Open Source and Collaborative Classrooms

One of the features of the HP 5101 netbooks that has a definite potential for misuse is the integrated webcam.  While there are many potential educational uses of these cameras (digital story telling, copying diagrams from the board, capturing and documenting learning experiences, etc.), there are obviously many potential misuses.  Over the weekend, I learned how to disable the webcam.  I think that I will have a very frank discussion with students about the use of the webcam, how they must get permission before taking pictures of other people, and that they must not post pictures to online environments without their permission.  I thought about totally banning posting, but realistically, they could do the same thing with their own digital cameras, so it’s more important that I teach students to respect others and get consent before sharing their images.

I know it’s still early going, but one of the things I’ve noticed is that cuing the students to pay attention by asking them to lower their netbook screens seems to result in better attention to instruction or discussion than simply asking students to pay attention during normal instruction.  I think this might be because their is an actual physical action that students must complete to indicate that they are paying attention, and as a teacher, it’s very easy to notice open screens, thus indicating students who need a second prompt to pay attention to what’s happening in the rest of the class.  I think that this might be analogous to some of the prompts that primary teachers use where they ask students to fold their hands in their lap, etc., to indicate that they are ready to pay attention and learn, that might not work at the intermediate level.

I can only hope that this trend continues!

One of the challenges that students and teachers face is how to deal with ease with which students can copy and paste answers they find on the internet.  This is not just a problem at the elementary and high school levels, but for students, researchers and teachers at all levels (for interesting background and discussion, listen to CBC Ideas for November 10, 2009: In Praise of Plagiarism). 

I think this means that, as teachers, we must be a lot more careful about the kinds of questions we ask.  In particular, if we consider Bloom’s Taxonomy, questions at the Knowledge and Comprehension levels are particularly easy to find answers that can be copied from the internet (for further resources, take a look at Bloom’s Taxonomy Model and Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy).  Students must have opportunities to respond to questions that ask them to apply what they read and then make judgements, predictions, or analyze new situations.  This is far more challenging for the teacher as he or she must be able to devise questions that can’t be answered simply by copying and pasting factual information or simple comprehension.  The questions teachers ask should have multiple correct answers that can be supported by factual information.  Of course, these means assessment is more challenging because there are many more potentially “correct” responses.

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Of the 28 HP 5101 computers I received in my classroom, I had issues connecting two to the wireless network at school and at home. 

Description of the problem:

• Even though the wireless adaptor appeared to be working, I could not “see” any wireless networks to connect to, even though I knew there were wireless networks available.

Hardware/Software

• HP 5101 Mini
• Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 (UNR).  I ran System Update and installed the drivers for the Broadcom Wireless Card. 

Solution

• Go into the boot setup by pressing F10 on boot.
• Enter the administrator password
• Choose System Configuration
• Choose Device Configuration
• Ensure Dual Core CPU is set to Enable
• Press F10 to accept.
• Then move to Built-In Device Options
• Ensure LAN/WLAN Switching is set to Enable
• Press F10 to accept
• Go to File
• Choose Save Changes and Exit

I’m not sure if the LAN/WLAN Switching actually did anything, but both steps combined have both computers working now.

While we’re waiting for our charging cart, we’re making use of 4 power bars to charge all of the laptops.

Looking at the walls in these areas, I can see that it might be a good idea to post a few technology tips where ever our cart goes.

Well, the big day finally arrived and my students received their netbook computers today in “math” class.  Things ran pretty smoothly.

We handed the netbooks out, booted them up, changed the initial passwords, labelled the netbooks and adaptors with the students names and then worked on getting everyone connected to the internet.  We had a couple of technical issues, but out of 27 computers, there are only two that I haven’t been able to get connected yet.  Once connected, I had everyone use a Google Form to record the serial number of their computer so I could track what computer belonged to which student.

