Conference washup

So two days of complete immersion in all things IT.  At risk of sounding like a John Lennon song:  “So what have we done….”
I got to spend a few hours learning a new programming language, how to create apps for an iDevice, wrestling with iPad and learning concepts,  made lots of new online friends who tweet very wise things…

Yet I am feeling that the real meat of the conference came from the Keynotes.  I felt quite challenged that it is now high time to stop thinking old school, students in rows, teacher does the talking.  Time to start taking some risks and let the kids manage their own learning.

I felt most challenged and inspired by Mark Pesce’s keynote centered around how young people connect.  The standout for me was his suggestion that parents are giving phones to their children at a younger and younger age.  It is just a matter of time until we have students arriving at Prep with a mobile phone in their hand.  I am already aware that my own children are growing up in an age where they have only ever known the presence of the Internet and the ability to gather info from anywhere, anytime.  Therefore, knowledge is freely available – it is no longer the role of the teacher to dole out facts at their chosen time and method.

So what to do with this?

Our classrooms no longer need teacher at the front sprouting information.  If we are to adapt our teaching practices to the way that young people now interconnect we need to consider how we can facilitate them in sharing their ideas in a collaborative sort of way.  Now if you are anything like me, you have heard all this before.  Yet it feels like things are getting urgent now.  So why are teachers not leaping at this seeing as the community seems to be screaming that this is where things need to go….

Big change is scary.  We don’t want to give up control of our classrooms in case it all falls over.  Yet I think the time is right to try.  So when I begin a new topic in class next week, it will be centered around a wiki.  Students, go find whatever you can that you think is relevant and share.  Obviously there will be more scaffolding than that. but one step at a time.  I don’t think I am quite ready to let them set the agenda entirely – pretty sure they wouldn’t know what to do with this anyway.  However, let’s be guided by their ideas and what they can find to bring to the conversation.  Mark suggested that if you give kids a connection, they will share whatever they think is important or of value.  How they choose to wrestle with a given topic will naturally be of value – so let others share in the conversation.

Next step is to model this.  Change needs to be gradual, but perhaps we can guide others to take similar risks and open up our classrooms to new ways of letting students interact.  You never know, we might even learn something ourselves!

Going soft – docx to epub

Like many schools, we are currently considering what devices students might be bringing to the class room in our near future.  This obviously raises fabulous questions about how we deliver content to students who have an iPad or netbook in front of them throughout the school day and beyond.

So I began the journey to discover how difficult it was going to be to convert resources from the commonly used MSWord version, and create a file that could be opened on a range of devices.  Epub seemed to be the most common file type that would be opened by e-readers, and a wonderfully timely tweet pointed me at a nice online tool to convert docx to epub.

I created a word document with images, hyperlinks, even a mailto link to test my conversion process.   I was surprised to find that none of these features were lost.  In fact Stanza, my preferred ereader, displayed most images, font colors/sizes and linked out beautifully to both the browser and email when tapped.  It even used its onboard dictionary to give me the meaning of my own words when requested.

Other formatting features were lost, quite surprisingly.  See list below:

• Page breaks were ignored
• Section breaks were also ignored
• Word Bookmarks were ignored as well
• Table of Contents built in word are also ignored.
  • (How you create chapters in the ebook I am yet to work out….)
• Using a line shape seemed to force a page break (although the line itself was not printed)
• Page size (A4/5) seemed to have little effect on the finished epub result
• Images are automatically upsized to fill the horizontal page space available
• I did lose the odd image or two, so I have to work out if there are restrictions on size (by file size and pixel) restrictions on what will display.
• Embedded video would not play within the e-reader.

The process was quite heartening, as I feel that with some guidance the average teacher could begin to convert the resources they are currently using to a file that could be read by a range of devices.  The trick will be making them understand the need.

Next steps will be to see if there is a way to embed rich media into some sort of file so that it will open either in the e-reader, or pop out to another app/program.  Obviously one could link to Youtube, but we are trying to replace a textbook, so the challenge is to see if we can do all this without the use of the web.