Myth #8: The Teacher's Role is New and Different

8 Myths About Digital Learning

"Technology has even changed that old and traditional notion of the teacher as the main source of knowledge and turned him/her into a simple facilitator, organizer, and collaborator."  (25 Techy Tips Every Teacher Should Know About).

We have read this so many times in the last 5 years that we all assume it is true.  It is a myth.

Unfortunately, digital is not yet human.

At its core is the belief that technology will create heightened student information seeking, gathering, and curating, followed by the collaborative building of understanding.  "Teachers can be with students as they learn and give feedback as they go" (Five Ways Technology Enhances Education).

I have written previously about Myth #5: Collaboration.  Let's look now at the changing role of the teacher.  I think that over the last five or so years this role did move toward a new paradigm in some 1:1 classrooms, but also in expeditionary classrooms, PBL and experiential learning environments, and lit circle classrooms.

However, for the most part, the role of the teacher as content curator and deliverer has not, by and large, changed.  Take a look at this piece of information from a new PBS LearningMedia survey of teachers:

Teachers Embrace Digital Learning Strategies

Does this data suggest in any way that teacher's perceive their role in the classroom to be changing as a benefit of educational technology?  Does it suggest a shift of content management from teacher to student?  

To me the survey data suggest that technology in the classroom has not changed the teacher's role at all, and may in fact be returning it to that of the pre-digital educational timeline.  

Why would this be?  Many reasons come to my mind, including lack of adequate teacher preparation, professional resistance at all levels, the primacy of "motivation" or "engagement" over deep learning, and the conservative ELA methodologies many believe are proscribed by the new Common Core Standards (Consider this from Learning Unlimited's Common Core Cheat Sheet: "The standards define what students should know and be able to do, not how teachers teacher. Decades of literacy research should provide the framework for instructional best practices in reading, writing, speaking and listening." If anything, the recommended strategies for close reading and writing instruction put the teacher more than ever front and center).  

Combined, these create a powerful blockade to changing the teacher's role in the classroom. 

But wait, there is more. Placing one adult in a room with a passel of students creates an imbalance. There was a time when Teacher Power was expected in the classroom.  This power came from Knowledge + Technique, and Technique contained many elements that have disappeared from our school culture (Discipline is a big one, Failure is another).  

Technology is perceived by many today as a way to solve that imbalance by turning student attention from teacher to tool, geting the teacher not off of the podium, but off of the classroom see saw. This would be terrific, but it doesn't generally happen.  

Most of the time, technology is expected to be a middleman - a deliverer, a diffuser or filter (as needed), a communicator.  On one end is the teacher, whose goals and roles remain the same (define & clarify content, design activities, units and assessments, address the needs of individuals as well as the group as a whole).  At the other end is the student, who has a body of new skills and content (Standards) to master in a given time and to communicate clearly back to the teacher. 

It would fall to the middleman - technology - to be the true Guide on the Side.  But, unfortunately, digital is not yet human. The quality of what goes in still determines the quality of what comes out.  Technology is not a teacher; the Knowledge and Techniques of the teacher in the classroom are still of utmost importance.  

Myth #7: Digital Learning Develops Problem-Solving

8 Myths About Digital Learning

OK - I have to compromise on this one. I do believe that using digital tools develops the problem-solving skills necessary to use "new" digital tools.  In fact, I suspect that the thinking that leads children to succeed in any problem-solving digital game becomes a habit of mind that helps in solving similar non-digital, real-life problems.  Students who can, for example, advance steadily in Cut the Rope are more likely to be able make suggestions to get a team over a wall challenge or are more likely to contribute key language to a class constitution.

Here are some problem-solving basics (this is my own list):

• I have to understand the problem and what makes it hard
• I have to think about what I already "know" about the problem topic
• I have to take a deep breath and think critically about what I read, see, think, feel, hear, and already "know" - throw out the unimportant, wrong, false, exaggerated, emotional, and biased
• If I don't see a solution, I have to take a risk and try something different
• If I do nothing, there will be no solution
• I have to accept and learn from my mistakes, missteps, and failures
• I have to give this time
• If I find a solution right away, this doesn't mean I have the best solution
• Some problems are too hard for just me
• Being in a team has advantages, so listen to team members
• Finding, keeping, and evaluating evidence and experience as I work for a solution is important
• I have to test my solution (unless it obviously works)
• Solving a hard problem gets me ready for an even harder problem and makes me better at similar problems

Problem-solving requires Critical Thinking. In education, Critical Thinking is today thought of as, well, critical.  As expressed in this post from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, it has these elements:

Other researchers use different terminology for critical thinking skills:

It's In the Genes

Whichever language you choose, notice that individual judgment and opinion are embedded in these research models of Critical Thinking (on this point I quibble with critical thinking as applied by the Common Core to reading.  Personal response and previous knowledge matter. Enough said).  Note also that research supports that critical thinking skills can be taught, but also that once learned, they are not applied with automaticity by any individual.  Their optimum application in the classroom should, therefore, be monitored, and must be required.

