My inattention to this site for a few months shows that it may just be time to put the K12Geek to bed for now. I’ll keep things posted here for a while, but new ideas are churning and energies need to be redirected at this point.
Thanks for reading over the years…
-Dave
Ok, I need to know what tool was used for this and if our teachers are able to utilize it:
This could be a powerful learning tool – any help would be appreciated.
Thanks to Barb Rule for sharing with me.
If you haven’t yet seen Khan Academy, you need to visit the site. What an incredible set of resources, coupled with exercises for our students – or anybody for that matter. The premise is that anyone can call up for FREE, short, bite-sized videos to learn something — anything — from their catalog.
Some K12 teachers are actually ‘flipping‘ their learning. Instead of lecturing to their students during the day and giving problems for homework, they are having students watch the Khan Academy videos for homework, then having students practice in class, with the teacher there for support. Students can watch and reply those parts they don’t understand, then get real support from their real teacher at school. It’s a no-brainer!
After attending the Learning Solutions Conference last week, I’m even more convinced this is how our students will be doing much more of their learning now and in the future.
Just a quick, practical example of learning-turned mobile: Hairdressing Training
This is just one example of how we’ll all be learning in small, bite-sized, mobile chunks. It’s already happening in industry. I attended a few case studies at the conference, one of which was from a physical therapy group rolling out iPod Touches to their caregivers in order to track patient therapy electronically. They gave the staff the actual iPods they would be using with these types of tutorials and also some simulations of what they needed to learn to use them. The staff was expected to go through the trainings and simulations for a month, then the new electronic therapy tracking system would go live the next month. Through the simulation software, they track the roll out on how people are doing and see if some need extra help before they went live with the system.
Feedback from the caregivers was incredibly positive. They could work at their own pace, in small, bite-sized chunks when they had a break, over lunch, or those short ‘down-times’ they had during the day.
Khan Academy gets it. Many of our students are quick to utilize video for learning. They can play it back without having to ‘ask to have that part explained again.’ They can take it anywhere and learn any time – at their convenience.
It’s not a question of us getting on board with this type of learning – it’s a question of when we’ll get on board.
Exciting stuff!
My eyes have been opened to the idea of producing ePUB documents for education. I didn’t realize how easy it was to do on the Macintosh with Pages, the iWork word processing application. I put together an ePUB ebook inside of about 30 minutes mixing text, audio clips, video, and web links using Pages. Now, it wasn’t pretty, but the ease with which I could produce something with all those elements really made me start thinking: why not have our students and teachers start producing such work? Talk about a collaborative, real-world, project-based assignment that would cover several learning styles!
So, now I have to try to find an equivalent piece of software for the Windows side of things. Sure, Adobe InDesign will work well, but it’s a bit pricey, especially in this time of budget cuts and spending freezes. I started thinking, well, if Pages will do it on a Mac, why not Word for Windows? I tried searching on Microsoft’s site and look what I found:
Can you believe it?! NOTHING!
So, instead I’m off to Google to see what I can find. If you have experience or suggestions for inexpensive ePUB software for creating and laying out ePUBs on Windows, please comment. I’ve started looking at eCub, but other than that, I’d like to have something simple. I realize you can use Word, then save to HTML and/or PDF, then convert, etc. but we need to make this EASY or no one will want to do it.
I started putting together an ePUB wiki on the subject as well, just as a one-stop-shop.
Thanks for any suggestions / comments you may have on the subject. I think ePUB can be a powerful tool for learning in the classroom, if used correctly.