The Digital Journey: On the Road to 1:1 Using Digital Curriculum in the Social Studies Classroom Presenter: Michael Hutchison Social Studies Department Chairperson Lincoln High School Vincennes (Indiana) Community Schools Related webpage for presentation: http://www.vcsc.k12.in.us/lincoln/Technology/MichaelHutchisonsWebGallery.aspx
1
Introduction: In 2009, the Lincoln High School (Vincennes, Indiana) Social Studies Department elected to forego use of a “traditional” textbook curriculum, and began to instruct students using digital curriculum. This session focuses on the issues the department faced in making this decision, the decision’s impact on teachers, parents, and students, and continuing plans to more fully integrate digital technology in our social studies curriculum. About the presenter: Michael Hutchison (
[email protected]) is social studies department chair at Lincoln High School, Vincennes, Indiana. He is a curriculum consultant for Social Studies School Service, and has also written curriculum for C-SPAN and PBS. His work also includes contributing lessons for several Ken Burns films, including The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, The Dust Bowl, Prohibition, The War, Baseball, The Tenth Inning, and The Civil War, among others. Currently in his 36th year in the classroom, he serves as a moderator for the NCSS Network, a list editor for the H-HIGH-S listserv, and is past president of the Indiana Computer Educators. In 2014, the Indiana Historical Society named him Caleb Mills Indiana History Teacher of the Year. Agenda for today’s presentation: • • • • •
Introduction of session and presenter Short “Discussion Question” interaction Discussion of “the journey” in adopting digital curriculum Demonstration of types of digital curriculum used by LHS Social Studies faculty, including Active Classroom Question and answer session/door prize drawing
Definition of “digital curriculum”: While students at Lincoln High School are now 1:1 in all four grades, with 10th, 11th, and 12th graders using iPads, and 9th graders using ChromeBooks, we recognize that the process of successfully integrating digital technology is an ongoing process, for several reasons. First, technology is constantly in a state of evolution. As a result, our approach to digital curriculum must be in a state of evolution as well. Second, the process of how students learn is in a state of evolution as well. Therefore, how teachers present material and assess learning should be in a state of evolution. Purchased curriculum materials come with a liberal site license, and Active Classroom is accessible on any type of Internet-connected device. While all students in the school have some sort of device (most also have “smart phones”), Active Classroom allows us to provide online instruction for all.
2
Suggested Digital Curriculum Resources: (Presenter’s note: While the focus of this presentation is primarily on social studiesrelated sites, it is evident that teachers in any subject area wishing to pursue a digital curriculum model can easily find and utilize similar online resources that will effectively integrate digital curriculum into a 1:1 model.) Social Studies School Service (http://www.socialstudies.com): In 2009, we purchased a substantial amount of digital curriculum from Social Studies School Service. At that time, we also received a liberal site license from them to share materials with teachers and students in both traditional and non-traditional school settings. Social Studies School Service provides quality resources for all social studies disciplines. Active Classroom (http://www.socialstudies.com/c/activeclassroom.html): In 2011, we moved from using CD-based digital curriculum to Active Classroom, an online resource in which teachers can provide curriculum in a paperless environment. The teacher can assign lessons (or activity sets of lessons) remotely from school or home, and students in turn can submit completed work remotely for assessment. Teachers can also provide online “feedback” to students. Active Classroom also provides a parent portal as well as online gradebook. While it is subscription-based, the presenter contends that it is an inexpensive alternative to a traditional textbook, with superior materials and resources. PBS Ken Burns America (http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/): This site includes a multitude of resources for teachers wanting to integrate Ken’s films into their curriculum. This site is a wealth of information that includes film clips, related materials about the films, biographies of central characters in the films, an interactive maps with photos related to the films, and a timeline. Of special interest to teachers include an online search feature for lesson plans related to the films, and a new “scrapbook” feature in which teachers can save photos, lessons, and other related material for future reference. PBS Learning Media (http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/): PBS Learning Media (formerly PBS Teachers and PBS TeacherSource) provides thousands of lesson plans in various subject areas. Most do not need the related PBS programming in order to use the lessons. Others provide links to video clips to supplant the lessons. The site can also be “customized” to reflect programming for the teacher’s local PBS affiliate. The site requires registration in order to download and customize lessons. However, registration is free. C-SPAN Classroom (http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/): An excellent free resource for teachers in various social studies areas as well as various disciplines. Resources include online video clips, lesson ideas, and other resources. While all the resources are free, most require teachers to register as a user. (Registration is free.) C-SPAN frequently has giveaways, including DVDs and classroom posters. Be sure to check out the “Student Cam” contest page, located at http://www.studentcam.org/.
