techna virumque cano

More on Badges

2012-01-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

Having returned from THATCamp Games hosted at the University of Maryland this past weekend, I wanted to open the "Badges Done Right" discussion to a wider audience after a very productive session. You can view the notes from the session here at this link: Google Docs: Badges Done Right

Here's the session as I proposed it for THATCamp Games:

I’d like to propose a session, or at least a conversation, on the topic of badges and achievements in education. It seems to me that many of the “trend-settters” of gamification are using badges in a very unfortunate way: badges as simple extrinsic motivators that have very little value for creating intrinsic motivation. For example, take a look at the ready-made badges provided by one course-management company.

From my point of view, none of those badges is indicative of the student achieving meaningful progress towards the course objectives. They aren’t tied to any real learning activities and at a glance tell me nothing about the student other than that s/he might have not missed a class or that she “worked hard.” However, the kind of small sample shown here is generally what I see whenever I look around at the badge and achievement systems which are being grafted onto pre-existing learning-management-systems by the major players in the education industry.

Before we embrace badges in education, I’d like us to discuss ways we might be able to move past badges-as-21C-gold-stars and to consider how we might craft meaningful badge systems that are a true record of accomplishments towards the learning objectives for the particular course, curriculum, or program.

There seemed to be two different conversations happening: badges on the macro-level as credentials across disciplines or institutions and badges on the micro-level in the individual classroom as records. Naturally I'm more interested in the latter discussion but both are worthwhile ones to have. So what are your thoughts? Are we able to effectively remove the "gold star" nature of badges and instead use them to accurately represent accomplishing learning objectives in a way that will motivate our students intrinsically rather than extrinsically?

The Computer as a Barrier

2011-09-10T15:30:00.001-06:00

We finally got the school year underway this past week after a delayed start due to Hurricane Irene ravaging New England. Last year at this time I was just embarking on an amazing journey known as Operation LAPIS in one of my Latin I sections and I spent a great deal of time in that first week posting my thoughts here (you can find the links on the right.) With the new year starting, and the plan to go “all in” with practomimetic learning across all of my Latin courses (both Latin Is and a Latin II), I was eager and excited to get the year going.

Unfortunately for me, I found out on the first day back that the level of tech integration that I had last year was actually going to be worse this year. Our building (one of many on a campus that serves 2500+ high school students) traded a single mobile laptop cart of 30 computers for a stationary lab of 26 desktops -- only 23 of which were actually working on day one. Our building houses almost all of the world language classes and about half of the science classrooms in addition to special education and a sprinkling of history classes. In all, there are between thirty and forty classrooms in the building alone and yes, you read that correctly, one physical lab of 26 desktop computers is what is available to those classes. In 2011.

While I don’t want to spend time talking about the logistics of that set up, and the need for a real push for better access in our school, I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about the new lab and why it is actually a terrible space for learning to occur.

In my classroom last year, with the mobile laptop cart, I was able to group the students into their year-long teams for LAPIS on day 2. They had their laptops in front of them and they were sitting face to face with their teammates, interacting in both real space and the virtual one. The first night last year, and the first night this year, were identical: the operatives rushed home to create their Google accounts, register with the TSTT and post welcome messages to their new teammates in their team forum.

Here’s what I wrote about the class when they came in for day two:

I saw the non-LAPIS class first and it was a fairly standard experience: they file in and sit in silence before the class starts, it is still a struggle to get them to open up to myself, to their classmates, to volunteer, to answer questions or contribute. Nothing new or nothing surprising there. Usually by the third week they start to come around and by the end of September we’re really in full stride with the atmosphere that carries through the rest of the year. The LAPIS class, on the other hand, which came in directly after the non-LAPIS was an entirely different story. They came in chatting to one another and immediately started talking with their teammates. The dynamics for the rest of the class stayed at that elevated level. While doing activities, a far greater number of hands shot up to volunteer, they more readily engaged in discussion back and forth about topics. They responded to comments made by fellow classmates. They more actively engaged with me. To say there was a stark difference between the two classes after just one day would be a gross understatement. There is absolutely no question in my mind that this came as a direct result of the relationships that they began to forge online the night before in the Team Forums.