The above research article (It's In the Genes) also states that problem-solving style preferences are innate (adaptive/narrow solution focused or innovative/wide solution focused).  This suggests to me that the design of an educational problem is, for many students, directly related to its outcomes - for an individual student and for a problem-solving team.  This requires a teacher or teaching team.

[Aside: the relationship between Problem-solving and Critical Thinking is a complex one, characterized by overlap and interdependence.  I have found this article to be very helpful in understanding the components of both as they related to education.]

So what?  It is clear to me that the skills of critical thinking can be assisted by digital tools, and to this degree digital learning does develop them.  Multiple cases have been made for the use of technology to enhance and develop each of the elements of critical thinking identified above.  Tools such as blogging and backchanneling can even develop the student's ability to self-examine and self-correct.

On the other hand, problem-solving is not developed, but supported, by technology. Ready access to information, including that previously explored and that converted to knowledge, and the communication of solutions and their analysis, are more easily done with facile use of technology than without.  But it only through solving problems that we get better at solving problems.  Ready access to multiple challenging problems may be better for students than extended access to one large, hard technology-rich problem.

So, when we speak of learning, we do better to speak of Critical Thinking.  When we speak of gathering and demonstrating learning - of the processes of learning (writing, reading, researching) - we do better to speak of solving problems.

I have touched on this previously:

• Writing as Problem Solving
• The Literacy of Failure
• The Literacy of Critical Evaluation
• Writing/Thinking Smarter Tools

Myth #5: Digital Learning is Collaborative

8 Myths About Digital Learning

Guidecraft Classroom Building Blocks

I have a love-hate relationship with Myth #5.  As an educational talking point, collaboration is not new. Some years ago I wrote about it in a piece called Who's on First? - And Why Should I Care?,  part of a lengthy post called Learning and Lobstering.  If you can tolerate the small print, the extended metaphor (I do live on the Maine coast) and the outdated resource list (muse on how quickly the internet has grown and changed), you will find a learning model in the post. It is still the one I stand by.

I talk about the role of the collaborative group (in education) as being primarily to inform the thinking and learning of the individual.  I define the collaborative group as a filtering, collecting, problem-creating, problem-solving, and solution-analyzing group. I define collaboration as greater than ping-pong-style or linear data collection; collaboration is feedback driven.  I stress that, in terms of learning, the individual is more important than the group. The individual is the focus of education.

Collaboration is not the cornerstone of education, as this myth would have us believe.  It may be a cornerstone of 21st century business, where a collaboration's product is more important than any individual on the team.  For this reason, it is important for students to learn how to collaborate using digital tools and methods as well as non-digital tools and methods.

Some important educational leaders (Elliot Soloway, for example, who is briefly profiled here) and of some important educational bloggers (Langwitch, for one - see the slideshow in her column Critical Literacy: Is Notion of Traditional Reading and Writing Enough) reinforce this myth unintentionally.  Slide shows and articles tout digital tools as magical gates to new collaborative learning worlds.  What is new is the scope of communication now possible for the digitally connected student. What is not new is the nature of the collaborative process itself and its role in learning.

The word collaboration looms large in the educational world, larger in the digital world.  For this reason, it is a powerful persuader.  But be alert to its misuse.  This is even more true of the phrase collaborative learning.

There is now and has always been learning without collaboration, digital learning without collaboration, and collaboration without learning - digital or otherwise.  Instead of talking about collaboration when we talk about digital learning, we need to be talking about a wide range of digitals tools and activities that the individual student can harness for learning.

As I have said before and now say again, a mobile or desktop digital tool is an individual tool, like a book, a marker or a pair of scissors. This is its strength.  However, like books, markers, scissors, cameras, letters, phones and language, the mobile tool is also a handy tool for group work.

