10 ways to share content between iPads in the classroom

Based on this blog post which attempts to explain the basic reasons iPads are so popular, as well as describes the main challenge with iPads in the classroom, I've put together this list to help educators (and others) share content with their students and vice-versa.

If you have other ideas, please do leave a comment and I'll add them to the list. I'll try to keep this post updated with new ideas and update it as I go.

Of course, this is over and above built-in sharing to external services like YouTube, DropBox, Evernote and others.


1. Collect files over WiFi or direct connection using iTunes

Even when iPads are synchronized with another iTunes Library, if you connect them to another Computer, they will appear in the list of devices and you can navigate to the App section and see files for each app. The app must support iTunes file sharing, and many do. You can then drag files out of this folder onto your computer's hard disk. You can also automate this using Apple Configurator, a free utility for managing iPads as a group and which can collect user's files all at once, but this cannot be done over the network. You must connect all devices directly.
Pros: Simple and available over the network. Nothing more required.
Cons: Must drag individual files manually on each device, and typically, the teacher has the burden of managing the files. Some apps must "export" their documents for iTunes, an extra step not always intuitive.
Tools to consider: Apple Configurator, a free app to manage groups of iPads all at once. Available on the Mac App Store only.

2. Send files as email attachments
The most universal way of sending file out of the iPad is via email. It is almost always available within apps and is a familiar way to do things. For many projects it can be a lifesaver. But it does have its drawbacks. All iPads need to have an email account set-up as this does not work for web-based email (your email service might offer both, you should verify this. You might access your email via the web, but it might also offer a direct access via the Mail app). Also, sending large files (more than 5 or 10 MB) is usually blocked by email services. Not great for larger projects like videos or presentations. In such cases, you could sometimes resort to special services like Send to Dropbox which is free or install your own to save on network bandwidth on your own Mac using a tool like AtBox (beta but not free, see disclosure below) which strips attachments and sorts them in a shared network folder in your own network.
Pros: Integrated, easy.
Cons: Need email to be configured on each device, large files pose a problem and not everyone understands the implications. Must rely on an external service like DropBox or others which is not always legally possible for schools in certain countries as an official tool. Teacher might have to manage tons of email attachments in a 1:1 scenario.
Tools you might consider: Tools which act as a mail server and strips attachments to store them in a service (like DropBox) or on a Computer or Server (like AtBox). Full Disclosure: AtBox is a tool I actually wrote myself and is currently available as a beta. It is not completely simple to configure and install mostly due to the complexities of school networks, email services and DNS, etc. But it works.

3. Share the result to a screen wirelessly using an AppleTV
Projecting student or teacher productions onto a large screen can be made simple. If you have a recent projector or Interactive White Board with an HDMI port, you can use an AppleTV and do it wirelessly. Some configuration is required to put the AppleTV on the network and there might be some configuration to be done in the School's network to allow for this to work. Once in place though, it works flawlessly.
Pros: Once installed, works flawlessly. No requirement for special apps. All screen can be projected, not just content, so great for showing how to use the iPads (or recent Macs).
Cons: There is a cost of approximately US$99 ($109 in Canada) so adding this to every classroom has a cost. Configuration might have to be done by a technician. Some networks might need to be configured to let the right kind of traffic go through (Bonjour protocol) and a wired connection might be preferable in some scenarios. A little bit of lag compared to a direct connection.
Tools you might consider: A VGA to HDMI converter with audio-out like the Kanex ATV Pro, a US$59 device which allows an AppleTV to be connected to a VGA projector and has audio output for speakers. Or an equivalent of course. Also see below for software solutions.

4. Share the result to a screen using an cable
An iPad can be connected to a large screen using a connector. There is also a cost to this, but the connector can be shared. This is a straightforward approach but requires the management of cables.
If the projector has an HDMI port, things are better because the sound also is shared. If your projector is VGA only, then you also have to connect speakers to the iPad. And have cables sticking out of both ends of the iPad. The cables can also get disconnected more easily and given the state of desktop speakers and cables in some classrooms, might not work really well sometimes. Especially with the iPad 2, and 3rd generation which use the 30-pin Dock connector, this one gets disconnecter very easily which makes for a less-than-optimal situation as projectors may have to re-synchronize every time the cable gets loose.
Pros: Straightforward, plug in the cable.
Cons: Can be fragile (VGA or Dock connector version), separate audio required when using VGA, Adaptor can get misplaced or become fragile. Not much mobility when presenting.

5. Share the result to a screen wirelessly via a computer
This alternative is actually quite interesting and avoids most of the costs. Instead of connecting the iPad directly to a projector with a cable or to an AppleTV, one can install software on their computer to do the same thing. Wether you have a Mac or Windows PC connected to your projector already, installing a tool like AirServer or Reflector allows your iPads to see your computer as if it was an AppleTV.
When the app is running, simply use the iPad's built-in AirPlay button (see above) to share the screen and since the computer's screen is already being displayed, the iPad will also appear. These apps are inexpensive ($12-$15 range with licensing options) and work quite well.
Pros: Inexpensive, simple to use, can even display more than one device at a time (depending on bandwidth). You can also record the result into a movie file.
Cons: Must be installed on the computer. Requires a computer to bridge the iPads to the projector. A little bit of lag compared to a cable connection as with the AppleTV).