This year, during the whole first week, the new recruits in Operation LAPIS couldn’t remember who was on their team, nor pick them out of a crowd. In fact, there was almost no socializing among the students. They looked very much students in the first week of a traditional classroom setting. I might even wager to say that they were even worse. How could the same process (creating accounts, registering, posting, etc) produce such different results?

Turns out I was actually a little bit wrong in my analysis then. It wasn’t only the fact that they were communicating in their team forums the night before -- although, it certainly had a big impact. Comparing notes from last year to this year I’ve found out that there’s another variable that has a huge impact; the traditional computer lab.

The new computer lab is laid out in, what I would consider, a terrible fashion for any kind of community learning or even learning in general. There are computers along the back wall (the student backs are turned around from the IWB in the front of the room), and on the sides there are a couple short rows of 2-3 computers, face to face. This means that some of those students, too, are facing away from the visuals on the IWB. Because the towers are on the tables, along with the computer monitors, the students cannot physically see the students sitting across from them, making communication across the table virtually impossible. There are also only 26 stations -- most of our classes are now getting dangerously close to 30 (both of my Latin I sections are now at 28).

The traditional computer lab and the computers in it, in this case, is actually a barrier to the kinds of social and collaborative learning that we’re hoping to foster with our style of game-based learning. Heck, the kinds of learning any classroom should be trying to foster. Even the returning Senior Operatives (my Latin II class) already mentioned that they really dislike the lab and want to return to our old classroom with the laptops. The computer lab is a relic of the past; something that has no place in a modern educational setting. With as many different kinds of internet enabled devices out there, and the prevalence of wireless infrastructures in other parts of the “real world”, any place, any where, can become a computer “lab”. The computer shouldn’t be the focus, the main attraction, like it is in the traditional lab. The device should just be one of many tools at the learner’s disposal.

Iteration of the CARDs

2011-07-27T15:18:00.006-06:00

This post was originally published on July 21, 2011 at Play the Past:

A few months ago here at Play the Past, I wrote about the collection mechanic that’s a large part of the grammatical instruction in Operation LAPIS. The rewards for completing categories in that collection mechanic were those wonderful CARDs (digital only) that would then appear in their personal dossiers. From a certain point of view, these CARDs were nothing more than glorified badges and achievements -- examples of the dreaded gamification.

I’m here today to tell you that those versions of the CARDs as rewards for a grind were indeed a failure. I’m not really surprised that they were a failure, much as I tried to convince myself that they would work. On the other hand, the collection mechanic itself, rooted in the “Pokemon Thing,” was not a failure. The students that bought into the collection mechanic demonstrated a higher level of proficiency in the finer points of Latin grammar that I’ve seen most Latin I students demonstrate in the past.

So what was the problem? It’s actually quite simple. Why does the collection mechanic in Pokemon work as well as it does? The players get to do something with their Pokemon. They are collecting them from the wild in order to raise them, train them and battle them. We needed to figure out how to turn those CARD rewards into something that could be used, preferably something that also tied into the learning objectives for the course. You know, that whole 1:1 game rules:learning objective thing.

When we first started down the road of development with the CARD idea, we wanted there to be a physical game tied to them--that is, an imaginary-yet-real purpose to collect the CARDs. We looked at a lot of different models and were first intrigued by ways we might incorporate some form of the mechanics of Top Trumps -- namely, head-to-head battles between players that really go back all the way to the playing-card-game War. However, Top Trumps’ number-value mechanics don’t particularly align with any learning objectives for the course (it might be helpful for students to remember that Cicero was a better public speaker than Octavian, but assigning Cicero a 10 and Octavian an 8 actually seemed to us to cut against possible learning).

We also were particularly interested in ways that we might apply some of the mechanics from discussion games like Apples to Apples. Also, tor the classically-uninitiaed, there is also a serious (and seriously, nay wildly, popular) college-bowl-esque trivia contest in the classics sphere known as certamen. We also wanted to incorporate the high level of knowledge that participants in certamen have about all aspects of ancient history and culture in the new iteration of the CARDs.

