Classroom Management Software Blog

By Kirk Greiner, Sr. VP & GM, Netop

With school out for the summer, things always slow down a bit in the Netop offices.  That’s a good thing for vacations, but it also gives us time to look more closely at the education market from a macro, long-term perspective.  I’ve consolidated feedback from many of our staff whose job functions put them on the front lines of the education market.  These trends are neither exhaustive nor conclusive, but they do offer a peek into what we are seeing from a software vendor point of view.

BYOD – Bring Your Own Devices

Last year the talk was about Macs, iPads and tablets and the question needing an answer was “which device”?  Over the last year this seems to have morphed into a trend for schools to want to support students in bringing their own devices.   A number of booths at ISTE this year had the term “BYOD” in their display bullet points.  With the mounting ubiquity of smart devices owned by students, it’s only natural that the pressure is increasing to figure out how to integrate those devices into the classroom experience.  While several hurdles remain to make that concept a reality, it is clear that conversation and thought leadership on this subject is accelerating rapidly.

iPads – Schools Aren’t Just Talking, They’re Buying

It’s amazing, and not at all common in education, that what was ‘just talk’ last year is now a strong trend, in a period of just 12 months.  We’ve talked to numerous schools who have already invested in these devices.  There also appears to be a number of companies offering grants to bulk buy/win them (a customer mentioned something about a Blackboard grant).  Our Product Manager has had conversations with an Apple Business Development Manager, who has been canvassing providers to see if they have plans to support the iPad in their solutions.  Both agreed that the move from ‘just talk’ to action has been incredibly quick.  This acceleration of the acceptance of the iPad is influencing our development plans for MyVision, which we will be discussing at Netop in our July technology workshop.  Stay tuned for future announcements regarding MyVision and the iPad.

1:1 Computing – Could We be on the Cusp?

This is a common theme that we’ve heard for the last ten years or so:  1:1 computing is coming.  First it was the desktop, then the laptop, then the netbook, but now with the broad usage of smart, mobile devices, 1:1 computing is closer than ever.  The percentage of students who own smartphones and smart devices can be debated, but the fact that the rate of ownership growth is increasing rapidly is universally agreed upon.  Regardless of the policies restricting use of these devices in schools, students are in fact using them, and using them in increasingly diverse ways.  The low cost of these devices and the growing percentage of students owning one may be eliminating one of the largest hurdles to 1:1 computing: putting a device in every student’s hand.

It’s the Infrastructure

Putting a smart, mobile device in every students hand is a grand idea, but the reality is that many schools don’t have the network infrastructure to support that many devices connected to their network.  Bandwidth is a major concern. The technical staff at schools we’ve talked to often ask how much bandwidth our solutions use with the expectation that it be very low.  This is because more and more, the school’s computing devices are connected to the network wirelessly and the administrators want to avoid network bottlenecks or contention at access points and wireless routers.  The net-net is that school networks must become more efficient and vendors must create applications that are better network citizens before mobile devices and 1:1 computing become universally accepted.

Head in the Clouds

Leading educational technologists are expecting, and in some cases demanding, that applications and content live in the cloud.  It may seem like an obvious transition, but we think the impact of this is pretty big.  One of the reasons smart mobile devices are getting such traction is because of the vast number of applications available in the cloud.  Teachers and students are going to be extending the classroom beyond the four physical walls and they are going to want to access all their content, materials, apps, etc., anytime, anywhere, on any device.  This doesn’t mean everything needs to be in the cloud, but it makes sense for software vendors to start moving more and more of their content that direction.

A great example of cloud computing in the classroom is the Collaborize Classroom student response system http://collaborizeclassroom.com.  This response system is cloud-based and can be used either within the classroom or outside of the classroom.  Inside the classroom, it can be used in the traditional manner of student response systems to query students, stimulate conversation, engage shy students and give the teacher a snapshot of where the class is on a particular subject.  Outside the classroom, it can be used to extend classroom discussions and create a private online community for the students during non-school hours.