Some first day observations…

• Giving students the cue of asking them to lower their screens 3/4 of the way was pretty effective when I needed to give instructions.  It’s a good visual signal to me that they’re paying attention.
• Favourite software/hardware combination – Webcam and Cheese!  Student really liked how they could add effects to their photos immediately.  I can definitely see that we’re going to need some rules for the use of the webcams in our community standards.  I’m thinking of something like “Make sure you have permission before you take someone’s picture or make a video of them, and make sure you have their consent before posting anything online,” (whether it’s on a school site or other site).
• Although I removed the games menu from the desktop, I didn’t remove all of the games.  One student already figured out how to find them (Good for her!).
• The computers were definitely a distraction from our reading and writing period and there were several students who were more concerned about tweaking their desktop and getting the perfect background than working on their guided reading assignments (First day with a new computer – I can’t imagine why!), but one of the guided reading groups who actually had to come up with a new dialogue between a couple of characters in the book they were reading, actually seemed to write more than the other groups.
• While F5 is usually "refresh” in Firefox, you actually have to use the Function key to access the F# keys.  That’s because the shortcuts such as volume up and down, brightness, etc. have been given priority.
• Students adapted well to using Open Office.  Because we were having some network difficulties (from our access point, not the computers), some students chose to work in Open Office Writer instead of on Google Docs.  I didn’t get a single question about how to do something, and some even figured out that they could print right to the Library printer that they’ve always printed to.

Moving forward, a priority will be to get all of the students on board with creating community standards.  I’ve already put down a few ideas and another student has contributed several, but I’d like to get participation from the whole class in the near future.

In preparation for the arrival of the netbooks, I’ve started making and uploading some tutorials to the OSCC Moodle.

The first tutorial is for how to change your initial password.  All of the student netbooks have been set up with “password” as their original password.  I will be going over how to change the password in class, but here’s the link to the tutorial.

The second tutorial is for how to connect to the YRDSB Wireless Network.  Again, I’ll be doing this with you in class.

The third tutorial is for connecting to your home wireless network.  I can’t guarantee it will work for everyone, but I think most home networks are similar.  I’m not going to be providing technical support at home, so that will be up to you to work it out with your service provider if you can’t get connected.  Remember that you can always plug in to a network cable and connect that way if you’re not able to get your wireless working.  The home wireless connection tutorial can be found here.

These tutorials are accessible to all YRDSB staff and students on the YRDSB Moodle.  If you need the enrollment key, please contact scott[dot]monahan[at]yrdsb.edu.on.ca.  If you’re not a member of the YRDSB, contact me and I’ll send you copies of the tutorials.

The IT folks picked up the student netbook that I’ve been working with over the past couple weeks and they’re going to copy the image onto all of the student computers.  The computers should be in the hands of students next week.

I think my first project will be to come up with community standards regarding how the netbooks are used in class.  I need to make sure that they are enhancing the teaching/learning that should be happening rather than a distraction.

I’ll create a shared document in Google Docs and work on it with the students.  When we come up with our standards, I’ll post them here.

Wow, it’s been over a month since I’ve posted anything here. I wish I could say that’s because i’ve been so busy getting thee computers integrated into the classroom, but that hasn’t been the case. It took just over three weeks to have HP deliver the computers so I’ve had two of them for a couple of weeks. Started out with the pre-installed Novell Linux SUSE operating system and it worked relatively well for the basics. One issue I ran into was that the software repositories were relatively limited and really focused more on the business user. So we switched over to the Ubuntu Netbook Remix and things have been running relatively smooth. No issues with wireless connections and these HPs. So I’ve been focused on setting them up so that they can be used easily by all students and offensive web content is filtered out. I don’t think any content filtering solution is perfect, but students will have to work at getting by it and there shouldn’t be any issues of inappropriate content “accidentally” getting by. Unfortunately, the solution I’ve chosen may be one that blocks reasonable sites if they contain some keywords that the software judges inappropriate. Tough to balance when you don’t want students to use school board computers to access inappropriate material while they’re at home.

Hope to have more to report very soon.