Unfortunately we kept hitting the same brick wall over and over again: if you remove the straight numbers battles of something like Magic: the Gathering or Top Trumps, how do you determine a winner? Finally, at Games+Learning+Society 7.0 in June we saw the solution laid out before us: one of the mechanics of Eric Zimmerman’s (along with Local No. 12) renowned-in-the-game-community Metagame.

Metagame revolves around intelligent discussions about video games. From my perspective, the key mechanic in the Metagame ruleset is that any appointed bystander can function as a judge who decides the winner of the debate. This mechanic, I think, has a lot of implications for education.

On the CARD redesign

Decompressing after GLS, I sat down and laid out what would be the rules for what we now call CARD-tamen™ and the tie-in to the collection mechanic of Operation LAPIS. Also realizing that the original CARDs (while cool-looking) were obvious knock-offs of Magic: the Gathering, we also decided on a complete redesign centered around a Roman-themed deck with four categories of CARDs: historical people, significant ancient structures, places of renown, and Roman divinities.

We wanted to keep the overall feel of the CARDs the same but we needed a stylistic change that would allow us to be free of any litigation with Wizards of the Coast. The new designs, both in terms of content and style, are a beautiful representation of Roman culture in the form of a deck of cards.

Original Pompeiī CARD (left) and the new CARD (right)

On the rules of CARD-tamen™

The idea of CARD-tamen™ is simple: a roll of a d20 decides which of the twenty controversies the players will have to debate and then each participant, after selecting a CARD from their deck, has two minutes to prove to the iudex that their CARD is the more compelling answer to the controversy. The controversies range from declarations such as “More significant to world history” to “Greater contribution to the development of public speaking” to even “Inspired more significant stories.” (Students of Roman culture may recall that not-dissimilar controversiae formed an essential part of the education of young men destined for public life.)

In order to make their declamations better, players will go to resources beginning with Wikipedia and ending with scholarly articles on JSTOR to research more about their CARDs before playing their next game. In the very first round of play-testing with students, it took only minutes for one of them to take out a phone and look up some quick facts on Cicero. It took only a nano-second more for one of the other students to claim “Hey, that’s cheating!” to which the first student replied, “How? I’m using a resource to make my speech better.” When I heard about that exchange, I couldn’t have been happier: that’s precisely the effect that we wanted the CARDs to have. We’ve put just enough information on them to create a need to find out more.

But it’s the presence of what we call the iudex-mechanic, with its powerful effect of drawing in the bystanders to the activity, that makes the game matter, finally. Much research in educational psychology supports the notion that one of the most effective methods of helping students learn is fostering peer interaction. We hope that the iudex’s active role in deciding the winner will cause him or her, too, to feel the need to become more knowledgeable in the content covered by the 63 cards. In addition, anyone else observing the game will of course also hear the declamations made by each participant and gain knowledge of the topics.

The rules of CARD-tamen™ require the participant to talk intelligently about various aspects of Roman history and culture. That play objective also happens to be one of the learning objectives for an introductory Latin course or even a much more general course about civilization or history. The rules of the game foster the learning, rather than trying to transmit the content like so much chocolate on the broccoli of Roman culture.

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We just launched a Kickstarter campaign for CARD-tamen™ and would love the support from anyone interested in quality educational games or Classical studies. A preview of the 63 card deck (offered as one of the rewards for contributions) is located on the Kickstarter page:

Reflections, Part 3

2011-06-28T09:32:00.003-06:00

Back in October, I posted about a series of events that lead to a drastic shift in my grading and homework philiosophy in my Latin II classroom. You can read about the backstory if you’d like, but in sum a single comment “Latin kills me inside” prompted me to try out the ideas that educational reformers like Alfie Kohn have been pushing for years.

Simply put, I was removing all traditional “grading” from my classroom and instead putting in its place a self-evaluation “masteries chart” of all of the skills we expect our Latin II students to have at the end of the year. In addition to that chart, I also established time at each marking period to have one on one conferences with the students to talk about their accomplishments, areas that they struggled in, and what they were going to work on in the next quarter.