6. Print from the iPads
Sometimes, it is simply more efficient to print. When managing paper is a better way to assess student work or if students are creating printed content for a project (posters, flyers, etc), being able to print can be essential. The good news is that iPads can print with perfect ease when things are set up properly. The goal is to have a printer on your network (wireless or not) with the added requirement of it using the AirPrint protocol. This can either be part of the printer itself (many brands including HP offer this in their wireless printers) or available through a piece of hardware or software which bridges the network and the AirPrint protocol. Software solutions include Printopia and FingerPrint (less than $25 each) and hardware boxes like the xPrint Server (around $99) which allows most USB or networked printers to be available to AirPrint-enabled apps. As an added bonus, Printopia (and possibly others) allow you to "Print" files to your computer and collect them in a local folder instead of using paper or email.
Not all apps allow printing, and the developer decides wether this is possible or not.
Pros: Familiar way of sharing content, simple once it is set-up, does not require a new printer in many cases.
Cons: Encourages use of dead trees, some associated costs, Mac or PC hosting software needs to be available at all times. Not all apps enable printing (taking screenshots is a workaround).

7. Share movies and pictures via a web service
If the result created by students or teachers is an image or a movie and stored in the iPad's Camera Roll, it may be possible for you to upload this to a web server. If visiting a web page on the iPad and if this web page has a place to upload images or movies like in the case of Google Drive or a private server like Apple's OS X Server Wiki service, then you can select files from your Camera Roll or take a new picture or movie. And of course, if you use dedicated apps like Google Drive, DropBox, Evernote, etc, you can also send movies and pictures from your camera roll. But many people do not realize this is possible via the web.
Pros: Many apps are free. Quite simple. Can move files from iPad to iPad.
Cons: Only for pictures and movies, although you can take screen shots of any app that does not export to the Photo Library.

8. Share movies and pictures between iPads
There are many apps which allow the sharing of files directly between iPads. Because of the limitations of the iPad and the absence of a file system, this can only be done using images and movies in your Camera Roll though. So for example, if students create a movie using iMovie or Pinnacle Studio or any other app, they can send the result to the camera roll. Then, you launch an app like SimplTransfer (free) and many many others ranging from free to a few dollars. I'm not endorsing this one, I just searched and found it, so many alternatives can exist.
The idea is that your iPad becomes a web server and on Safari for Mac you can see it directly without entering the URL manually (by enabling Bonjour in your preferences). On other browsers, on any platform, you also can see the address and enter it manually of course. It is just a web server you are connecting to. The app provides the address to enter. Such apps also allow sharing Photos and Videos between iPads quite elegantly.

9. Use iTunes U to make files available to your students
You can get files into your iPads quite easily, using any kind of web page or collaboration service. This is less of a challenge than the other way around when collecting multiple files. But if you use iTunes U, it gives educators an infrastructure which allows for lessons to be shared as well as accompanying documents in the form of PDF, Word or other files. You can also include Presentations in Keynote or PowerPoint format which students can download quickly directly into the iTunes U app, which makes them easy to locate and keeps them all into one place.
To achieve this, you must create an iTunes U account by using your own AppleID or creating a new one. Then, you connect to a special web page and post your content, which your students subscribe to. You can learn all about managing content including some video tutorials on how this works on Apple's iTunes U for Educators site.

10. Share files directly via a WebDAV server
WebDAV is a protocol which runs of many server platforms as well as some services. One such tool is Apple's OS X Server, which is only $19,99 on the Mac App Store and runs on top of Mountain Lion. It is fairly easy to manage, but requires some networking skills for some of its features. It has built-in support for iPad Sharing via WebDav and via its wiki which makes it quite easy to access via a web browser, a webDAV client on any client device and via apps which support this protocol (there are tons). More specifically, if your students use Pages, Keynote or Numbers, these three productivity apps can be configured to access this folder automatically, allowing students to read and write directly to the server. There are many other centralized services which support this protocol as well.
Pros: Very efficient within apps which use this protocol.
Cons: Not useful for apps which do not manage this protocol. So your mileage may vary.

File sharing and collaboration options on the iPad

The ubiquity of the iPad makes no doubt. Mobile devices are certainly part of our computational present and future in a big way.

Many schools are adopting the iPad as a less expensive alternative to laptops or as a compliment to them but although this may offer some great advantages for content creation or economical considerations, it does pose challenges.

As an individual, sharing files to and from an iPad is already tricky. Apple's rules for developers and the APIs available make it impossible to have system-wide modules to hook into shared servers or passing information to other apps. Each developer must add their own support for various file sharing methods like DropBox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, WebDav or FTP Servers, Email or even Peer-Peer sharing amongst devices.

Hopefully, this will change at some point, perhaps to a model more akin the Android's and Windows Phone 7's "Intent" mechanisms, while retaining the security inherent to the device.

