When I was in grade school, I only heard about timelines in history classes. Recently, though, it seems timelines (and timeline creation tools) have been popping up in every grade level and classroom. These aren’t your mama’s timelines — and they’re not just for history anymore.

Students can timeline the steps in a math problem, the process of a science project, and the events in a novel. I taught the concept of timelines by having students create one of their lives. Then, we’d work as a class to create a timeline of the school year, adding to it each month.

We also tried to build a single timeline that included every historical fact we learned in any subject throughout the year. The idea was that we’d add to it as we learned more. I draped strips of brown paper in a halo around the walls of my classroom. We did a pretty good job of adding to it for a few months, but inevitably we ran out of room or realized we hadn’t left enough space for the 18th century.

Which is one reason web 2.0 timeline tools are so great – technology does away with those logistical space issues. You can include entire articles, websites, videos, and photos on each point, but the timeline can still fit on your computer screen.

Lately, I’ve heard of half a dozen FREE internet-based timelining tools. So I decided to try them all out. They’re all useful, but they’re not all useful for everyone. Some are great for older students, who need to create more in-depth timelines. Others are easy-to-use even for younger kids. Some allow students to fill out a form and have the site create the actual timeline, while others require students to use their own graphic design skills.

Below, I describe what I found and include samples of each tool. If you’ve got any others to add, please leave a comment!

Capzles

Ease of Use: Advanced
Good for: class-wide projects; students creating their own content
Features: lots of customization; can upload various filetypes
Glitches: doesn’t look like traditional timeline; users must be 13 or older
Link: http://www.capzles.com
Sample: Click the sound icon, to the right of the controls, to hear the soundtrack. Click the ‘capzles’ logo in the bottom left corner to open the timeline on the Capzles site. There, you can click on an image and then click “show details” for more information (the “show details” link doesn’t work on the embedded sample).

My friend and former partner teacher Sarah Waling recently sent me a link to Capzles, which was actually the impetus for this blog post. It definitely takes timelines to whole new level. Of all the tools I looked at, Capzles looks the least like a timeline. And that’s by design — it’s marketed more as a collaborative, social, digital storytelling tool. That’s what makes it so robust, but also what makes it imperfect for many classroom settings.

First, the good. Capzles is definitely in-depth. Users can upload various files (PowerPoint, images, Word files, videos, etc.) directly from their computer to accompany each bullet on their timeline. In fact, you can group multiple files together, so they’ll be displayed as “stacks.” You can also type directly into the timeline using the “blog entry” feature. Users also have multiple customization options, like changing the font, adding a location tag, and even adding a soundtrack to your timeline.

As with all robust tech tools, though, added customization sacrifices ease-of-use. Of all the timelining tools, Capzles took me the longest to use, but partly that was because it’s not really ideal for a traditional timeline. To create the above timeline, I tested the various types of input Capzles allows. I liked the blog entry for input, but then the thumbnail displayed on the timeline was just a default ugly image icon that had nothing to do with the event. I thought about the stack, but then users see two thumbnails and have to click on the one they want. I liked the main file upload for showing a photo and description, but I needed to use stack to add videos. In the end, I decided to use both the upload and stack options because of the ugly thumbnail for the blog input, but that meant I had to download and upload all the images and videos from my computer – I couldn’t just embed them. That also meant I had to find a place to paste the original link, for due credit.

There were a few other glitches in terms of using Capzles to create traditional timelines: things aren’t scaled to show how close or far apart they happened. And by default, the site tags events with the date you created them, so you have to change them to the date they happened, but you need the FULL date, not just the year or this won’t work (in the above sample, I used January 1 if I didn’t know exact date). I also decided to include the date in the title to make it resemble a true timeline.

And because it’s a social networking tool, things are set to ‘private’ by default, so you have to set them to public for others to view. (To do this, you have to click ‘edit’ after loading each file.)

Still, I definitely see potential for using Capzles in the classroom for some projects. It could be really good for a class-wide or long-term project, where every student is adding a lot of files/details to a single event. For example, a friend suggested using it in an AP history class, where each student is responsible for a single event on a class-wide timeline. The work they put into that single event is equivalent to a research paper. It’s perfectly designed for students creating their own content (photos, Word documents, videos, etc.), so it would work great as a tool for students to track their progress on a project.

And I really like the soundtrack option (which offers an opportunity to discuss fair-use copyright laws). The following Capzle, on the financial meltdown, is a great example of using a soundtrack to help tell a historical story. Don’t forget to click the sound icon, to the right of the controls, to hear the music:

Dipity

Ease of Use: Intermediate
Good for: current events; collaborative projects
Features: robust; can collaborate; can add images, links and videos
Glitches: “featured” timelines aren’t always G-rated
Link: http://www.dipity.com
Sample:

For a long time, it seemed Dipity was the only name in the web 2.0 timeline world. I can see why — it’s got just about everything. Users have a virtually limitless amount of space to create multi-media timelines, where they can add images, links and videos. And because everything is embedded, you can click on a video or image to see the source directly. Users can also allow other users to edit a timeline, which is great for collaborative projects.

Dipity has been around for a while, so it’s perfected a lot of its timelining features. For example, if things overlap on a timeline, you can use user-friendly thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons to sort them by importance. This is very useful, although the site still will only display a maximum of four events on the same date (any more than that isn’t visible, unless you specify different times of day).

Like with Capzles, you can add “locations” – either place name or latitude/longitude — to events to see them on a map (only one location per event). Users can then interact with your presentation as a map, a list, a timeline, or a flipbook (though the map never fully worked for me). Anything created on Dipity can be marked as public or private, which is ideal for school kids who might be creating something like a timeline of their lives.

Like every website these days, Dipity has added some social networking features. Some of these can be useful in the classroom — you can “follow” timelines of interest so, for example, you’ll get notified if a timeline creator adds an event to their “Arab Spring” timeline. You can also “like” and “+1″ timelines.

The form to create Dipity timelines is fairly detailed, especially in comparison with some of the tools discussed below. But that allows users to do a bit more. For example, you can pull information directly from Twitter, Digg, and other sites by giving Dipity a hashtag to track. This can be great for current events — you could pull anything tagged as #2012election and create an instant timeline — but it’s also risky, as this will include ANYTHING with that hashtag, regardless of relevance or appropriateness.

In that same vein, Dipity is more of a public (than educational) site, so some of the featured timelines on the homepage might not always be G-rated.

In the end, I think Dipity is a great timelining tool for high school and some middle school students. It’s robust but not too difficult to use, so it’s a good tool for more in-depth projects. And with its ability to pull directly from Twitter, savvy teachers could use it to create current events timelines in a jiffy.

Prezi

Ease of Use: All levels (can be more or less complex, based on user)
Good for: teaching students how to lay out timelines
Features: my favorite tool; collaborate with other users; more layout control
Glitches: no location/map interface; can only embed YouTube videos; requires creating layout
Link: http://prezi.com
Sample:

You might be asking, “Isn’t Prezi a presentation tool?” You’d be right. But it just so happens to also offer a perfect interface for creating timelines. In fact, it’s generally my favorite timeline creation tool.

Just like Dipity and Capzles, Prezi allows for collaboration, so it’s a good group project tool. But unlike those other sites, Prezi requires users to create their timeline from scratch. While this can be time-consuming (it requires more than just filling out a form), it definitely helps students understand the overall concept of timelines. They’re forced to think about scale and layout. And unlike on paper, they have virtually infinite space to build their timeline.

And, by uploading images and embedding videos and links, they can make their timeline a multi-media one. Prezi automatically embeds YouTube videos, which is great if your school allows YouTube. If not, students can still embed videos, but they have to upload the films from their computer.

The main reason I name Prezi as my favorite is its versatility. No matter what topic you’re covering, whether kids are working alone or in groups, and no matter how proficient students are, Prezi will work. Students can make a Prezi timeline as in-depth or as simple as necessary — creating one in a few minutes or over several weeks. And the tool isn’t doing any thinking for them. Students have to decide the best way to communicate their timeline, which is a great opportunity to build higher level thinking skills.

TimeToast

Ease of Use: Beginner
Good for: quick, simple projects; younger students
Features: most basic of listed tools
Glitches: must upload images; can’t embed videos or locations; ads
Link: http://www.timetoast.com
Sample:

TimeToast is, by far, the most basic of all the timelining tools listed here. For each event, users simply write a title, write a caption, select a drop-down date, and optionally upload an image or add a link(s).

The beauty of TimeToast is definitely in its simplicity. And the site works well within that simplicity, even offering users two ways to view timelines: text view (table) and timeline view.

As with simple tools, most of the negatives related to TimeToast have to do with what it doesn’t do — users can’t embed videos; users can’t embed online images (you have to upload the images from your computer); users can’t just put the year — they have to put the exact full date; users can’t write descriptions longer than 500 characters; users can’t share their timelines unless they make them public to everyone.

For most short, simple timeline projects, none of that really matters. But teachers should be aware that TimeToast also displays advertisements. The site is educational-focused, so I’ve never seen any inappropriate ads, but it’s important to be aware that they’re there.

I could definitely see teachers using TimeToast with younger students, especially shortly after students first start building and reading timelines. It’s an easy-to-use tool for simple timelines.

xTimeline

Ease of Use: Beginner
Good for: simple projects; younger students; basic collaborative projects
Features: collaboration; create own url
Glitches: freezed up a few times; viewers’ interface not user-friendly
Link: http://www.xtimeline.com
Sample:

I found xTimeline on one of my favorite websites, Go To Web 2.0. (This site is an overwhelming list of virtually all web 2.0 sites on the internet, but it’s searchable, which makes it a bit more manageable.) Of all the timelining tools I tried out, this one gave me the most problems. A lot of that is because I couldn’t get it to display my timeline the way I thought it should.

That said, I did like the tool, especially in comparison with TimeToast, which is very similar. Like TimeToast, xTimeline is pretty easy-to-use and it targets the educational community. But its user interface is a bit cooler, and it offers a few more features. For example, users can embed or upload media (just one per event); users can add just the year OR the date and year OR a time span; users can create a customized url for their timeline; and users can upload or download events.

Like TimeToast, there are two viewing options for xTimelines — an event list or a timeline. And like some of the more robust tools, the site allows users to collaborate on a timeline and also offers some social networking features (comments, fans, etc.).

However, although I really liked the samples on xTimeline, I couldn’t figure out how to get my timeline to work like those. Specifically, I couldn’t get my descriptions to display on the main timeline — only on the event view. Overall this is a minor issue, but it definitely soured the tool for me, and I could see students getting frustrated.

Plus, some of the features were a bit glitchy. For example, it took a really long time to upload some of the media. Often, the entire timeline took quite a while to load. And, as some of you may notice above, the embed feature doesn’t always work properly.

If you can get xTimeline to work as it’s meant to, it could be a good solution for simple projects or even for group projects, especially in some of the lower grades. But with the glitches I experienced, I’d probably stick with TimeToast — at least for now.

Lesson Integration Ideas

Elementary Classrooms

Grade: 1-6
Subject: Science and English Language Arts
Objective: The student will be able to communicate the procedure of a science experiment.

When I taught 4th grade to mostly English language-learners, it was always difficult to get my students to write out the procedure of a science experiment, even right after they had completed it. We spent a lot of time learning to read and write directions in class, and a timelining tool could have helped with that process.

To start, a teacher can tell students they’re going to do an experiment as a class and record the steps. The teacher can take photos of the students completing each part of the experiment and then display them, out of order, on a projector. The teacher can then ask students to work as a class to organize the images and write step-by-step directions for what the class did in each step.

The teacher can use a simple timelining tool, like TimeToast, to record the students’ directions and can post each step with the corresponding image. Afterwards, students could work alone to complete a similar assignment (older students could create TimeToast timelines, while younger kids could emulate this in their notebooks).

Middle School Classrooms

Grade: 4-8
Subject: All subjects using project-based learning
Objective: The student will be able to organize  and track all the pieces of a long-term project.

I work with a lot of middle and high school teachers who utilize Project-Based Learning in their classrooms. There’s a great benefit to PBL — students are engaged, motivated and learn a ton of content. On top of that, though, students also learn important soft skills, like working in a group and time management.

Timelines can be a great help when it comes to those soft skills. Students can use programs like Capzles to plan out their projects — what date they’ll finish their abstract, when they’ll complete their research, etc. As students complete various tasks, they can upload the finished product directly to the timeline (or add a link to their work). Then, everything is in one place and, if it’s a group project, group members can divide the work and then access one another’s completed products.

High School Classrooms

Grade: 9-12
Subject: History
Objective: The student will be able to research and communicate important events in history.

No matter what your class is studying — European history, American history, world history — you can use a digital timeline to help your students jigsaw information. Take a look at a chapter, unit or even entire year of study, and separate the content by major events or time periods. Have students sign up for one of the events. Then, have your class create a collaborative Capzle. Each student is responsible for adding his/her event, with relevant links and information, to the timeline.

If students make mistakes or omissions, you can have them correct the errors themselves. When it’s finished, the entire class can use the timeline as a study guide for a summative exam.

Yesterday, my boss, Rita, told me about a new program through Comcast. It sounds remarkable — Comcast is offering internet service, at just $9.95 a month, to any household with a child in the free lunch program. Of course, the household must be in an area where Comcast has service. (Call 1-866-928-9135 to find out if Comcast services your area.)

Comcast also promises NOT to increase the monthly fee and NOT to charge for any equipment rental — just the monthly rate of $9.95 +tax. The program, called “Internet Essentials,” also offers participants a low-cost $150 computer and FREE internet training. For more information, check out http://internetessentials.com. You can also get brochures and posters advertising the program, as well as teacher-specific information, by registering at http://www.internetessentialspartner.com/Login.aspx.

One of the largest economic divides in the 21st century is access to the internet, and this program could really put a dent in that problem.

Of course, most people immediately ask, “Why is Comcast doing this?” There are a lot of reasons this program will benefit Comcast as a business — first off, it’s great marketing that paints Comcast in a very positive light. And a marketing strategy like this could help get Comcast into new areas. Also, much like Apple’s push into schools, Comcast could be creating lifelong brand loyalists.

No matter the reasons, I’m extremely excited that many of our students will now finally be able to get access at home. I’m rarely one to advertise corporations, but we’re sending brochures about the program home with all of our high school students today.

Digital storytelling is an ed tech buzz word that’s thrown around a lot. When I first heard it, digital storytelling pretty much referred to podcasts and short films. And, to a certain extent, it still does. But podcasting and film-making no longer require massive amounts of hardware and software, like iMovie or Garageband. Today, anyone with a computer and an internet connection can easily create digital stories.

I’ve highlighted some of my favorite storytelling tools in the past — websites like Go!Animate and xtranormal. But recently, I’ve been working with PreK-2 teachers, many of whom are newcomers to the ed tech world. So I’ve been searching for digital storytelling tools that are easier to use, both for teachers and for pre-literate students. And I’ve found some great ones.

Depending on the age and tech experience of your students, some of them might be able to use these tools with little or no adult help. But with younger kids (PreK-1), you might need to offer support. You can make the following tools centers in your classroom, where a teacher, aide, or parent volunteer works one-on-one to help students create digital stories. Better yet, you can partner with a class of older students, pairing each of your students with an older child to help them. The older students can work with your kids all at once so, by the end of a 45-minute lesson, every child has a completed digital story.

