Digitalkatie's blog

Mobile Learning Trial: a reflection?

Recently I've been seeing lots of references to the Handheld Learning Conference in October this year.  Last year I presented to the conference about the mobile phone project in our school that was about to be launched to the pupils.  I'm now thinking about how the project has gone.  I'd say "gone so far" but I think the project is pretty much over.

About a week or so after I got back from the conference we distributed the phones to the senior pupils.  It was a few months later than planned but at least we'd managed it.  The idea was that with unlimited internet access on the phones, the pupils would be able to research on the web, upload photos and videos of science experiments, and record French, German and Spanish speaking practice for example (I believe we are the only school in Edinburgh to offer three foreign languages)

There were teething problems.  Issues with the keyboard on one phone, another phone that didn't have the website filtering installed, sites that were blocked that we wanted unblocked, a cracked screen.  Nothing too major within the first few days.  However a couple of days after the launch I had to go off on sick leave.  This was the first problem that we couldn't really have avoided.  There was now no-one with the time to do the troubleshooting or chasing up companies.

The bonus to the project was the phone provider, O2, offered us unlimited calls and texts to other O2 customers.  This meant that the pupils could call and text each other at no extra expense.  We were told there was £5 of 'credit' on the phones, and as soon as that was used it would cut off and they wouldn't be able to make any calls to non-O2 numbers (except 999, of course). 

This turned out to be the second problem we couldn't really have avoided. 

This cut-off wasn't set up properly by O2.  Yup.  Give a bunch of 17 year olds a phone and say there is £5 of credit before cutting off and they will use it.  We encouraged them to use it.  We were happy for them to be using the phones.  The kids did point out they felt they had been using it a lot so we checked up and were assured by the company that there was a £5 cut-off in place.  There wasn't.  I don't know the exact figure, but I believe it was pretty scary(*).

It took us a while to work this out though.  First some phones' data connections were intermittently not working.  It got confusing and we couldn't figure out why some pupils could get internet and others couldn't.  The already-overworked teachers involved in the trial were getting very stressed.  I visited the school under the disguise of bringing in some science resources that Sean didn't want any more.  As I signed in I was warned by the bursar "I trust you're not here to do any work?!" I assured her I wasn't and was then warned I wasn't insured if I was working.  Oh, what a workaholic reputation I have!

After testing the modem settings then switching sim cards round, we realised the issue was not with the phones but the sims, or more particularly the accounts.  After a couple of phone calls we realised the problem.  It took a while and a lot of phone calls I believe, but the pupils phones and internet connections were working again...until O2's billing computers didn't speak to their call blocking computers the next month.  The system still thought we owed them lots of money so started blocking access again.  I think this also happened again the next month.

By this time, naturally, the pupils had got fed up wih the phones not working and had stopped bringing them in to school.  The teachers in the trial couldn't rely on the phones working or the kids having the phones, so they didn't use them in much lessons.  This then gave the pupils another reason not to bring them, as they weren't using them in school.  By the time the issues were resolved the pupils were into the serious revising season.

Is there a way to rescue the project?  I'm not sure.  We still have the phones, we could launch again with next year's fifth years, but we'd need to find enough money for the year's line rental, and this would be difficult to get given this year's success rate.  We have the line rental until October, but it wouldn't be fair to the new fifth years to give them phones for two months then take them away again.

Could we have done anything differently?  I don't think so.  The only thing would have been releasing someone for a couple of periods a week for some time to do the troubleshooting and phone calls so the problems could have been resolved quicker.  Unfortunately this wasn't possible because we had staff off ill (sorry!)  I did even wonder if I should have carried on for another week or so more, but I really was struggling to cope by the time I went off ill.

Should I apply to present again at the Handheld Learning conference this year?  I'd like to, although I think it will be difficult getting time off school once I'm back.  I don't think we fit into the strand of "successful Scottish projects" though!  Maybe we were.  It felt like a huge victory getting past all the beaurocracy and legal paperwork to get the phones to the kids in the first place. 