Why do we put up with this?
The answer is actually quite simple: simplicity. Paradox, right? The success of the iPad is not due to the fact that it does more than a computer, or that it does the same. No, it's success is due to the fact that it does less. Less, but in a more focused and efficient way. By this I mean that for the majority of users, computers are typically too complex. File systems confuse many people, installing software is also complicated, let alone finding software to install. Figuring out software, even simple apps, is still a stretch for many. We're talking the larger percentage of the population. Not the techies. And focus is about saying "no", not doing everything. So the iPad's success is absolutely and almost exclusively due to the fact that it focuses people on simple tasks they can feel empowered by. There is always a simple way out, the Home button, back to my list of apps. No other level. A few gestures, swiping, touching, perhaps pinching and double-tapping. Nothing too complex. Even the four-finger swipes are disabled by default. Like the right click on the Mac. There is a reason for this.

Geeks and technically savvy users are put off by this. They feel limited. Unless they see the need to have a simple experience for some tasks, which is sometimes the case. Some geeks will simply be tired of fiddling with details and just want stuff to work. They will enjoy the iPad, and will put up with its limitations. Others don't and prefer Android or other systems.

Great for kids and teachers
But in schools, teachers do not have the time or energy to fix problems, and support everything. It is hard enough in a homogeneous environment, so when things get too messy, they often stop exploring what technology can bring to support learning. And kids also appreciate this simplicity. They enjoy having fun doing work and not having to figure out the details all the time. Again, there is a mix of geeks there too, but not all kids are geeks. Not all kids are familiar with tech either actually. We assume they are experts at technology, but in reality, they are experts at very vertical tasks mostly. What they are is "at ease" with technology. They are not afraid to try and explore and this makes it easier for them to figure it out.

So in schools, the iPad helps by making things simpler. It helps teachers allow more projects to happen and allows kids to create more. It happens to be fairly simple to support too. No crashes, no viruses, simple tools for sharing the screen on a projector or interactive white board, etc.

File sharing and collaboration
This is not as simple. iCloud is not a collaboration tool at this point, and when you are planning a 1:1 deployment or large deployment of devices, the Cloud is not always the answer. In a distributed environment where funding and bandwidth is limited, the Cloud causes headaches. Wireless networks cause issues already, so adding a bunch of synching or uploading does not help. It might work for smaller number of devices, but not a large quantity of devices across many rural schools with limited bandwidth. This will change over time, but not yet.

Local laws and regulations, in Canada amongst others, also prevent public schools and other organizations from resorting on servers hosted outside of Canada when they might contain personal information. Because of the Patriot act, either the supplier of services must change their rules, which they will not, or parents must all accept the potential risk, which is impractical when some refuse (and they actually do sometimes). So great environments like Google Drive, SkyDrive, DropBox and Evernote are not being used as the central, official infrastructure for collaboration, with or without the iPad.

Individual users can use these, but a large public organization cannot rely on them officially.

So I've collected a series of best-practices and techniques to facilitate the sharing of documents between teachers and students, which can certainly apply to other scenarios.

I've placed this in a separate blog post which I've entitled:

10 ways to share content between iPads in the classroom

Rich content creation apps on Android and iOS

As I reflect on the various tools available for students today, I've been exploring the relevance of certain tools in the context of flexible content creation in and outside of the classroom.

No hasty conclusions yet, but one of the parameters I believe should influence choice, apart from the obvious one of getting students and teachers to explore the tools themselves, is the capabilities such mobile tools should support, not only for current uses, which may or may not be very transformative, but also aiming for an environment which promotes rich learning environments.

It seems clear, in light of all the 21st Century skills we keep discussing, that allowing for the most creative flexibility for our students is a key component in our future decisions.

Secondly, teacher comfort with the capabilities of the technology, for their own use as well as for suggesting some of the paths students can take with technology, will allow for deeper and richer technology use.

So, my reflexion is about the various ways we can offer a content-creation environment, tools and practices and figuring out the most cost-effective way to achieve this, without sacrificing what will allow the transformation of our learning environments.

This reflexion is continuing, but as I was exploring a few tools and ideas today, I came upon this post from the excellent Fraser Speirs, which mentions the "GarageBand test". A quick, informative read.

I was already trying to compare the environments offered by the Nexus 7, iPad, iPad mini and others in the context of content creation and collaboration. This gave me the idea to look at the top paid apps on Google Play and the iOS App Store. I figured either would offer the best tools for each platform that people are willing to pay for.

The results are quite interesting:

Here is the list on the App Store as of Nov 30, 2012 (Canada store)
1. Angry Birds Star Wars
2. Pages
3. The Room
4. GarageBand
5. Bad Piggies HD
6. Sky Gamblers
7. Offroad Legends
8. Minecraft
9. Wreck-it Ralph
10. Angry Birds Space
11. iMovie
12. Numbers
13. GoodReader
14. iPhoto
15. Tetris for iPad
16. Keynote
17. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
18. Where's my water
19. Walking dead: the game
20. Scrabble

Here is the list on Google Play
1. Swiftkey 3 tablet Keyboard
2. Minecraft: Pocket edition
3, Angry Birds Star Wars HD
4. Wreck-it Ralph
5. The Amazing Spider-Man
6. DocumentsToGo Full Version Key
7. Camera Zoom FX
8. Quickoffice Pro
9. Tunein Radio Pro
10. Officesuite Pro 6+ (PDF + HD)
11. SwiftKey 3 Keyboard
12. Where's my water?
13. Poweramp Full Version unlocker
14. Titanium Backup Pro Key
15. HD Widgets
16. Beautiful Widgets
17. Grimm's Snow White
18. ezPDF Reader PDF Annotate Form
19. Devil's Attorney
20. Grand Theft Auto

I've bolded the content creation tools. It became quite obvious that at least in the Paid category, there was a lot more diversity in the available tools to create rich content.