Little Bird Tales

Tool: Little Bird Tales
Ease of Use: Beginner
Grade levels: PreK and up

Little Bird Tales has quickly become my new favorite web 2.0 tool, mostly because it’s easy to create a high-quality product. The web site allows users to create podcasts with images — basically, narrated slideshows — in just three steps:

1. Users can upload photos to their Bird Tale or they can use an embedded drawing tool to draw images. Older students can add text to their images.
2. Users then record narration to go with each image.
3. Finally, users share their Bird Tales, by sending a URL via e-mail.

The finished product looks something like this:

Little Bird Tales’ simple interface makes it perfect for younger students or tech beginners. But older students can create Bird Tales, too (once they get over the website’s somewhat babyish name). Teachers can easily create a FREE account and begin creating tales. They can have all their students create tales under a single account, but the site also allows teachers to create separate FREE accounts for each student. These accounts are always connected to the teachers’ account, and the website is built to ensure student privacy since so many younger kids use it.

The website asks users to create and use a “school code” so teachers and students from the same school can be grouped together. Teachers can’t access Bird Tales from another class unless it’s been shared with them, but it allows teachers to see who else in their school is using the tool and how often. This is helpful in terms of finding on-site teachers who can offer support.

UPDATE: For step-by-step directions on getting started with Little Bird Tales, check out my guest post on the Teacher Challenge blog.

UJAM

Tool: UJAM
Ease of Use: Beginner – Intermediate
Grade levels: 1st and up

Technically, UJAM is a music creation tool. And it’s actually a pretty good one. After starting an account, a user can record themselves singing or playing an instrument. Then, with the click of a button, the website creates a full soundtrack to accompany what the user recorded. The user can choose a music “style” (i.e., 80s rock, reggae, game music) to specify what type of soundtrack will accompany their recording.

When I show this tool to teachers, though, I demo it not as a music creation tool but as a podcast creation tool. At its most basic level, students can create podcasts in just 3 steps:

1. Students record their voice reading a poem, personal narrative, or other piece they wrote.
2. Then, they choose a “style” that fits the mood of that piece (students won’t know what a lot of the styles are, so they’ll often try out several of them before they find one that works).
3. Finally, they download an mp3 of their completed recording.

In the end, this creates a musically accompanied podcast, similar to this poetry podcast by 4th-grader Sylvia. This helps students learn to identify and communicate the mood of their writing. UJAM allows users to save their work and come back to it and, when they’re done, to download an mp3 of the track they create. One caveat: with UJAM, sometimes students’ recorded voices are overpowered by the music tracks, so it’s important to have students speak loudly when they record (using an external computer microphone helps with this).

That’s the ‘beginner’ use of UJAM. The reason I rated the site as “Beginner – Intermediate” is that UJAM has a ton of options. More advanced users can use drop-down menus to customize the accompanying music, even changing specific chords. This is great for music teachers because it’s a simple, leveled interface for music composition. Advanced students can adjust more options, while beginning students can focus on just a few.

This tutorial shows all of UJAM’s capabilities. (Beginning users should stop after 0:43 — more advanced options are described after this.)

Teachers can have all students use their account, can create separate accounts for each student, or can have students create their own accounts. UJAM requires a unique e-mail address to start an account and doesn’t have accounts specifically for students, but all accounts are FREE.

Blabberize

Tool: Blabberize
Ease of Use: Beginner
Grade levels: PreK and up

I’ve highlighted Blabberize a few times in the past, but I also wanted to include it here because it definitely is a tool fit for beginners. It’s especially good for students researching a specific animal or historic figure. Here’s how it works:

1. Students upload a picture of their topic (or copy and paste the URL of an image).
2. They use their mouse to outline the mouth in the image.
3. They record a first-person account of that animal or person.
4. They get a URL of their blabber, which they can share with others.

Here’s a sample student blabber, created to explain the water cycle from the viewpoint of a raindrop:

Teachers can create a single FREE Blabberize account and have all their students use it, can create individual accounts for students, or can have their students create their own accounts. (Blabberize doesn’t specifically designate student accounts.)

Voicethread

Tool: Voicethread
Ease of Use: Beginner
Grade levels: Kinder and up

I know a ton of teachers who rave about Voicethread, specifically for its ease of use. I’ve never used Voicethread in the classroom but, with such incredible reviews, I couldn’t leave it out of this post. Voicethread is one of the most dynamic easy-to-use tools I’ve seen — it’s used in Kinder classes, in college courses, and in everything in between. Here’s how it works:

1. A user uploads an image, file, or video.
2. Other users can add comments to this file, by either recording from a webcam, recording from a mic, typing in some text, OR uploading a file. As users comment, they can annotate over the common file. Numerous users can add comments to the same file.

If your students have Internet access at home, Voicethread is a great tool to use for homework assignments. (This is especially true for younger students, who can work with their parents to create Voicethreads.) For example, if you’re learning about measurement in a PreK class, you can upload a photo of a table. Have every student measure their own table at home (using their hands and their parents’ hands). Then, each student can record a comment on the image of the table you uploaded. Their comment can be a recording of their voice explaining what they did at home and what they learned.

Anyone can get a single FREE voicethread account. So you can create one as a teacher and create similar FREE accounts for your students. Teachers can get more features for a one-time $10 fee or a classroom account (where you can monitor all your students) for $60 per year.

Lesson Integration Ideas

Elementary Classrooms

Grade: PreK-3
Subject: Science
Objective: The student will be able to design an experiment to test an original question AND will be able to communicate the results.

Starting in pre-school, students can begin to design and test their own simple science experiments. In your schoolyard, have your students sit around a tree, a garden, or a patch of grass. Give them hand lenses. Have them record what they see and what they wonder in their science notebooks (for pre-literate students, these notes will be illustrations).

After the students have made several observations, go back into class and discuss what they saw and what they wondered about. Write down their “I wonder” questions on sentence strips. In the next lesson, sort the questions into testable and untestable questions (with younger students, you may have to lead the sorting but older kids can begin to sort questions alone). After the sorting, have students choose a testable question to test. For example, “how long will it take a snail to walk across my desk?” or “do all flowers have the same number of petals?”

Allow students to test their questions. During the testing, have students use old, donated cell phones (without SIM cards or service plans) to take photos. When they’re done, have students report what they did and what they learned by creating a Little Bird Tale. They can upload the photos they took, take photos of their illustrations to upload, or create new illustrations using the website. Then, they can record their voice narrating each photo. Older students can add text to accompany their photos.

Middle School Classrooms

Grade: 4-8
Subject: English Language Arts
Objective: The student will be able to identify and communicate the mood of an original writing piece.

After a poetry or personal narrative unit, have students record their original poems or portions of their narratives on UJAM. Allow them to select a ‘style’ that appropriately conveys the mood of their piece. After they perfect their piece, have them download the mp3.

Assign one student as the MC. Have him/her record introductions for each piece. Then, burn all the completed mp3s, in order with the proper introductions, onto a CD. You can give the CD to students at the end of the school year or sell it for a fund-raiser.

High School Classrooms

Grade: 9-12
Subject: Music
Objective: The student will be able to compose an original piece of music.

Depending on students’ levels and your objectives, have students use UJAM to record themselves singing an original song or playing an original piece on an instrument. Have them use the site’s options to turn their single track into a full-blown arrangement. Depending on your expectations, give students specific tasks, i.e., they must create a customized ‘style’ for their piece OR they must edit the chords of at least one track.

When all students have completed a piece, collect their mp3s and create an original CD to sell as a fund-raiser.

I first tried Skype about five years ago and, immediately, I began brainstorming ideas for using the FREE video chatting tool in my classroom. I wasn’t alone — thousands of teachers across the globe have used Skype to connect their classrooms to the world. But it could be hard work — teachers had to think about the best ways to use Skype in their classroom, and then seek appropriate Skypers to connect with. Message boards on teacher sites like Classroom 2.0 were often buzzing with requests for Skype buddies.

Now, Skype has made teachers’ jobs much easier. After several months of beta testing, the company just released Skype in the Classroom, an education version of its site specifically targeting teachers.

If you’re unfamilar with Skype, read on. If you’ve got some experience, skip to the next section, titled, “Effective Classroom Skyping.”

What’s a Skype and How Do I Get One?

Skype is FREE software that allows you to make audio or video calls to any other person in the world (who also has Skype). My mom now has dinner with grandchildren who live 500 miles away, thanks to Skype.

To use Skype, all you need to do is start an account and download the software to your computer (or get the Skype app on your smart phone).

After that, you can make a basic audio call:

Making a video call follows a similar process:

Skype audio and video calls are completely FREE, but you can get added features (like group conference calls) for a fee. I’ve never known anyone who used the fee-based Skype features — for most teachers, the FREE features are all you really need.

Effective Classroom Skyping

Teachers have been using Skype in the classroom for years. But that doesn’t mean they always use it effectively. Often teachers will Skype with a single author or expert — the guest’s video projected onto a screen in front of the entire class, with students raising their hands to ask questions. In some circumstances, this format can be really powerful. For example, the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles has a program that brings Holocaust survivors to classrooms around the world via Skype. However, this is still basically a lecture and, for most lessons, it’s not the best way to teach. One teacher at my school volunteered with EarthWatch for several weeks during the school year. She was sent to Canada, where she worked with scientists to complete climate change research. During that time, she blogged about what she was doing and regularly Skyped with her 4th-grade classes back in Phoenix. While the students really enjoyed the Skype calls for the first couple of minutes, it was difficult to keep their attention for extended periods of time. And, of course, since the teacher wasn’t in the same room, it was difficult for her to fully interact with the entire class.

So what are better ways to use Skype? One of the best things about 21st century technology is that, in many cases, teachers have access to one computer for every student (or every pair of students). This allows for much more individualized learning. Even if you only have access to one or two computers, you can have students rotate through them throughout class to chat with Skype buddies — it just takes a little more planning.

Once you figure out the logistics, you can head to Skype in the Classroom to get started. You can look at the listed ‘projects’ to answer a teacher’s request for a partner class. Or you can post your own request to do something like the following:

• Partner with a class(es) in another timezone (preferably another country). Partner each of your students with a student from this distant class. Have the pairs collaborate via Skype and Google docs to complete a project (i.e., a science experiment, with each adding data from own environment).
• In foreign language classes, use Skype to find language partners who are native speakers.
• Use Skype to include a sick or chronically ill student who is at home. Have the student use one computer, with webcam, at home. Set up another computer, with a webcam, at the student’s desk so (s)he can participate and see the class as if (s)he were there.
• On Skype’s education site, the company suggests using the software for a cultural exchange. Partner with a class from another region of the world and have students report on one another’s culture, using their Skype partners as one of their sources. (You can do this with a class from an area you’re reading about in a novel or studying in social studies.)
• Try a Skype scavenger hunt. Have students connect to a user in another geographic area, who gives kids a task (draw picture, build model, answer a question). Once the student completes it properly, they’re given the name of another Skype user, who they must call to get the next task. This would be great for a geography class, where each call is to another part of the country or the world.
• Skype suggests something similar, called mystery Skype calls, “where classes connect online and give clues to help each guess the other’s location.”
• Use Skype for long-distance parent-teacher conferences. Often, one parent may be separated from their children because they live in another city or are temporarily away for work.
• Students can offer peer-to-peer tutoring via Skype, so your students can partner with younger kids and act as tutors and/or older students to act as tutees. The software has even been used to connect teachers and tutors to students in third-world countries. Wouldn’t it be great to have your high school students tutor elementary kids in India one-on-one for an entire school year? Aside from cementing their own content knowledge, think of the global and social lessons your students would learn in the process.
• Some people even offer music lessons via Skype. I wonder if a creative music teacher could orchestrate something like the virtual choir, using a computer lab connected to another music class.

For more ideas and for resources on using Skype in education, check out this article. Also, be sure to share your own Skype successes and challenges as a comment!

Lesson Ideas

Elementary Classrooms

Grade: K-5
Subject: Social Studies
Objective: The student will be able to compare and contrast his/her culture and community with that of another geographic area.

You can use Skype a lot like teachers in my day used classroom pen pals. On Skype in the Classroom, post a request for a partner class from a geographic area you’ve been studying. Depending on your students’ age, you might try to partner with older students (it would be difficult, for example, to have two Kindergarteners answer each other’s questions, but a 5th-grader can work pretty well with a Kinder kid). Once you find a suitable partner class, work with the teacher to schedule Skyping times and to partner up students (or pairs of students).

Tell students they’re going to interview kids from another part of the world and then they’ll create a presentation for the class about what they learned. With younger students, give them specific questions to ask their Skype buddies. For older kids, a general rubric scaffolded with pre-Skyping class discussions should be enough. Encourage students to have a conversation with their Skype buddies, rather than just interrogating them with a list of questions — you might be able to do this with a low-stakes first meeting, where partners complete simple team-building activities with their Skype buddies.

In upper elementary classes, your students might be asked geographic questions about their community as well. This is a great way to motivate your students to understand local geography since they’ll be responsible for teaching others about it.

Middle and High School Classrooms

Grade: 5-12
Subject: Science
Objective: The student will be able to recognize the cumulative nature of scientific evidence AND perform tests, collect data, analyze data and display results.

On Skype in the Classroom, post a request for a partner science class with students of the same age as yours. Depending on your scientific focus, it might be interesting to find a class in a different climate or geographic area (coastal vs. plains). Once you find a class and a teacher that meets your needs, set up a schedule of Skype calls — several in the following weeks or months. Using class lists from both classes, work with your partner teacher to create Skype buddies or groups.

Have students meet their buddies on Skype — these will be their lab partners. Either have the students work together decide on their own science experiment or offer them a guided experiment. Have students communicate with their partners via Skype and each collect their own data for the experiment. Have students use Google docs (or another wiki-like tool) to collaboratively record and analyze data and create a final report or presentation.

Grade: 5-12
Subject: Foreign Language
Objective: The student will be able to use speaking and listening skills to communicate fluently in the target language.

On Skype in the Classroom, post a request for a partner class that natively speaks your target language. Most likely, there will be a class out there looking for English language partners, as well. Chat with the teacher to set up regular Skyping times and to assign students Skyping partners. Ideally, these sessions would be about an hour in length, with the first 30 minutes spoken in one language and the last 30 minutes in the other.

For each chat, give your students specific assignments — questions about their partner’s culture, life, etc. — to guide the conversations. You might also offer students some prompts, if they have trouble keeping the conversation going for the full hour.

Every time I work with classroom teachers, I ask them the same question: Why aren’t you integrating more technology into your classroom? And, every time, I hear the same two answers:

• No training.
• No equipment.

It’s clear that if we want to bring schools into the 21st century, we need to eliminate those two obstacles.

Adding training and hardware to a school has the power to transform it within a single school year, but many school administrators say they don’t have the money to make these changes. In fact, admins do have the budget; they just don’t realize it.

Most of my blog entries are focused on web 2.0 applications and other software, with suggestions for getting affordable hardware sprinkled throughout. But, below, I’ve focused entirely on ways to get your school past the hardware and training obstacles. I outline all the hardware and personnel needed to transition into a 21st century school. And, being that this is “Stretch Your Digital Dollar,” I describe low-cost and FREE options to get there. In fact, using the suggestions below, it’s possible to bring your school into the 21st century for a grand total of $55 per classroom.

