Just a Short Jaunt to the Dojo

This is just a Short Jaunt TechXcursion into the mysterious world of the ninja.  At the Learning 2.012 conference last year in Beijing (back at my old school, the Western Academy of Beijing, so I had to make the long trip from Europe ;-) Jeff Utecht demonstrated the Google Apps Ninja Program that he developed based on the official Google Apps Certification program.  I had met Jeff before, in my previous days working at WAB, and his presentation of the Ninja program intrigued me.  He originally developed the program at the International School of Bangkok and has since released it for any school to implement for free.

As you can tell by the name of the program, Jeff has branded it and made it for student consumption.  There are online quizzes and ninja belt levels to work through, as students (and faculty) work through the different belts on their way to becoming a Ninja Master.  I have implemented and launched the program here at ASW, but I have to say that it was no small feat.  It is a huge job!  As another blogger mentions here, it has taken me numerous hours to take the Ninja materials and fashion it into a workable program at my school.  Updating and checking all of the quizzes was a big job, and I took my cues from the materials and logos to make it a little campy as well.  Do you understand, Grasshopper?  In building the program for my school, I also took the opportunity to reorganize the program into 5 Disciplines corresponding to the different quizzes that are available - Search, Communication (Gmail), Organization (Calendar), Collaboration (Docs/Drive) and Contribution (Sites).

I took a slightly different path for my implementation, as my school uses both Google Apps and Moodle as our primary learning platforms, so I built our Ninja Dojo in Moodle along with placing all of the associated materials in Google Apps.  This particular Moodle course is not currently setup for Guests, so I cannot provide you with a link into it here. So you will just have to be content with the screenshot above and the other links at the top of this post.  However, I will say that I have put myself through the entire program (which makes me Grand Master Kwan) as a test of all of the materials, belt tests and processes for grading the quizzes through Flubaroo . . . it is challenging and fun, and there is a lot to learn for staff and students alike.  I have pushed this out directly to a few faculty members who wanted to learn more about Google Apps this year, and have done a soft-launch with the HS student body . . . a few have signed up already so it's gaining some traction.  The other angle that I am playing with this is to turn it into a CAS service project for students, where the idea is to become a Google Apps Ninja Master Sensei after completing all of the belts . . . sounds cheesy, but it might just work.  I have already created a student tech help group in the HS which I have named the AppleCorps to help with in class support for our new Mac 1:1 laptop program, so why not try to build a similar student program for Google Apps?  Have a look at the Ninja Program, and if your school uses Google Apps for Education then you might want to start a dojo of your own.

Do you think becoming a Google Apps Ninja Master can change your Computing Karma?  Have you started a dojo in your school?  What have been the challenges and successes?

Six Months into a TechXcursion to the MacWorld - Part 1

We are now just past halfway through our first year of a platform change for our 1:1 laptop program in the HS - this blog entry contains my thoughts and reflections on the change of platform, how the process has gone, and where we are now in the world of Macs.

A Short History Lesson - Origins of the ASW 1:1 Laptop Program

I think a little history lesson is needed, to get started - going back to the beginning. The American School of Warsaw has had a PC-based laptop program for about 7-8 years now. It started in the MS and then spread to G5 in the ES, before moving up into the HS the year before I came to Poland. As there were some connections between the school and a US-based PC manufacturer, the 1:1 laptop program was launched with PC laptops in the MS. By the time I arrived here, the HS had evolved into a Tablet-PC laptop program. Coming as an Apple Distinguished Educator from the oldest MacSchool in China, I was a little concerned about the laptop program that I was inheriting, but was encouraged by the fact that the school had Tablet-PCs rather than regular PC laptops.

All of my previous schools have either been PC-based or multi-platform, so working in a PC environment was not an issue. I was actually quite excited to be going into a Tablet-PC program as that was new for me, and provided a different dynamic in the classroom - namely a stylus/pen to go with each machine. The school had already gone down the road of implementing a school-owned model for the laptop program, due to the significant cost of the Tablet-PCs, which was also new for me. The reality of the program that I walked into though, was far from sparkling.

