmission -- Jean has a very large lecture class of about 400 each semester.  DyKnow facilitates engaging all of those students via the technology.  Jean knows that each of her students receive the lecture notes and can type additional information while in class.

• Working in Small Groups -- The small collaboration group feature was something Jean was very excited about when she first saw DyKnow.  With a few clicks she is able to separate the class into smaller groups of her choosing.  These students can work together even if they are not seated near each other.  In a way, this emulates interactive whiteboard technology for the small groups.  They now have a shared space to collaborate--and they can easily submit their work to Dr. Adams.

• Submitting Work in Class -- Speaking of submitting work, the students use the submit panel feature to send their work (either as individuals or as groups) to Dr. Adams.  It's then easy for her to determine if she wants to share those submissions with the class or review them afterward.  If she selects to look at them afterward, she can mark them up and send them back to students with the click of one button.

• PowerPoint Plug-In -- Jean was very excited to hear this fall that we now have a PowerPoint Plug-In.  She is able to create all of her content, including polling questions, ahead of time.  She can click one button to have it convert into a DyKnow file and is still able make changes once it's in DyKnow.

This is just a sampling of Dr. Adams favorite features in DyKnow (I'm sure she uses others, too).

According to a recent survey, college "students are spending nearly 12 hours daily, on average, engaged with some type of media".  I found this survey on the PRSA website.  So half of a college student's life is spent using technology.

While this article doesn't go into detail regarding when these gadgets are used to engage with media, I'd almost bet cash-money that some of that time is during class.

Students are using technology in the classroom -- sometimes as a distraction and sometimes for good purpose.  The student could be surfing the web for classroom-related content, playing the "google jockey" perhaps.  Maybe the instructor uses online classroom software, like an LMS, to post additional resources and homework questions.  Students could be using their cell phones to send answers to polling questions via software for the classroom.

On the other hand, students could be playing FarmVille on Facebook or texting their friends about what happened at the weekend's big bash.

Whatever these students are doing, they are doing it with technology.  Sooner than later, I believe more professors will embrace technology as a tool with purpose in education which will better help them engage and connect with their students. 


**Photo from mediabistro.com**

I queued up a post to come out today as I assure you I am at home with my wonderful family, but I did want to take the time to mention how thankful I am for all those involved with DyKnow.  I'm thankful for the dedicated employees that I work with from the sales, marketing, support, dev, and CRM teams who are tirelessly working to make DyKnow as good as it possibly can be and to help as many educators as possible take full advantage of technology in their classrooms.

I'm thankful for all you educators out there who use our product and are always pushing yourselves to make your classrooms better.  I'm thankful for those that tweet, blog, or email encouraging words about the product and the ways you're using it.  I'm thankful for you who are kind and motivated enough to present at conferences, webinars, or share on the community site to help spread the knowledge and experiences you've gained as well as consistently shatter my expectations for the way you would use DyKnow.  

I'm thankful for all the IT staff that we work with when setting up the environment as well as when needing to troubleshoot technical issues.  I'm thankful for all the network admins who may not feel qualified to run projects but know that if they don't do it no one will.  I'm also thankful for the overworked staff (both IT and teachers) all fighting to make these classrooms successful.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you to all of you.  You've made this a very good year, and I hope the coming ones are just as wonderful.

So one of the themes I've seen in my reader the past few months has been the mentioning of cognitive load theory.  It might be mentioned in someone's paper or passively mentioned en route to some other point, but it was enough for me to sit up and wonder "what's that?"

Cognitive load theory(CLT) is the branch of psychology that gave us the 7-digit phone number.  It explores the capacity of the mind to retain information, something that is quite important to educators as well.  The intro to the intro version of CLT states that the mind can only take so much load and there are three types of cognitive load: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane.  

Intrinsic cognitive load describes the inherent difficulty in the subject matter.  There is a greater load when reading Ulysses than there is reading Green Eggs and Ham.  Simple addition is easier than calculus.  It is noted that while there are strategies to manage this, intrinsic cognitive load is largely out of your control.  

Extraneous cognitive load describes the unnecessary cognitive load present during instruction.  An extreme example of this might be trying to learn a subject in foreign language.  While the translation exercise may be very good for practicing the foreign language, it stands as a barrier to learning the subject being taught.