3
National Archives (http://www.archives.gov/): The National Archives website contains thousands of text and photo exhibits that can be used as springboards for discussion or creation of lessons and worksheets. The Archival Research Catalog (ARC) provides for an easy keyword search for text and audio-visual artifacts. Be sure to check out the “Charters of Freedom” resource. (The ARC site is located at http://www.archives.gov/research/search/. The Charters of Freedom site can be found at http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters.html). Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/): Similar to the Archives site, the LOC site contains thousands of educational resources. American Memory is an especially good resource with a large number of text and audio-visual resources. Also, check out the Teachers’ Page. The American Memory site is located at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html. The Teachers’ Page can be found at http://www.loc.gov/teachers/. (Note: educational materials can be sorted by Common Core or state standards.) NCSS Network (http://ncssnetwork.ning.com/): The NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies) Network “Ning” is a great opportunity for social studies teachers to interact, post information, and participate in forums. Teachers do not currently have to be NCSS members in order to participate in the Network. Membership is free, but teachers do need to register in order to participate in discussions. H-HIGH-S (https://networks.h-net.org/h-high-s): H-HIGH-S is a secondary social studies teachers’ listserv operated by H-NET, which is part of Michigan State University. Members nationwide (and worldwide) interact via the network to share views on topics of interest and concern to teachers and social studies scholars. Teachers nationwide moderate the list, including the session presenter. Internet History Sourcebooks Project (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/): Paul Halsall’s “Internet History Sourcebooks” includes a plethora of primary historical source material that can be used by teachers to help illuminate class content as well as to create lessons and worksheets to increase student achievement. Thousands of documents are available, and there is also a searchable index. Internet Archives (https://archive.org/): The Internet Archives is a highly engaging, easily searchable site full of text, audio, and video resources that are available for viewing and download. (There’s even an archive of Grateful Dead material.) Another great resource here is the “Wayback” machine which has thousands of archived webpages from as far back as the late 1908s and early ‘90s. Another great feature of this site is the Prelinger Archives, which includes thousands of “Ephemeral” films, including those famous “Coronet” films we all watched in school. The famous “Duck and Cover” film is one of the more popular features on the Internet Archives site, as is the “A Date With Your Family” film. (The Wayback Machine can be found at https://archive.org/web/. The Prelinger Archives is located at https://archive.org/details/prelinger. You can find the famous “Duck and Cover” film at
4
https://archive.org/details/DuckandC1951. “A Date With Your Family” can be viewed, at https://archive.org/details/0248_Date_With_Your_Family_A_E00190_19_29_54_00.) Avalon Project (Yale University) (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/default.asp): The Avalon Project (on the Yale University site) is a great repository for US and World History documents that can be utilized in social studies classes. Documents include categories of law, diplomacy, and history. Available documents run from ancient history to events in the 21st Century. There is a comprehensive, searchable index, as well as documents based by historical event (such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011.)
The Journey: As a classroom teacher, I had utilized computer technology in my curriculum since the mid-1990s. However, I typically had to rely on using one of the few computer labs in our building, usually in the school media center, and sometimes I found myself in conflict with other teachers wanting to use the lab. As one former principal told me, “if I had a million computers in the building, it probably wouldn’t be enough.” At that point, the dream of using digital technology or going 1:1 wasn’t much more than that…a dream. However, by 2008, things began to shift. The Indiana Board of Education released a statement noting that traditional history textbooks were “as dry as dust”, and asserting that school districts should not feel constrained to buy them. Instead, if a district wanted to purchase alternative curriculum (online or digital curriculum), they should feel free to do so. (Note: Indiana is one of the few states that allows for local decision in regard to textbook selection, but passes the cost of textbooks onto parents through rental fees.) At that time, I was president of the Indiana Computer Educators, and I saw this as a great opportunity for technology-using educators statewide, but also for my own department. I immediately e-mailed Dr. Aaron Willis, chief education officer at Social Studies School Service. (Disclaimer: I have been a curriculum consultant for Social Studies School Service for several years. While I am not a fulltime employee of the company, I have written curriculum for them since 2000.) I suggested in my e-mail to Aaron that the Board of Education statement might be a good opportunity to develop a market in Indiana. Aaron replied with an offer to provide my school with a large amount of digital curriculum at a reasonable discount. He also gave us a liberal site license. We could share a single copy of a product among all the teachers in the department. I immediately proposed this to my building principal. After discussing it with the then-department chairperson and careful discussion as a department, we elected to “go digital”. However, we still had some resistance. One of the older teachers in the department demanded that she have the “safety net” of a textbook. We reached a compromise. Each