Most of the time, digital group work is for the purposes of:

• content collection, sharing and curation (Scoop.It, wikis, Picasa, Dropbox)
• comment streaming (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, goodreads, iBooks)
• cooperative brainstorming (Mindo)
• peer editing or evaluation (Google Docs, GoodReader)
• group filtering and sorting (wikis, wallwisher, Stickyboard 2)
• communication and conferencing (Skype, FaceTime, blogs, Twitter, texting, email, Noteshare)
• collage/mashups/crowd sourcing (Mixel, Educreations, Sign2Sing)
• cooperative product construction (few tools allow for synchronous product building and I have found none that is satisfactory - but Reflection, Nearpod, wikis and Google Docs and Presentation are tools that assist; asynchronous product development is cooperative by default)  

The above is not a list of collaborative digital learning activities and tools; labeling them as such is at the root of Myth #5.  However, a good collaborative task will use tools like these and contain all of the above elements.  In fact, one or more of the above bulleted tasks is generally meant when you read or hear the word collaboration.

The simple collaborative activity of building with a class set of blocks is a good way to envision this. I learned as a preK and K technology instructor that every child brings a unique perspective, skill set, and goals to even the simplest project. As a block structure emerges (tower, town, castle, museum, etc.), each child learns from the individual physical act of building (balance, design, geometry, spacial awareness).  Each child learns from subsequent group play/discussion/reflection. Each child generally also learns - from the physical and verbal streaming that takes place - something about how to collaborate (to fail, to listen, to respond to suggestion, to refrain from pulling down the work of another, to support and encourage, to criticize constructively, to adjust, to input constructively).  However, such learning is not serendipitous and it is not guaranteed.

Now digitize that activity.  I maintain that the digital environment, because its spacial borders have been removed, is often terrific for the discrete learning activities bulleted above, but it is far less conducive to learning through collaboration than is the traditional non-digital activity.  Why is this?

1. Time - The delay necessitated by asynchronous tools and global time differences is significant to children.  Information can be collected, filtered, and analyzed, but this is not collaboration.
2. Most apps and websites for digital devices are better for rubber stamp learning than they are for collaboration.  To use a 1:1 app collaboratively is generally to impede the learning process for which the app was designed.  Oh, some say, but when two children work on one iPad (or other mobile too) they are learning collaboratively.  Not often.  If you have ever had the opportunity to view two elementary level (preK-2) students working on one iPad or two middle schoolers making music on one laptop, you know what I mean.  I have seen this in school.  I have seen it in my own house with my grandchildren (all gifted or "very able").  Sharing is happening at best; collaboration is not.
3. The collaborative process is hard work, much harder work than any other digital activity. It requires of the learner an enormous amount of communication, divergence, and back-stepping. If you have ever, as you should have, taken a graduate-level online course, or if you are in a PLC or teaching team, you know how difficult it is to collaborate with one peer, much less with a group. Someone must give way, someone must take charge. Everyone needs to participate. When this does not happen, the group task is not accomplished.  Given (a) the intense engagement or total disengagement of a child with a digital tool and (b) the extension of time the process requires, the k12 child must work harder to collaborate successfully than he would at a hands-on task. After all, it is a myth that all children are digital natives. Moreover, the process requires of the teacher a level of organization and oversight for which few are trained and experienced.  Check out some of the materials at Edutopia if you question this.
4. Following #3, collaboration is often misunderstood as a process; poor task-making results. Collaboration is especially hard - it is almost impossible - when the task is perceived as one in which each member contributes the same type of content: all research, all write, all edit, all film, all talk, etc.  Many PBL tasks stumble because they insist upon such sameness.  Ironically, many well-designed PBL tasks also stumble because the team members are not up to their tasks. Only when prerequisite learning (skills, content, process) has progressed to mastery can true collaboration become possible. To believe otherwise is pedagogical wishful thinking that brings to mind the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant.  
5. Many tasks, especially digital tasks, that are identified as collaborative are not.  They belong somewhere on the task list above. True collaboration requires a problem large enough for multiplicities of input, design, solution, and creativity.  It requires not sameness but a rich variety of skill sets and subsequent inputs. Samples of such collaborations include film, music and video (such as this great new video infographic - viewers can see the collaboration happening) and the new app The Silent History (read about it here). Cooperative data collection, even on a global scale, is not collaborative unless student groups also work to filter, interpret, make learning, and create a product from the data. Networking can be a powerful process to support learning, but it is a 1-way, not a collaborative, process.  Collage-making appears to be collaborative, but unless all students participate in the conceptualization and creation of a unique product it is not - it is just a mashup.  Collective Vision paintings, for example, are collage masquerading as collaboration.  
6. Oh, you say, but when social media is an element of learning this is learning in a collaborative environment. Certainly digital learning should take advantage of social media.  But is are Shelfari reviews collaborative?  Is a Twitter stream collaborative?  Is a Socrative quiz collaborative?  It is certainly possible to use every one of these tools as part of a collaborative process - but to say that the these are digital collaborative learning tools is to vastly oversimplify and overvalue digital tools for learning.