But not only that, but the quality of the apps are worlds apart.

Even at the word-processing level, Pages offers a lot more in the lines of rich content, than say, Officesuite Pro 6+ which seems to be the best one for Android. Manipulating objects, fonts, tables, inserting shapes and lines and overall useability and responsiveness of the app is so much better and easier. Not perfect, not for professional word-processing experts, but great for students and teachers for most day-to-day work.

But when you start exploring the other tools, like Keynote or Numbers, the Office suites on Android are simply inadequate compared to the Apple apps. Of course, education customers also get to pay the same price for either Pages+Numbers+Keynote or Officesuite Pro, but they get a lot more for the price.

Then, the big important part: rich content. GarageBand, iMovie and iPhoto are in this list and they offer such great creation environements. You can do 80% of what the equivalent tools do on a Mac on some of these. iMovie is the exception. It is a nice product for quick movies, but far from being as complete as the Mac counterpart. And there are many other such tools. I'd love to see some stats on the percentage of content-creation apps on all platforms... think of drawing apps, sketching, music creation, misuc notation, photography, 3D, graphing calculators, astronomy and science, etc.

If there are any more and better creation apps for Android out there, I'm very interested in finding out. This is by no means an extensive seach, but I find it quite telling. But please, leave comments if you have interesting alternatives and suggestions! Perhaps the free apps on Android offer richer environments? I do hear that Evernote is better on an Android tablet... but that's one case. Are there more?

iCloud, UIManagedDocument and library-type apps

So I've been programming for a number of years now, and as with many other topics, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. Perhaps a lot less if you are Aaron Hillegass, Joe Conway, Paul Hegarty or Ray Wenderlich and many more excellent Objective-C gurus from which I have learned various pieces of great knowledge over the years.

So much to learn, just following the changes in the Mac and iOS APIs!

Understanding APIs per se are not the greatest challenge though. Most of the time, you can figure out how to use those after looking around a bit. What I find challenging is discovering the best practices for various types of apps. Making the best assumptions before I start a project. By now, I've refactored so much code because of initial choices that I've stopped counting.

Like I said, I'm no expert. I've been programming for the Mac for many years, learning as I went, relearning all the time. At a slow pace at first and accelerating over the last couple of years as I jumped onto the iOS bandwagon, followed some courses and built a couple of intro courses myself.

Anyhow, I'm learning Core Data, UIManagedDocument, iCloud and some other little pieces of info around this these days and boy, it is not easy to figure out how to approach this. So I'm publicly posting this in order to:

1. Clarify my thoughts (nothing better than to explain to make sure you understand)
2. Get some reactions from peers on where I might be wrong, better approaches, etc.

This, I am sure, will be a great learning experience.

The goal
I'm building an app which will sync its single-document via iCloud (if available) on multiple iOS devices.

The tools
UIManagedDocument, to make things easy following both Paul Hegarty's suggestion in the CS193P Stanford course and the WWDC 2011 Core Data and UIDocument/UIManagedDocument sessions
CoreData (automatically part of the above)
A Library-Style app (a single instance of UIManagedDocument)
iCloud to optionally store this document

The Journey
So I read and listened to the CS193P lessons, WWDC sessions, re-read Joe Conway's excellent course, Ray Wenderlich's great tutorials and perused Stack Overflow to make up my mind on hw to approach this and started first migrating my current work-in-progress app to Core Data instead of a local monolithic archive. That wen't well. Now, I'm moving this to iCloud... If the service was always on, thre would be no issue, but the user being able to toggle it at any time is causing the questions I currently have.

Once all is running in iCloud, it's fairly straightforward. User creates data in one place, it appears on the other device. Almost no work once UIManagedDocument is used. Even conflicts are pretty much resolved automagically.

Now, what if the user decides to start using the app without iCloud, either because iCloud is not enabled, unavailable or turned off in my apps prefs (a best-practice according to Apple's documentation). Then, the app should create a local version, right? Cool.

Update: Some apps actually ask you up front if you wish to use iCloud or not. I might assume so on first run if iCloud is on, but leave it off if the user enables iCloud later.

Cloudy after sunshine
When iCloud later is turned on via the device settings or in the App, I figure unless it was specifically turned off for the app itself (via my apps prefs), this is an indication the user want to migrate their data to iCloud, so I'll assume I can move existing data to iCloud using the appropriate calls to NSFileManager. Pretty well documented. not so cloudy at this point I guess. This is all well if the user never had iCloud on when using this app before. No data exists yet. What if there is something though? I guess I'll have to check first if there is some data in iCloud and ask the user which data they want, the now local data or the potentially older iCloud data. Am I missing something? Sounds like the old MobileMe syncing UI... Or does UIManagedDocument handle this and try to sync the data, sending notifications or setting the state of the document accordingly?