5
teacher would get a classroom set of the textbooks we originally had planned to adopt. Unfortunately, the purchase of textbooks limited the amount of digital curriculum we could purchase. (We would not make this same compromise in 2014.) Another unwanted consequence of this was that textbooks ordered didn’t always match the teacher’s class load. For example, I received a set of World History books, even though I wasn’t teaching World History the first year we went to digital curriculum. In addition, since we only had a “classroom set” of books (approximately 30 per set), it was difficult to assign homework from the ancillaries since we generally had more students than books. While we had the software for curriculum, we also needed devices. We received a grant from the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) to purchase three rolling labs of 30 MacBook laptop computers, as well as iMac teacher workstations for each teacher in the department. We had been primarily a “Windows” school prior to our adoption, but we found the switch to Macintosh easy. (Personally, while I had been a Windows user for many years, I bought two iMacs for home use, and when the time comes to replace them, I will replace them with new Macintosh computers.) With our software and hardware in place, we next had to meet a bigger challenge…how would our students handle the transition? We found that they handled this exceptionally well. We did have to make some adaptations. For example, since students didn’t have devices in school, we often either found ourselves copying materials so students did have a hard copy, or asking students to bring flash drives so we could copy files for them. Still, this didn’t totally solve the problem. Our new district administration began to consider a 1:1 initiative on the high school level. A committee of teachers and administrators looked at various devices and related services, finally settling on iPads as our student device. Unfortunately, we gradually introduced them with only the freshmen and sophomores receiving them the first year, the juniors added the next year, and the senior class not added until two years later. At approximately the same time, Social Studies School Service began preparations to roll out “Active Classroom”, an entirely web-based online curriculum for US History, World History, Government/Civics, and Geography. Dr. Willis asked me if I would become an Active Classroom “fellow”, providing feedback on the interface, what I liked, didn’t like, or would like to see changed. Other “fellows” and I submitted this feedback electronically as Social Studies School Service continued to tweak the interface to make it student and teacher friendly. Once Active Classroom was ready to roll out, my school received a year’s free subscription. We went through typical “growing pains” as is common with a new technology. This included working to find an easy, effective way to “enroll” students into the system, as well as seeking to find ways to share technology with classes and students that weren’t issued 1:1 devices yet. Once that hurdle was out of the way, things went more seamlessly.
6
However, we were dealing with some significant concerns regarding our selected device—iPads. We found very quickly that the iPad can be a great web browser, as well as a game machine. However, it wasn’t really effective for typing, nor was it nearly as easy to supervise use (or misuse) as we had hoped. Using the Mac Books, we could use our remote desktop system to monitor student use. We weren’t able to do so with the iPads. In addition, students seemed to be able to delete the “profiles” that were supposed to keep them from games, chat, etc. So, in that regard, we frequently found ourselves policing students from improper use rather than working with them on assignments. The “Big Switch”: We began to look at alternative devices. Not only did we find it was difficult to “police” students, but we also found that repair and replacement costs were high for broken screens or other damage or issues. Turnaround time to return fixed iPads was excessive as well. In 2014, we decided to move from iPads to Chromebooks. Our district administration finds these devices to be a more than suitable replacement. While costs are comparable for the device purchase, the device is considered to be easier to repair or replace, and restrictions against improper use are more manageable. Chromebooks are Internetdependent devices that use Google Docs, including their word processing and presentation software. With limited hard drive space, they are more suited for “cloud” storage such as through Google Drive than local hard drive storage. Again, the decision was made to gradually introduce the devices. So, the incoming freshman class received Chromebooks while the other three classes continued to receive iPads. (Our iPad policy allowed students to purchase the device upon graduation after a token payment.) Next year’s freshmen and sophomores receive Chromebooks, then freshmen, sophomores, and juniors in 2016-2017, and so on. Since I teach only juniors and seniors, I have not had an opportunity to use Chromebooks with my students as of yet. I’m also not sure if there will be issues working in a “hybrid” environment with some of my students/classes using iPads and others using Chromebooks until all four grades have the same device. Regardless, I believe that the “digital journey to 1:1” will be rewarded. (I never said it probably wouldn’t be bumpy…) The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly… If I had to make the choice whether to use traditional textbooks, or go 1:1 along with Active Classroom, I would vote 1:1 and Active Classroom every time. That doesn’t mean all has gone 100% perfectly. Any innovation or revision of curriculum or technology has some ups and downs. Here are some positives and negatives regarding our move to 1:1. Some of these have been somewhat remedied by our move to Chromebooks, but not all have completely disappeared.