The final type, germane, is described as the load present when constructing schema (the unit of learning in CLT).  These are (among many things) the connections and metaphors you might construct to explain and relate new information to past information.  The mind is working when learning which does increase load; it's only that this load is the kind we want to increase.

So in comes the Fire Story, Dave Berque's story about his earliest days of teaching and coming to the epiphany that technology could aid him in engaging his students.  As the story goes, Dr. Berque was forced to hit the ground running as an educator, teaching a theoretical computer science course.  He explained the material, copying his notes on the board, while students copied the board into their notes.  All the while, the class was disappointingly silent.  Then one day, Dr. Berque noticed seven hands raised in his class of 150 people and excitedly called on one of the students.  He was soon disappointed to learn that these seven students were only trying to inform him that the ceiling had caught fire after a light had exploded.

The extraneous cognitive load from furiously copying notes had become so overwhelming to the students that only 7/150 had noticed the ceiling was on fire.  It seems fair to say that if students' minds were too overloaded for their survival instincts to detect danger, there was likely little room for new schema acquisition.  

From this experience, Dr. Berque was inspired to create DEBBIE which later became DyKnow.  Now his notes on the board are automatically transfered to students and he is free to focus on active learning activities designed to increase germane load and creating a more engaged (and less overworked) classroom.  

It's important to note, in my opinion, that not everything Dr. Berque writes is automatically transferred to students.  I think one of the problems with many PowerPoint presentations is that they after oversimplifying concepts down to a few bullet points they spoon feed you those points one at a time, reducing your need to pay attention.  Additionally, I believe there is quite a bit of mnemonic potential in physically writing (in moderation).  Dr. Berque takes advantage of this potential by using what is called "private ink."  When he writes on the interactive whiteboard at the front of the class with private ink, students see what he's writing, but are forced to copy it into their notes.  This helps provide emphasis on key concepts, which in turn will hopefully lead to better schema construction.

From the moment it was suggested, I was almost giddy with excitement.  Private notes is a special area where students can take notes without having to contend with the notes coming from the Session, so it simply makes so much sense that students should be able to use the private notes area to take additional notes when using Replay.  Prepare to be introduced to my favorite feature in 5.3.

Alright, so I really just introduced you, but I can't figure out a way to verbalize my excitement over this.  Students (okay anyone, but I have had students in mind this whole time) can replay a notebook and write any additional notes in the private notes area.  It's a subtle addition, yes, but so was capturing audio and syncing it with the rest of your lecture content.  But that subtle change is now being used to turn the classroom upside down by having students watch the recorded lecture before class and spending classtime going over more difficult exercises or discussing problem areas.

Simply put, learning is a living and continuous process that doesn't end when class finishes.  If we've merely captured the lecture as if to put in a museum, we're really only becoming more efficient at being a sage on the stage (sage on the screen?).  But by encouraging refinement of observations and making new connections, the captured lecture is more than a recording but instead a tool used by the student for his or her own investigation.  

Along the same lines, I'm excited about what this means for the upside down classroom approach.  I'm a firm believer in having your notes right there with the content (it's a lifesaver when reviewing or relearning material after several years), and now students can take notes that are linked to the recorded lecture.  I'm not naive enough to believe this is some educational panacea, and perhaps I'm making a bit too much of this minor tweak.  Nonetheless, I think this is a step in the right direction and am proud to be able to say we've added it to 5.3.
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Image adapted from Marshall Astor's original image found here.   Remixed under Creative Commons share alike license.
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Yes, another of the new features in DyKnow 5.3 is an upgrade to File Transfer to additionally allow students to send files to the moderator.  Since DyKnow 5.1, Monitor has provided the ability for you to send a file or files to your entire class.  Not only are you able to distribute files to your students, but also you can have the files automatically open in whatever the default application may be.  You can let Monitor worrying about the details of passing out files and bringing them up on students' machines while you're getting started with class.  This is great for passing out worksheets, but getting the worksheets back has still required a shared drive or email communication.  

Now in 5.3, you can choose to have your students send you files.  Students will choose which files to send, and then all the students files will be automatically downloaded and organized into a special folder for your assessment and/or critique.  You'll also see all the student submitted files as they come in and the progress of each of the downloads (speaking of which, there are some upper limits on the amount of data students can send, so you won't be stuck waiting forever), though you can easily minimize this window and continue on with class.