Does this mean I stopped giving quizzes and tests? Absolutely not. Instead, after we took those assessment checks, we went over them in detail and the students made their own corrections to see and understand their mistakes. Occasionally I collected their work to make sure that they were doing the self-corrections but eventually I found that I just didn’t need to do that: they were doing their corrections and doing them quite well. In comparison to their Latin II peers with my other colleagues, all of our sections performed nearly identical on the National Latin Exam. There was no degradation in ability or skill as a result of removing grades from the picture.

As the second semester went by, I slowly weened them (or myself?) off of homework. Because of larger systemic issues with homework, a very small percentage of students were actually doing the work that I assigned. Instead, a lot of the exercises and tasks that I would have assigned at home, we worked on in class either individually, in small groups, or as a large class group. Again, the result here was that 100% of the students got the extra reinforcement of the language skills rather than 20-40%. Did this take away from class time that would otherwise be used for other things? Absolutely -- it took away from the time that I normally used for direct instruction. Instead, that time was limited to only when introducing new topics, another huge departure from business as usual.

Did these changes impact how much material we covered during the course of the year? It didn’t at all. In fact, I’d argue that at the end of this year my students as a whole had a better understanding and recoginition of the advanced clauses than any of my past groups. I’ve seen students who, in the past, might have been treading water through Latin II, sneak by in III, accomplish their language requirement and bail out now approach reading and studying Latin with renewed interest and vigor because they are confident in their ability. With the threat and/or reward of grades removed, by in large the students instead focused on learning Latin for the sake of learning Latin. This resulted in a far more enjoyable experience for both my students and myself.

I should also add that before I even started this transition, I approached both my department head and building principal to let them know exactly what I was planning, why I was doing it, and what steps I would be doing to ensure that the students are demonstrating mastery of the material. They were fully supportive with the understanding that, like the initial launch of Operation LAPIS, if things were to go terribly wrong, I’d pull the plug and readjust.

So how about the students? To quote LeVar Burton, “You don’t have to take my word for it...” Here is just a small sample of the feedback provided by my Latin II students at the end of the year, specifically about the shift in grading philosophy:

“I love how we weren’t graded this year, it made the class a lot less stressful and allowed me to just focus on learning, rather than worrying about grades.”

“The new style of teaching (and learning) you implemented really worked for me when I thought it would fail. I didn’t know how you could learn without taking tests or quizzes to get a number grade but I realized that you could get a lot more out of the class by focusing on things other than the grade.”

“I used to suck at Latin and now I suck less.. actually, I don’t suck at all. It just now dawned on me how much we learned this year and I didn’t even realize it because I didn’t obsess over a grade at the top of the page.”

“I feel like it was a lot easier to focus on learning the grammar parts when we didn’t have to worry about quizzes. I also think that the elemination of actual “grading” really encouraged learning and made things our own choice instead of doing things just for the A”

Wouldn’t it be great if these were the thoughts of every student at the end of every course?

Reflections, Part 2

2011-06-11T10:36:00.001-06:00

Quality, and meaningful, feedback is something that is paramount to the success of Operation LAPIS and of practomimetic learning in general. However, I noticed a very interesting trend in how each of the two sections felt about the feedback that they received. Their responses in the end of the year surveys couldn't be any more different. On the one hand, the original LAPIS group felt that the feedback given to them was exceptional, especially when it came to interaction at night in the team discussion forums. On the other hand, the partial year class felt that the feedback they received was significantly insufficient.

Obviously, I was quite puzzled (and a bit taken aback) by the comments of the newer group -- especially since I read through that batch first. However, reading the comments from the original group made me realize something very important about this whole process, especially the feedback portion.

For the original group, all they've known throughout the entire year were the interactions in their team forums between them and myself, comments left in their dossiers, and feedback left on the occasional attunement challenges. Also, they recognized the value in the conversations that I had with their teams in person each class as they were working on any given task.

However, for the newer group, they began the year in a traditional Latin class, with traditional instruction -- including frequent quizzes and tests. They've also spent the year in their other core classes, receiving similar instructional methods. For almost every student not involved in a practomimetic course, their idea of "feedback" is a letter at the top of the page. When those letters disappeared for the newer group, they believed that they stopped receiving feedback altogether. The only "feedback" the ever receive, anywhere, is a letter on the top of the page. Because of how used to the traditional system they had become, they were unable to make the connection that not only were they receiving feedback, they were receiving feedback in a substantially more meaningful way.