7
The Good: • •
• •
•
•
•
•
•
We can more effectively tailor our curriculum to meet the immediate and longterm needs of our students. Since students should be using the iPad (and eventually, Chromebooks) for several classes, not just social studies, the cost of lease and Active Classroom subscription is far less than rental of a traditional textbook. (As of Fall, 2014, Indiana is one of the few states that requires students to rent their own textbooks, and the state doesn’t pick up any of that cost, except for students getting free and reduced lunch assistance. There is currently a proposal by the state superintendent of public instruction for the state to absorb this cost, but at this time, that proposal hasn’t been endorsed by the governor or state legislature.) Using Active Classroom, it is a simple matter to align our curriculum to state and national social studies standards, as well as Common Core standards. Digital curriculum can provide more diversity in regard to providing varied instruction. Active Classroom provides activities such as video analysis, audio analysis, Google Earth activities, Power Point presentations, and simulations that generally aren’t available via traditional textbooks. In addition, new, engaging content is added on a regular basis. The journey to 1:1 obviously works well with teachers considering a “flipped” or “blended” classroom model; in which teachers spend class time focused more on activity than on lecture. Students have further access to technology, which allows the teacher to make video lecture content more available. The use of technology allows us to add new, and innovative content into our classes. For example, it’s easy for me to add content from CNN, Politico, CSPAN Classroom, or other resources into my daily lecture or activity. If I decide to do so, Active Classroom or other resources can allow my students to interact with geographically distant partners or experts. Digital curriculum provides an easy way for absent students to keep up with class lecture and activities since anything can be downloaded and completed by students. This relieves the teacher from providing make-up work in traditional formats, and helps students since they can keep current with course work. The same can be true for an “absent teacher”. For example, if I need to be away from the classroom, I can record my lectures using Camtasia or other screen capture software, and make those available online. While I can’t speak for all teachers using a 1:1 model, I’ve found that going that route has invigorated me as a teacher and has made me more enthusiastic in my profession. As a teacher who taught from a traditional textbook model for nearly 30 years, the idea of a new, innovative way to deliver curriculum via each student having a device, and the ability to use a resource like Active Classroom makes it more “fun” to come to school daily.
The Bad: •
While students should be interested and involved in utilizing new technology in their studies, some students see the iPad as a way to chat, watch streaming video, 8
•
•
•
or play games during class time instead of focusing on the curriculum. On the other hand, using traditional textbooks, I sometimes found myself working hard keeping kids on task if they tried to text on their cell phone (it’s still an ongoing problem), or writing notes in class. I know that if kids know they can circumvent the system or do something rather than classwork, they will do it. Our attempt to limit this includes using “good old fashioned vigilance” by moving around the room and observes what students are doing. Second, while we had hoped that installing a “client” on the iPad that would limit student abuse, it was not the case. Our move to a Chromebook model should limit this, and hopefully misuse will be limited. I’m not quite sure it can ever be totally eliminated. We are finding that home Internet access and WiFi on the home level are becoming more and more ubiquitous. We were pleasantly surprised early on at the number of students with home access. Regardless, there are some students who don’t have home access. This means it’s more difficult to “push” assignments their way, or have them access video content at home. However, my view is that there are “enough hours in the day”, and enough WiFi hotspots locally that students can access the material. (I usually try to give “study time” when needed, or in a flipped classroom model, the student can save video content locally to their device, and watch it at home.) When one is dealing with technology, the possibility that something will “go wrong” or fail is always lurking in the background. For example, we have a “vigorous” filtering system that will sometimes block sites I want to use in class. Naturally, I don’t filter at home, so it’s sometimes an unpleasant surprise if a site I find at home is blocked at school. If I take enough time and do “advanced planning”, the possibility of those “unpleasant surprises” is minimized. As for issues such as when the network “goes down”, I’ve just learned to plan in case. There is always a “learning curve” with something new like digital curriculum or technology. Still, I think most teachers can easily adjust. After all, we basically did the same thing when we adopted new textbooks. We had to go in and outline new lessons, create new tests, and so on. Using technology requires some of the same advance planning, but in my view, the rewards are much more worth the effort.