While this is a huge win for collecting documents and projects, the real magic is still in Vision's Panel Retrieval and Return Panels features.  After you've graded student work in Vision, you're able to click the Return Panels button (on the Authoring tab) and DyKnow will automagically return the graded student panels to each of the student's class folder on the server.  The File Transfer family in Monitor isn't yet that sophisticated, but for quick two way file transfers Monitor 5.3 is going to be great.

Though perhaps not obvious to those outside the DyKnow development team, student file transfer as well as chat has been a unique step for Monitor as students now are beginning to require elements of a user interface.  Features such as Url Filtering and Application Blocking are really behind-the-scenes types of features, but students need some way to choose what files to send you.  We've gone through several iterations already, and things are bound to change more once we start getting feedback from our Beta customers, but we are narrowing in on a fairly simple design for the student interaction pieces.  

So I hope you're getting as excited about 5.3 as I am.  Feel free to ask any questions you might have about any of the features I've talked about so far, and stay tuned because there's tons more to talk about still.

Don't forget to register for our upcoming webinar: The Noisy Classroom: Using DyKnow software to encourage collaboration and discussion.  It will be happening November 12 at 2:00 EST.

Our September Educator of the Month, Dr. Andrew French will lead the webinar and demonstrate how DyKnow software allows him to immediately evaluate student learning and adjust instruction based on understanding.

Dr. French uses Tablet PCs and our interactive teaching software to create a "noisy classroom." 

Oh and don't forget you can always review previous webinars on integrating technology in the classroom on our webinar archive website.

Laura (our company President) caught me while I was passing in the hallway not long ago and I have no idea how we got on this subject, but we started talking about theater and performance.  I mentioned that I had done several musicals as a high school student and one thing led to another and the conversation ended by jokingly suggesting that we put on a company musical.  No, we haven't discussed it since, but now that it's on the Internet we'll see if there are any YouTube videos in our near future.

Seriously though, in theater there's this notion of a fourth wall that is the front of the stage.  The audience is stationed in their area where they observe and enjoy the performers stationed in their area.  But during this time, there's no anticipated acknowledgement of the audience by the performers.  There are times, however, that a performer will "break the fourth wall" and address the audience -sometimes even coming out into the audience to do so.  The effect is a transformation in the audience's experience of the play going from passive observation to active participation.  

Much has been written all over the Internet against the "sage on a stage" model of teaching (and if you haven't heard there are tons of opportunities for creating an engaged classroom with DyKnow Vision), but the wall I find interesting is the one created by Monitor.  DyKnow's classroom management product has the word "Big Brother" thrown around to help describe its function.  You as the teacher can impose limitations on websites and applications not to mention the thumbnail image of every student's computer in the class.  You can even view the screen of any of your students in real time without the student knowing they're being monitored.  

To me this is another fourth wall.  For Monitor 5.3, the main push is for features that bust through that wall to take Monitor from a passive observation tool to a classroom participation tool.  And I'm quite happy.  It's my belief that classrooms need technology to be used to create connections more efficiently and abundantly, so why should classroom management tech not fit that as well.  As I've mentioned before, we've been moving in that direction slowly with Remote Control and File Transfer.  I've already mentioned that Screen Broadcaster is being added to Monitor as well for 5.3.  But an interesting addition to the growing list of interactive features is Monitor Chat.  

For me this is the big one.  Chat's use has consistently surprised me on the Vision side, so I can only imagine the uses Monitor chat will get.  But excited anticipation aside, I think this is important as it helps provide for the first time a feedback mechanism for educators using Monitor.  Your students will be able to discretely ask questions or for assistance.  They'll be able to strike up discussions with you or with their classmates (as in Vision, you'll have the ability to set chat to off, to you only, or to everyone).  This is a different beast indeed, and I'm excited we're headed in that direction.  So let me know your thoughts on including chat in Monitor.  Is anyone planning on using it once 5.3 is released next year?  How will this change the way you use Monitor?

Next week, I'll be heading to Denver, CO for EDUCAUSE 2009.  EDUCAUSE seems to be (and perhaps it) one of the largest High Ed conferences in the US. DyKnow attends every year.