Even if your school has a robust technology budget, bargain shopping can help you get a lot more for that money. And if you’re in a budget-strapped area, the suggestions below might be the only way you can get any technology into the hands of your students. As much as possible, I try to offer NO-cost solutions. And if you find that the low-cost options are out of your budget, I’ve included links to grant opportunities at the bottom of this post.

Before I start, though, I have to mention that there’s one non-negotiable technology every 21st century school needs to shell out the big bucks for — school-wide wireless access. This is absolutely essential in any 21st century school — the items discussed below will have limited use without it. Most schools already have wifi but if you don’t, you need to find the money to get it. (E-Rate dollars are specifically set aside to get all U.S. public and non-profit private schools online.) However, if you’re a teacher without the power to make wifi decisions, there’s one other possibility — if you have a wired internet connection in your classroom, you could purchase a wireless router for about $100, connect it to your wired connection, and allow your students to access wifi through it.

Now, let’s start modernizing your school.

Training

The biggest mistake schools make when it comes to technology integration is putting all their money into equipment and leaving nothing for training. I’ve seen teachers use interactive whiteboards as bulletin boards and computers as AR-testing machines. For technology to be successful, schools need two things:

1. teacher buy-in
2. on-going coaching and support

Let’s be serious here. Most teachers are overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated as it is. In order for them to add 21st century skills to their already packed objectives lists, they need to believe it’s going to be worth it — for the students and for themselves. I tell teachers that technology should make them more efficient and more effective educators. In the long run, technology should make their jobs easier and make their students learn better. If the technology isn’t doing this, then it’s not the right technology.

So how do teachers find (and understand) the right technology? If you’re an administrator planning to pull your school into the 21st century, you’ll have to prioritize technology, dedicating time during regular staff meetings to tech training (at least an hour a month). This training should begin before the school year. In the summer, host a professional development session centered entirely around the pedagogy of educational technology. Help teachers answer the question, “Why should I do this?” You might want to hire an outside speaker to run this workshop or you might find someone in-house. Either way, your goal should be to at least get teachers thinking and talking about technology integration. (For resources — including videos, articles, hand-outs, and Prezis — that might help, check out the PD section of this blog.)

This also means that you need to have an educational technology specialist on site, available to coach teachers one-on-one throughout the school year. I know what you’re thinking — an ed tech specialist sounds expensive. Sure, ideally, you’d finance a brand-new position with duties encompassing regular staff-wide trainings, one-to-one coaching, lesson modeling, and equipment maintenance. But I know very few schools or districts that can afford this. Not to worry, though. There are other options.

Trainer: Low-Cost Option

What: Added duties for one teacher
Cost: about $1,000 per year per school

I entered the ed tech world as a 4th-grade teacher at a Title 1 elementary school. I was tapped as the school’s education technology specialist, a position I served while I continued my full-time teaching position. Basically, this was an added duty. For an extra $1,000 per year, I was in charge of offering regular tech integration trainings for our staff and maintaining all of our hardware (mobile labs, cameras, etc.). Because I was in the classroom, facing the same pressures as my colleagues, I had street cred. If I could successfully integrate technology into my classroom — with my workload, my student population, and all the pressures of being at a Title 1 public school — then every other teacher at my site could, too.

Importantly, my district sent me regularly to conferences and workshops so I could bring that knowledge back to my school. If you have the money, I highly recommend sending your school’s ed tech specialist to two to three conferences a year — conferences like ISTE or local/state workshops (i.e., Arizona K-12 Center workshops). But if this added cost simply won’t work, technology provides a solution. Dozens of ed tech workshops are offered for FREE online, through webinars or distance-learning software. This past year, I attended Educon for FREE remotely, and it sparked quite a few ideas.

Because this duty comes with a stipend, you can add a list of requirements to it. My position had fairly loose requirements and, while I tended to do a lot because I really enjoyed it, teachers in the same position at other schools did very little. I would recommend having your ed tech specialist offer a school-wide training session at least every month. This can be part of a regular staff meeting (with required attendance) or an optional course offered after school. I used to hold weekly optional after-school training sessions. As a carrot, teachers who attended received continuing education credits that they could use to meet a district requirement.

Trainer: No-Cost Option

What: Minor added duties for entire staff
Cost: FREE

If your school is totally strapped for cash (or if no one is able to take on the demands of an ed tech role), you can have your entire staff share the task of tech training. In some ways, this can be even better than having a designated specialist at your site. By encouraging all teachers to take up the post to a modest degree, you can build a school culture of tech integration and collaboration.

To get started, after an introductory PD on 21st century teaching, plan for monthly staff-wide tech share-a-thons. These can be set up in a couple of ways. You can just have any staff that’s interested share student projects during this time, as either a gallery walk or a staff-wide discussion. With this set-up, two or three teachers might emerge as tech leaders who share projects more regularly. For a more organized approach, you could have teachers sign up to lead a training session each month. You could have multiple staff members sign up for the same month, so each only has to prepare a 15-minute presentation. These trainings can be as simple as a “here’s what I did in my class, why I did it, how I did it, and what did/didn’t work.”

With various staff members presenting on technology, your staff will come to recognize the body of expertise they possess as a group. After a few months, one teacher may be seen as the cell phone expert, while another might become the Google guru. Teachers will begin going to one another for one-on-one help and coaching, which is an ideal environment for tech integration to blossom.

One Computer for Every Student

The hallmark of a 21st century school is 1:1 computing. When you put a computer into the hands of every child and make it available to them 24 hours a day, in every class and at home, it’s virtually impossible not to utilize the devices constantly. If you’re in a low-income area, 1:1 computing has an even deeper impact. When you send a computer home with a child (especially a child who has learned how to use it), you’re impacting more than that child. You’re impacting his parents, his siblings, his community. It truly is one of the most powerful moves any school can make.

Some schools and districts can purchase a laptop or iPad for every student. Others require students to pay for them, either by buying their own or through a yearly “technology fee.” But that’s not a viable option for a lot of schools. If your school is one of those, read on for some more affordable options.

One-to-One: Low-Cost Option

What: netbook for each student
Cost: about $300 per student
Hardware Life Span: 3-4 years

I was slow to jump on the netbook wagon, in large part because I believed that netbooks don’t have the power to run integral software, like video and audio editing tools. But then I heard about netbook integration at Saugus USD in California. The reason most netbooks are relatively limited is because they come with complex operating systems, like Windows. Basically, netbooks don’t have a ton of memory, and Windows takes a huge amount to run properly. But a Linux operating system, like Ubuntu, is streamlined. Ubuntu netbooks can do nearly everything a laptop can do, but at a fraction of the price. Better still, Ubuntu is a totally FREE operating system, as is all the software. So you can install things like PowerPoint, Excel, video editing, and podcasting software completely for FREE.

A year ago at the aquarium where I now work, I spearheaded the purchase of 80 Ubuntu netbooks, to be used in K-12 classrooms. With absolutely no knowledge of Ubuntu, I installed the operating system (as well as a few dozen standard programs) on all the netbooks, in about 5 minutes per computer. Teachers, aquarium staff, and K-12 students have been using the computers with very few problems. Ubuntu looks and acts a lot like a Windows or Mac machine would, so there’s virtually no learning curve. Students have used the netbooks to record and edit films (each computer has an embedded webcam in it); to access web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis; and to create complex graphs, among other things. The netbooks are extremely popular and get a lot of use. After one school year, they’re all still going strong.

For more information on setting up and going 1:1 with Ubuntu netbooks, take a look at this blog post.

One-to-One: Lower-Cost Option

What: rooted Nook Android tablet for each student
Cost: $250 per student
Hardware Life Span: about 3 years

More and more, I’m hearing about schools giving iPads to all of their students. I can see why — tablets can run some great education applications and can utilize web 2.0 tools, like Google docs, for word processing, presentations, and data analysis. They’re lightweight and relatively powerful, not to mention that, with e-reader capabilities, they can potentially replace textbooks. Personally, though, I’m not willing to plop down $500-$830 for a tool that will be dramatically improved in the coming years.

I am, however, willing to consider it for $250. That’s the current price of a Nook Color. The Nook is the Barnes & Noble e-reader and was designed as a direct competitor of the Kindle. Out of the box, it’s just that. It can hold thousands of books, which it downloads through a wifi internet connection. But with just a few minor tweaks, you can basically turn a Nook Color into an iPad.

The Nook, which has a touch screen, was built on an operating system very similar to Android. However, most of the operating system’s features were locked for users. In a few easy steps, though, you can install FREE software onto the Nook and unlock it, essentially turning it into the Android version of an iPad.

At least one school district is already unrolling these rooted Nooks into its special education classrooms. From what I’ve heard, it’s simple to pay for educational Android apps just once and then install them on an entire fleet of Nooks.

Click here for directions on rooting a Nook and ideas for using it in the classroom.

One-to-One: No-Cost Option

What: one cell phone (with NO phone service) for each student
Cost: FREE
Hardware Life Span: 3-6 years, depending on device model and age

The cell phone in your pocket right now is probably more powerful than the desktop computer you had 10 years ago. It’s a computer with internet capabilities, a GPS device, a clock, a camera, all rolled into a tiny mobile package.

Most teachers have no idea how powerful cell phones can be. Students can record and edit short films as well as podcasts on them. They can blog and wiki. They can write reports and create graphs, using web 2.0 tools like Google docs. They can respond instantly to poll questions, collaborate with others, and geo-tag photos and notes.

A lot of teachers are shocked when I suggest having students use tiny cell phones to write papers, blogs and wikis. But think about it — most kids are writing with cell phones more often than they write with anything else. One Japanese high schooler even penned an entire novel on her cell phone while riding the bus to and from school. A colleague who runs educational technology sessions for students across the country told me that she allows students to write using a netbook, a cell phone, or a paper notebook. She said about 90 percent choose to use the cell phone. Why? They’re most comfortable with it.

Despite the benefits, many schools and districts are wary of allowing students to use their personal cell phones in class. Administrators argue that text messaging is a distraction and a cheating landmine, not to mention that parents might get up in arms if students’ cell phone bills skyrocket due to an in-class project. So some schools have purchased cell phones to use in the classroom. This comes with quite a price. But it doesn’t have to.

At the aquarium, we use Nokia cell phones in most of our education programs. Teachers in various districts check out the phones to use in their classrooms. Several of these districts have policies banning cell phones from the classroom, and the aquarium wasn’t willing to take on cell phone bills for all of these devices. So we turned off the phone capabilities of our phones. By removing the SIM cards from the phones, they aren’t able to make calls or send text messages. There are also no bills. But the phones can still be used to record and edit video and audio. And, with wifi, the phones can still access the internet. A SIM-less phone is basically a mobile computer and nothing more.

Ok, so there are no monthly fees, but how are you going to get these mobile computers for FREE? Have you ever had a smart phone, like an iPhone or a Droid? How long did you have it before you got a new one? Most people get a new phone as soon as their provider allows them to, which is generally every 2 years. But a smart phone can work well past two years. So why not host a few cell phone drives at your school? Just like the can drives or newspaper drives schools have hosted for decades, a cell phone drive encourages community members to donate their old phones to your school to be recycled. Or, in this case, re-used. You can group the phones into class sets and assign them to students, all the time thinking of them not as phones but as mobile computers.

Check out this post for ideas on integrating these cell phones into classrooms.

Interactive Whiteboards

One of the biggest single educational technology purchases is the interactive whiteboard. Teachers who are trained to use them often rave that these boards completely change their classrooms. But at $5,000 – $10,000, most schools can’t afford to install one in every classroom. I’m pretty sure most schools can afford $55 per classroom, though.

Whiteboards: Low-Cost Option

What: Wiimote Whiteboard
Cost: $55 per classroom
Hardware Life Span: about 10 years

By far, the most popular post on my blog is one detailing how to build an interactive whiteboard for only $55. I’ve led a few 3-hour workshops on the topic, where the participants leave with a ready-made interactive whiteboard and some minimal training in how to best utilize it. How is this possible? It’s called a Wiimote.

You’ve probably heard of the Wii gaming system. Well, the Wii comes with a controller — called a “Wiimote.” It turns out that this Wiimote actually contains some pretty sophisticated infrared cameras. So, coupled with an infrared pen and the right software, teachers can create a system with the functionality of a Smartboard or Promethean ActivBoard. The Wiimote costs $40 (though you can often find it as low as $20 online), the infrared pen goes for $15, and all the software is FREE.

Check out my Wiimote whitboard post for all the directions and details on building one.

One caveat: in order for the Wiimote whiteboard to work, each classroom needs an LCD projector to project a computer screen onto the board. Most of the teachers I’ve worked with have access to a projector, but not everyone can be so lucky, especially since these generally retail for several hundred dollars. Not to worry — there’s a no-cost projector option available. You can actually build an LCD projector out of an old overhead (you know, the kind teachers use transparencies on) and a used LCD computer monitor — here are the directions. (It would be great to have students construct and maintain these. Perfect for a tinkering class, like the one described below.)

School-Wide Online Community

Once you have enough devices for every student to access the internet, you can truly start integrating technology school-wide. The first step? A virtual community.

No-Cost Option

What: Edmodo
Cost: FREE

Honestly, I’m afraid people are going to start thinking I work for Edmodo. I don’t, but the more I use this social networking website, the more I love it. And, as is always true with love, I can’t shut up about it.

Social networking is one of the most powerful tools of the 21st century. Generally, though, it’s been overlooked by educators, who think of social networks only in terms of sites like Facebook and MySpace. Social networks can be so much more, though. Done class-wide, school-wide, or district-wide, they can help students build a community, give kids a voice, prompt academic discussion, help students develop and share ideas, make teachers’ jobs tons easier, and extend the school day. I’ve watched a half dozen middle and high school teachers launch Edmodo in their classrooms this school year, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive, both from teachers and from students.

Hands down, if I could integrate only one technology into a school, I would choose Edmodo. It’s powerful, easy to use, and — best of all — FREE.

For details on social networking in education and, specifically,  on launching Edmodo in your classroom, click here.

Class Websites and Student E-mail

Most tech-focused schools have two things in common: student e-mail accounts and classroom (or even student) websites.

For a long time, setting up and managing safe, monitored student e-mail accounts was hugely expensive. And classroom websites — places where teachers can communicate with parents and students can show off their learning — required coding knowledge and web expertise. Not any more.

No-Cost Option

What: Google Education Apps
Cost: FREE plus added duties for one staff member

I firmly believe that Google will rule the world one day. And I’m fine with that — they’ll probably do a really great job.

Google offers dozens of excellent educational tools, totally for FREE. You might already be using a lot of them, like Google Earth or Sketch-Up, in your school. But what most educators don’t realize is that Google offers a FREE school-wide solution to e-mail and website hosting.

One of the nicest features of Google Apps is that you can actually use your school’s domain name, like jeffersonhigh.edu. That means your students’ e-mail addresses will be johndoe@jeffersonhigh.edu, and any school or classroom websites will contain the same url. With Google Apps, schools can decide which features students can use. As soon as kids are literate, you can give them access to e-mail, calendars, chat, documents, and more. Or you can give them access to only a few. Google has gone to great lengths to ensure Apps for Education is safe and complies with all federal laws. There is message security (through Postini) that blocks spam and give school administrators oversight of students’ messages.