Were the beaurocrats right, that we shouldn't give mobile phones to pupils?  NO.  I still firmly believe that this is the right way to go in education.  Mobile technology is enabling and motivating for young people, and all young people should have equal access to technology.  Mobile devices let young people learn wherever they are, and in ways that are exciting and fun.  This is the way forward, we just need mobile phone providers to be more adaptable and aware of the education market and students' needs.



(* all O2's fault.  No public money has been wasted on huge phone bills for teenagers, trust me!)

Pondering the future at work...

I've been starting to make arrangements to go back to work.  We've found a nursery that is just round the corner and we're both happy with, and we have a couple of grandparents generously offering to help out a day a week each (Sean's mum and my dad)

I phoned my school yesterday.  One of the things I asked about was the rumour I'd heard that no Computing type courses had been offered to the S5/6 classes.  One of the people I spoke to wasn't sure, but suggested that she didn't think any S2 pupils had chosen Computing for their course choices in S3.

I need to chat to the school more next week, but the possibility of going back to work and having three days a week of cover classes isn't particularly appealing.  It may all just be me getting worked up over nothing.  Maybe they have plans for other things for my time, like media or design courses, or helping with planning the new school building.  Or maybe they are planning on me helping with actually building the new school, although my brickwork and joinery skills are pretty lousy!  I could probably manage to paint some walls.

It would have been nice being able to check my work email more than once since October.  It may take me a LONG time to go through the back log - I may have to declare email 'bankrupcy' :-)

Virtual fieldtrip to a water treatment plant

Today the students in the Science class at HSGC went on a virtual field trip. We 'went' to a vitual aquaculture water treatment plant that had been moved to the teen grid temporarily.

Zev Paiss was our tour guide, and he showed us all the stages the water goes through before being used again. In the first stage the 'waste' water is kept in a large tank full of plants and fountains under a greenhouse (which looked very pretty). The plants used the waste products in the water to grow, feeding on the nutrients.

The plants were then harvested and put into a huge tank and converted into gas that can be used for power or cooking. The water, meantime, was filtered through more plants and sand before being safe to pipe into the ocean.

It was a fascinating look at a process I really knew nothing about. It is a shame that more places aren't using this environmentally friendly way of cleaning water.

It was a fantastic 'build' too. None of the students questioned anything about the 'virtual' nature of the event. When asked "what type of building are we in?" they all pitched in with variations of "greenhouse" answers. They asked some great questions too, and gave enthusiastic responses when Zev asked them a question.

A real success in a virtual world :-)

Visiting the High School for Global Citizenship

This morning we got up REALLY early and got the 7am train. The reason for the silly early start (for a holiday!) was that we were going to school. This wasn't because I was missing being at school or because we thought Louis needed a head start in his education. We were actually going to visit the Science class I had been working with in Second Life.

Beth, who has been developing the science course material, visited the class today as well. She lives a hundred miles away but this was her first time visiting the class too.

The class went well. Today they were learning about coal mines. They were finding it difficult to navigate through the coal mine as it was small, crowded and also a 'phantom' object (they could walk through the walls) so combined with the lag meant they kept popping out the sides.

The detail was amazing though. At the entrance to the cave was a canary in a cave, while inside the cave was a dead canary in a cage! There was a miner 'chatbot' to question about how horrible it was cavemining. There was a shiny stream running past the mine that turned a bit gunky as it flowed past the cave. There were fish swimming around (actually moving) in the upstream water, although they looked a bit floaty and dead after the polluted water from the mine had been added.

The students job today was to look around and write down observations. They also had to interview the chatbots in and around the mine (coalminer, researcher, etc) and think about how much of what they are told is scientific 'fact'.

The students were a bit confused at me being in the room but were very friendly when I went round and helped them. It is so much easier being able to help kids in person than stand around in the virtual world and ocassionally shout "anyone need help?"

It was interesting at one point one of the kids told me he liked Sean's shiny trainers, pointing to Sean sitting at the back of the room. Sean doesn't have shiny 'bling' shoes in real life, he was logged into SL. The class has never met him before, yet this student was quite happy that this new person in SL was also the new person in RL.

Afterwards Tracy Rebe, the class teacher and Vice Principal, gave us a tour of the school. The school used to be Prospect Heights High School, a school with over 2000 students and a bad reputation. The school was split into four separate schools four years ago: HSGC, a international school with mainly ESL students, a school specialising in Science, and a fourth one that specialises in the music and theatre. The students don't mix and are not allowed in the other schools' corridors. There is also very little interaction between the schools staff.