There were a number of factors which led me to explore the possibility of changing platforms for the school, away from the existing Tablet-PC model. Without getting into all of the nitty-gritty details, the main factors at the time were:

1) The Tablet-PC program was not introduced into the HS with enough support and training for the faculty, or any lead time to put the new machines into the hands of the teachers before giving them to the student body. It is crucial when introducing a laptop program into a school to ensure that the faculty are comfortable with the machines, thoroughly trained, and very well supported as they adapt to a huge paradigm shift in their day-to-day pedagogy. Needless to say, the first year of the laptop program (before I came here) was pretty rocky for the faculty. A common refrain that I heard from teachers was that the "tablets were dumped on us", and that they had no input in the process or decision to bring in the laptop program.  Part of the fallout of this was that the 1:1 program was faltering and sporadic when I came onboard, and hardly anyone was using any of the tablet features of the machines.

2) The Tablet-PCs were very expensive to buy and support. As a result of their huge price-tag (over $2000 per machine, times by over 300 faculty+students), the program was brought in as a school-owned model with a 4-year replacement cycle. This initial proposal must have sounded good on paper, but was not sustainable - not even for the first few years.  The 4-year program was simply too long for a school-owned model - it was apparent after the first year that the machines would not last three more years of heavy usage in student hands.

3) The Tablet-PCs were very fragile and expensive to repair. Combined with the school-owned model where there was very little sense of ownership amongst the student body, and with only a 3 year warranty/care agreement in place, this created a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Machines were always getting broken, were taking a long time to be repaired, and students had no ownership or sense of responsibility for their machines. The school started the program in more of a library mode - students would get a machine kind of like taking a book out of the library, use/read it, and return it when you are done in whatever condition - good, bad, or ugly. Charging students for damage or loss of their machines was an unpopular policy that I introduced in my first year here, but it has certainly helped to change the uncaring attitude of the student body towards the machines. A further extension to the model that I introduced at the same time was to have each machine assigned to a student so that it stays with them until they leave the school, graduate or the machine gets replaced, to create a greater sense of ownership. Even so, these changes did not completely solve the problem - they merely addressed some of the symptoms with bandaids over the gapping holes in the management of the program.  In short, we had a laptop program populated with machines that didn't work or were frequently broken.

4) The Tablet-PCs that we had were underpowered and frequently crashed/failed. Fully 2/3 of the student machines were DELL XTs (the first model of Tablet-PC that they produced) which have numerous well documented problems, incompatibilities and design flaws, all of which were painfully evident every day when placed in the hands of students. They simply did not work. Combined with the frequent freezing/crashing that occurred when students tried to use the stylus for inking on documents, these machines were reduced to being very expensive, fragile, underpowered and sickly laptops.

As last year was the 4th of the HS laptop program working with these Tablet-PCs, we were due for a refresh for the beginning of this school year. The shortcomings of the laptop program that I inherited were apparent, so I began working on our laptop program refresh one-and-a-half years in advance. If the refresh was going to include a platform change, I knew that we would need a lot of lead time - in fact, it wasn't enough!

Changing Platforms - Reflections on the Process 

With a complete refresh of our HS laptop program coming in August 2012, I set about working on the question of platform as early as I could. Even though I started this process in the spring of 2011 (almost a year-and-a-half in advance) it turned out to be not enough lead time. The first order of business was to form a technology committee, the likes of which had never been seen in the school before, which I dubbed the HS Tech Collective. Note that I was not using "collective" as a reference to communism or the Soviet organization of work units. Rather, it was a term that was used at my previous international school which I always liked in a geeky, trekkie sort of way, which I adopted. I have always liked branding and the concept of putting an identifying mark on things, and by calling it the Tech Collective I could use it in many different ways. For example, our first order of business was to make some "collective" decisions for the HS . . .

Key words from our HS Technology Vision Statement research

I sought to have representation on the Tech Collective from each of the departments in the HS, as well as for Technology and the Library. In the few remaining months of the school year we set about working on two goals to complete before the end of the school year: writing a Vision Statement for technology in the HS, and to start exploring what the faculty wanted from the 1:1 laptop program in the future. There has never been a Vision statement for technology written specifically for the HS, and working through this process really brought the Collective together through a collaborative research and writing project. The question of what the faculty wanted from the laptop program had never been asked before, so this was the logical next step after the Vision Statement was completed.