In addition, Google allows users to create their own websites for FREE. The website creation tool is extremely user friendly, so every teacher at your school could maintain their own website fairly easily. (When I was teaching, I actually had 4th-grade students create and maintain classroom websites for teachers.)

Google Apps has a ton of features so, if you implement it in your school, you’re probably going to want a go-to staff member to take charge of it. Luckily, Google offers online courses where users can become Google Apps Certified Trainers — this basically means they have the knowledge to train teachers on Google apps. The courses are FREE, but to get the title, you have to take six tests that cost $15 each, for a total of $90.

You can find more information on the Google Apps for Education page.

Tech Help

Obviously, if you’re going to integrate all this new technology into your school, you’re bound to have some technical difficulties. Occasionally, a piece of hardware won’t work properly, and not every teacher will have the expertise to fix it. But a tech help desk isn’t likely to get any funding at most schools. Luckily, you don’t need any money to get one.

No-Cost Option

What: student-staffed help desk
Cost: added duty for one teacher

When I was the ed tech specialist at my school, teachers usually called me for help when things weren’t working. Of course, they often needed the hardware fixed at that exact moment. Sometimes I was able to run to their aid but I was also a full-time teacher so, generally, I was in the middle of a lesson myself and couldn’t help out.

Then, one day, when my own interactive whiteboard wasn’t working properly, one of my fourth graders walked to the front of the class and fixed it. I realized I had a pool of slave tech labor just waiting to be tapped. I assembled a team of 4th- and 5th-grade students who were responsible and had some tech savvy. I invited the kids to attend a few tech training sessions, alongside teachers. Of course, the kids picked everything up extremely quickly. I created a protocol for this “tech help desk.” If a teacher needed help during the school day, I’d send one of the students. They had 10 minutes to resolve the problem. If they couldn’t do it, they’d return to class and I would try after school. I put the kids on a rotation, so they were only getting pulled out of class once every few weeks. I also created a short report sheet, which the kids had to complete, detailing the problem, whether they resolved it and how they did so (many of the students were lower ELLs, so the form was good writing practice). They would turn these papers in to me on their way back to class after their 10-minute troubleshooting visit.

I’ve talked to quite a few teachers who have used students in similar ways. Some schools are able to dedicate an entire class time to these squads, but my method worked well for my school — the kids resolved nearly all of the problems, making the teachers and me a lot happier.

If you’re interested, take a look at this post on student help desks for more details.

Classes and Clubs

While technology integration into content areas is the key to creating a 21st century school, you still need some courses and/or clubs dedicated entirely to technology. I’m not talking about a general computer literacy class. I’m talking about classes that help students gain and practice a variety of 21st century skills. These are classes that will really get students, as well as the community at large, excited about what’s happening at your school. Ideally, these would all be classes offered during the school day. But, realistically, it might not be possible to fit them into busy school schedules. At the least, though, they can be offered to 3rd- through 12th-grade students as clubs.

Electives: Low-Cost Option

What: Gaming Lab and Class
Cost: about $3,200 per school, plus added duty for one teacher
Hardware Life Span: 5-10 years

Again and again, research has shown that video games help students learn more and learn better. Video games have been shown to increase students’ problem-solving skills, collaboration abilities, and even their vision. And educational games can teach students content-specific concepts in a way that helps kids better understand and recollect that knowledge. So why not open a video gaming lab at your school? Housing various game systems, as well as a multitude of educational games, the lab could be open to students before school, after school, and during breaks like recess. One California high school noted a decrease in behavior issues at these times, plus added community building and cross-clique socialization, after it opened a gaming lab.

But the learning shouldn’t stop at playing games. There’s tons of FREE and low-cost software available that allow students to build games. We all know that when you teach a concept, you truly understand it. The same is true for students who build games that teach players specific concepts. Even elementary students can build computer and XBox 360 games. Older kids can create iPhone and Android apps.

For more, check out this post on gaming in education.

Electives: Lower-Cost Option

What: Robotics Class or Club
Cost: added duty for one teacher, plus about $100 per student (but loads of grant options)
Hardware Life Span: 5-10 years

This weekend, I was a judge at an underwater robotics competition. I spoke to teams of students, from 5th to 12th grade, who spent months designing and building a robot to complete a series of tasks underwater. I couldn’t believe the variety of skills and knowledge these students acquired — time management, team work, problem-solving, trouble-shooting, not to mention a deep understanding of science concepts like circuitry and buoyancy. The students were from a variety of backgrounds and communities. Some came as part of a class or an after-school club. Others just decided to build the robot on their own.

The best part about the competition was that it was clear that nearly all of the work was done by students. Teachers acted as mentors, answering questions but — for the most part — simply giving the students a place and the time to work.

Depending on the scope and objectives of your robotics class/club, cost can run from a just a few dollars per student into the hundreds. The cost estimate here is for materials that would outfit teams of three with LEGO MINDSTORM kits, which are about $300 each. But most schools don’t foot the bill. There are tons of STEM grants available for robotics programs, especially in low-income areas.

Electives: No-Cost Option

What: Tinkering Class or Club
Cost: added duty for one teacher

A tinkering class is the quintessential 21st century course. It allows students to be creative, collaborative problem solvers. In fact, tinkering is basically why Google is such a great company — they allow their employees to use 20% of their work time on projects outside their job descriptions. Employees can work on whatever they’re passionate about — tinkering with gadgets, computer code, whatever. The 20 percent policy is how many of Google’s most popular applications (including gmail) were invented.

A tinkering class is fairly easy to set up. Host an electronics recycling drive — collect old monitors, laptops, hard drives, etc., and store them in a room. Add in some random supplies that you can find in trash heaps, like plywood and nails. Get some donated tools — whatever you can find will work. Then, invite students to play. In the course of the class, require them to identify a problem and build a solution. Teach them safety procedures. If you’re teaching older students, review basic engineering principles, like circuitry. Guide them in their design, materials choice, and collaboration. But let them take the lead. Let them decide what they want to invent and create a plan to invent it. Let them fail again and again. And then watch them problem-solve their way to success.

Once established, tinkering classes can provide a wonderful resource for schools, which can ask tinkering students to build Wiimote whiteboards, LCD projectors, and a host of other equipment for use in classrooms.

For more information on tinkering classes, take a look at my “Let Them Tinker” post.

Still Can’t Afford It?

Although everything discussed above is fairly low-cost, for some schools, it’s still not enough. With budgets being slashed, many educators might not have access to any tech money at all. If that’s the case, there is a lot of money available for technology integration in schools. Below are just a few websites to get you started. If you have any other ideas — for grants or for low-cost tech solutions — please leave a comment!

• The federal Department of Education has made technology a priority and, as such, offers various funding options to schools ready to increase tech integration.
• Donors Choose is one of the best grant sources out there, especially for individual teachers. You write up a brief proposal for whatever you need — from a class set of novels to a mobile netbook lab — and donors can choose to pledge money to your project. Most projects are funded by hundred of small donations.
• As I mentioned in this post’s intro, the E-Rate program allows schools to get massive discounts on internet and wifi contracts.
• Also noted above is LEGO’s list of Science, Technology, Education, and Mathematics grant opportunities.
• For more grant sources, check out this page at Edutopia.

Last March, I wrote a blog post about the general benefits of social networking in the classroom, and I briefly described a few tools like Edmodo. Since then, I’ve had the time to delve even deeper into educational social networking and, specifically, Edmodo. I’ve introduced the site to a number of teachers, who have each used it to transform their classrooms in various ways. After seeing what the site can do, I know that when I return to the classroom, Edmodo will be the first thing I implement. I’d even push to get my entire school using the site, from 3rd through 12th grade. As soon as kids are literate, a social network really can help them learn.

Why social networking?

Let me back up a bit here. When I first speak with teachers about social networking in the classroom, I usually see an immediate reaction that my former students might refer to as “stank face.” The idea of bringing something like Facebook or MySpace into our schools generally conjures up a long list of cons before we, as teachers, ever think of a single pro. So before I talk about Edmodo specifically, I want to discuss the idea of educational social networking in general. (Hopefully, you’ll feel that “stank face” slowly melt away.)

In the past couple of years, surprising even myself, I’ve become a pretty strong proponent for social networking in the classroom. But by no means am I alone. Both the National School Boards Association and the Young Adult Library Services Association encourage the use of social networks with kids, in large part because they prepare students for the real world. The library association contends that social networks help teens “learn a valuable life skill, as these social networking technologies are tools for communication that are widely used in colleges and in the workplace.” Today, there are people whose entire jobs are to maintain a Twitter and Facebook presence for a company. In my work, I use professional social networks daily to collaborate with my peers around the world. The fact of the matter is that social networks are no longer simply for socializing. They are tools for networking and collaboration — key 21st century skills that every student should learn.

There is a lot of talk about internet bullying these days, and teachers often point to this as the main reason not to integrate social networks into schools. But I would argue that this is a major reason for social networking in the classroom. Taking kids off the internet isn’t the way to solve it. Our students will be on Facebook and Myspace and Twitter, whether or not their teachers ignore those sites. So why not take the opportunity to teach them to appropriately and safely use social networks? Why not scaffold that learning with a safe, closed social network in elementary and middle school? As the National School Boards Association puts it, “Safety policies remain important, as does teaching students about online safety and responsible online expression — but students may learn these lessons better while they’re actually using social networking tools.”

Aside from these larger benefits, social networks can provide immediate, concrete academic benefits. Social networks can help students build a strong, supportive community. They help students see each other (and themselves) as holders of knowledge. Students will begin asking for and offering help, becoming leaders and collaborators while simultaneously taking some of that burden off of the teacher. (Translation: a classroom social network can actually make your job easier.)

Plus, a social network allows in-class discussions to expand beyond the 45-minute block of classtime. Social networks motivate students. Kids want to feel that their voice is important, and social networks give them a platform where they can be heard. When you start a social network in your classroom, suddenly kids will find and share answers to that question you couldn’t get to in class. They’ll even start asking and answering questions they didn’t have the time to think of during school.

My favorite thing about classroom social networks, though, is discovering the personalities of those kids who rarely speak in class. How many times has your class discussion been led by three or four students? Are there any students in your class who, even in March, you still don’t really know? Often, social networks give these kids an outlet — a place where they can think about and edit their questions and responses without pressure.

Why Edmodo?

There are a lot of good reasons to try out social networks in the classroom. But why, specifically, am I such an Edmodo fan? Three main motives: it’s FREE, it’s safe, and it’s easy.

I may be cheap, but I don’t automatically love everything that’s free. Still, it’s nice. And unlike most free educational websites, Edmodo offers a ton of useful features for absolutely no charge (at least for now).

Plus, Edmodo is the only social network I’ve found that gives the teacher all the control. Teachers create classes, and students join those classes — this is the only way someone can be on Edmodo. Students can only interact with the classes they’re enrolled in. I think of Edmodo as a virtual classroom — all the doors are closed and locked, so no one can just walk in without permission. Anything that anyone says is shared with the entire class, so posts are like students raising their hands to speak in class. The only private communication is between teacher and student, sort of like a desk-side conference.

Lastly, Edmodo is pretty easy to use. Teachers can get started with the basics in just a few minutes and then begin using more advanced tools as they get more comfortable.

Get Started

To start, go to Edmodo and create a teachers’ account. Then, create a ‘group’ (also known as a class) and get a secret code for that class. After going over expectations for appropriate user names, you can either create accounts for all your students or have them create their own, using the secret code to enroll in your class. (Kids don’t need an e-mail address to create an Edmodo account.) Once you do this, you’re pretty much done.

Students can add a profile photo (or choose an avatar from within Edmodo). All of your students, as well as you, can start posting things, and everyone can see everything, similar to the ‘news feed’ on Facebook. Students and teachers can share text (like Facebook status updates), as well as links, videos, and even files.

There are no private student-to-student messages, although the teacher can send private messages to students, and students can send them to teachers. Because everyone can see everything, kids generally don’t post anything inappropriate. And even if they do, the teacher can delete anything that’s posted on the site at any time. (I work with a half dozen middle and high school teachers using Edmodo, and they haven’t had any appropriateness issues, although one middle school teacher gave accounts to all his students’ parents for additional oversight.)

This basic posting feature is a wonderful place to start. It allows teachers and students to continue and expand upon discussions outside of the school day. It also allows students to ask for and offer one another help. A great way to start is to post a question or prompt to begin — or extend — a content-based discussion. But it’s important that students feel comfortable posting their own information, without a prompt. I tell kids that this is a “professional network” — everything on the site should be connected to what we’re studying. Whatever a student posts should be something they’d feel comfortable sharing in the middle of class because that’s what this is — a class discussion. Students can still be relaxed, informal, and even funny, but they should do this in a professional manner. In other words, this isn’t the place to post a YouTube video of a cat burping.

One benefit I’ve found of setting kids up like this is that I’m able to eavesdrop on students’ conversations. When they’re confused or they find something particularly interesting, they’re comfortable posting it. This lets me know what they’re actually learning and what’s most interesting to them. Students can’t (or won’t) always articulate their passions or misunderstandings — they rarely ask for clarification or help during class, especially during lectures. A social network gives teachers an opportunity to offer input if, for example, you notice that a lot of students are posting questions or misinformation about a particular concept or assignment.

Once you’re comfortable with the Edmodo basics, teachers can start exploring the additional posting options. In addition to general posts, teachers can post polls for students to respond to, which can be a great discussion starter. You can also post alerts, which are highlighted on students’ pages — alerts are great for things like field trip reminders.

Teachers can also post assignments on Edmodo, and students can turn in their assignments through the site. That’s right — they can attach documents and turn them in directly. The teacher can even post a worksheet as a Word file and require students to complete it and turn it in. (Better yet, teachers can post a link to a Google form, which students are required to complete. Google automatically saves students’ responses in a spreadsheet, so they’re easier to grade.) A totally paperless classroom! The great thing is that Edmodo keeps track of the assignments — who did and didn’t turn what in, so you and your students know whether you’ve received their work on time. Teachers can grade the assignments right on the site, and Edmodo keeps a class gradebook. The site will notify students when an assignment is graded, so they can review it. (Students can only see their own grades; not others’.) While I really like the gradebook feature, most of the teachers I know don’t use it because they already have a district-mandated grading system in place. Still, they’ll often assign and collect some assignments through Edmodo.

My absolute favorite thing about Edmodo, though, is the library feature. Anytime any student or teacher in a class shares a link, a video, or a document, that object is automatically saved in the class library. People are constantly sending me links that I love but, inevitably, when the time comes to share those links, I can never find them. With the Edmodo library, everything is saved in one place so you can go back and refer to the video one of your students (or classmates) posted months ago. Plus, teachers and students can create their own folders within the classroom library to organize the files, thus helping kids gain valuable organizational skills.

Multiple classes

If you teach more than one class, you can create different ‘groups.’ Students will only be able to communicate with the groups they belong to, so you can have a ‘Period 1′ group, a ‘Period 2′ group, and so on. As the teacher, you can use the ‘filters’ section on the right sidebar to see only posts from one class at a time. But students will only be able to see posts from the class (or classes) they’re enrolled in.

If you’d like, students can belong to more than one group. So if you have, for example, several sections of Biology 1, you might want to create a group for each section, as well as a general ‘Bio 1′ group. Students can belong to both ‘Bio, Section 1′ and ‘Bio 1.’ When they post something, they can choose whether to send it to just their section, to all of the Bio 1 students, or just to the teacher. Students can also use the ‘filters’ on the right sidebar to view only what’s posted to students in their section, to all Bio students, or to both.

