Keynote Day two – Why Tablets – Gordon

There is a difference between Data and Information, and Knowledge and Wisdom.  There is a disconnect between between the two.

Tablets change what happens in the classroom:

Papers on how people learn – Bransford et al 2000; Poole, 2007.  Need to get these!

Notetaking literature – Fisher JL and Harris HB, 1973 – Effect of note taking and review on recall – Journal of Educational Psychology 65:321-325

Notetaking relates to repetition, generative processing and the potential to form internal connections.

* Note – when a lecturer/teacher writes notes, it slows them down!  This means that students can keep up!  This is so true – even during this very talk I am finding that I can’t keep up – the speed of delivery is engaging and interesting, but there is no way I can take the notes I normally would in a blog entry!

Hi Fidelity v’s Low Fidelity….  Low fidelity is very important – why give a high level of detail if a low level of detail is what is needed to show the point.  Detail can be distracting – a tablet can be used to give generic low detail so students can see the wood for the trees.

The powerpoint will be made available!  I hope so, my notes are not very good!  It was so fast!

The potential of tablet PCs

Enhance active learning; promote interaction; improve opportunities for collaboration.

Literature review – how are tablet PCs transforming the learning experience in higher education.  Starting pool of 144 papers on the use of tablet PCs in education; papers were selected if they were in a university context; use of TPCs in the classroom; contained sufficient detail for current purposes.

38 papers used for the review.

Activities were classified using Chi’s 2009 taxonomy of learning activities.

	Chi’s def	Tablet def
Interactive (dialoguing)	Involves “dialogue” with another person (peer, expert) or system – instructional dialogue; joint dialogue	Submissions (poll or slide) – instructional dialogue, formative feedback, joint dialogue – verbal or working on shared slide
Constructive	Output goes beyond what was presented – e.g. self-explanation, drawing concept maps, making predictions	Note taking with T’s annotations – individual worked examples, tracing, concept maps, creating graphs
Active	doing something – e.g. searching, underlining, copying, summarizing	Teacher making annotations, highlighting, copying

 

Why introduce a tablet PC

• didactic to interactive teaching
• Specialist software
• flexibility/mobility

I need to get the slides from this talk – I got caught up listening and didn’t take good notes!  ooops!

Tablets as an Everyday Teaching Tool – Antony Dekkers

Antony started using the tablet because he was sick of students being powerpointed to death.  The university was across five campuses; products such as camtasia allowed recording of lecturers in a more efficient manner.

After the initial trial, he used the tablet PC to make videos of worked examples and emailed those back to staff, rather than typing an answer to an email.

From there videos were made of prac work equipment for viewing BEFORE the lessons/prac – this meant the students were coming to the class ready to learn – Dimension 1.  I love this idea, and certainly think is something that we can do in science!  I can’t wait!

The turnaround time for marking was decreased to 1-2 days, rather than 3-4 weeks.  This is perfect for the teacher.  The other thing is the teacher always has a copy of the work – this is valuable for conversations after the fact.

Antony has thrown out the print based study guide and instead is developing a video based study guide.  This has video and audio for each worked example…. What a great idea!  Flash is better than windows media files… maybe a focus for PD.

The tools used are Camtasia for the video screen capture.  Evermap instead of PDFannotator – add in for acrobat – one product that does all!  Itunes – huge potential.

The next aim is the paperless course!  All paper documents are scanned for marking, so now all items are stored for each student.

This approach is quicker, more efficient and all records are stored for every student, which solves disputes.

However, staff training is really important.  We need to get staff properly trained.

 

Some things to look at:

eemedia – media server that uni’s are using

iFiles (Novell) – aut backup for students

captivate – like camtasia but produces flash!

Tablet PCs for simple flexible and mobile lecture recording – Bernard Gibson

Recording was for anywhere, anytime – designed using flexible methods using Tablet PCs.  Given to 50 lecturers to trial.

Problems with traditional recording – need dedicated rooms and equipment.  The tablet PC overcomes this.

Wireless lapel mic connected to the computer; software; three buttons to record the lecture by lecturer, then uploaded.

90% used of students used online lectures.  Students reported that they used them for exam preparation, revision and reviewing key points.

90% of lecturers reported positive impact on teaching; 60% reported improved quality.  The rest said no difference.

80% students reported that the annotations improved the quality of the lecturers.  Annotations also were a good place marker of where  the lecture was up to.

Problems were file size (large download), some handwriting that was not easy to read or information obscured by annotations.  Some lecturers reported that being tied to the podium was bad. This can be overcome through wireless projectors or logmein software – we need to sort this out for BBC!  Can we put old computers at the front setup and logged in all the time using a second staff login?

Tablet technology enhancing thermodynamics - Anton Rayner

DyKnow was used in engineering and thermodynamics with a Tablet PC to facilitate problem solving.  Classes of 20, 10 machines, students working in pairs.

Students found that the tutors/teachers were more prepared using DyKnow, so the students felt more supported.

BUT… students didn’t really use the replay (but this was posted on blackboard and students didn’t have their own machines)

Students that used the tablets were happier with the learning, enjoyed the subject matter (thermodynamic) and overall student assessment results were significantly higher. (9 out of 25 tutorial groups used tablets, up to 20 students in a class)

Evaluation was done with PPI surveys, interviews with tutors and students.

Scaling Innovation into Teaching Practice - Travis Smith

Hattie – 21 out of the 26 top factors that have a positive impact on student learning are attributable to the teacher and their work in the classroom.

? maybe we should look at what we spend on teachers compared to other areas such as infrastructure, etc

Challenges to innovating

• School perspective
• Leadership and priority
• Does $ and time = change or progress?
• Accountability measures
• How can we try and scale this cheaply?
• can we?
• Should we
• is it time to realise that we can’t
• What about student results at the end of year 12
• Inappropriate Teacher training?
  