With the first goal completed, we approached the laptop refresh question by asking teachers "what do they want to do with technology to enhance teaching and learning?" As our tech director puts it, the question focussed on the verbs rather than the nouns - what the physical machine was going to be was left out of the discussion. Feedback was gathered from all of the departments, which was sifted through, organized, summarized and analyzed by the Tech Collective. Surprisingly, this stage of the process was not as time consuming or as onerous as you might think. The primary outcomes from this research was as you might expect: that the faculty wanted to engage students with more multimedia projects and video, to communicate and collaborate more within the school and with the wider world community, to move students into being digital producers rather than consumers, and to better integrate technology into their classrooms to enhance teaching and learning. The one message that stood out however, was that everyone wanted "machines that just work".  I took this as a clear message of pushback about the failings of the existing Tablet-PC program.

From there, the discussion turned towards the nouns - what kind of machine do we want which will fulfill the identified needs of the faculty? Four options were tabled for consideration and investigation: Tablet-PCs (as a continuation of the existing program); PC laptops (which was essentially what the existing program had devolved into being); Mac laptops (which were on the edge of the picture due to questions about servicing and support in Poland); and finally iPads (which were quickly growing in popularity for school programs). The Tech Collective's initial questions focused on funding for the refresh and how much latitude we would have in this decision. The answer to the budget question immediately took Tablet-PCs off of the table, due to their high price point and our history of dysfunctional and fragile machines in the school. With the question of latitude, we were assured that whatever decision we made was for education reasons and would not be reversed by administration. We were now in a place where we could explore and investigate what types of nouns would best meet our needs as a school, as a faculty and as a student body.

The question of using iPads for our 1:1 laptop program was explored in depth, as this was a very enticing possibility for the school. Many international schools, as well as ones back at home have been investing heavily in iPad programs, so there was a lot of buzz on this topic. As an Apple Distinguished Educator, a lot of the buzz in the Apple Education world was clearly centred on iPads in the classroom, so this option deserved its due attention. Now remember, we were researching this fully two years ago from the writing of this post, and the iPad world has significantly matured since then. Two years ago, it was readily apparent that iPads would be very sexy and cutting edge to bring into the school, but would not fulfill many of the requirements that the faculty had already identified about what the machines needed to be able to do. In terms of supporting our existing programs and courses, integrating and meshing with other existing technologies that were already in the school, and meeting the basic computing needs of the student body and faculty, the Tech Collective regretfully took iPads off of the table. If the same conversation, research and investigation were conducted today, the outcome might be entirely different. Now, we were down to the age-old question of Mac vs PC?

To complete the process as objectively as possible, we set about answering this question by matching up Macs vs PCs across each of the items that the faculty had already identified for what they wanted to do with technology. By no means was changing to Macs a foregone conclusion - there were a number of roadblocks and obstacles in the way, many of which stemmed from having a PC-based program for many years in the school. Rather than getting bogged down in the semantics of one machine has this piece of software or can do "this" while the other does not, we worked with broader generalities such as video editing capabilities, battery life, initial cost, cost of repairs and ease of use. All of this was complicated by the fact that not everyone on the Collective had previous experience with Macs, so they found it difficult to make objective decisions on each item. In the end, it was clear from our research and data that Macs fulfilled more of the wants and needs of the faculty, and would be the machines "that just work" that we were looking for. As such, the Tech Collective made the recommendation to the Tech Director and Senior Administration to change platforms, which was later approved and supported by the faculty as a whole. PCs have long been the machine of choice in this school, so our recommendation was immediately followed with a detailed feasibility study which delved down into specific software titles that would need to be replaced or purchased, implications for our network and servers, and training that faculty and technicians would have to undergo in order to be successful. But a firm decision to change platforms had been made which we were going to move forward with, and what a long and arduous trip it has been. Keep reading for Part 2 of this TechXcursion to the MacWorld, for how our platform change was raised from the dead - twice, how our eventual rollout went earlier this year, the training and support for the faculty and students that has been ongoing, and to look at where we are now, half a year into our great leap forward.