The teacher can always view and edit a list of enrolled students for each group. That means teachers can delete or move kids if they drop the class or switch sections.

At the end of the semester, you can ‘archive’ groups. This saves the posts (as well as grades, etc.) for future reference, while not allowing students to make any additions or changes.

Internet Access

Anytime you require students to use computers or the internet outside of class, you have to consider accessibility. I taught entirely in low-income schools where almost none of my students had computers at home. Still, they all had MySpace profiles. I was surprised that, after my elementary students began blogs in class, they started editing them outside the classroom, from friends’ homes, relatives’ workplaces, or the public library. When I taught middle school, most of my students would access their MySpace or Facebook profiles from their cell phones. Even kids who seem to have no internet often have limited access. But I wasn’t requiring them to go online outside of class. If you are, you’ll need to ensure that every child has access.

You might consider sending a note home to parents detailing your expectations and offering suggestions that include things like the local library’s hours. It’s also important to offer students opportunities to access the class social network from school. If possible, keep a computer lab (or your own classroom, if you have a few computers) open before and after school and during lunch. Even if your school doesn’t have many working computers, there are options. If your school has wifi, host a cell phone drive to collect people’s old smart phones. Removing the SIM cards from smart phones means they can’t make phone calls or send text messages (so NO monthly bill), but they can still go online via wifi. If you can collect a dozen or so of these phones, let students use them to access the class social network from your classroom before and after school, during lunch, and during your planning time. If you live in an area with numerous free wifi spots, you could even allow students to check out the smart phones.

Behavior Management

Edmodo is so simple, there’s really no troubleshooting required for the site. But if you’re a teacher, you know that students sometimes require their own troubleshooting.

As I said before, because of the way Edmodo is structured, the teachers I know personally have had no appropriateness issues with their students. Still, as with any lesson, it’s important to set specific expectations for students. Just like some students will find ways to inappropriately use a pencil, sometimes you’ll have a kid push the envelope with Edmodo. I’ve heard of three possible issues with Edmodo that teachers should be aware of, but these are rare and easily corrected.

First, I heard third-hand that some students have started Edmodo teacher accounts and then invited other students to join their ‘group.’ Why would a kid do this? Well, it allows them to create a Facebook-type friends-only wall that they can access from inside their school’s firewall. In other words, it’s a way to access a Facebook-type site during the school day. I wouldn’t tell students that they can do this, but I would be sure to monitor students if they’re using Edmodo during the school day. In all honesty, even if students thought of trying this, it wouldn’t be rewarding unless a large number of other students joined the unsanctioned group.

Second, because students don’t need an e-mail address to set up an Edmodo account, they could potentially create anonymous users who join your class and post inappropriate things. I’ve never heard of any student doing this, but it’s a possibility. It’s also easily preventable. Once your students have joined their ‘group,’ you can change the group code. Then, don’t tell your students the new secret code. This means that no one else will be able to join your ‘group’ because they won’t have the code. Of course, teachers can always access a list of everyone enrolled in your groups so if there’s an unauthorized user, you can delete them at any time.

Finally, I’ve heard of students using unprofessional user names and profile photos. This truly is a teachable moment. With our aquarium students, we prevented this beforehand by explaining to kids that this was a professional network and they were expected to present themselves professionally. We told them their user names were required to include their first names and their profile photos needed to be appropriate. One or two students used weird user names, like ILoveOtters, so we told them they had to change their name or we’d delete the account.

Even if you have the world’s next evil genius in your classroom, Edmodo gives you all the power in the end. Suspending students from using the site for a few days (or weeks) will almost always solve any problem you’re having. Why? First off, Edmodo is fun, and they won’t be able to access the fun. Secondly, that student will no longer be in the know — things will be happening without him or her there. Kids (especially in middle and high school) are social creatures, and they’ll generally do anything not to be excluded.

Content-Specific Ideas

Social networks like Edmodo are wonderful just in a general sense. At the aquarium where I now work, we were amazed at how often our middle and high school students continued on-topic conversations at home, through our social network. They shared ideas, links, home-made videos. They even started asking questions we hadn’t yet thought of investigating. But, used creatively, social networks can go beyond simple discussions. They can help students better understand, explain, and enjoy complex content.

On most of my blog posts, I list grade-specific lesson ideas for integrating the tool discussed. But just like a chalkboard can be used to teach any grade level, Edmodo can be used with all levels of students (once students are literate). The only difference is what you write on it. So instead of lesson ideas organized by grade level, here I’ll offer some content-specific Edmodo extensions.

Reading

Anyone who has taught in a K-12 classroom knows that no matter what subject you teach, you teach reading. Reading comprehension is ingrained in nearly everything we do as adults and, as such, is embedded into every K-12 subject.

But, often, teachers complain to me that technology is destroying reading and, specifically, reading comprehension in 21st century students. Kids are so used to immediate gratification — to getting everything in snippets, to 120-character tweets, to Google synopses, and to Facebook status updates — that 500-page novels are a bore. “Can’t we just watch the movie?” they’ll ask. (I think this last question has been around a bit longer than the internet; I remember my own peers asking it 20 years ago.)

It’s true that technology has changed the way we process information, including the way we read. There’s a plethora of recent research studying how these new technologies have affected the way we interact, process, and analyze. There are studies suggesting that, as a society, our very brain chemistry is changing. Good or bad, this is happening. As teachers, there’s virtually nothing we can do to stop our students from having Facebook accounts or using their cell phones. But our job is still to teach them to read, understand, and appreciate tons of different writing — literature, science journals, historic papers, daily news, math proofs, websites, etc.

Frankly, it’s never been easy to get most students to love The Odyssey. But now, technology has given us a golden opportunity — a chance to hook most of our students into reading novels, textbooks, newspapers, and virtually anything else. We just have to do what great teachers do best — get a little creative.

Reading is all about empathy. If we feel for the people we’re reading about, if we can imagine what they’re feeling and thinking and hoping, if we can relate to them, we’re hooked. And social networks can help students become empathetic. They can allow students to walk around in someone else’s skin, virtually.

Say, for example, that your class is reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Assign each student a different character in the book. The student’s assignment is to pay particular attention to that character — their beliefs, actions, motivations, voice. Everything. And then, to become that character. Have each student create an Edmodo profile, posing as their assigned character. Then, as you read the book throughout the semester, students must post updates, comments, related links, videos, etc., on the class social network. They are to become their assigned character, interacting on a social network. (It’s great if the teacher takes on the role of a character as well.) What link would Ron Weasley share with his peers? How would Draco Malfoy react to it? These are all high-level questions students will have to ask, think about, and answer through the class social network. Best of all, they can be funny or ironic or touching — all motivation to try their best at the assignment. Your class Edmodo wall might look something like this:

Social Studies

Social studies teachers have started some of the most creative social networking sites I’ve seen. It’s easy to see why — social networks can make history come alive for students, through role play.

When I was a kid studying the American Revolution, our teacher assigned each of us a historic figure to research. One student got Thomas Jefferson, another was assigned Ben Franklin, and so on. We all wrote papers and made posters. Then, we stood in front of the class and talked for 5 minutes, during which only about 3 kids paid attention. With social networking, this assignment can become more interesting and much more meaningful for all students. Instead of (or in addition to) writing a report, each student could be assigned to create an Edmodo profile, posing as a historic figure (like this Thomas Jefferson profile). Then, students could be required to interact with one another as that historic figure. How would Ben Franklin respond to Thomas Jefferson’s comment about democracy? Students would have to understand a lot about their own historic figure, but they’d also have to know a good deal about other figures in order to converse with them. Deeper, higher-level thinking would be required of students, but the assignment would also be fun and motivating for them.

Social studies social networks don’t have to stop with historical figures, though. No matter what time period you’re studying, students can be assigned to act as countries, groups of people, or even historical events. “If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses” is a funny look at this idea (be aware, though — it was written for an adult audience).

Science

Just like you can assign each student to be a literary character or a historic figure on a social network, you can extend that idea to science. You could assign your students to be famous scientists, scientific principles, or even scientific theories. What would Evolution say to Creationism? If you’re teaching marine biology, you could assign students to be different marine animals. How would they interact with one another if they had personalities, could speak, and could access social networks?

My absolute favorite idea for a science social network, though, was sparked by a video called “Chemical Party.” The video personifies chemical elements and compounds, and it got me thinking, “what would neon post on hydrogen’s wall?” Wouldn’t it be great if your chemistry students were asking this question at home on a Friday night?

Have you used a social network in the classroom? Do you have any ideas for ways to integrate them with content? Share your ideas, successes, and challenges as a comment!

UPDATE: The Kindle Fire, at $199, appears to offer a very similar interface as the tablet described below, and it doesn’t require any hacking. It’s set to be released November 15, 2011.

iPads have already been heralded as the personal computers of the future. (With the rise of cloud computing and web 2.0 software, I have to agree.) I work with several teachers who already have iPads in their classrooms, and the devices really can help students learn. But at $400-$830, most schools can’t afford to get iPads for every teacher, much less for every student. And even current iPad competitors, like the Motorola Xoom, are priced at around $500 – $800.

So when I heard that some brilliant computer programmers had figured out how to turn the $250 Barnes & Noble Nook Color into an Android tablet, I took notice. A couple of hours later, I had my very own Android tablet with functionality nearly identical to a first-generation iPad for only $250. This demo of a rooted Nook shows what it can do:

How It Works

You might be wondering how this can be possible. As a former science teacher, I always like to know the how and why before jumping in, so here’s the deal. (If you don’t really care and just want to know how to do it, skip to the next section, “Root Your Nook.”)

The Nook Color was created as a simple e-reader, as shown in this video:

The basic idea was that you could download hundreds of books on this little tablet and access them wherever you happened to be. Now, in order to download books, the Nook Color had to be able to connect to the internet, so it has wifi capabilities. To create a user-friendly interface, the Nook’s developers built it on an operating system very similar to the one used by Android phones and Android tablets (like the Motorola Xoom). However, they didn’t give the Nook Color the same capabilities as an Android phone or tablet — they just built up the e-reader function.

Once the Nook Color went on the market, though, some ingenious computer programmers figured out that with just a few tweaks, users could add all the features one would find on an Android tablet. All you have to do is “root” your Nook Color. “Root” is the term used for the admin user on a linux operating system, like Android. If you’ve ever tried to install programs on a work computer, you might understand what this means — the “admin” user on most computers is the only person who can make drastic changes to the operating system, like installing new programs. Well, for the Android, the “root” user is the only person with these powers.

Out of the box, the Nook Color doesn’t give its buyer this “root” access. But if you download and install a small piece of software on the Nook, you can “root” it and, thus, get administrative privileges to make all the changes you’d like.

The best part is that you don’t lose your Nook Color. You can still use it as an e-reader. But you can use it for a lot more, too.

Rooted Nook vs. Other Tablets

Just like with any major electronic purchase, you’ll probably want to make sure that a rooted Nook is the best device to meet your needs before you go out and buy one for yourself (or a few hundred for your school). So here’s a quick break-down of the differences between a rooted Nook Color and other tablets:

• The Nook doesn’t have any built-in cameras, which I see as the largest benefit of having an iPad 2 in the classroom.
• The Nook is smaller than other tablets, so it can easily fit in an adult-sized hand. This can be great for traveling and for kids with little hands, but it might be a con for some.
• The Nook has a slot for SD cards, so you can add memory easily — as much as 32GB on top of the default 8GB.
• The Nook is only available with wifi. As long as you have wireless service in range, you can get internet access. But you can’t get a 3G/4G data plan with Verizon or AT&T for your Nook (although I’m using mine with a Verizon mobile hotspot, which allows up to 5 devices to connect to the internet anywhere a phone could for $35 a month).
• You can connect the Nook to any computer using an included USB cord, so you can transfer photos, video, and other files fairly easily.
• The Nook comes with Bluetooth capabilities, so you can connect it to other devices. (According to this post, it also means you can make phone calls on the Nook through Skype.)
• The Nook doesn’t have a built-in microphone, so you’d have to use a Bluetooth mic for voice recording.

Now, obviously, price is the largest benefit of using a Nook Color as a tablet. I added 16GB of memory to my Nook, using a $20 micro SD card, so I have a total of 24GB of memory. In the end, that means my $270 Nook Color falls somewhere between the $400 and $500 first-generation iPads. That might not seem like too much, but if you’re buying class sets of tablets, the savings can add up pretty quickly:

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Root Your Nook

To download everything and set it up the way I wanted took about 3 hours on the first run. But if I was programming a fleet of them, I’m sure I could do each one in about 30 minutes, once all the pieces were laid out. (Of course, if you’re programming a fleet and you’ve got the technical prowess, it would probably be a lot easier to create an Android image that you could install on all the devices.)

First, I had to get three pieces of hardware:

1. a Nook Color ($250 at Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, or online)
2. a micro SD card (cheaper online, but also available at stores like Radio Shack and Best Buy)
   Your micro SD card is what will increase your Nook’s memory from the built-in 8GB. You can get a 4GB micro SD card for as little as $5 and a 32GB card for about $50. I went with a 16GB card, which is around $20 online.
3. a micro SD card adapter (some cards come with adapters, but stand-alone ones cost about $5)
   The micro SD card adapter allows you to plug the card into your computer so you can transfer files from your computer onto your Nook (like a flash drive), which you will have to do to root your Nook. If you have a more recent laptop, you’ll probably see an SD card slot in the side, so you’ll want a flat card-like adapter. If you don’t have an SD card slot, you’ll want to get a USB adapter.

Next, I followed all the directions listed on Jim Klein’s blog, with a few minor adjustments:

• Jim Klein’s directions for clearing the SD card after install were a little different on my Nook. (You have to clear your SD card after the install because you can’t clear it from your computer and, if you don’t clear it, it will re-install Android every time you re-start your Nook, so you’ll lose any changes.) I had to go to settings > Device info > SD card and then click “Unmount SD card” before I could choose “Format SD card.”
• Jim’s Soft Keys directions were a little off for my new Nook, too. To find the “Run Service” button to uncheck, you need to open Extras > Soft Keys > Tools (button next to magnifying glass) > Softkeys Service. To get from there to the “Physical Home Button” Menu, click the backwards arrow icon at the bottom of the screen (to the right of the open book icon) > Physical Home Button > Home Button.
• Also, I’d suggest you follow Jim’s directions under “A note about the Nook Color’s built in launcher (Extras),” which explain how to install and set up the Advanced Task Killer. However, after I went through the install process, I changed the security setting back to “high.” Why? This version of Android doesn’t automatically close apps, and there’s no easy way to close most of them unless you turn off your Nook. This is how all Android devices work — the idea is that apps will stay open to easily re-boot unless more memory is needed, and then Android will automatically close them. This is nice if you want to, say, listen to a music app while you’re browsing the Internet. Still, it means you could have all your apps running at once, even when you’re not using them, which annoys some people (including me). The Task Killer allows you close any open apps. You can start up Task Killer (it’s the green android guy in the bottom left corner of your screen) and it will show you all the open apps. If your security settings are on “high,” it’ll only show you the apps, and you can just click “kill all” to close everything at once (the “low” security setting shows you everything that’s running, including operating system stuff).