So why did that happen? How come they weren't able to see the value in the shift of how I was interacting with them nightly?

The answer, I think, falls back to the narrative. One of the sections that I skipped in order to fit into the condensed schedule was a whole series of missions that took place in Britain. Included in those missions is a fantastically constructed series of episodes that force them to think about a lot of the metacognitive issues at play with practomimetic learning and it's connection with Plato's Allegory of the Cave. When the original class went through these exercises, it was one of the most rewarding consecutive days of teaching in my career. The self-discovery about their own learning and school in general was incredible to watch unfold as they put all the pieces together.

The rift between the two sections in terms of their perception of how feedback was handled was precisely because the newer group just wasn't exposed to the metacognitive process that the original group went through. Again, this misstep on my part fortunately exposed something incredible about Sinistrus' strange farm: that part of the narrative, like seemingly everything before and after, is vital to the complete package. Practomimetic learning is as much about learning how to learn as it is about the content area itself.

Reflections, Part 1

2011-06-10T15:14:00.001-06:00

The first full year run of Operation LAPIS is in the books. The final mission was finished on Monday. The exam was completed yesterday. I've learned a great deal over the past academic year and in a series of posts, I plan to reflect upon and share some of the anecdotal pieces of evidence on just how powerful practomimetic learning can be. Next week we'll be traveling to Madison, Wisconsin to the Games, Learning and Society Conference and I'm very excited to share LAPIS with a wider game-based learning audience.

So where to begin?

Originally I started the year teaching one section of Latin I that was presented in the traditional format while the other section came in on the first day to find out they were tasked with saving western civilization as we know it. As the year went on and the other section caught wind of what their peers were up to, eventually I had to cave and in the middle of March, I brought the other group into the fold; albeit on the fast track through the missions and the storyline. This proved to be a fortunate decision because the newer group proved to me something that I had long thought would be true -- the full narrative is indeed vital for thorough and meaningful fulfillment of the learning objectives.

While the newer group was clearly impacted positively in terms of engagement with the material, because they were on such a fast track, they just didn't have the deeper understand or connection with the material as the original full-year LAPIS group. This became most evident on their prompt responses for the final mission. After reading and translating a passage of decent length, the students (as part of their final assessment) had to do what they've done all year: respond to the immersion prompt, taking into account the world-view of their character. The only difference was this one was a solo mission.

Over the past few weeks, as I noted in previous posts, they were researching and giving speechs as part of the trials to gain access to the headquarters of the Societās Potentium. All of those speeches were intentionally laying the foundation for them to understand the collapse of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Principate under Augustus. They did a great job at understanding how the Gracchi led to Marius which lead to Caesar... but could they tie it all together for Antony and Octavian?

The answer was that in a timed exam, under pressure, the results were very mixed. But at the very least they could demonstrate their awareness of how Octavian fit into the big picture. However, I do want to show an example of one of the best responses from the newer LAPIS group (the third of the year group) and the original full year group.

Example from the newer group:

If I could align myself with either Octavian or Anthony I would align with neither of them. Octavian although a great leader, used his power to persuade the Roman senators into a fight that didn’t nessasarily need to occur. When he wanted to start the war, he made sure to persuade the senators to declare war, so it was official and couldn’t be argued against. He started the conflict that would end the lives of both Anthony and Cleopatra. Because my Recentius’s view is very political, Octavian persuading the senators to start this war seems very harsh and it almost seems as though he wanted a war for no reason, but turned the senators against Anthony. Now Anthony on the other hand isn’t perfect either. He left Rome to be with Cleopatra and told her he would give her land that the Romans owned. This is completely going against the idea that he wanted to help Rome at all. I think that him making a decision like this was a good reason for the Romans to be upset but maybe not so upset that a war turned to the outcome, because the land was still technically owned by the Romans. It wasn’t Anthonys to be giving away. So in the end I believe that both sides had mistakes that they seemed to make and in the end the both chose the wrong decision to stick with. They both could have thought their decisions through before they made them.