Update: I'm pondering this. Should I auto-migrate the data with no warning or ask the user? How about a message which says "I notice you've enabled iCloud, would you like me to move your existing local data to iCloud? Then, what if there is already a version on iCloud?

Clearing up the sky

Then, what should I do if the user disables iCloud in the app or for the whole device after creating some data? If it is for the device (via Settings), they get a warning that local iCloud files will get deleted. They stay on iCloud, and can potentially be re-accessed later. In such a case, I could just create a new empty local database on the next launch, since there is no way I can move it back... That I know. Am I wrong? Would I get some last notification perhaps?

Update: I notice some apps seem to simply keep the iCloud version as their local version. Not sure how... I'll have to read some more.

Second Update: Don't always trust what others have done... some apps say things, but they don't actually work :-)

If the user turns iCloud off in my app's prefs, then I can handle moving the data locally which is really changing the location of the file, as only the log of changes gets stored in iCloud after the first move there. So if I did this, the user would still have their latest data. Will users actually turn off iCloud in their apps before turning it off completely? Will they perhaps be aware enough of all this not to turn it off?

And on top of all this, when the user creates a new file, I must not forget to delete any logs which would have stayed in iCloud, otherwise it will be impossible to sync anymore using this app. I got this from Rich Warren's book, Creating iOS 5 Apps: Develop and Design. It was probably in multiple other places, but I was ready for that info when I was reading his tutorial on UIManagedDocument.

So that's where I am... Trying to make sure I do this right both in the way I use the Frameworks and objects, as well as the user experience. As I discover more, I'll update and fix this so it can become an overview on how to best approach this scenario.

More updates: Found more info in the documentation in "Designing for Core Data in iCloud" especially in "Design the Launch Sequence for Your iCloud Core Data App" which help sunderstand how to structure this. Basically, you keep info in the UserDefaults so you can make the right choice later if iCloud availability changes or the user changes their mind.

- Renaud

Posté avec Blogsy

Réinitialiser git pour un projet Xcode existant

Je ne suis pas un expert du "Source control", mais j'aime bien explorer... et c'est évidemment un outil précieux!

Mais il m'est arrivé rgulièrement de devoir repartir mon "repository" git à zéro... souvent après refactorisation de mon code, ou pour manque de connaissances sur la façon de réparer certaines erreurs.

Je note donc ici les étapes de base pour y arriver.

1. Quitter Xcode
2. Via le Terminal, naviguer dans le dossier de votre projet
3. déplacer le sous-dossier .git vers un autre endroit (juste au cas)

mv .git ../git_backup

4. Git ne doit pas prendre compte du document qui gère l'interface de Xcode... il faut donc lui dire de l'ignorer. Pour ce faire, on trouve d'abord le document en question en tapant

find .

Le résultat affichera tous les documents et sous-dossiers du projet, dont un se terminant par UserInterfaceState.xcuserstate comme ceci:

 MonApp.xcodeproj/project.xcworkspace/xcuserdata/renaud.xcuserdatad/UserInterfaceState.xcuserstate

5. Enregistrons ce docuemtn dans le fichier .gitignore avant de démarrer l'archive Git

echo atBox.xcodeproj/project.xcworkspace/xcuserdata/renaud.xcuserdatad/UserInterfaceState.xcuserstate > .gitignore

6. Initialisons git pour ce répertoire

git init

7. Ajoutons tous les documents (le .xcuserstate sera ignoré)

git add .

8. Faisons le Commit initial

git commit -m "Nous sommes sous contrôle!"

9. On démarre Xcode, on ouvre notre projet et on continue avec git comme si on partait à neuf.

 

 

 

 

Of education and motivation

This blog post was motivated by John Siracusa's Hypercritical podcast episode 52 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/52 in which he discusses why technology, the iPad and especially electronic textbooks will not change education in a major way. I do not disagree with this, but I wanted to add some information to put some of this in perspective and help change the discussion to another level. This is all something which has been close to my heart for may years now, as I have worked in the education world with great partners for about 18 years, helping teachers, pedagogical consultats, principals and technicians struggle and grow in their implementation of Apple technology in the educational system and especially the classroom.

I am not a teacher or claim to have all the answers, but I know great teachers and think I understand the global idea of what makes technology work in this context and where it can play an important role. 

Also, the context in Quebec is different from many other systems to a certain extent. By no means exclusive, the Quebec education system is quite progressive in its approach, until a few years ago at least, and tends to at least attempt to answer the needs of students in developing the appropriate skills for their future needs. It tries to anyhow. Wether it attains these goals is another discussion altogether.

With this in mind, here is what I agree with and another angle to explore.