Now, you should have a high-functioning rooted Nook. Woo hoo!

Make Your Nook Look Like a Tablet

After following those directions, you’ll notice that your Nook still looks and acts primarily like an e-reader. To access the Android apps and other tablet functions, you have to enter the Nook’s “extras” menu. Because I’m using my Nook primarily as an Android tablet and only secondarily as an e-reader, I wanted to change its look and feel. In other words, I wanted my Nook to look like an iPad. It turns out, it wasn’t too difficult.

After some online research, I found the solution. I made sure my Nook was connected to the Internet through my wireless. (To do this, click the center up-arrow button at the bottom of the screen. Choose Settings>Wireless.)

I opened the Market app (in the Extras) and downloaded the “Launcher Pro” and “Home Switcher” apps, which are both FREE. Then I followed the following directions, from tenny.org:

1. On your Nook Color, go to Extras > Home Switcher
2. Click on set default next to Launcher Pro
3. Press the Home Button (the ‘n’) on the Nook Color and your home screen should have changed
4. Press the menu button (it looks like an = symbol with 3 lines instead of 2) and then click Preferences
5. Click Homescreen Settings and then change number of columns and number of rows to your liking (I went with 6×6)
6. After you click ok to the reset Launcher Pro box that appears, click the Home Button and your new layout should appear
7. To move apps to your new homescreen click the button and then press and hold the app until the app appears on the homescreen; drag to the desired location and then remove your hand

Once you do this, you can click the menu button on your home screen to change the wallpaper. (If you want to use a picture from your computer, you can connect your Nook to your computer with the included USB cord and drag photos into the ‘photos’ folder — these will then appear in your Nook’s gallery.)

After all this, I went to the Market and downloaded a few additional apps to try out, all of which are FREE, of course:

• Angry Birds
• Labyrinth Lite
• 3D Digital Weather Clock (This is a widget, which means to get it to appear on your Android, you have to hold your finger on a blank part of your home screen and wait for a menu to appear. Then choose “Widget” and select the clock from the list.)
• Google Sky Map
• Google Earth
• Dolphin HD Web Browser
• Pulse
• NYTimes
• WordTwist
• AKNotepad
• Thinking Space (mindmap creator)
• Study Droid (flash card creator)
• Periodic Table

Click here for a list of other Android apps that work well on rooted Nooks.

Not Quite Perfect

With a few apps, you may notice that things don’t look quite right on the Nook — they work fine. They just don’t seem to utilize the screen space of the Nook. The reason is because the Android OS you installed is Android 2.3, which was created to be used on phones. The new Android 3.0 (known as “Honeycomb”) was recently released and is designed specifically for tablets, so the interface looks great on the Nook. You can install it on your Nook, but it takes quite a few extra steps that are fairly tech-heavy. I’m betting that a one-click install of Honeycomb, like the one for Android 2.3, will be available for the Nook in the next 6 months.

But if you’ve got the courage and the patience to try, this post will point you to this thread, which lets you install Honeycomb fairly easily. From there, the tricky part is getting the Market and Google apps to work. For that, you need to follow these programming steps.

Troubleshooting

I’ve been testing my Nook pretty hard in the week since I rooted it, and I haven’t had any problems at all. However, if you’re having issues (or want more info), there are a lot of places to turn for help. There’s a large (and growing) community of rooted Nook users out there, so Googling your problem along with the phrase “rooted Nook” will probably get you to some relevant pages. Also, the website nookDevs offers a wiki and a list of forums filled with information about the rooted Nook.

Cool… But Is It Legal?

I’ve researched the legality of rooting a Nook, and I can’t find anything saying it’s illegal. But I’m guessing if it was illegal, that would be common knowledge by now (Nook rooting became really popular just before Christmas last year). Also, in reading the licensing agreements, it appears that users can do whatever they’d like with the Nook once they purchase it. But they can’t hack into the Barnes & Noble software and mess around with the code. (Rooting a Nook doesn’t do that — it’s similar to adding an additional piece of software to your computer. You’re not changing what’s already there. You’re just adding to it.) However, rooting a Nook does void your warranty. So you probably don’t want to buy the added 2-year warranty option.

Still, if you’re planning to use rooted Nooks school-wide, it would be a good idea to have your district’s legal department okay the move.

Classroom Uses

If you’re a teacher rooting a Nook for yourself, you can still use it in the classroom pretty effectively, even if none of your students have one. Here are some ideas:

• Use the Nook to track student progress.
  When I taught 6th grade, I made an Excel sheet that listed all of my weekly objectives as the column headings and all my students’ names as row headings. Then, I printed it out (a separate page for each class) and put it on a clipboard. I would walk around during labs taking brief notes about how students were progressing toward the standard. It was great in theory, but it was really difficult to go back to these pages and use them to inform my grading, parent meetings, or future instruction. With a tablet, though, you could create a file like this as a Google docs spreadsheet. Then, you could create a code (1 if a student exhibits the skill during lab, 2 if they show it during class discussion, 3 if they use it during a test) for quick note taking and easy data analysis. The Nook would be easy to carry around and write on briefly and, with everything stored electronically, it would be easier to analyze the data to inform your instruction or grading.
• Use the Nook in small groups.
  When leading a reading group or speaking with a small group of students, new vocabulary often comes up. Tablets are perfect for quickly finding a photo or video to explain a new concept. With visuals and audio, students are more likely to understand and remember the content.
• Use the Nook as a center.
  Just as you can use computers as a center that students rotate through, you can use a tablet for the same purpose. Two students can work on a tablet to complete an activity and then pass it to the next pair.
• Use the Nook to model problem-solving.
  I once knew a science teacher whose motto was, “I don’t know, but let’s find out.” Whenever students asked him a question he couldn’t answer (and sometimes even a question he could answer), he would say, “I don’t know, but let’s find out,” and then lead the student to find the solution. A tablet can definitely help in this process. How many times have you wondered something and pulled out your smart phone to look up the answer? You can do the same with a tablet, but it’s large enough that several students can see what you’re doing at once.

Read on for ways students can use the Nook, either in centers or one-to-one.

Lesson Integration Ideas

Obviously, one of the best applications of a rooted Nook Color is that students can easily access the internet and all gaming, interactive, and web 2.0 sites available there. But Android apps also allow for further learning. And there are a TON out there. Below, I highlight just the few I’ve found in the past week. If you’ve got other suggestions, please leave a comment!

Elementary Classrooms

Grade: PreK-2
Subject: Reading
Objective: The student will be able to read grade-level appropriate text.

When young students are learning to read, it’s very important that they’re read to a lot. The Nook comes with a couple of children’s books already installed, and these stay on the Nook (in the “library” app) even after it’s rooted. Students can open these books and either read to themselves or have a recorded voice on the Nook read to them. In addition, there are tons of similar FREE and low-cost children’s books available for download through the B&N Nook app and the Kindle app.

Grade: 3-5
Subject: Writing
Objective: The student will be able to plan, draft, and write a story based on a prompt.

Have students use the FREE version of the Thinking Space app to create a mind map for a writing assignment. When they’re ready, have students draft their product on Google docs or on their student blog.

Middle School Classrooms

Grade: 5-8
Subject: Math
Objective: The student will be able to eliminate incorrect answers using logic and reasoning skills.

Have students use the FREE Sudoku app that comes with the Nook Color to practice their logic and reasoning skills. The app allows students to pencil in notes and use a “pen” when they’re certain of an answer. If they mark something that can’t possibly be correct based on the numbers already filled in, the number turns red, which can help scaffold understanding. The app also allows users to choose their difficulty level and pause play, so students can come back to the same puzzle day after day. The app times them, so they can see how long it takes them to complete a Sudoku puzzle and track their progress as their speed improves.

High School Classrooms

Grade: 9-12
Subject: Technology
Objective: The student will be able to follow programming directions in order to build an Android app.

Have students reflect on things they’ve learned in the previous year (you can focus on one class, or let them choose from any class). Tell them they will create an app to help teach one objective to students who will take the same class next year. Challenge each student to create an app that will both engage students and help them better understand the content.

Have students build apps using Google’s FREE App Inventor, which allows students to create apps for Android devices.

Even simple apps can go a long way if they’re built creatively. This is a great opportunity for students to create apps that help explain major concepts like evolution or even climate change.

I have to admit – I am a very recent convert to using video games in the classroom. When I first considered the idea, I thought, I’ve got absolutely no planning time to find appropriate games, much less the class time to have kids play them. Besides, I figured, I can teach my kids more than any video game could.

But then I remembered the game that introduced me to economics when I was in elementary school. It was also the game that inspired me to create paper cigarettes and sell them to friends at school (I filled them with baby powder, so when you blew out, it really looked like you were smoking). Aside from the obvious moral issue with that venture, it certainly taught me a great deal about business. So what was the game that started it all? Lemonade Stand.

Twenty years after closing my paper cigarette company, I started my 4th-grade students up on an updated version of Lemonade Stand. To my amazement, the bright yellow pixelated graphics enthralled them just as they had me. The kids all wanted to make money and, within less than an hour, my English-language learning students were appropriately using words like net profit and assets.

So I started doing some research. I discovered that, again and again, studies have shown video games can help students learn when teachers integrate them in three ways:

• allow students to play educational games as part of a facilitated lesson
• have  students create video games for their classmates or younger students
• use game design principles in curriculum design

What can gaming teach students?

Teachers have been using games like Scrabble and chess for as long as schools have existed. And just like with those board games,video games engage students and can make learning fun. What’s more, with the added visual and audio effects, video games deliver information to students’ brains in a much more effective envelope. In fact, research has shown that educational video games can increase student achievement, as well as spatial reasoning skills, compared to more traditional instruction.

Now, let me be clear here. When I talk about “educational video games,” I am not talking about simple interactives or simulations (though there are a load of great ones online), nor am I taking about online quizzes posing as games (kids are smart — they know the difference). I’m talking about full-on video games, with missions that the user completes.

More than facts

Mission-based video games are about more than just getting students to memorize facts. Video games have been shown to teach literacy, problem-solving, perseverance, and collaboration. Even games designed exclusively for entertainment integrate skills like literacy and math by forcing players to read necessary information or make complex monetary decisions in order to “level up.” Most video games offer students opportunities to both gain knowledge and, more importantly, immediately utilize that knowledge to solve a problem. Going back to the Lemonade Stand example, the game never asked students to define “asset.” But kids were forced to look at their assets, examine additional information (weather reports), purchase supplies, set a price for their product, sell, and then assess their profit. After this, they had to reflect on what did or didn’t work and re-adjust their strategy. Talk about critical thinking!

This immediate application of knowledge, coupled with the inherent fun of video games, engages and motivates students far better than many traditional lessons could. Students become problem solvers who can think through complex missions to find the best possible solution.

And because students are so motivated to find a solution, they will often take risks they might otherwise be too scared to take in the classroom. In a recent New York Times Magazine article about gaming in education, video-game designer Will Wright refers to this as “failure-based learning.” Think about it — a video game is all about failing. Gamers make mistakes, lose lives, lose the entire game. But then they learn from those mistakes and try it again. Keep trying, in fact, until they “beat the game.” Therein lies the challenge and fun of gaming. The article even refers to the language of gamers as “the language of strivers.”

“Failure in an academic environment is depressing,” Will Wright says. “Failure in a video game is pleasant. It’s completely aspirational.”

Game designer Jane McGonigal takes this idea even further. In her TED Talk, she asserts that gaming skills could actually help us solve the world’s largest problems:

Real-World Preparation

In the past, I’ve heard adults deride video games for isolating students, for keeping them plugged into a virtual world rather than interacting with the real one. However, video games have been at the forefront of the rise of social media. One teacher told me that her teenage son is a huge World of Warcraft fan. In that game, players create avatars and roam around a fictional world completing quests. Players connect to the game online, so they can interact with other gamers live. The teacher explained that her son connects with players of all ages, races, genders, and backgrounds through the game and learns to work with them. He’ll form a “guild” with a professor in Australia, a housewife in France, and an engineer in Mexico to complete a specific mission. Not only is he gaining valuable collaborative and leadership skills, he’s also becoming a true global citizen. All while plugged into his computer.

Hundreds of teachers have discovered that World of Warcraft (commonly called WoW) helps students gain collaboration, problem-solving, math, and literacy skills. These educators have even created a wiki called WoW in School, where they share lesson plans and integration ideas.

The corporate world has already seen immense potential in the ability of video games to train workers for real-life scenarios. Right now, doctors use video games to practice rare and complex surgeries. And U.S. military soldiers use video-game-like consoles to control unmanned droids.

Literacy expert James Paul Gee is one of the major proponents for video games in education, in part because he believes they ready students for the real world:

How can teachers integrate gaming?

Now, I’m not asserting that video games can replace teachers or even that they’re the magic education bullet. When I had my students play Lemonade Stand, I didn’t just put them on the game and let them go. It was a strategic piece of a larger unit. I introduced the game after we had begun talking about businesses — what they were, how they worked, etc. Plus, students had worksheets to fill in as they played the game, which re-enforced the vocabulary and major concepts I wanted them to learn.

With any in-class activity, our job as teachers is to help students transfer that knowledge so they can use it in scenarios outside of that day’s lesson. The same goes for educational games. Research shows that students need time to reflect on a game if it is to be an effective piece of a lesson. As such, educators need to develop an appropriate framework for the game to encourage students to reflect on and transfer their learning. That framework can come in different forms — depending on the game, I’ve had students complete worksheets, author reflective blogs, or simply participate in group and class discussions.

Logistics

If you’re going to introduce video gaming into your classroom, the first thing you need are quality games. Check out the *footnote at the bottom of this post for a list of recommended FREE educational video games to get you started.

You’ll also need an implementation plan. My school had a mobile Mac lab, so I was able to put each student on his/her own individual computer to play video games. In other instances, I rotated students through the three computers that sat in the back of my classroom, much like one would rotate students through a center. For added re-enforcement, I’d let students come into my classroom before and after school to play games we had played in class. (Sometimes, I’d even let a student re-play an educational video game for 15 minutes of classtime as a reward. Haha — fooled them into learning!)

Henry Danielson found a more permanent solution at one California high school. I heard Henry, a tech director in the diverse Coast Unified School District, speak recently at a conference about his school, where he started a video game lab. He went to his local Best Buy, talked to the manager and got a few Plasma-screen TVs, a Wii, an XBox 360, and a PlayStaton3, all for $3,200. He installed them into an unused classroom and added a few computers for good measure. The game lab is open before and after school and at lunch. With recent cut-backs, finding an empty classroom wasn’t too difficult, but he also needed staff to man the room — the lab turned into an added duty for a single math teacher.

What’s interesting, though, is the behavioral benefits Henry noticed due to the game lab. Because students were in the lab, they weren’t bored enough to cause trouble during their down-time. Plus, teachers started seeing some intriguing self-regulation habits take form. With a limited number of controllers, students were politely asking and offering to take turns in the game lab, without adult intervention. And the lab attracted a variety of kids — girls, boys, special education students, kids from all socio-economic backgrounds. Students who normally never interacted were playing together.

Moving Up Bloom’s

Playing video games can help students acquire a number of higher level thinking skills. But, just like students learn more when they create content, they can learn a ton when building video games. Quest to Learn, a new middle school in New York, boasts an entire curriculum built around gaming, and students regularly create games in class. School leaders contend that by building video games that work, students begin to understand complex systems, which will give them valuable knowledge as they enter the workforce. After all, isn’t the world just a series of complicated systems?