To make digital learning collaborative is a complex undertaking for an educator.  This fact is not well enough understood by pundits and jargon slingers.

This is not to say that digital tools do not play an important part in working collaborations.  Science, economics, astronomy, physics, performance arts, political movements...  follow the news and you will find evidence of successful, powerful, ground-breaking adult collaborations that rely upon digital technology for the sharing, gathering, analysis, creation....  of new ideas and products.  

We are not there yet, folks.  Spending a lot of money on mobile classroom tools is not going to get us to collaborative digital learning.  The fact of the matter is this: students are not brilliant, experienced, opportunistic professionals.  Giving each a powerful digital device will not change that.

Myth #5 is a dangerous myth.  It facilely sells the concept of mobile tools as collaborative learning tools - often without any deep understanding of how to make it so.  Or of why to make it so.  It suggests to many that collaboration can not happen outside of a digital environment and that the focus of education for the 21st century must be collaboration.  Nonsense.

[Question: Are "blogging buddies" (re: Moving at the Speed of Creativity) collaborative?  What is the learning that happens from these time consuming commenting activities?  What do you think?]

If you get to the teaching stage where you are ready for Collaboration, check these out:

• Facilitating collaborative learning: 20 things you need to know from the pros - neither digital nor iPad is mentioned - the 20 points are all about learning, not tools
• iCollaborate: making the most of collaborative learning in an iPad classroom - good ideas for how to create a working process - and no, there is not an app called iCollaborate, just one iPad per group (in this example)

Myth #3: The Digital Classroom is a Playground

8 Myths About Digital Learning

In today's m-digital landscape, certainly in a 1:1 or technologically supported setting, the learning experience too often is, like that described in this description of the Dragon Go! iPhone app:

You say….
“Cowboys & Aliens showtimes” – Dragon Go! delivers you directly to Fandango featuring movie trailers, showtimes and ticket purchasing for your local theaters. The Dragon CarouselTM also enables you to see what people are saying about the movie on Twitter and flick over to Wikipedia to learn more about the graphic novel the movie is based on."

David Warlick labels this a  learning-literacy playground.  Libraries and schools, he suggests, need to take note - and then change the way they do business.

I love the metaphor of self-directed internet use as play.  But think about the promo above.  Think about your last visit to a children's playground. The erratic, flicking nature of the play experience is the same in both instances.  Like Katniss Everdeen, the learner/child is driven by a pattern of respond-and-move on, and on, and on.  Engaging, yes, but eventually exhausting.  Where is the learning here?  Recesses are not learning time for a reason.

That said, I agree that social learning is in the playground domain and not to be dismissed by educators. The value of the social media playground and the necessity for young people to learn how to negotiate this playground safely and wisely is not to be questioned.  Mobile devices - any computer - engage students in this type of play.

But the digital playground as a learning experience is a Myth. A qualified myth.  Play can result in academic learning. It can result in learning how to solve complex problems and how to independently apply guesses to solutions.  But that is not what digital playground means.

In fact, David Warlick misspeaks himself when he uses the term playground. What he alludes to is a paradigm shift away from place-based and fixed-object-based learning and into digital spaces where learning elements and their interconnections are multitudinous, constantly changing, constantly updating, unprescribed, unbounded, and - because of this - deep with question-making and problem-solving.

It's not play - it's hard work that happens in a digital workroom.  With work comes learning.

This is the promise of the digital world for education.

The problem is that human beings, including digital natives, are place-based and fixed-object based.  We like straight-forward prescriptions, boundaries, predictability, tried-and-true. Educational use of digital tools has adapted to these needs.  In this digital age, answers quickly become viral (tweeted follow-the-leader). Questions are quickly forgotten, if they are even asked.  Five good activities build a playground; five hits end a search.

For the most part, therefore, teachers and students - learners all - do not take advantage of the opportunities available to them to access the multiplicity of threads that inspire creative questioning and deep learning - digital or otherwise.  They impose upon themselves - upon their students - limits that make the learning trajectory shorter and, unfortunately, more linear.

This is not a new phenomenon. Socrates warned about the stagnation of creative thinking when facts and thoughts were committed to books (read one source). The internet as it is used in most k-12 classrooms is simply a  new form of the book. This approach is easy.  It is also the traditional model of learning and teaching.  Moreover, digital tools are remarkably like workbooks, and about as interactive if you look critically (Myth #4).