The four schools are seperately about the same size as my school, yet the differences were incredible. Apart from the computers bought by Global Kids for the science SL class, there are a handful of computers around in various states. Similar to my students in Edinburgh, many of them don't have access to computers at home, yet at HSGC it isn't a taught subject. This has affected our science class in unexpected ways. At one point we asked them to email information to their teacher, yet many of them were unsure how to send an email. This is also a cultural issue - kids in the USA and the UK don't use email, they instant message (IM).

Funding for schools seems very unequal and dependent on how much tax people pay in the school district area. A rich area of New York state will have schools with computers and textbooks, while other schools in other areas struggle. Even comparing the four schools in the same building they seem to all be getting funding from different sources. HSGC gets some funding through Global Kids. I was very confused when I was first told that GK "had a school" but it makes more sense now.

The school is doing fantastic work though. Tracy spoke with pride about the students' work and huge change in attitude and behaviour since the old large school closed four years ago. The students are also getting fantastic opportunities that they wouldn't normally have, to travel and meet people. Academically results are much better, and this year will be the first year of students graduating from the High School for Global Citizenship. Congratulations to them all!

Last class: Shopping, pianos and animations

Today was our last class (awwww!). We have really enjoyed teaching the classes, and it's looked like everyone has enjoyed them. As well as the four people we were teaching, I think another half dozen people dropped in to see what was happening and now have avatars!

We started today with a bit of retail therapy and a trip to GuRLywood - the biggest and best hair shop in Second Life! :-)

Unfortunately the grid started to get a bit iffy so we went to Torley Linden's youtube site and all watched the video on creating your own SL animations. We then attempted to make our own animation, but the version of Qavimator for the Mac is buggy.

We switched to the FreeSound site instead and showed how to download short sound clips and import them into SL. We then made a giant piano with five keys each which all made strange noises. Mine had a trumpet fanfare, a meow, a laugh, a comedy toot toot horn, and an old-fashioned ringing phone.

We had a quick look at editing the land terrain, then Dan and Josephine arrived and we turned to testing streaming and setting up blogging.

We were joined by others at lunchtime, Sheri, Ranney (songwriter and comedien), DJ (the hiphop teacher), as well as a vast quantity of food. We then spent the rest of the afternoon discussing the summer program.

Afterwards we helped tidy up, including opening up all the sealed packaging on the headsets, mice and mousemats for the program. We then headed to the Jerk Hut for some jamaican food with Dan and Josephine before they headed off to the airport.

We've had a fantastic time teaching this class. I'm really going to miss everyone we've been working with, although I'm sure we'll still meet them online in SL! I'm looking forward to keeping an eye on the Kidz Connect island and seeing what they get up to with the kids there this summer.

7th class: Everyone doing different things!

Dan and Josephine were along this evening, but they'd had a long couple of days of meetings. Rachel wasn't along as she was graduating, and Sheri was back having been off since the start of last week. We also had a couple of staff along who would be helping with the program. They worked through induction island.

Crystal and Leslie played with making sculpted prims using Plopp SL. Crystal then did some shopping and Leslie worked on setting up the Kidz Connect blog. Sheri tried doing some building and textures.

6th class: Hide and Seek and Sculptees

On Tuesday we had asked everyone to come to class on Wednesday with a question or something they weren't sure about and want to cover more.

After writing a list we played a warmup game to practise camera controls, finding a hidden prim then IMing me after seeing the colour on the opposite side of the prim.

We looked at putting photos and links into notecards. We talked about ways to promote events in the teen grid and giving gifts and prizes to other avatars.

During the class Wendy dropped in to say Hi. She brought us a cassette tape of white noise that she made and used to sell to parents of babies with colic. We tried it out as Louis was lying about playing on the floor. It was kinda surreal teaching while there was the sound of a tumble dryer in the background!

For the last section of the class we looked at sculpted prims (or sculptees) using the fruit textures provided free in SL. Leslie made a very funky spinning apple with a picture of her avatar on it.