This is a great, thoughtful, and thorough response to the question of whom would they align themselves with. This particular student was the only one who chose to aid neither man. I love the risk taking that happened here that I'm not sure would happen in any other setting.

Now, for those wondering what true practomimetic learning looks like, here's something that I would love to make into a poster:

Titus thought for a moment on what would be the correct choice, tapping his chin in contemplation of the matter while he considered the story that Sextus had just relayed to him. It certainly did clear some things up, that much was true. With a heavy sigh, Titus turned his eyes from the ground up to the image of Sextus and declared. “I align myself with Octavius.” he stopped to collect his thoughts and became just slightly distracted by the annoying sting of the arm wound he acquired earlier in the day, a bit sickened by the fact that he had only earlier engaged in mortal combat and was now supposed to work up the mind to make a firm decision. Ah, saving the world is quite a fair burden, eh? Shaking his head of further complaint, he cleared his throat and continued “Having been the true heir of Caesar, it was only natural that the late Augustus seized power. ‘Tis the goal of all men who have ambition, it seems. And the conflict with Antony could be seen as inevitable, since Rome has been through the same sad song-and-dance time and time again. The Second Triumvirate’s rather rocky relations made it far too unwieldy to properly oversee the internal functions of Rome, so in some way it was best for the three, that is, Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, to break off from each other and better place power in a more resolute, single direction. While one may see Octavius’s actions to dispose of Antony as being of rather underhanded political maneuvering (i.e, having the war declared on Cleopatra rather than on Antony, thereby circumnavigating the slippery slope of official civil war entirely), perhaps it was for the best. One can only imagine how different things would be in the event that Rome was taken under the clutches of Antony, assisted by Cleopatra. Personally, all I can say is that the aftereffects of Octavius’ victory led to the Pax Romana. And if anything good were to come of the Battle of Actium, then that would be the primary thing. For it was about time that Rome set down its weapons and embraced peace, if only for a time.” Titus explained, looking a little bit weary of having had to explain himself. Right now, all he wanted was a nice nap. But there was no time for such matters. There were still things that he and his cousins had to do. So, he stood straight and watched the other Recentii closely. ‘Well, Titus. You’ve already killed a man.’ he thought, furrowing his brow. ‘And it looks like you might need to man up and do it some more.... So that no one needs to resort to violence again.’

That's what practomimetic learning looks like. That's the power of the narrative.

Text-based Compassion

2011-06-03T16:53:00.000-06:00

Something curious happened in the final few days of Operation LAPIS that piqued my interest greatly. As I implied in the previous post, the Recentiī were faced with large (and intentional) moral dilemma. After defeating Marcus' first batch of guards, another group shows up. However, seconds later their companion in Egypt, Tertius, shows up to lend a hand... quickly followed by the enigmatic Sinistrus to further complicate matters. The take away is this: the door to the final chamber is about the close and Tertius is hopelessly outnumbered. The Recentiī can either proceed forward, hopefully in a dramatic Indiana Jones style duck and roll under the door, or they can stay and fight a battle in which they surely will lose. The side effect of the latter decision is that they, too, will lose access to the final chamber and risk not discovering the fate of the Lapis Saeculōrum.

So what's a team of operatives to do?

Well, initially the teams all got together and decided that the strongest fighter (Bellātor) and maybe one other would stay with Tertius outside of the chamber while the other Recentiī would duck under the door and try to uncover the Lapis. However, from my perspective, that proposal presented a little bit of a design challenge -- the plot almost demands that all five Recentiī go into the final chamber for a variety of reasons. In game terms, while I like to describe that it's a "sandbox" to the students, in reality, it's a series of mini-sandboxes on rails. This was one of the times when the cart was moving.

Through a series of fun posts back and forth as "Demiurge Omega" and "Sinistrus", I dropped a bombshell on the students: their former companion from Pompeiī, Sextus (and brother to Tertius), was dead. He was killed by Sinistrus and with the way things were going, he was about to do the same to the Recentiī and Tertius. To illustrate his point, Sinistrus linked an exemplum for them -- the scene from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace where Darth Maul kills Qui-gon Jinn. Most of the operatives knew exactly what Sinistrus was implying. The immediately likened themselves to Obi-Wan; powerless to stop him.