At the aquarium where I currently work, we’re partnering with the Mobile Learning Institute this summer to invite high school students to build mobile phone apps. Our focus is on science instruction, so the students will spend the summer working in collaborative groups creating apps that teach other teens the science behind several aquarium exhibits. Similarly, at his high school gaming lab, Henry is adding two computer stations specifically for building mobile phone applications. His school already offers a computer programming class where students learn the basics of app creation, for both the Android and iPhone.

If you’re interested in having students create apps as a culmination project in any subject, check out Google’s App Inventor. It’s a free program for building Android apps and, because it’s from Google, there’s a series of tutorials online that can teach middle and high school students the basics. (UPDATE: Google has announced it will stop supporting the program at the end of 2011, when MIT is slated to take it over.) To create iPhone apps, you’ll have to shell out a little cash — its Developer Program goes for $99. UPDATE: ARIS, an open-source program from the University of Wisconsin, allows users to create location-based games for the iPhone and iPad. Compared to the Apple Developer Program, it has a much easier user interface that’s great for students. Plus, it’s totally FREE.

But video game creation shouldn’t begin and end with mobile phone apps. Several easy-to-use FREE programs can get even elementary school students building their own video games. With Kodu Game Lab, students can create XBox 360 games. Gamestar Mechanic (created by the founder of the Quest to Learn school) and Alice both make computer game creation easy and fun for students.

What can gaming teach teachers?

Any teacher in the 21st century can tell you that video games engage students. Games motivate kids to keep trying, even as tasks get more difficult. They feed students bits of information, just when it’s needed. They encourage students to persevere, despite failure after failure. Video games are, in essence, scaffolding machines. And they do it perfectly.

Imagine how effective schools could be if they did the same thing.

A few educators already are. Obviously, every lesson can’t be (and shouldn’t be) learned by playing a video game. But there are ways to integrate gaming principles into everyday lessons to help motivate and engage students.

At Indiana University, Professor Lee Sheldon’s students gain experience points rather than grades. They earn those points by completing quests (giving presentations), fighting monsters (taking tests) and crafting (completing projects). For some quests, students are grouped into guilds, while others they complete solo. Lee says that, since he made the changes, he’s seen a marked improvement in his students’ enthusiasm. The Quest to Learn middle school is set up in a similar fashion, with students earning levels of expertise from ‘novice’ to ‘master’ on their report cards. (You can find the school’s learning framework here.)

Nothing is new in education, though. A lot of gaming ideas correlate to principles that have been in education for decades. Quest to Learn basically utilizes Problem-Based Learning — a technique originally designed for medical students — to teach its middle schoolers.

With Problem-Based Learning, students must solve a problem (or complete a mission), but they need various skills in order to find a solution, so they learn these necessary skills (the lesson’s objectives) along the way. A common PBL lesson is the roller coaster challenge. In many middle school science classrooms, students have to solve a problem — how can they design a safe, speedy, fun roller coaster when roller coasters don’t have engines? In solving this problem, students test different methods (failing again and again) and learn various physics-related principles, all while having quite a bit of fun.

Problem-Based Learning (which is similar to both Project-Based and Inquiry Learning) has been shown to increase student’s critical thinking skills, as well as the depth of their understanding.

But gaming-based curricula aren’t solely a new face on an old idea. What gaming can uniquely offer educators is a new vocabulary to assess and critique students, where that feedback is encouraging rather than frightening. A classroom setting where students both want to win and believe they can.

Lesson Integration Ideas

Elementary Classrooms

Grade: K-3
Subject: All Subjects
Objective: The student will be able to master a variety of objectives while solving problems for a fictional zookeeper.

Thematic units are a big part of many lower elementary classrooms. If we look at video game structure, we can use gaming design principles to help create strong thematic units.

One of the benefits of working with young students is their unparalleled imagination. You can put students into a completely imaginary situation, and they will become totally enraptured in this fake world. Coupled with a thematic unit, you can take the principles of video game design to a whole new level.

In lower elementary grades, there are various animal-related science standards — understanding what animals need to live, the characteristics of various organisms, and the life cycle of animals. Plus, kids at this age LOVE animals. So why not create a thematic unit around the idea of zoos?

On the first day of the unit, post a large sign outside your classroom door with an appropriate name for your class zoo. Decorate the outside of your classroom so it looks like a zoo (if you have windows in your classroom, use construction paper to emulate zoo cage bars; add paper green grass along the bottom of the wall in the hallway leading to your classroom; etc.). Before students enter your classroom, tell them that you got a very important call from the local zoo. They heard how smart your students were, and they asked the kids to help some of their animals. In order to do this, each student would be named a Junior Zookeeper. Have students raise their right hands and repeat a “Zookeepers’ Pledge.” Then, give each of them a “Junior Zookeeper” badge to wear as they enter the classroom.

Once inside the classroom, have centers set up for various subjects and objectives, but continue the zoo theme with the decorations and activities. At each center, have a letter from a zookeeper explaining the zoo’s problem and asking students for help. (If you’re really ambitious, you could have videos from the zookeeper — you or a friend dressed up — at some of the centers.) At a math center, the zookeepers need help sorting animals into the right habitats. Depending on age, students can sort different species or different sizes of the same species. At a writing center, the zookeepers need help writing the signs that will be hung on a specific animal’s exhibit. Have younger students read books to get information about the animal, while older kids can do research on the internet. Then, have students write and design exhibit signs.

Every day, you can create new lessons in each subject area that align with your objectives and timeline, but also have students solving problems for the zookeeper. As a culmination activity at the end of the unit, tell students that the zookeepers are thinking about adding a new exhibit to the zoo and need some ideas. After a field trip to the zoo and/or some research, have students write a proposal for a new exhibit and make a 3D model of it. You could even ask the local zoo to send a zookeeper to your class to speak to students or judge their projects.

Middle School Classrooms

Grade: 4-6
Subject: Math
Objective: The student will be able to find the perimeter and the area of an object.

First, spend one day teaching students about perimeter. The next day, introduce the idea of area. Then, take students out onto the playground. Tell them to walk on the PERIMETER of the playground (generally, students will walk in a line around the outside of the playground). Then, ask them to walk in the AREA of the playground (they run around in the middle of the playground). Keep switching your directions — having students walk along the PERIMETER, and then inside the AREA. Afterwards, discuss what students noticed — were the perimeter and area the same? Etc.

Next, have students play the Cyberchase game Cyberspaceship Builder. In the game, students are given a set perimeter. Then they have to create shapes with various areas using the same perimeter. As students play, have them take notes about their findings. You might want to make a worksheet where students must demonstrate the different perimeters and areas they create. With older students, you could have them record their findings in their math notebooks.

After the lesson, discuss what students discovered, any questions they have, and have connections they made. (This is a good time to connect area to multiplication arrays and ask students if they found a more efficient way — other than counting — to find the area. For older students, ask about strategies for finding the area of oddly shaped spaceships.)

High School Classrooms

Grade: 9-12
Subject: Technology
Objective: The student will be able to communicate information to others, by engaging them in a mission-based video game.

Partner with a middle or elementary class in your area. Have the teacher send you a list of objectives his/her students have been studying. Present these objectives to your high school students and challenge each student to create a video game that will both engage younger kids and help them better understand one of the objectives (allow each of your students to choose which objective they’d like to teach).

Have students build video games using Google’s App Inventor, the iPhone Developer Program, ARIS, Flash, or another game development software (like Kodu Game Lab, Gamestar Mechanic or Alice).

Even simple games, like Lemonade Stand, can go a long way if they’re built creatively. There’s a great opportunity for students to create games that help explain major concepts like evolution or even climate change.

*Footnote: Educational Video Games

Civics

Budget Hero (grades 7-12), created by American Public Media, invites students to control the federal budget. What government programs should be cut? Which ones should be expanded? How much should Americans pay in taxes? You decide.

Food Force (grades 4-8) “invites children to complete six virtual missions that reflect real-life obstacles faced by the World Food Program in its emergency responses both to the tsunami and other hunger crises around the world.”

Games for Change (preK-adult) lists a variety of games for different grade levels and topics. Most of the games are designed to teach students about global issues, such as refugees, global poverty, and climate change.

iCivics (formerly Our Courts) (grades 4-12) “is a web-based education project designed to teach students civics and inspire them to be active participants in our democracy. iCivics is the vision of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who is concerned that students are not getting the information and tools they need for civic participation, and that civics teachers need better materials and support.” It includes a teacher section with several lesson plans.

In Whyville (grades 4-8), players complete missions and, in the process, “learn about art history, science, journalism, civics, economics, and really so, so much more. Whyville works directly with the Getty, NASA, the School Nutrition Association, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (to name just a few) to bring engaging educational content to kids.”

Economics

Lemonade Stand (grades 3-8) requires players to create and manage a lemonade business. If they don’t make a profit, they lose. (Newer version here.)

In Whyville (grades 4-8), players complete missions and, in the process, “learn about art history, science, journalism, civics, economics, and really so, so much more. Whyville works directly with the Getty, NASA, the School Nutrition Association, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (to name just a few) to bring engaging educational content to kids.”

History

Discover Babylon (grades 3-9) “uses sophisticated video gaming strategies and realistic digital environments to engage the learner in challenges and mysteries that can only be solved through developing an understanding of Mesopotamian society, business practices, and trade.”

Math

I’m a fan of most of the games on the PBS kids website, but specifically those associated with the Cyberchase (grades 3-6) cartoon series. Each episode of Cyberchase teaches a different math concept in a real-world setting, and the dozens of games available on the website do the same. Plus, the site has a teacher section that lists the games by national math standards and offers associated lesson plans.

Science

In Immune Attack (grades 7-12) “you must navigate a nanobot through a 3D environment of blood vessels and connective tissue in an attempt to save an ailing patient by retraining her non-functional immune cells.  Along the way, you will learn about the biological processes that enable macrophages and neutrophils – white blood cells – to detect and fight infections.“

In Re-Mission (grades 9-12), which is rated T for Teens, players fight cancerous cells at a microscopic level to keep a human body healthy.

In Whyville (grades 4-8), players complete missions and, in the process, “learn about art history, science, journalism, civics, economics, and really so, so much more. Whyville works directly with the Getty, NASA, the School Nutrition Association, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (to name just a few) to bring engaging educational content to kids.”

Technology

With Smokescreen (grades 7-12), a game about Internet safety, gamers “explore websites, search for clues, receive phone calls, chat on IM, and tackle puzzles and minigames. On Smokescreen, who can you trust?“

Art

In Whyville (grades 4-8), players complete missions and, in the process, “learn about art history, science, journalism, civics, economics, and really so, so much more. Whyville works directly with the Getty, NASA, the School Nutrition Association, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (to name just a few) to bring engaging educational content to kids.”

More

You can find more FREE educational games listed at Social Impact Games. Also, College at Home lists some of the best commercial ($$) video games that can be used in education.

A few months ago, at the annual CETPA conference, I decided to attend a session entitled “Screencasting for Better Learning and Instruction.” I had recently written a blog entry about screencasting where I discussed having students teach one another by creating screencasts (a video recording of your computer screen and your voice-over narration). I figured the session might give me some other ideas for student screencasts. So when AP Chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam started talking about creating screencasts as a teacher, I let out quite a sigh — I’m a staunch advocate for getting technology out of the hands of teachers and into the hands of kids.

Boy, were my eyes opened.

I still think it’s a good idea to have students create screecasts. But Ramsey explained how his own screencasts completely transformed his daily classroom. He showed that, by creating screencasts yourself, teachers can become much more effective and make their lives easier simultaneously. Best of all, everything he does in regards to screencasting is backed up by brain research. Now, although Ramsey teaches AP chemistry, I recognized that his ideas can be transferred to nearly any classroom, so I couldn’t keep his revelations to myself.

Traditional Instruction

All teachers split up our in-class time between direct instruction, modeling, and hands-on practice. In most of our classes, it’s clear that the hands-on practice is where most of the learning takes place for students, but the previous two steps are necessary to get them to that place.

As such, most lesson plans start out simply enough. For example, here’s an outline:

• the teacher explains what the area of a space means (15 minutes)
• the teacher solves a problem asking about area (15 minutes)
• students solve area-related problems (30 minutes)

Straight forward enough. Of course, when has lesson plan timing ever been accurate? Generally, during the first two parts, there’s a bit of “Sammy, are you listening?” “James, face front,” and so on. And as soon as the third part — independent practice — starts, there are 15 hands. “What are we supposed to do?” “What’s ‘area’?” “Isn’t it lunchtime?” So, in reality, you often get something like this:

• the teacher talks about area, tries to get students to stay engaged by singing, dancing and/or yelling (25 minutes)
• the teacher keeps talking about area, while writing on board, hopes students haven’t zoned out yet (20 minutes)
• the students ask the teacher to repeat everything said in the previous 45 minutes (15 minutes)
• class is over — the students do independent work for homework

Sound familiar? I would say that second scenario accounts for about 90 percent of my lessons, as much as I hate to admit it. What’s worse is that, when I think about my most successful lessons — the ones where students learned the most — a majority of the time was spent on that independent practice. If that’s true, then I should be asking myself, “What can I do to increase the amount of independent practice time in my classroom?” The answer? Shocker: screencasting.

‘Reverse Instruction’

What Ramsey does in his class is ingenious. He takes the direct instruction and modeling portions of his class and records them as a screencast. His screencasts are usually about 7 minutes long, and they’re posted online. For homework, students have to watch the screencast — at home, on their smartphones, at the library, or in the computer lab — and answer questions about it via an online form. Then, Ramsey takes the first 15 minutes or so of class and has a Q and A session related to the video. After that, it’s all independent practice time. So his lesson looks more like this:

• direct instruction (at home before class)
• Q and A about screencast (15 minutes)
• students solve related problems, with peer and teacher support (45 minutes)

Here’s one of Ramsey’s chemistry lectures:

Ramsey tested his screencasting method with one class and found that their test scores, as well as their confidence, improved significantly, compared to a class with more traditional instruction. Because there was time for independent practice, Ramsey was able to challenge students with more difficult problems in class.

Although I first heard about this method from Ramsey Musallam, he’s not the only one advocating it. Others have coined the terms “Reverse Instruction” or the “Fisch Flip” to describe similar methods. But it all goes back to the same basic idea — direct instruction/lecture becomes homework, while independent practice happens in class.

Added Benefits

In addition to what is essentially added classtime, screencasting comes with a host of other advantages:

• Students can watch the video as many times as they need to, in order to better understand complex concepts.
• During the independent practice time of class, when it often seems that all of your students need you at once, students can be encouraged to access the screencast again on a class computer to review segments of it before asking for one-on-one help.
• Students are getting the direct instruction (when you’re most likely to lose them) one-on-one at home, plugged into a computer, without as many distractions.
• Since students are working on independent practice in class, the teacher can catch misconceptions early and offer interventions.
• Students spend more collective time on independent practice — where they learn more, and where they’re practicing skills necessary for standardized tests.
• Students can work collaboratively during the early stages of independent practice, which offers support to those who need it and helps solidify the learning of those offering support.
• When doing additional problems at home, students can refer back to the video for added help.
• Absent students can stay on-track with little teacher intervention.
• Screencasts are great when kids are studying for a test — they can essentially refer back to all the lessons from the entire year.
• If you screencast all your lessons this year, you can use most of them again next year and every year after.