The reality of the digital world is that good answers can be found easily (no matter what the librarians advise), but good questions are hard work.  These take iteration of thought, pattern-seeking, cross-checking, evaluating, consulting (asking, listening, replying) and a lot of literate access to texts of various kinds (images, video, fiction, information, charts, tweets, opinion, games, news...). 

Who has time for that?  Not most teachers.  Not today's students.

Says who?

There is time - lots of it.  But it is already crowded with the questions for which prescribed answers need to be found.  It is already crowded with seat-time, even in the m-classroom. 

The new and truly digital workroom is full of possibilities, of virtual threads forming a play space for learning. But will our students do anything with this in terms of learning? Or will they do what most are doing today - just play?  I personally don't fault kids - or study hall monitors - for digital play, but  turning a desire for pleasure into a desire to learn because it is pleasurable should be the focus of today's schools.

One of the most innovative dream-to-reality educators I know of, Nick Stoneman at Shattuck-St. Mary's in Minnesota, has it right.  He is building physical spaces where his students can play - create, dream, explore, build, move, share, collaborate.  There are top-of-the-line digital tools, but also top-of-the-line physical tools.  And above all there is time to access the boundless worlds - external and internal - that are the playgrounds of the mind.  Learning time will be created out of "seat time" by using a blended learning model, one that maximizes the impact and importance of face-to-face time while placing the work of learning play in the hands of the students.  It is a model that will work.

The digital classroom needs to not be a classroom at all - then it can truly become a learning playground. This is really David Warlick's message.  But the availability of iPads and other digital tools alone will not guarantee this.  It will first take a renewed commitment on the part of educators that learning must be, to paraphrase Seymour Pappert years ago, hard fun.

My Top 20 mTools to Support Learning

mTools 

m is not for myth, at least not in this case.  mTools are iTools that support an mLearning environment, meaning that they enhance the use of mobile devices for learning.  That said, many of these tools also require a desktop device.  The largest mTool of all, a strong wifi with open access, is an understood need.

I don't quite understand why we need these new words, mTool and mLearning - it seems to me that iTools still works for all personalized digital learning.  But it is nice to know that as the tools themselves temporarily flatten in functionality (we are seeing variations of repeats of variations and very few unique products), language itself is serving to keep the spirit of change alive.  (Myth #9 should probably be: iTools are not driving change.  People drive change.  Back to the myths in my next post.)

Anyway, my current top 20 mTools are:

1. Three Ring - the purpose of this tool is to create teacher-built digital portfolios of student work, with notes attached - in a 1:1 environment, students would be able to build their own portfolios - in a global or digital class, the tool can be used to greatly extend the idea of collaborative conversations - use of mCameras and blogs, VoiceThread accounts, will extend the functionality
   
2. WEB to PDF - this robust app alternative to Readability or Instapaper makes it possible to turn any webpage into a pdf for later reading, sharing, etc.  - I prefer Readability as a literacy app and Instapaper is proven in the classroom and workplace, but there is also learning value to sharing an entire page, links, ads, distractions and all - A cool new alternative is PDF Printer for iPad (separately available for iPhone) - other apps that do similar work are dotEPUB (creates docs that display in iBooks) and the Chrome extension Send to Evernote (captures highlighted web text)
3. GoodReader - read, organize, annotate pdf files - OR UPAD, which adds a note-taking feature - as a literacy teacher in a 1:1 or BYOD school, I would have found either an invaluable as a tool for teaching students how to read documents - with WEB to PDF, eliminates much of the need for printing... (articles, company information pages, government sites and info, infographics, data...) - OR Notability (cheaper) - read and annotate multiple file formats - I like and use the audio annotation feature - can also be used to "sign" a .pdf file - integrates with DropBox.
4. Google Drive - get the app and an account, for each device - schools should provide Google ed accounts to all stakeholders and make sure that Drive is enabled (and installed, where possible) - this is a great alternative to DropBox (see below), especially since it opens the door for educators and guides to use the wide variety of Google Docs tools available - check out David Byrnes' new guide, selling the power of Google Drive in education
5. Blog Docs - huge range of features - integration with DropBox, WordPress, Blogger and Google Docs - does not support audio at this time, but otherwise a terrific tool for student bloggers and for file sharing
6. Join.Me (read about the app here) - free virtual meeting space that can be used on the fly - works for both students and teachers
7. DropBox - my go-to app for file sharing - I use it across devices for instant access, but also as a cloud server to facilitate uploading and sharing files of all types - when set up with care, it is the only server a classroom will need for collaboration, document submission, etc. - Google Drive is newly available, and probably I would switch if I was in a school today - on the other hand, David Byrne has just posted this about Box (changes in features), which will make me take another look at sharing in DropBox - Evernote is another tool I use at times because it is integrated with various apps and web applications
   