This year we have a bunch of activities:

• Hands-on Classroom: Dr. Vince DiStasi, CIO and professor at Grove City College, will lead several sessions on implementing technology in the classroom. The session, called "Active Learning: Selecting Technology for Your Environment" will be held 4 times during the conference.  Check out this page for more information.
• Concurrent Session: Dr. Dave Berque, Computer Science Professor at DePauw University, will present "Using Audio and Ink Recordings, Tablet PCs and DyKnow to Maximize Class Time - Teaching Upside Down" on November 5th, 2009 from 2:20-3:10PM in Korbel Ballroom 2B.
• DyKnow Booth #1210: We'll have education software demos that showcase our classroom management software as well as our curricular software which includes classroom response technology, classroom capture and collaboration tools.
• HP Booth #1110: See how DyKnow software combines with HP hardware for innovative and reliable classroom technology solutions.

For more details on where we'll be, see this page.  You can also get updates by following DyKnow on Twitter.

Today, Vince DiStasi, the CIO for Grove City College gave a webinar regarding integrating technology in the classroom in a meaningful way.  

Here's an overview from my perspective.  The first part focused on the hardware, infrastructure and why it's important to consider several perspectives.

• Don't underestimate what you need for your network.  Infrastructure is incredibly important.  You'll need more bandwidth than what you initially expect.
• Hardware that is reliable and quality is important to faculty.  They won't want to create a meaningful classroom technology plan if the hardware won't consistently work for them.
• Make sure there is enough work space for students (previously this meant actual work space, now that means enough screen real estate on their devices).
• Applications supporting the classroom experience are important as well.  Some are discipline specific; others will have campus agreements.
• Students won't always use the tools if they have them.  They must understand what they are and how they are used.  For example, students use MS Word to take notes, because that's how they've always taken notes on a computer.  Once OneNote is explained (more as a collection tool for gathering information, like note taking), they are more likely to use it.
• Why a Tablet PC? A Tablet PC is "a laptop on steroids."  It's particularly useful for when a pen/pencil is needed.

The second half of the presentation focused on DyKnow software. 

• With DyKnow, you're not asking faculty to change a lot about the way they teach.  If they write, they write on a Tablet PC instead of a chalkboard.
• If they like PowerPoint, they now have a PowerPoint Plug-In to use.  They can use existing PowerPoint, create polling questions during prep time, keep animations, and even launch a DyKnow session from PowerPoint.
• The DyKnow Suite has many layers -- like an onion.
• It's a good tool because most students today are not good note takers -- DyKnow makes it easier for them to understand what is important.  But the key is not to make them passive learners.  There are interactive tools in DyKnow to ensure students are involved.
• The software ensures that students are able to replay all of their notes after class.  If a teacher records audio during class, that stays with the notes from class.
• A very useful part of DyKnow is that it provides different ways to collect student work.   There is no handing out and collecting paper.  Everything is done in DyKnow.  For example, a quiz is sent to students, collected upon completion, reviewed after class and the graded quiz is sent back to students electronically.
• DyKnow is client/server, not peer-to-peer. So it allows student to connect from a distance.  They have students in France take a class with students in PA.  Students are paired up in a small group, even though they are not physically together.
• Another way to collect feedback is through a poll.  This way it is anonymous, but the results are there for the entire class to see.
• There have to be pedagogical goals (engagements, problem introduction, challenge artifacts, etc) with any sort of activity implemented in DyKnow.  Students will know if you are just giving them busy work.
• The idea of collaborative note taking is powerful.  Faculty determine how much information to give to the students.
• What's important to the faculty?  The finished product or the process the student took?  Replay allows faculty to see the process that the student took.  
• If you are using small groups, you only have to grade the groups' submission once and it will send the graded paper back to all of the students in that group.

In closing, it's not just about the technology.  The infrastructure has to be there and be reliable.  In today's world, everything is about access and mobility. The true reason to use technology is to leverage the power to help meet the objectives of the classroom and the school.

I'm sure you know by now that our interactive teaching software, DyKnow Vision, has a PowerPoint Add-In.  I think this is a great tool, especially for educators who already use PowerPoint in their classes.