Also, at the leadership symposium held this year at ISTE, more and more teachers were talking about integrating free cloud-based apps into their instruction.  Two apps that were demonstrated were lulul.com, a book-publishing app and Google SketchUp, a 3-D modeling app.  The keynote speaker, Kevin Honeycutt, has created a website listing a vast number of free web-based apps that teachers can use in the classroom.  You can see the entire list at http://kevinhoneycutt.org.

A Cautious Market?

There do not seem to be as many major product releases to date this year as there have been in previous years.  This supports other corporate insights that even educational heavyweights in dominant markets are looking to short-term profitable initiatives to plug holes in business plans.

Rather surprising though, and in contradiction, not many educators who we’ve communicated with complained about budgets as their number one issue.  This may be in part because the education market has now had time to adjust to the new austerity measures imposed by the recent financial crisis.  For optimists and forward-thinkers, 2011 & 2012 may be seen as “get-ahead” years.  The need for technology certainly hasn’t diminished but shrinking budgets and staff levels are leading schools to look for and evaluate solutions that make everything from installation to support to academic results more effective and efficient.  Providers who can deliver will make significant competitive headway.  Those that can’t may be left behind.

By Kirk Greiner, Sr. VP & GM, Netop

Classroom management software has evolved since its inception more than a decade ago. Nonetheless, the core features have remained relatively the same including screen sharing, student monitoring, remote control, blanking the screen and blocking the Internet. What’s changed is the way computers are used in the classroom with the rise of 1:1 computing and smart, mobile devices. At ISTE 2011 we heard from a lot of customers and potential customers on areas they believe classroom management software vendors should focus their future efforts. Among these were:

• Better support for mixed, heterogeneous environments that included PC, Mac, Linux and smart devices like the iPad. To be clear, it wasn’t just a matter of having a solution for each of these platforms, but having one solution that would span all platforms. A tall order, but one we are working on.

• Lower bandwidth usage and ability to share video effectively in wired and wireless environments.

• Easier setup – Techs don’t appreciate having to build individual classes and would like to have a way – especially in 1:1 environments – for classes to be built from class roster data. They also mention a need for easier ways for students to float from teacher to teacher without giving the student control to join or leave class.

• Connect by MAC address: some of the schools we talked to use DHCP with a very short lease time, meaning that laptops will get a new IP address at every connect, thus it will be more convenient for a network admin to setup classrooms by MAC address instead of IP or user name.

• Connect across VLAN: some of the schools explicitly asked about the ability to connect teachers and students across VLANs.

If you have other suggestions for the future direction of classroom management software, we’d certainly appreciate hearing about it.

While following the Twitter conversation during the show, I found several excellent tips for teachers:

• Ten Peer Coaching Tips in Ten Minutes: http://wwwatanabe.blogspot.com/2011/06/10-peer-coaching-tips-in-10-minutes-at.html?spref=tw
• Seven Tips to Enhance Your ISTE Experience from Home: http://edreach.us/2011/06/23/attending-iste-home-seven-tips-to-enhance-your-virtual-iste-experience/
• Ten Things I Hate About ISTE: http://www.thenerdyteacher.com/2011/06/10-things-i-hate-about-you-iste11.html (One of my favorite blogs)
• Student Journalists Reporting on ISTE: http://www.iste.org/connect/iste-connects/blog-detail/11-06-30/Student_Voices_ISTE_Goals.aspx
• What NOT to do at ISTE: http://www.teach42.com/2011/06/21/what-not-to-do-at-iste/

And, because it’s amazing, the official ISTE flash mob video: http://stumpteacher.blogspot.com/2011/06/iste-flash-mob.html

By Kirk Greiner, Sr. VP & GM, Netop

Want to read about what educators had to say about the possibilities of mobile devices at the ISTE 2011 Leadership Symposium?  Visit http://leadershipsymposium2011.iste.wikispaces.net/Discussing+Possibilities+-+Mobile+Devices+in+the+Classroom

The Wiki at this link contains actual discussions between educators and addresses several questions about mobile devices in the classroom including:

• How would learning look or be different if you were to implement this innovation in your classroom, school, or region?
• What would you need to have in place for mobile devices to work?
• What strategies would you need to put in place to scale this idea to more than one classroom, school or region?  How would you start?
• What steps would you need to take to put this idea into practice?