That's when things got very interesting. Quite a large number of students displayed genuine concern for what was going to happen to Tertius. Was he going to die? Why would he stay and fight against Marcus and Sinistrus only to buy them some time? Was there anything they could do that would save him and allow them to gain access to the final chamber? In fact, on the next day when they had already gained access to the chamber but the text told them that they could still hear the sounds of fighting on the outside, students again asked what was going to be the fate of Tertius.

I shrugged and simply said, "I don't know... all we have are his final words before the door shut: I'll buy you some time. Go! The Lapis is more important!"

What does it mean when a group of students cares so much about the digital characters that they meet in a Latin I course? I'm not sure I know the full answer to that question right now but it sure as hell gave me chills as it was unfolding before my eyes. I think part of the answer does indeed lie in the power of play -- the very thing that we've been hoping to tap into since the very beginning.

Authentic Engagement (in June)

2011-06-02T16:38:00.001-06:00

I just wanted to take the opportunity to comment about some authentic engagement and ownership of content that I observed in the past week.

The students (as operative-teams roleplaying the Recentiī) had at long last gained entry to the headquarters of the Societās Potentium and were now going through a series of tasks. After composing a series of three defense speeches about some of the most important figures in the late Repbulic (from Tiberius Gracchus to Juilius Caesar), the door to the final chamber began to open. At that moment, Marcus Maecenas and his cronies rushed in to attempt to thwart the Recentiī’s plans. For many of them they have been waiting the whole year for this moment; a real battle.

Prompt: You have no where to run. Five guards are present. Fight for your lives.

Describe in vivid detail your fight with one of the guards. You should make the fight exciting and engaging.

I turned them loose to compose their own narratives of their individual fights with the guards (five Recentiī - five guards.) As they were beginning to work out the details in class, I also decided to throw in a couple of extra objectives: most exciting narrative as determined by the Demiurge was to be awarded the Mars CARD and the best attempt at Latin composition was to be awarded the Apollo CARD.

The results were absolutely incredible, especially at a time when most students are checking out because, “hey, it’s June, man.” One group roleplaying Recentia Octaviana decided that a direct confrontation was not to their advantage, so (entirely in Latin) they described how they winked, blushed, and blew kisses at the guard to get him to come close to her. When he did, Octaviana pulled out a dagger (which was holding up her hair) and dispatched the guard, while exclaiming a witty line worthy of any action move, “Time to get you... out of my hair!” I should also add that they made great use of the emoticons along with the Latin verbs to help their classmates out with some of the vocabulary.

Another group described their “epic” battle, trading blows back and forth, even receiving a serious wound on one of their arms. Yet another group took a wound to the face that will become a permanent scar. One of the most inventive descriptions came from a group that composed two narratives: one from their point of view and one from the point of view of their opponent.

They researched how Romans would fight and used appropriate vocabulary. These battles were meaningful because they were their own creations -- not some passage that I gave them to translate. A few groups even included a few present participles, their most recent grammatical addition, demonstrating the desire to continue working at their full potential even in June.

When the dust settled and the opportunity to move into the final chamber again presented itself, the Recentiī would soon find themselves in major moral dilemma...

What Made Rome Strong?

2011-05-20T16:32:00.002-06:00

As I head into the final two weeks of the school year, I wanted to just take a few minutes here to reflect on the growth of the students in my original pilot section of Operation LAPIS. In the daily whirlwind of all my obligations and requirements, throughout the year I often lost track of just how far these students had come along since the beginning. Thinking back to the first day of class when I told them that they weren’t actually enrolled in Latin I, but rather in a secret mission to save the world as we know it, what they must have thought was absolutely insane is now second nature to them. Indeed, it’s a refreshing sight to watch them file into the class, pick up a laptop from the mobile cart and in one motion log in to their Operative Storage Device (Google Docs) and the Texto-Spatio-Temporal Transmitter (the immersion discussion forums and supplemental CODEX). The computers aren’t a novelty or toy to them, but rather a tool through which they are learning how to think, act, speak and read like a Roman. You should see their protests on the days when I have to cave and allow my science colleagues use of our one mobile cart.