I'll be honest: I'm not a huge fan of PowerPoint.  In my experience, PowerPoint wasn't used to necessarily make powerful points.  It was used more to rehash everything I'd read about in the text.  Often times, I was able to access the presentation beforehand with our school management software (an LMS to be exact).  I'd print them out, and then take notes on the side with anything else the professor would say that seemed important. 

Nothing to me in this situation was engaging or interactive.  It was the teacher talking at us (that's right, I wrote "at") and us trying to write down as much as possible.

I do, however, like the PowerPoint Add-In for DyKnow.  Why you may ask?

1. PowerPoint isn't the actual mode of presentation.  It's DyKnow.  And with DyKnow you get interaction, collaboration and, hopefully, some engagement during class.
2. The embedded polling tool is fantastic.  Now, teachers can prepare questions for this student response tool while they prepare for class.  With one click of a button the question for understand is sent out to the student computers for them to answer.
3. Clarity.  Now, when you convert from PowerPoint to DyKnow all of the text, links and images remain "live."  It's no longer a static image.  Everything is edit-able and move-able.  Which means more flexibility during class with last minute changes.

I'm sure as I use the new tool more often, I'll find even more reasons why I like it! Until then, go download the latest version of DyKnow and see what it can do for yourself!
Photo from friendbeef.com

Okay, so there's nothing really exciting about being Pre-Alpha.  It merely means that we haven't even built an official version of the 5.3 code, but it definitely does not mean that we haven't been working (I can't believe you'd even think that).  Since everything is at such an early stage, I simply don't know what will be in 5.3 next year, but I do know what I've been working on lately so I'll talk about that.

This week I've been knee-deep in bandwidth issues as we work on adding a screen broadcaster feature to DyKnow Monitor.  Screen broadcaster has been a Vision feature for years now given the dividing line traditionally has been classroom management = Monitor and classroom interaction = Vision.  But many of our newer features in Monitor have begun to blur that line.  In many ways, I'm beginning (hoping) to see Monitor as a way to engage your students as opposed to merely ensuring they're engaged.  I'm getting ahead of myself.  So what does Screen Broadcaster mean for Monitor and why am I worried about bandwidth?

I'm glad you asked.

Firstly, lets define why anyone (Vision or Monitor) would want to broadcast his or her screen by looking back at my Computer Science (CS) classes at DePauw.  CS is a major that necessarily requires multiple tools.  Much of the theory and concepts were discussed using DyKnow Vision thanks to its collaborative notetaking features, but try as you might, you can't compile and run a program with DyKnow.  So in order to participate in class labs and paired programming exercises we had to use a compiler.  It would be nice if everyone was completely fluent in whatever program they're using at all points in time, but reality has shown that you have to show people how to use tools.  Broadcasting your screen to your class allows you to demonstrate how to do an action to your entire class at once without needing a projector (or students being in the same room).  

So why am I worried about bandwidth?  It's because images are very large.  Ted Stevens famously received the ire of the Internet by calling the "internets" a "series of tubes."  His metaphor wasn't entirely apt in the situation he described because he thought an email was being delayed by a matter of days due to increased network traffic.  Despite the famous faux pas, the series of tubes metaphor does make sense when talking about general bandwidth concerns.  Only so much water can flow through a tube before it starts getting congested.  The same is true with your wireless router.  If you try and push too much information through the router, eventually some or all the programs you're using for class will stop working (at least the connected ones).  

Additionally, we're not just talking about one classroom, but there will be some effect on your entire network.  On the other hand, you don't want to send too little data or you won't be able to effectively demonstrate (earlier today I ran and subsequently failed a test that looked like I was trying to redraw the screen in MSPaint).  One thing we do in Vision (and will also do in Monitor) is to allow the user to broadcast in a "Low Bandwidth" mode.  This way users are able to govern the wireless usage, but given that this also comes with a loss of quality, not many people will opt into this option.  

So obviously, there's a lot to think about still, but I am pleased with the progress we're making.
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Not long ago I was catching up with one of my old high schools friends who is now teaching high school English.  We were catching up about what we're currently working on and the lessons we each have been learning in the beginning years of employment.  And then we got to talking about educational technology and the like (it was a pretty easy transition given our circumstances) and she asked me about the problem of cell phones in the classroom.  Immediately, she noted that it was becoming more of a burden to write up students and collect the cell phones constantly.  