Writing Code - Is it just for us geeks?

Check out this video from code.org which promotes schools to implement more computer science and programming programs in schools for all grade levels - complete with a number of the biggest geeks out there. STEM is a current hot topic, especially in the American school system, and the computer science community has been questioning why CS has been left out of STEM, when such a huge percentage of jobs that are in demand are directly related to computer programming? The video highlights this issue and seeks to change people's perceptions of computer programming and how/where/when it is taught in school. Have a watch . . .

As a computer science teacher for many years, who has started or developed CS programs at every school that I have worked at, I applaud the creation of this video and what code.org is trying to do. I have always told my CS students that it did not matter if they had other interests and strengths, that studying programming was still a great fit for them. In fact, I actively encouraged my students to try and find that niche field which combined computer programming with some other passion or area of interest, and that the career/job/area of research would find them in the end. I remember one student who combined her artistic talents with her programming ability, and went into the gaming industry as a designer. Another student of mine got interested in programming after doing an introductory course where we explored programming through robotics and 3D animation. She went on to study Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at MIT - I just wonder if she found a way combine her musical talents with her studies as well?

Back when I was working in Canada, I remember sending a student on a work experience placement which turned into a summer dream job for him. You see, I had this student in a beginner programming class and he also played ball hockey with us every week as one of our regular goalies. He had a love for hockey, but he was too small in stature to make it onto a junior team, so he was stuck playing ball hockey at school with friends (and teachers like me). Imagine his delight when I found him a work experience placement at EA Sports, which he of course loved. Imagine my surprise when I returned to school after the summer to find out that he got called back for a summer job at EA Sports working with John Vanbiesbrouck (a famous NHL goalie) doing motion capture for the latest EA Sports NHL Hockey edition. What a fabulous intersection of two passions, to find at the age of 16!? This is really what it is all about!

Throughout my 24-year teaching career (to date ;-), I have always taught programming and computer science in one way or another, except for now. This is partially due to my current position as a technology coach which means that I no longer have specific classes to teach, but it also has to do with the state of affairs with computer science curriculums that are being taught. More specifically, the changes that have been made to the IB Diploma Computer Science program. Stepping back for a moment, over my career I have taught CS within the Canadian system (BC provincial curriculum), American system, Advanced Placement program, IGCSE program and the International Baccalaureate (IB MYP and Diploma) program. I have also been an examiner for the AP, IGCSE and IB DP Computer Science programs as well. With so many years invested in teaching CS, stepping away from it was not an easy thing to do and I am still looking for ways to bring some programming back into the school as there are still some students who want it. But the recent changes that have been made to the IB DP CS program are such that my current school could not offer it any longer, and we have phased it out. Very briefly, it is my understanding that the IB sought to try and increase enrollment in their CS courses by changing the curriculum to make it accessible to more students, and to increase the number of potential teachers that could offer the course. But I think this plan has been misguided as much of the old programming curriculum has been removed from the course, and it has been changed to be an "experimental" course which comes with a move to the Sciences group in the IB DP organization. I think that the Science departments of international schools will not accept another course into their group as it waters down the number of students who take the mainstream big-3 sciences. Thus, overall enrollment in IB DP CS will likely decrease as even fewer schools offer the course at all. What a shame if this happens, but we will see with time.

Which leaves me with how to tap into the energy and excitement of teaching programming to students, writing code with students, and bringing CS back into the school in some way. Perhaps a club or elective course offering, or a program such as is on offer from code.org might do the trick. Writing code certainly is not for everyone, and not everyone will be good at it. It's just that most students have not had an opportunity to really explore programming in a meaningful and constructive way - there are many potential programmers out there that don't even know what they are missing. Remember that former student who went to MIT? She had no plans on taking Computer Science until she took a course with me - the challenge of programming really spoke to her inner love for solving problems and she had no idea that coding would have so much appeal. Most CS geeks got into programming long before their high school days.

What's happening with CS at your school? Is CS growing/shrinking/holding its own? Do you have a CS program in place, or has it been phased out? And if you offer the new IB DP CS course, what do you think about it?