8. The Oona - this is not an app, but a tool of intelligent design that will support digital creativity and the display of information to a group - turn student smartphones into document cameras, claymation stations, display mirror-ports (with a screen sharing app like) - lots of places to buy it online - although fixed seems to fight against the concept of mobile, there are times when a steady hand is not going to be good enough
9. A stylus - I am still seeking an improvement over my PenGo TouchPen, but I find the stylus invaluable for sketching, brainstorming, or annotating - now available in multi-packs
   
10. IdeaPaint - not an app, but literally a paint - it makes almost any surface into a dry erase whiteboard - walls, desktops, floors, screen, lockers...   Rust-oleum makes an alternative, as does Whiteboard - I have not had success today with the IdeaPaint website, but it may just be overloaded
11. Reflection - a mirroring app for an iPad or iPhone - to Mac or PC - makes sense to me to have this in a learning room with unencumbered wifi - I tried the free demo and it worked beautifully at home (until we had a more complex network installed) - also use Reflection with AirPlay (on Mac) and Jing to quickly create a screencast of an iPad or iPhone app (very cool)
12. WebNotes - read multiple web pages using tabs, search using several engines, take notes in a lower window - word count - post directly to Twitter or Facebook, email, attach (txt or pdf) - this is a 1-1 student reading/research option  OR Side by Side +  a similar tool that enables the user to take notes on multiple web pages or texts (stored on the device) simultaneously (multi-window display) - this tool has DropBox (and CX) support and integration so notes are uploaded automatically to your cloud
13. VoiceThread - a school .ed account is recommended, but even without it this is an invaluable tool for communicative learning - for the instructor, can be a 1-stop place to receive most digital assignments - for the student, multiple ways to communicate with other students - a much simpler app is Air Sketch, which can also be used for group communication about a text (pdf), image, idea... (note: at $9.99, it is a serious investment)
14. Educreations - one of many free or inexpensive tools for creating audio-visual demonstrations of learning or understanding - fully supports creative storytelling as well - other options are ShowMe (which gets more robust with each update), Screen Chomp, Explain Everything, and Replay Note.  That said, the newish app Haiku Deck will probably become my top choice after a few more uses.
15. Nearpod, now that it is IOS 6 compatible and sensibly streamlined, should be on all iPads.  Also a presentation app, this one allows for all-user simultaneous viewing, but also for individual responses to instructor-created slides within a longer presentation.  It does require a web-based account for the instructor.
16. QuickMark Classic - my favorite QR code reader, but just one of many free options - also creates codes (not for audio, alas) and uploads directly to DropBox
17. An audio recording app like iTalk Recorder,  DropVox or TinyVox Pro - select one that uploads to a cloud or blogspace (all will send via email) so that students can access files to use them elsewhere - one double-tasking device is Speak It!, which can be used to speak imported text of any type and thus for student-created files as well as files that need to be read - I'm not sure how I feel about AudioBoo, which is simple and straightforward and free and has a 3-minute limit - it will help students reach higher as long as quality standards are set
18. Pages - it makes no sense to me to scrimp on a writing tool - period
19. Camera - the onboard still and video are invaluable for learning - you can enhance the experience with free apps like Adobe Photoshop Express and Camera Plus, but the basic app (on any mDevice) will do just fine - students using iOS 6, will want to use shared Photo Stream, others will want a Picasa account (Google) - all students will want to couple Camera with the new app Givit, which makes quick editing and sharing (via email for school use) a snap.
    
20. AnswerGarden, a web-based tool (works on mobile devices too) that serves for polling from any mobile device - teacher has a simple interface and a small number of very sensible options - an alternative to Poll Everywhere, Google Docs/Forms, and Socrative.

+1:  Need to print?  Select an app from this list of Printer Apps.  I personally prefer to use the cloud to share docs and to rely on printing the old way - from a laptop with the option of using a USB cable.  There are times when wifi and place and time do not work well together - and a print is needed.  I have both AirPrint (compatible HP printer) and Brother Print and Scan (Brother all-in-1 printer) - both work seamlessly,  but I rarely use either.

Myth #2: Digital Learning is Non-Linear

Access: the student can access an array of information

8 Myths About Digital Learning - 

Myth #1

Digital learning is neither uniquely non-linear nor always non-linear.  In fact, I maintain that digital learning is no different in linearity from other learning activities.  Which is to say: it is generally linear.