How do I do it?

Basics

According to Ramsey, screencasting can work even better than direct instruction because you’re reaching students through various modalities — visual and audio. But for the best results, there are a few things to remember. First, anything longer than about 10 minutes will lose most students. Break up lessons if you need to, but try to keep your screencasts short and to the point. Second, students respond better to voices they recognize, so try not to use videos recorded by other people. Your voice will do a better job of teaching your students.

You’ll also need to hold students accountable for watching the videos for homework. Ramsey has students write a brief summary after watching the videos through a Google form he embeds into his website. Other teachers have students turn in notes on the videos or complete a worksheet while watching the screencast. Some more expensive screencasting software (see below) allows teachers to embed quiz questions into the videos themselves. After the first two minutes, a question will pop up. If the student gets it wrong, they have to re-watch those two minutes.

Access

If you’re going to require students to watch screencasts for homework, it’s important that they’re able to access the videos. I’ve only taught in low-income areas and, although only a couple of my students each year had access to the Internet at home, they all somehow had MySpace accounts. With friends, family members, smartphones, and libraries, most students can access the Internet after school, especially now that so many gaming systems are Internet-ready (XBox, Wii, etc.).

But if you’re worried, there are a few options to ensure access. If you have computers in your classroom, allow students without access to come in before or after school or during lunch — the screencasts are only 10 minutes long so it shouldn’t be too difficult. If your school has a computer lab, find a way to open it up to students during their free time. Some teachers even create a few DVD copies of all their screencasts (they use the same ones every year, so they only have to do this once) and allow students to check them out, as they would a library book. Ramsey distributes his videos as an RSS feed, through iTunes, so students can access them on their video iPods as well.

Software

You’re going to want two kinds of software — a program that will record your screencast AND a program that allows you annotate on your computer (basically, to turn your computer into a whiteboard). There are FREE, low-cost, and more pricey programs for both of these uses. Ramsey lists quite a few under “tools” on his screencasting website, but I’ll highlight my favorites here.

I really like Jing – it’s a FREE screencasting tool that I’ve written about before. It’s fairly easy to upload Jing screencasts onto the Internet. One problem, though: the free version only allows you to record up to 5 minutes, so anything longer has to be broken into segments. If you’re using an Ubuntu machine, I recommend the FREE RecordMyDesktop for basic screencasting functions. Camtasia Studio is definitely not free, with a pricetag of $299, but the PC version allows you to embed quiz questions throughout your screencast. And if a student gets a question wrong, they have to re-watch that segment of the video. (For other FREE screencasting tools, check out this Mashable article.)

Ramsey lists a ton of annotation programs on his site, but I haven’t used too many of them. I’ve heard that CoSketch, a FREE web-based whiteboard tool that requires no registration, is pretty good as well. I like ActivInspire, which is actually an interactive whiteboard program and is FREE for teachers. In fact, I used to have students create screencasts using my classroom Promethean board and the accompanying software. If you don’t have an interactive whiteboard, though, you might struggle with annotating using just your mouse. You can build an interactive board for about $55, or you can order a tablet slate — a stylus that you can use for a mouse — for anywhere from $80 to $500, depending on quality.

Once you’ve created a screencast, you’ll need a place to post it. The easiest way to do this is to create your own channel on YouTube or Vimeo, if those are allowed in your school. You can then either direct students directly to your channel or create a class website or blog, where you embed the videos.

Update: For more, check out Flip Teaching. It’s a website just released by Ramsey Musallam and it includes step-by-step screencasting directions as well as information on his research.

Other Uses

Screencasting doesn’t have to begin and end with a teacher’s direct instruction. Screencasts are also great for substitutes. Instead of leaving a lesson plan, leave a screencast for your sub to play before (s)he hands out a related set of questions or problems.

You can also save time with homework reviews. I HATE homework reviews. Ramsey offered a statistic that said 50 percent of your students don’t need to review their homework and the other 50 percent need you to review it more than once. So you’re helping no one. But screencasting allows you to help those that need it. For example, have students show their homework to you on Monday morning and give them credit as long as it’s finished — but don’t collect it. Monday night, post a screencast reviewing all the homework problems. For homework, students have to watch the screencast and make any corrections. Then, on Tuesday, collect their homework and grade it. You’re doing just as much work, but you’re not wasting any class time to do it.

With younger students, screencasts are a great opportunity to model your teaching for parents. When I taught 4th grade, we used TERC Investigations as our math curriculum. I loved it, but we didn’t teach students the traditional algorithms (carrying, borrowing, etc.) for solving math problems, so parents often felt like they couldn’t help students at home. But if they had seen my lessons, they would have better understood how their children were learning and, thus, would have been in a better position to help.

Teachers aren’t the only ones who can create instructive screencasts. You can have your students screencast homework reviews or create screencasts for next year’s students. Then use those screencasts for peer-to-peer tutoring, without having to pull the higher student out of class or make the lower student feel less adequate than the person next to him/her. Plus, every student has a strength, so every student can create a screencast to teach someone else, even your lowest kids.

Some teachers even use screencasts for in-class student presentations. For example, sometimes teachers have students work in groups on a jigsaw activity — every group becomes an expert on a different aspect of the lesson and then the groups share their knowledge with one another via presentations. Unfortunately, when some students are asked to talk in front of the entire class on the spot, they’re less than articulate. If you give every group about 10 minutes to create a brief Jing screencast as their presentation, though, they can communicate their ideas better (they’re able to write as well as speak) and they can have a few chances to re-do their recording if they mess up the first time. Plus, shy students only have to speak in front of their group, rather than the entire class, so they’re more likely to be involved. Afterwards, you can show the screencasts whole-class, just as you would a presentation, but you can also post the videos online so students can access them later for review.

For more information on Reverse Instruction, check out this website, created by two Colorado teachers who have been using Reverse Instruction for years.

Lesson Integration Ideas

Elementary, Middle and High School Classrooms

Grade: 2-12
Subject: Math
Objective: The student will be able to use grade-level appropriate mathematical operations to solve a problem.

Often in math class, a student will struggle with a particular operation or problem type. In 4th grade, a few of my students had consistent problems with subtraction and division. Screencasts are perfect for offering these students one-on-one tutoring, without having to schedule the time.

Create a screencast with a sample problem involving the operation the student has trouble with. Give the struggling student a worksheet with an identical problem, but with the numbers slightly different. Have students follow the screencast step-by-step, pausing it to complete each step on their own worksheet (for younger students, it might be a good idea to tell students when to pause the screencast during the recording).

You can create one such screencast and use it with several students over several years. The students can watch the screencast in class, using headphones, or at home, with parental support.

Middle School and High School Classrooms

Grade: 6-12
Subject: Foreign Languages
Objective: The student will be able to express his/herself verbally in a new language.

Using the FREE program Jing, have students create screencasts in the language they’re learning. They can explain step-by-step directions or record a dialogue, all the while annotating pictures on their computer to accompany their speaking. Students can re-record their speaking over and over, until it’s perfect — the repetitive practice will help them learn.

Once they’re finished, they can post the video for their classmates to watch. They can create an accompanying worksheet for their peers to complete as they watch the screencast.

Grade: 6-12
Subject: English Language Arts
Objective: The student will be able to make corrections based on teacher feedback.

Feedback is one of the most important — and most time-consuming — pieces of a teacher’s job. Ideally, we would have regular conferences with all of our students going line-by-line through their writing. However, this isn’t possible. So instead, we collect their essays, grade them at home, and return them, along with comments that we hope will help the students improve.

Unfortunately, research shows that when students see both a grade and a comment on their work, they only look at the grade and ignore the comment. But screencasts can help.

Go through grading students’ papers as you normally would. However, use a document camera connected to your computer OR a video camera to record the paper and your corrections, along with your voice explaining the corrections. Stop and re-start the recording between each paper, so you’re creating a separate video for each student’s paper. Upload these videos on a website like YouTube or Vimeo, which give you the option to make them private. Share the video ONLY with the student whose paper is being graded.

Now, instead of only receiving a marked-up essay, your students can have a virtual conference with you. If they have any questions, they can add them as a comment to the video, which you can reply to. These dialogues are now recorded, and you can use them during parent-teacher conferences or special education proceedings, if needed.

Nearly every teacher in America integrates technology into the classroom through at least one gateway – research. Generally, I stay away from discussing Internet research with teachers because it’s something most already feel comfortable with. I try to focus on tools and strategies that teachers may not know about. However, in the past few months, I’ve discovered some search engine tools that I wish had existed a few years ago, when I was working with 3^rd- and 4^th-grade English-language learners.

Qwiki

In the Disney movie Wall-E, there’s a scene where the captain of a spaceship sits in front of a screen and asks his computer to define various words he knows very little about. “Computer, define ‘Earth.’” “Computer, define ‘pizza.’” And so forth. In response, the computer shows him a series of images and videos, accompanied by a brief narration that is basically an excerpt from an encyclopedia.

That is Qwiki.

In essence, Qwiki is a quick Wikipedia. Type in a name, place, word, or phrase like, for example, “Hurricane Katrina,” and you’ll get a series of images and videos, along with a short computer narration explaining the basics. If you want more info, the website links you to broader sites, like Google and Wikipedia.

The beauty of Qwiki is not in its depth. A student isn’t going to get all the information they need for a research project on Qwiki. But it is great for the basics. When a student asks, “who is Sojourner Truth?” or “what was the Apollo program?” Qwiki is the perfect place to turn for a brief shot of basic information, without having to sift through 5 million hits on Google or ten pages of college-level reading on Wikipedia. Because the site integrates multiple mediums – images, videos, and sound – it can give information to students of nearly every level, even struggling readers. (Everything on Qwiki has closed captions so, even though the computer is actually reading the text, students can see the words being read, which helps with fluency and comprehension.)

Here’s a video of one of the early Qwiki demos, which also includes a peek at a pretty cool Qwiki phone app:

One warning: Qwiki is far from perfect. I first heard about it several months ago, when it was in an early testing phase. Then, you needed to register and login to use the site. It didn’t have a very wide base of knowledge, and many of the computer pronunciations were wrong. The site has since been upgraded, and now anyone can use it without registering, but there are still some issues – things that should resolve themselves with time. There are several people and terms that aren’t yet in Qwiki’s database (you’ll get a message saying “We’re sorry, we couldn’t find a Qwiki by that name”). The language used is taken from various websites, so there is a lot of upper-level vocabulary used. And there are still some pronunciation errors (with one Qwiki, the computer read “1,867” as the year rather than the number). However, each Qwiki has a button requesting feedback – so if something is pronounced incorrectly, read at the wrong speed, or if there are other images and videos you’d like to see associated with it, you can mention them. With this feedback method, Qwiki seems to be getting better every day.

SortFix

One of the main problems with search engines like Google is the sheer number of hits users get when they search for a general topic. Even adults have issues coming up with the exact wording necessary to produce the results you’re looking for. A friend of mine once had a student researching breast cancer, and her searches were turning up some really inappropriate pages simply because she didn’t know how to properly narrow her search.

Enter SortFix, a website that I first heard about from Erin Klein. SortFix offers the scaffolding students (and many of us) need when we’re using search engines.

Let’s say a student is researching raccoons for a report. When they type “raccoons” into SortFix, the website will list the millions of results but it will also pull up a list of “power words” that seem to appear in several of the hits – food, information, facts, television, north, pictures, animated, common, wildlife, procyon, animals, natural. Now, the student can drag relevant words to an “add to search” pile and irrelevant words to a “remove” pile (if there are words students don’t know, they can drag them to a “dictionary” pile to define them first). “Information” and “facts” go to the add pile; “animated,” “television,” and “pictures” are removed, while we leave the other words alone. Click the search icon, and now the first hit gives us some basic raccoon facts – just what we were looking for. If we’re still struggling, a whole new group of power words appears so we can refine our search again.

SortFix is a great way to help students improve their Internet searches while simultaneously teaching them to become better search engine users.

Google Search Tricks

If your students are 13 years old or younger, Google has existed for their entire lives. Every K-12 student today is considered part of the Google Generation because, for as long as they’ve been in school, Google has been a tool at their disposal. Google is such an ingrained part of our society that the name itself has become a verb, synonymous with “searching on the Internet.” Most of us — and most of our students — use Google as our main search engine.

But most of us aren’t using Google to its fullest. Everything Google designs is brilliant, and its search engine is no exception. If you know the tricks, with just a few keystrokes, you can use Google as a units converter, a calculator, or a flight tracker. In Google’s help section, you can find all of these shortcuts, along with some simple tips to help you (and your students) become better search engine users.

The main Google Search Tricks are also outlined by Tony Vincent in one of his Prezis:

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Lesson Integration Ideas

Elementary Classrooms

Grade: 1-5
Subject: English Language Arts, Technology
Objective: The student will be able to find and understand information from a variety of sources, including the Internet.

Whenever a student has a basic question in class — i.e. “What’s Paris, France?” — look it up on Qwiki as a class. As time goes by, start having conversations about what students can and can’t learn from Qwiki. How does Qwiki compare to a dictionary? Can you ask Qwiki specific questions or just general questions? As a class, use chart paper to make a list of things Qwiki would be able to answer and a list of things it wouldn’t.

After several weeks or months, once students become more accustomed to using Qwiki for basic facts — similar to an encyclopedia — introduce SortFix to them. First, use it as a class to research a topic. Explain that, sometimes, computers need extra clues to understand your questions and, by giving them additional words, it helps computers answer our questions. Go back to the list the class made with things Qwiki wouldn’t be able to answer. Discuss whether there are any questions on that list that SortFix would be able to help answer. After using both SortFix and Qwiki several times as a class when questions arise, invite students to use the sites on their own for their research projects.

Middle School Classrooms

Grade: 4-8
Subject: English Language Arts, Technology
Objective: The student will be able to find and understand information from a variety of sources, including the Internet.

Introduce students to SortFix. First, use it as a class to research a topic. Explain that, sometimes, computers need extra clues to understand your questions and, by giving them additional words, it helps computers answer our questions. Have students use the site as they work on research topics.

In their notebooks, have students record their original searches and their searches after they added and removed power words. After several weeks, once students become accustomed to using SortFix, discuss what SortFix teaches us. Tell students you want to know what jellyfish eat, so you’re going to type “jellyfish” into Google. Ask students to help you refine your search, without using SortFix. Ask them to predict power words and infer how you would add or remove words from a search, using Google rather than SortFix. Invite students to start using SortFix strategies on more general search engines, like Google, as they research future topics.

High School Classrooms

Grade: 9-12
Subject: English Language Arts
Objective: The student will be able to comprehend various texts and synthesize his/her knowledge in order to communicate the main idea and supporting details to others.

Introduce students to Qwiki. Start a discussion about what Qwiki can and cannot tell users, guiding students to the idea that Qwiki is mainly for basic facts (main ideas), rather than in-depth information. Invite students to create a Qwiki based on a text they’re reading in class. Explain that they’re only communicating the main idea, supporting details, and main themes of the text; nothing more. Using a movie-making program (MovieMaker, iMovie, or PiTiVi), have students use image, videos, and their own narration to create a 30-second Qwiki.