Some of the interesting comments included:

• Teachers need to be properly trained. Otherwise, they will be a barrier to progress with mobile devices in the classroom.
• Reading on iPad is preferable to reading on laptop because of the ability to touch.
• The iPad is one device that replaces many. It comes with you and is accessible wherever you are.
• In Washington, the idea that there can be only one mobile device is heresy. We limit ourselves by being too device-specific. But, there is safety in that. The teacher has to know the device to be able to be in charge of the device. How can we get to the point when we know more about mobile devices? Students have devices, but all the devices can be different, they don’t have to be the same.
• Move to bring your own device means we need to think differently instead of getting stuck on what is convenient for teachers or institution rather than what works for students.

Read more: http://leadershipsymposium2011.iste.wikispaces.net/Discussing+Possibilities+-+Mobile+Devices+in+the+Classroom

By Kirk Greiner, Sr. VP & GM, Netop

At the 2011 ISTE conference, I attended a workshop on the future of mobile devices in the classroom. The featured presenter was Chris O’Neal, Educational Consultant, University of Virginia and former teacher, technology coordinator and state Director of Technology. Chris has been involved in Virginia’s ‘Beyond Textbooks’ project which removed social studies textbooks from the classroom for 1,500 students in two elementary and three high schools, replacing them with iPad and PDF versions of the textbooks. The goals of the pilot project were to understand:

• How digital instructional materials can be used most effectively to increase student engagement and educational outcomes and to improve teacher practice;
• The conditions necessary for delivering high-quality instructional materials for a lower investment; and
• The technical, social and policy implications of replacing traditional textbooks with digital alternatives

The initiative was started in November of 2009 and the year one report can be viewed here: http://ht.ly/559Rn.

Chris summarized some of the findings in our session:

• PDF versions of textbooks viewed on the iPad were no more appealing to students than the hard copy they replaced. While the iPad provided a different delivery mechanism, the PDF version of the textbook was still a static document.
• Students wanted the ability to highlight, drag words into a wordbank and work with interactive content rather than static content. Feedback to the textbook vendors affected changes that improved the overall appeal of the content on iPads.
• Out of the 1,500 devices used, not a single one was damaged by the students.
• No inappropriate use of the devices was uncovered during the study.
• Internet access with the devices was problematic at times.
• Other challenges included keeping the class on task with regard to the lesson plan (a problem I experienced first-hand in our session when we were given an assignment to perform with our smart phones. Everyone became so engaged in the assignment it was hard to bring the room back to order. Maybe that’s not such a bad problem to have?), establishing effective policies for the use of the devices and projecting the textbook from the iPad using a projector.

It was interesting to note that Chris’ comments on the project as a consultant did not necessarily align with the documented results in the first year report. Several reasons could account for this, including how the results are interpreted by participants who are involved with the project at different level.

My personal opinion is that content on, and the use of, mobile devices in the classroom will continue to grow at an accelerated pace. These devices may, in fact, finally lead to the realization of one-to-one computing over the next five years in the majority of US K-12 schools. Widespread one-to-one computing has been an elusive goal and still faces many challenges, but the integration of student and school-owned smart mobile devices into the classroom may remove one of the largest hurdles, putting a computing device in every student’s hands.

By Kirk Greiner, Sr. VP & GM, Netop

I just returned from the ISTE 2011 Leadership Symposium, which brought together more than 200 leading technology educators from all corners of the world. The focus of the symposium was scaling up technology for success in schools through the implementation of smart mobile devices and the leveraging of new paradigms such as social media, professional learning communities and the utilization of student experts to complement the teacher’s role in the classroom. The symposium started with an exceptional keynote by technology integration specialist, Kevin Honeycutt of the Educational Services & Staff Development Association of Central Kansas (ESSDACK). Honeycutt talked about the need to guide students in the appropriate use of technology and social media rather than restricting access. After the keynote, five breakout sessions were conducted discussing, students as experts, mobile devices in the classroom, social media in the classroom, mobile apps, and professional learning communities. The attendees were asked to attend three sessions and then pick one in which they would conduct an interactive discussion on real-world issues relating to that specific topic.