Hyperlinking and 1-device access to a multiplicity of information resources (tweets, blogs, nings, feeds, media, pinboards, etc.) provide many options for non-linear information collection, but  does the fact that a student can stumble upon and collect multiple information points create a non-linear learning experience? 

Collection: similar information in the array is linked by category

If you believe the answer is yes, you believe a myth.

Result: information is "in the head" but no new learning is created

Information that is collected is the result of a linear process (see illustration above).  Like a coin or Thomas the Train collection, an information collection serves the purpose of expanding a student's content knowledge by providing multiple instances of like information.  Does this expand deep knowledge, or learning?

Learning, especially deep learning, requires not just collection and ordering (or arraying), but the creation of new connections between unlike and even disparate information points.

This is non-linear learning.

A digital device can not creatively "connect the dots" for the student, but it does provide excellent support for ordering.  The act of collecting a digital array of information about medieval weapons, for example, does not result in learning about medieval weaponry, but it may result in a life-time encyclopedic content knowledge of it.

A box of 3 x 5 cards does the same thing.

The Digital Kit, provided by teachers and described in this post by Bill Ferriter, uses digital tools to provide a path to information collection.  Unfortunately, it does not require that students take part in the gathering of resources. 

Gathered is the key word here - as opposed to collected.  The difference is connotative. One gathers flowers for the purpose of creating an arrangement or display of unlike blooms.  One gathers supporters from different walks of life to achieve an end goal.  Gathering implies a connection or comradeship that is not haphazard, but purposeful, yet also a diversity and spontaneity that is unified by the vision of the gatherer.  

Information gathering is essentially non-linear. 

Deep learning requires curiosity but also the persistent pursuit of a goal.  This goal is often an amorphous, moving target that gains shape as the learner pursues a topic, makes connections, and draws conclusions.  Serendipity plays a significant role.

The fit between the digital environment and this moving target is a good one, but the likelihood that a young learner - or an impatient learner of any age - will not persist in the task is high. In fact, the reality of the classroom is that most students will fix upon a linear path to information - and call this learning.  After all, the most common search strategy is to Google a specific question.  What is more linear than that?

The nature of the learning experience depends entirely upon the inclination of the learner and the guidance he receives.  Left to their own devices, so the speak, students will be as linear as they have always been.  And, sadly, few teachers are skilled in developing curriculum and learning activities that support and spur students to learn otherwise.  Few schools have adopted educational models that support and encourage non-linear learning.

There has been little significant change in this over the last 15 years.

I am concerned about the long-term effects of Myth #2.  Teachers who have little experience with  non-linear learning believe that a digital device by itself provides something new, exciting and important.  They believe that apps proclaiming to be "non-linear" are new, exciting and important.  They are not trained to critically evaluate digital learning or its apps.

At the same time, they develop the same linear learning activities and lessons for this "new" learning experience that were developed on paper a teaching generation ago - linear expectations, linear lessons.

Moreover, they believe that creating a multi-media digital product is a demonstration of non-linear learning and they embed these products as assessments.

Alas, the digital tools available in most classrooms generally serve to present a collection of linear learning bits, rather than a creative product of deep learning - a true gathering of learning.  Peruse student digital products with a critical, rather than an "aha," frame of mind and you will find that they are generally shallow and imitative collections - linear responses to linear expectations masquarading as creative mashups.  The good news is that the best of these can provide other students with non-linear paths to understanding.  The bad news is that few teachers use student products for this purpose. 

Educators need to work harder and differently in the digital world if non-linear is the goal.  Instead of looking to iPads and other digital devices as the change-maker in the learning experience, we should look to teachers and school environments/structures as the change-makers.

Myth #1: Students and teachers can find everything they need online

8 Myths About Digital Learning - 

In January 2012, I wrote a post called iPad 3C's: Some Planning Questions.  It holds up nine months later.  For some schools, however, my warnings came too late.  Burlington (MA) High School, for example, began a 1:1 iPad program in the fall, funding it within budget largely by closing computer labs and not purchasing textbooks or a new language lab.  According to the article, Principal Patrick Larkin commented that "they didn’t throw away the old books, but no longer need to buy new ones, since students and teachers can find everything they need online."

This is a commonly believed myth, especially among educators who have themselves been participating only viscerally in the evolution of digital tools.

It is true that eBooks and eTexts can be found online - or created in-house and put online. But these need to be fully vetted by subject specialists. One would not, for example, teach an eBook explication of an expurgated classic or a text that asked few if any higher level questions.  On the other hand, most literature written before 1950 or so is in the public domain and it can be read as-is digitally.  And perhaps Burlington HS is taking advantage of the growing number of freely open university courses, which at least have quality control based upon the institution.  But is there a university or college course freely open and appropriate for the 9th grader reading at the 5th grade level? 