The Ugly: •
In our original “drive to digital, we were fortunate. When I first proposed going to a digital format, I had an interested principal. The same “interested principal”, when he became a district administrator, actually proposed our original 1:1 initiative. (He first told me about it over a couple of beers at the NCSS 2010 Conference in Denver. My former principal is now our school district superintendent.) We also had a supportive school board that backed our move to digital curriculum. On the other hand, not everyone has those luxuries. Teachers wanting to follow our path to a digital classroom may find some substantial administrative resistance. My suggestion in this regard would be to “keep at it”. I think the research is already providing (and experience is proving as well) that
9
•
•
•
•
•
digital curriculum enhances student learning, and it will continue to prove that point in the future. In our case, we had more teacher resistance than administrative concerns. For example, one of our more “experienced” teachers insisted she couldn’t teach class unless she had the “safety net” of a textbook. So, in order to get her to agree, we had to reach a “happy medium”. She accepted the digital curriculum as long as each teacher in my department had a classroom set of textbooks for each subject we taught. Unfortunately, that shot our costs up, and adversely affected the amount of digital curriculum we could purchase in 2009. Imagine my concerns when the school bookstore deposited 30 World History books in my classroom, simply because I taught the subject in 2008. (I wasn’t scheduled to teach it in 2009.) So, we bought 30 World History books for a teacher who didn’t need them. I also received 30 US History books and 30 Government books. I have never opened them. I have no reason to. When we adopted again this year, we didn’t have this problem. (The “experienced teacher” has since retired.) We went totally with Active Classroom. In some instances, going digital and 1:1 also means the teacher has to develop the curriculum, including content and assessment. Products such as Active Classroom make this an easier process, since all resources are pre-made and available (but can still be edited by the teacher). Schools and teachers can’t jump “head first” into digital curriculum and 1:1. Just as most people would research buying a new automobile or new home, schools should also thoroughly research and reflect on what device to purchase. In our case, we (the committee of teachers and administrators making the recommendation on the devices) met frequently after school and heard sales presentations from vendors wanting to sell us a device. Often, they “low-balled” the device cost hoping that we would spend a large sum to also provide our students with their online and phone service. We realized that we wouldn’t be able to provide students with online access, and instead went “device only”. Our decision to go iPads came after a great deal of listening, discussion, and sometimes debate. Even after all this, we have decided to move from iPads to another device—Chromebooks. While my students currently aren’t using them (we’ve are gradually integrating them and this year only our freshmen have them), I can see the advantages to using them over the iPads. What we found almost immediately regarding limitations with the iPads included our inability to successfully restrict what students could do with them. Students can easily play games, text, watch streaming video (such as Netflix), chat, and several other things we would rather they not do during class time. We found ourselves having a great amount of difficulty in regulating student “profiles” and keeping the iPads as “educational devices”. We believe the move to Chromebooks should be more effective in reaching that goal. Every device has its own limitations. As a teacher, I would much rather use a Mac Book or desktop computer than an iPad. (I can’t type on one.) On the other hand, we could not have required students to lease a laptop computer as easily (the cost would have been prohibitive). However, we felt that many of the
10
•
devices we originally looked at with full keyboards were too flimsy to stand up to excessive student use. Again, we believe the Chromebooks will solve this issue. Distribution of a technology device requires an entirely different set of “skills and conditions” than distribution of traditional textbooks. Insurance policy options had to be made available to parents and insurance proof provided before devices could be sent home. An “acceptable use policy” (AUP) had to be created, and terms agreed to by parents and students. Ways to load software on devices as well as remotely update them had to be found. (We hope this will be somewhat limited as we fully integrate Chromebooks.)
A Final Word: As I mentioned above, I believe completely that 1:1 and digital technology will revolutionize classroom instruction. My only regret is that this push wasn’t made in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I began my teaching career, and it’s now being made as I approach the end of it. Still, I’m proud to have been an early adopter of classroom technology and look forward to a future in which we utilize it even more thoroughly. Please feel free to free to contact me if you have questions or insights into my presentation. If you’d like to contact me directly, please feel free to do so by e-mailing me at
[email protected]. You can also access me through Twitter at @hutchisonm. You can also download this presentation, as well as sample lesson plans and other presentation files, from my webpage at http://www.vcsc.k12.in.us/lincoln/Technology/MichaelHutchisonsWebGallery.aspx.
11
Related sample lesson/resource materials are available on the presentation website: http://www.vcsc.k12.in.us/lincoln/Technology/MichaelHutchisonsWebGallery.aspx
12