John Siracusa starts in this one discussion stating that the two topmost important things for the education system are physical and emotional security. Based on the well-known scale of human needs, this makes sense of course and I willce rtainly not challenge this. I would even add that being well-fed plays an equally important role here, but we'll lump all these basic needs before the rest. Agreed.

John then goes on and states that the third most important item is having "good teachers". this is where I felt I could add to the conversation. 

I feel this is not the whole story and is way too vague to really mean anything. What does "good teacher" mean? A person who can explain something clearly? Who can make a classroom lively and fun? A teacher who helps their students achieve success in standardized testing? Or success in their lives? And how do they become "good", did they learn this during their university education? In class as they built experience?

And what role does/can technology play in this? Any role? No role?

I'll try to bring some useful info to the table here. But first, a bit of background on students and kids.

Kids are different. Very.

Many people still assume that the way things worked when they were kids still apply today. That what supposedly worked for us as kids will work with today's kids. But the world has changed tremendously. When I was a kid in school, some 25-40 years ago, new knowledge was to be found in only a few places: home with our parents and siblings, at school with our teachers, at the library with books and a bit on tv, with some educational or semi-educational shows.

Kids are motivated to learn, it's in they DNA. So they always look for ways to learn when they are motivated. When I was a kid, French tv shows, although cute, were not as motivating to me, as the hollywood-inspired superhero comics that played on American channels in English. So I learned English... by watching Sesame Street and leveraging my parents and playing with anglophone kids. I was bilingual before even going to school, and years before I even attended an English class in grade 4 (at the time).

In general, kids don't really like wasting their time listening to stuff they can source easily like dates and data. Do you?

In general, kids don't like making the effort when they are not properly motivated. Do you?

Now, I understand this is not based on factual data per se, it is just observation and my own understanding of kids. Please contradict at will if you think it makes no sense. This is all for conversation's sake.

Good teaching is not something that is taught in Colleges and Universities per se.

Ok, we did not define what a "good teacher" is. I would like to offer my definition. A good teacher is one who can motivate their students to learn the proper information and skills required to succeed now and later. Or something to that effect. They understand what their students need to learn and why, and will use various strategies to help them reach those goals. If the teacher motivates the student, then, the student has many more chances to actually learn something. Without motivation, there is less learning of value. 

Motivation is the actual driver of learning with kids today. They will learn what they need to learn when they decide they "want" to learn it. You can sing and dance in front of them, use technology or not, use one textbook or another, but if they do not see value in what you are trying to convey, they will do one of two things. Learn it anyway, despite your efforts, because the "have to" (or else: parent reprimand, detention, failure, etc.) or, they will not succeed, or succeed just enough to pass. Their motivation in learning will be spent on things they value: achieving an expertise in a video game, learning to play a musical instrument for their own pleasure or to impress, ahem, girls, learning to draw or write, practicing a sport, whatever they enjoy. All else is a waste of their time, according to them. They do not see the value.

A "good" teacher might have the skill to show them and convince them of the value of the knowledge and skills they are trying to teach them. If they succeed, their students will be more motivated and enjoy learning. If not, as good as they are at "explaining things", they will mostly fail. Either at motivating their students profoundly, or, at passing on relevant skills for them to succeed in life. Achieving good results on standardized testing is pretty much irrelevant at this point. Depending on where in the world you are, standardized testing is to my knowledge still strongly biased to knowledge retention in most subject areas. And if this is how we are measuring success, then we are failing to measure the skills we should be passing on to our kids.

21st century skills

This expression has been used over and over and has become a marketing term in many ways. But the essence is still good. What will today's kids need to be able to do in tomorrow's jobs. Or, still true, which skills did we teach kids 10 years ago which are the most used in the jobs they have today? Well, learning historical dates by heart is probably not the most relevant, and, unfortunately, this is still being done widely across the world today. Learning data which can now be found anywhere.

Validating that data, is a crucial skill. Is the data I've found good data? Can I cross-reference it with other data t ensure it is accurate? That skill is widely more important. Motivating kids to learn this skill is not trivial. They may not see the value of it. And this is where a good teacher can play a critical role. Putting skills in context to motivate students to learn the skill.

Unfortunately, many teachers "enjoy" explaining. Some enjoy playing the role of the holders of knowledge and want to share this with their students. They might be really "good" at this too, even fun to listen to. I had a great History teacher who was fascinating. I cannot for the life of me remember most of what he said though. He was one of the favorite teachers on everybody's list though.

So if a "good teacher" is one who helps students develop the relevant skills they need to succedd in life (and not necessarily standardized testing), then yes, good teachers are certainly at the top of the list and we need as many of them as we can get. Let's make some more!

Colleges and universities

In Quebec, like in a few other countries, we have tried to change the educational system and realized it is quite difficult. Changing the paradigm from a teacher-centric model to a student-centric model, where the teacher plays the role of a mentor has been challenging to say the least. Materials are harder to come by, more effort is required on the teacher's part because of this, no "step-by-step" techniques to motivate students or even to build activities for students. Textbooks are not always quite adapted, especially if they are old, or teachers did not get the correct training to use the modern textbooks built with the new education paradigm and they use them the same way they used the old textbooks, as rote-learning resources.