So obviously the solution is to find ways to use the phones positively to engage students, and there are hundreds of examples and ideas available online of teachers doing just that.  The iPhone in particular has gotten a lot of attention from edtech bloggers and tweeters for the simplicity of the user interface and the access of resources available (both apps and webapps).  

Which is really great if your students have iPhones.

A really good point she made was the fact that not all her kids have iPhones.  Yes some kids do have very powerful mobile devices but not all do.  You could purchase an iPhone/iTouch for all your students to use for class, but you're still competing with their phones and the original disciplinary issues that prompted the discussion.  On the other hand, it's obviously not an option to leave out students who don't have the phones capable of keeping up with the classroom activities.  

And it's not just about how nice a phone you have.  An additional concern is having a sufficient data plan for the phones.  This is particularly challenging as a data plan is going to be a monthly expense.  I can imagine in the worst case scenario some student coming to class with a huge bill from data overages because they weren't thinking about their cell phone plan when they were working on their class project.  

So in many ways this limits your pedagogy to the lowest common denominator for your class.  This could be a problem if you're wanting to take advantage of complex webapps that some phones may not be able to handle, but any phone that can text can take advantage of Twitter.  Simply set up the student twitter accounts to accept tweets from the student's cell phone number and then you can project the twitter feed from the class on the wall like I discussed doing with DyKnow Vision and DyKnow's chat feature.

I think using texting as the lowest common denominator might be okay since the student who doesn't have the ability to text or surf the web is less likely to be using the phone in a disruptive manner (snake only holds my attention for so long).  So with those students you could provide them an access tool such as a computer or provided cell phone to take part in the classroom activity.  There are additional consequences to handing out cell phones as well (for instance who pays for the data plan) which is why I like that the iPod Touch will connect to your wireless... or the full-blown computer option.

The interesting consequence of all my thinking along this line is that it all points to a seemingly inevitable 1-1 cell phone program necessarily being introduced in the same ways that 1-1 laptop/tablet programs are being rolled out now.  All of this is for naught if classroom activities using the phones are not engaging enough to lure students from the dark side, but knowing that they can be I wonder if it would be a workable solution to the cell phone problem.  The big scary part of all this is that classroom management software like DyKnow Monitor won't be a part of this brave new world which can be very intimidating, so it's jumping into the deep end feet first.  No matter which way things go, it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
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When talking with schools, I sometimes like to share the story of how our education software came to be.  Often referred to as the "fire story,"  our software originated in the college classroom based on an experience by Dr. Dave Berque.  

The story is written in the History section of the DyKnow website.  You can even hear Dr. Berque explain the story himself by clicking on the video link.  As the story goes, it seemed to Berque (after the fire) that technology could play a role.  There should be some way to incorporate classroom technology so that both student and teacher would be able to concentrate on what was being taught and not just writing it all down. 

Today we're known as DyKnow, but originally the software was referred to as DEBBIE.  There are some similarities between DEBBIE and DyKnow -- check it out for yourself.

A webpage about Dr. Berque on DePauw University's website reminded me of this story (it's also where the picture of Dave Berque resides) and the importance it plays in our ongoing goal to enrich technology enhanced classrooms.  See, we focused on the learning aspect of the classroom first.  The classroom monitoring software came later. 

Last week I was at a K12 Executive Forum in Texas with partner HP. Basically, HP brings in top K12 technology leaders to show and get feedback on the latest HP and partner products. It's casual, so everybody has some fun, too.

I was happy to meet several current DyKnow customers and partners, as well as present on our classroom management software and talk about integrating technology into the classroom. Across the board, these 1:1-focused districts and schools really loved the simple feature set and scalable IT design of DyKnow Monitor, but they didn't know that a special price expires soon.

In case you don't know, the DyKnow Monitor "Plus" product is something special we created this year that allows teachers to have the control of student desktops plus a bit of formative assessment. It's DyKnow Monitor + digital clicker/interactive student response system.

Special pricing is available via HP and DyKnow through December 31, 2009. It's a great time to standardize and reap the benefits of teacher confidence, time savings, and easy IT management.