• Teacher perspective
• Fear and loss of control
• No longer the font of all knowledge!
• Students correcting the teacher – Google reference live in class.  This can be good! Collaborate and share this
• Teachers need to be comfortable with ICT – some teachers are scared of the tech
• Web 2.0
• software
• “But I don’t have the time”
• BUT removing the legwork does not remove the teacher learning…  Support is really important
• What about year 12 results?
• Inappropriate Teacher Training

It is important that teachers realise that they do not have to know, understand and use everything!  Students can help!  Don’t limit the students experiences because you don’t know how to do something.

Any teacher that is worried about being replaced by technology probably should be – Gary Stager (US)

Pre service teacher training – is there a new model needed:

The most important thing for teachers is to contextualise the skills.  Rather than teaching with technology, have them learning with technology.

Research to get – Dr Neville Johnstone; Jeffery and Yates – contextualisation of PD

Keynote 1 – The rules of engagement: How & Why to use Tablet PCs – Joseph Tront, Virginia Tech

Barry and I met Joe whilst we were at WIPTE in the states, and it is good to be seeing him again.  On the way to the conference this morning, we were walking up the main drive to Monash Uni, and a taxi pulled over – Joe stuck his head out and asked if we knew where to go, but we didn’t.  But either did he or his Taxi driver, so he bailed out and walked with us.  Fortunately I had downloaded a map of Monash to my Tablet, so whilst we walked I very geekily opened it up, found where were going, and we got to the venue no problems at all.  As we arrived, Barry quipped “We wouldn’t of got here today with out a Tablet”!

Anyway, I digress, onto the talk!

Joe mentioned the current world economy and offered the idea that increasing access and quality of education is a major issue that needs to be addressed to improve the economy.

teaching style paper to get – Applications, Reliability and Validity of the Index of Learning Styles – Felder, RM & Spurlin, J.

Students say they are active learners (64%) – they want interaction, collaboration.  However faculty are 65% non-active – reflective teachers.  They want to lecture; deliver, not interact.  also found that 82% students are visual learners, however most teaching is not done with visual in mind – most is verbal/textual.  So we need to do things with more active, more visual activities.  This is where and why the Virginia Tech Tablet program came from.

When the program started, there was a pedagogical purpose:

• At the start
• Access – any time use (dorms)
• Writing (typing) papers
• in 1996:
• multimedia – images, sounds, video, visualisation
• in 2002
• Notebook/laptop was required
• This meant anyPLACE anytime
• Infrastructure upgrade needed
• in 2006
• Tablets required
• This was to increase engagement inside and outside the classrooms (Joe referenced defence department studies that showed this to be beneficial – these studies are done in a rigorous way and setting)
• To support pedagogical directions (its up to the teacher to DO the pedagogical and engagement)
• The Tablet PC ended up being a catalyst for the change and updating of teaching

Virgina Tech found that there were improved pedagogical practice

• Dynamic presentations (step one for teachers)
• Convert your current practice and update to leverage the capability and electronic ink capabilities
• Students can have the information more easily.  But you need to plan for the students to interact with this info and compile/complete/work with this information
• Active participation (step two for teachers)
• Multichoice
• write and draw submissions to the teacher – both anonymously and named… displayed for staff?
• Note-taking (more for students than staff, but facilitated by staff)
• Audio recording in OneNote – replay when hover over inked notes
• Collaboration (more difficult for staff, they are used to a quiet classrooms where students get information)
• It is important that teachers leave that mindset at the door and like and enjoy the commotion and interaction that is collaboration – but this is what students want and need!

All of these are process focussed

Physical structures that we MUST use mean we have to adapt to those environments in a digital sense…

Joe has found that students find OneNote to be more natural than other techniques.  Its a lot easier to to search and recall information.  They find comprehensive with the notes.  We need to teach students how to find the notes they have taken!  Synchronised voice recording is very powerful for students during the review phase of their learning.

 

The Expected outcomes for students:

• Collaboration
• Cooperation

Improvements in teacher efficiency

• Electronic grading
• PDF annotator/word
• Staff found it easier and faster to collect, mark, and return the papers
• There is a tool built at virginia tech called write on – this allows a transparent layer to be used over any computer media software anything!  This allows writing over it, and also a punch over.  This also captures and exports the whole thing to a video.

Tablet PC with constructivism

Tablet PC function	New opportunities
Electronic notes	active elaboration, integration of concepts, organizations
On line collaboration	teamwork, goal setting, tactics and strategies, monitoring
Multi-representational modes	textual, symbolic, special, textual representation, comprehension, tactics and strategies, divergent thinking
Interactive classroom presentation
Ready access to the internet
GET THE REST FROM THE PHOTO

 

Training program

• Staff
  Have a faculty development institute – training results in the new technology
• not only hardware
• assessment training
• pedagogical training
• Training by vendors
• When new things happen the vendors come in
• Faculty Study Groups
• Lunch meeting groups
  
• Students
• Student technology council
• freshman tablet PC group
• Provide training for staff
• SWAT

Tablet positives in class

• Resulted in more rapid feedback from the instructor
• Helped students review materials
• Helped students illustrate points made in class with visuals or other materials
• helps make the class more interactive
• helped gather background information on course material courses

Joe gave a couple of website:
www.engineeringpathway.org – tablet PC Community

http://filebox.ece.vt.edu/~jgtront/tabletpc/ – Joe’s webpage

ATiEC 2009

Whilst this blog was initially set up for the WIPTE conference, I am going to change the title shortly so that it is more general.  I am currently at the inaugural ATiEC conference and will blog each of the sessions that I attend!