On top of this, Faculties of Education and Ministries of Education may not have put in place all the resources and means to support this huge change. For example, standardized testing might have used simple multiple-choice questions to measure knowledge retention instead of adapting testing to measure skills in applying this knowlege. It is a difficult thing to change. It is changing, albeit slowly. But in Quebec at least, we are progressing or at least we have been for a few years... things are complicated now, but again, that's another discussion.

On top of this, education programs do not teach future teachers how to be "good" teachers per se. You might have some talent in motivating your students, simply because of your nature. But "how to teach", "how to explain", "how to motivate" are not things your really learn about in a university course. You do not learn how to be a good pedagogue in education programs. You may learn some of the psychological theory on different types of learners and how to adapt a lesson to them, and that's good, but we are only starting to see some courses on proper steps to explain different types of information. New teachers learn some of the techniques, but inherently, they may or may not have a natural talent perceived as that of a "good teacher". It's a start though. But you may understand this and still not be what you would qualify as a "good teacher". You might be totally appropriate, build clear lessons, apply the textbooks appropriately, but your students may not be motivated.

Even the ability to "explain" something clearly, is not innate, nor taught in school and is most probably lacking in many teachers. These are skills one develops on their own, over time. An experieced teacher, concerned with their student's motivation will work on this skillset over time as they realize they might not have been efficient the first or second time around. That's fine, this is how these skills are developped.

But truly motivating kids to learn is not something you learn in Univerity courses. Motivation 101 is not, to my knowlede, a course in any program.

So we have to live with the fact that there are good teachers and better teachers and others that have other qualities. Some are not motivated themselves for may reasons. Many of which have to do with conditions in their school, difficulties with the number of kids they are in charge of, number of compartmental issues they need to deal with, etc. What I mean to say here is that the fact that they cannot develop the best qualities is very often tied to the world they live in which is not helping them. 

So, up untilnow, I say the same as you: we need more "good" teachers.

But here is what I think might be different. I believe technology can play a role in increasing student motivation and get them to develop the appropriate skills for their future jobs and success, in spite of the teachers or at least, in spite of where teachers are at on the road to becomming "good teachers".

You need guts

In Quebec, in 2003, the Director General (superintendent equivalent) of a small mostly rural school board made a choice and took a stance. He knew that it was difficult to change teacher practice to a role more appropriate to motivating kids and helping them develop the right skill set for the future. He knew that if he tried to convince these teachers to change, he would most probably fail, or that it would take forever. So what he did is implement a one-to-one laptop program where every child in the board from grade 3 to grade 11 (just under 6000 of them) would get their own Apple iBook (and eventually MacBook).

Gutsy thing to do, technically, politically and pedagogically. Maine had started their initiative, Henrico County as well, each with varying degrees of success and failure. But this board, the Eastern Townships School Board, and this Director General, Ron Canuel, were the first to do it for so many grade levels, and became the first major one in Canada as well. And to this day, although they are exploring various models of technology integration because they are evolving, they are still unique.

The goal was certainly to change Education in their classrooms, but the means was different. They were forcing change on their teachers by placing them in front of a classroom full of computers. There was nowhere to go but to change. You simply cannot teach the same way when technology is so pervasive. You cannot control your students the same way, and you certainly are not the center of knowledge in this situation. You must become a mentor and change your focus. You must allow kids to create content. And the more they create with the tools that they like, the more the teacher can can concentrate on the skills they are developping.

Were all teachers amazing on day one? Not by far. But, as opposed to how things were happenning elsewhere, at least they had the majority of teachers using technology and changing their practice at the same time. Now that was the best achievement attained by the first phase of this project. 

Over time, as they used the technology, teachers started transforming their methods. instead of using the computers as a replacement for pen and paper, they moved on to leveraging the technology, then to transforming the kinds of activities they were doing to develop skills and now, some of them are at a level where they are innovating in new and interesting ways. And new teachers come into the system with their "traditional" methods and start the process at that level and start evolving.

One things though, student motivation has certainly increased, drop-out rates lowered and even standardized testing on basic skills like reading, writing and math have increased as well! Once motivated in general, kids get engaged more and learn more.

There is certainly a long way to go still. But this shows another point of view where technology, if well applied, can bring change or support change. It is only part of the equation, but it is important.

You can get all sorts of figures and data from their web site at www.etsb.qc.ca including research results.

The iPad is a game changer. Really.

Where the iPad plays a role is simplicity itself. I really mean it this way... "simplicity" is the key. Let me explain: the reason the Mac has been successful with educators for a long time has always been because it was simpler. More teachers could solve issues with technology with Macs because they were easier to manage. You could share files easily without a server in the eighties, you could print to your printer without complicated configurations, you could explore without messing up your system. So many good teachers were using the Mac because it was easier to master. Other excellent teacher were using other tools. Even Linux machines, with success. They had the expertise to solve their issues, try things out, etc, with these more complex tools. That's all fine. But "more" teachers were able to do motivating projects with their kids with Macs "because" they were simpler to master without having to rely as much on IT departments. That helped Apple in education. Macs were by no means the only possible tool to be successful with technology, but it made it possible for a much wider number of teachers to be successful with technology then Windows ever could and Linux probably ever will. Because the Mac, mostly, just works to create really advanced motivating projects like movies, music, slideshows, books, whatever. Even word processing is much more fun with Pages than with Word.