The internet is, of course, a vast information storage center, but it is very hard to search efficiently and effectively. Most students and teachers just touch the surface of what they could find if they did an expert search. I don't suggest that students be subjected to long-winded search strategy lessons - boring! Check out the infographic Get More Out of Google to see what I mean - and that infographic is solely focused on one search tool and one database.  But students do need to learn the basic literacy of using the Internet as a source.  Nope - it is not inherent to question the validity or bias of a source. 

Articles such as 12 Ways to Be More Search Savvy and The Times' Just Google It promulgate the myth by simplifying the problem; they are still viewing internet research as a linear search, the goal of a search being to find an answer.  That is the old way of thinking about learning.  While educators are stuck at this level, students certainly can find everything they need online. Learning becomes equated with the collection of content, whether it be information (70% or more) or literature (30% or less). 

But some teachers are - or at least should be - asking more convoluted, complex questions. These questions require problem-solving.  The problem is that when students are required to learn - to understand - something about content, when questions become creative, individualized and complex (higher level Bloom's questions), students can not find what they need on the Internet.  Moreover, as will discussed in Myths #2 and #3, searching for answers on the Internet becomes itself an anti-learning task.  Everything is anything.

The acceptance of anything as something is a large step toward educational mediocrity.

What's more, where it is believed that teachers can find everything they need online, the future of education becomes truly dismaying.  A teacher approaching a new topic in a 1:1 environment should be reforming learning goals, and thus redrawing what is still called "the lesson plan."  Too often I find requests for canned lessons in online educator discussions.  Too often these requests are answered with digital versions of the worksheet.  For example, I did a quick look for a short story that I had taught successfully and which two years ago was available only in anthologies, Bradbury's "The Sound of Summer Running."  I found online not only the story (in .pdf file - perfect for use in an iPad classroom - and probably in violation of Bradbury's copyright), but also several sets of comprehension questions that I didn't know I needed.  Immediately, I needed them.  But here is the thing: the questions were all level 1 comprehension and a few were just plain poor. I did not find a single deep reading question. I did not find a single textual or stylistic question.  What does the internet offer to a teacher of this story or to a student reading the story?  Nothing they need in order to question or create (except the story itself).

The essence of good teaching is deep thought about the core content on the part of the teacher, not time-filling, interactive, digital activities. 

Teachers can not find everything they need online. They need deep education, experience, and insight into the learning needs, interests, and styles of their students. They need time to access a multiplicity of print, media and experiential resources to extend their own learning - and to incorporate these resources into classroom activities for their students. To expect less of a teacher is to encourage mediocrity in the classroom.

The iPad is NOT all about collecting information. Deep learning requires collaboration (and its subset communication), reflection, and creation.  These can not be found - they must be made. 

Perhaps Principal Larkin is not just trying to be trendy and save money; perhaps he has well-deserved confidence in the intellectual abilities and academic backgrounds of his teachers and students.  I hope this is true. Most of all, I hope he does not believe also in Myths #2 - #8. 

8 Myths About Digital Learning

Myth #1: Students and teachers can find everything they need online
Myth #2: Digital learning is non-linear
Myth #3: The digital classroom is a playground
Myth #4: Digital learning is interactive
Myth #5: Digital learning is collaborative
Myth #6: Digital learning is creative
Myth #7: Digital learning develops problem-solving
Myth #8: The role of the teacher in a digital classroom is new and different

Each of these statements is a talking point or selling point for the expansion of digital tools in the classroom, especially 1:1 tools.  Each is also a facile generalization about digital learning - a modern myth based upon shallowly considered jargon.

Laptops, iPads and other devices are being purchased by districts having no idea what to do with them beyond the promises of these myths.  It's time for educators to take a deeper look at this jargon.  How, exactly, does each intersect with learning?

My points do not, of course, invalidate the concept of digital learning, a concept to which I have devoted the last 20 years of my career in education.  My purpose is simply to remind educators to proceed with purpose.  By questioning the validity of each of these statements as part of the on-going self-assessment of teaching strategies, teachers can improve their use of 1:1 digital tools. School leadership can (and should) extend and improve critical professional development around these ideas.

Myths are often founded in truth, and each of these statements is true of the best online learning experiences. Teachers should strive to create and find those "best of" experiences.

This leads directly to the discussion of Myth #1.  For the sake of simplicity, my discussion will focus on the iPad and internet tools, but the points apply to all tools that create a 1:1 learning environment matching one student with one digital tool.