To learn more about each of these discussion topics, visit http://leadershipsymposium2011.iste.wikispaces.net.

My overall impression is that smart mobile devices and social media are going to very quickly become cornerstones in the use of technology in the classroom. Two main challenges for these technologies will be overcoming the negative biases toward social media by school administrators and teachers, and finding meaningful ways to integrate the ubiquitous mobile devices that students already bring to school into the actual learning environment. Mobile devices and social media are not only here to stay, their use will continue to accelerate and our education system must embrace these new paradigms or risk the possibility of becoming irrelevant in the minds of today’s students.

While reading a lot of other blogs & Twitter, I’ve found all sorts of best-of-2010 lists, tips & random bits that I’ve enjoyed. I’ve picked some of my favorites to share with you:

From Free Technology for Teachers,  I found 131 tips for new teachers

While perusing Twitter, I came across The Daily Riff’s post on 21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020

Also from Twitter, I found @ShellTerrell’s  Teacher Reboot Camp blog on the 14 Apps That Should Accompany You to the Next Conference

The Ecology of Education cites a study that shows teachers simply giving students verbal praise & acknowledgement of effort increased performance by 30%. Incredible!

And we’ll end with one of my favorites, the Power of Positivity: The Friday 5 from the Connected Principals blog. I love this – what a great way to build rapport & community within your school.

Have a wonderful last couple days of 2010!

I’ve been hearing more and more about the ‘inverted classroom’ or the ‘classroom flip’. If you haven’t seen it discussed, it’s the concept of taking what is usually done inside of the classroom (lectures and static materials) and moving them outside of the classroom. Then vise versa, moving the actual hands-on work, projects and problem-solving into classroom time.

The inverted classroom concept is not new, it was presented as a paper by professors Lage, Platt and Treglia as far back as 2000. And at first, it was mostly colleges that were discussing and piloting the idea. But the explosion of technology in the last few years has given high school students much more access to media content when not in class, and now some high schools are starting to take notice of this concept.

It works like this: The teacher records a lecture for the class or solves a problem using a web cam or screen capture technology and posts this content for viewing outside of class on a service like YouTube, Google or the school’s system for media sharing. The student is responsible for viewing this content in order to be prepared for class. When students get to the classroom, the time is spent doing hands-on work, projects and interaction. One of the ideas is that students are already consuming media outside of the classroom and passive consumption of information is already part of their evening patterns – whereas projects and problem solving may be better accomplished with the energy of other students around and the resource of the instructor present.

Some people view this movement as ‘anti-technology’ movement but I don’t see it that way at all. I think that classroom management software fits into the inverted classroom model because one of the primary benefits of using it is to increase direct interaction with students. The ability to use computers effectively while accomplishing teaching goals instead of making computers being a barrier between the student and the teacher, or a distraction, is the only reason to even have classroom management software.

Some examples:

• You are giving your students class time to accomplish projects that involve media production, Photoshop, Illustrator or web site development. Being able to show complicated software settings deep within an application is best done directly on the student’s screen so they can see the detail of where you are at in the menus. Classroom management software lets you send a quick screen share to the entire class to show them exactly where to navigate.
• You are working in CAD or another design application and a student has come up with a innovative idea. You can quickly share it with the class by showing the student’s screen to everyone as an example of how to move forward on their own projects.
• A student watches your lesson the night before and then finds a great web site that they think will help everyone understand the lesson better. Instantly send out the link to every computer in the classroom so other students have a fast way to refer to the information.

We will be watching for more information on this trend and we’ll let you know if we think of other things that we find interesting about it.

Here are some links about  inverted or flipped classrooms:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/7996379/Daniel-Pinks-Think-Tank-Flip-thinking-the-new-buzz-word-sweeping-the-US.html

http://21k12blog.net/2010/10/13/advancing-upon-reverse-instruction-dan-pink-and-the-fisch-flip/

http://www.hg2s.com/blog/tag/inverted-classroom/