With the advent of the iPad, you will agree that what makes the iPad successful is that even more people can figure it out. Regular people. People who can figure out their phone, can figure out the iPad. That's a lot more people than the number who could master even the Mac. For teachers this is an amazing opportunity. Most teachers are not motivated to use technology because of issues, because they cannot figure out how to resolve them on their own, because they are shy to show their students they do not know as much as them, etc. With the iPad, a larger proportion of teachers feel they can allow their kids to use them and use them themselves because nothing can really go wrong. There are issues, like sharing documents with students, creating content is not as strong, etc, but if they can find out how the tool can help and if it is available, then "more" teachers will use it.

Which means more teachers will allow it in their class, more teachers will figure out ways to leverage them, than with any tool before it. Especially the CD-ROM. Those were a big pain. Unreliable, drivers to install, requires a big computer, speakers, cables, configuration, all that. You really neede to want to use them. And then, the content was not based on developing good skills most of the time. 

Now, textbooks are not an answer to fix education. Technology is not an answer in itself. Changing all the pieces is necessary, like teaching practice, textbooks (or other materials), tools which are simple and flexible and which encourage motivation and student engagement. But one thing is for sure, you need an environment which encourages "good teaching". You need testing and assessment which encourages the right skill set to be developed. You need teachers that motivate. You need tools which help kids be motivated. Replacing the tools with electronic version makes little difference. Electronic whiteboards, computers, tablets, they make no difference by themselves unless you do a massive change like the Eastern Townships School Board did. And even then you need to focus on how teachers become better teachers and encourage the proper model of teaching once these tools are made available.

In the end, I can add that I know many great teachers. Some are great because of innate skills which drive them to motivate their kids and have a way to explain things so that it works out. But other are not great at explaining, are not entertaining per se, but they use the tools kids love and they do it in an appropriate way to motivate these kids to learn the correct skill set they need. I'm not sure if you would consider these "good teachers" according to your definition, but I certainly do. And they achieve this level by leveraging technology to allow their kids to create rich content using simple tools (like iMovie, GarageBand, iPhoto and others) which they can handle and theirs kids can handle. But always with a clear goal of helping these kids develop specific skills, learn appropriate information and be motivated to do so.

Motivation and engagement, that is the third essential element or learning and technology really does help and make a difference for "more" teachers than simply being a naturally "good" teacher. In my humble opinion.

Hope this helps fuel this important discussion on changing education for bettering the human race.

Please, my fellow educators and friends, you all know more about this than I, so chime in and corrrect my mistakes, I'll fix up the ideas and update this living document as the need arises. And please pardon my syntax and mistakes, being bilingual certainly does not mean I have good style, but I'm motivated to improve this.

- Renaud

Parenthèse: Réinstaller une App du Mac App Store

J'ai dû régler un problème et je constate que les instructions pour ce faire ne sont pas simples à trouver sur le Net.

Le problème est simple: vous désirez réinstaller une App provenant du Mac App Store, mais celuici vous indique toujours que l'App est déjà installée... ou encore, le Mac App Store vous indique que vous avez des mises à jour pour une app que vous croyez avoir effacé définitivement de votre Mac.

Vous l'effacez de votre dossier Applications, vous l'éliminez dans Launchpad (la touche option dévoile le X qui permet de l'enlever), mais le Mac App Store continue d'indiquer que l'App est toujours installée.

Que faire?

Le Mac App Store est trop intelligent parfois, et voit TOUTES les copies d'une app sur votre ou vos disques durs. Toutes.

Ainsi, si vous avez une seconde partition qui est un clone de votre disque principal, ou une ancienne version de Snow Leopard par exemple, pour des tests, du développement, etc, le MAS y retrouvera les apps déjà installées.

Pour un développeur, ça se complique davantage: À chaque fois que l'on archive son app pour la soumettre au MAS, une copie de l'App est stockée dans les archives de Xcode. Toutes ces copies de l'app sont visibles par le MAS et considèrera que l'App est installée... l'enfer.

Comme solution, j'éjecte les partitions pouvant contenir une app avant de lancer le Mac App Store et je trouve toutes les copies placées sur mon disque.

Pour ceux qui n'ont pas de craintes par rapport au terminal, voici une commande qui retrouvera toutes ces copies (je fais une recherche pour notre app: PinPoint et j'ajoute le ".app" pour éviter de trouver autre chose comme les fichiers de préférences, etc.

sudo mdfind "kMDItemFSName = PinPoint.app" 

Attention aux majuscules et minuscule, cela compte!

La commande Unix find permet aussi de le faire, habituellement plus lentement, mais évite de passer par l'index Spotlight qui pourrait être incomplet (malchance)

sudo find / -name "PinPoint.app" -print


Une fois trouvée, effacez l'app ou déplacez-la sur un volume que vous pourrez éjecter pendant l'opération de réinstallation.


En espérant que ça puisse en aider certains.