Their digital fluency aside (and, probably, a topic for another post), I wanted to share a moment that really slammed home just how powerful this immersive collaborative role-playing experience has been for them. They (their characters) have infiltrated the headquarters of the Societās Potentium (one of the two factions) and are now faced with a series of riddles, puzzles and debates that will ultimately grant them access to the final chamber -- and with it, hopefully, the Lapis Saeculōrum. Thrown into the darkness, they hear a single voice which asks them a single question: “quid mihi nomen est?” What is my name? They are given a few more clues, thankfully: “ego sum illud quid Romam fortem fēcit. sum quod fuit in principiō.” I am that which made Rome strong. I am which was in the beginning.

I flash back to their first immersion prompt, what seems ages ago back in September, and I remember a collection of students that have never been given questions in this way before. I remember students who struggled with the concept that to answer the question of “What is your name?” the ruffian asked of them, they didn’t have to tell him their character’s real name. After a little guidence, I remember students that struggled trying to find a name -- any viable Roman-sounding name -- on the internet or from their own memories of pop-culture to give the ruffian as an answer. They knew of Google, but not how to use it. They struggled to post, respond, and debate with each other. I remember all those times modeling, and remodeling, how to approach these immersion prompts and I remember all of those countless times when I felt that the grain that I was trying to go against was just too harsh.

And so remembering all of those moments, at the beginning of Operation LAPIS, it was incredible to sit back just a few nights ago and watch the discussions and debates that were taking place in their team forums. One team decided pretty early on that the thing that made Rome strong was the idea of Romulus, that is, the idea that Romulus would set the precendent for all ages to come that the defense of Rome was greater than any thing else, including familial bonds. If someone were to threaten the city, they must be dealt with, no reservations or hesitations. Another team, after some heated discussion, decided that the thing that made Rome powerful was slavery and all of the economic implications that went along with it. Another group? Well, their answer was ‘roads’ and all of the consequences that a well maintained infrastructure had on an empire as big as Rome. They considered the economic impact, the speed at which communication could happen, and how quickly troops could be moved throughout the empire to respond to crises.

Why am I highlighting these responses? The simple fact of the matter is that these responses were generated without any guided reading worksheets. They weren’t the product of the research for a five paragraph essay where the library specialists pulled books aside for them. They weren’t even the regurgitation of a hypothetical powerpoint lecture that I had given earlier in the week. No, their responses to answering the question of “What made Rome strong?” were generated wholly on their own because over the past nine months they’ve learned how to approach problems such as this. I’m sure they don’t even realize just how much they’ve grown throughout the year, especially with respect to the ability to problem solve and think critically. I’m not sure how many of their peers in the freshman class could given such a vague “riddle” and, in one night, produce such thoughful reflections on what made Rome able to dominate the Mediterranean for such a long period of time without significant guidence.

In it’s first iteration, Operation LAPIS has produced amazing results in a multitude of areas, including their ability to read Latin. I’ll spend more time soon discussing some other positive gains, but the prospect of just what we are going to be able to accomplish as we continue to iterate the course is making me ecstatic just thinking about it.

Sometimes they Succeed Despite Us...

2011-04-20T06:53:00.000-06:00

The day before break I gave my Latin II students a challenging passage as a yardstick with which to measure their current skills. Like almost every formal assessment of this type this year, I allowed them to use a dictionary and whatever notes/charts they had. I'm interested in seeing if, with the tools, they can read Latin. I couldn't care any less about how many words they managed to memorize. That's not how things operative in the real world. I'm never in a situation where, if I don't recognize a word in a Latin text, I'm forbidden to look it up.

But I digress..

One of my students got called down to guidance before the class even started. He came back with just under half of the period to go. There wasn't any way that he was going to have enough time to do his best on the passage but I told him to just do what he could. At the end of the period I asked him if he had any free periods during the rest of the day because I didn't want this to spill over after the break. Given that he's a pretty high powered student, I wasn't surprised to hear that he didn't.

Then he had an idea: "Mr. Bal, we do NFA Reads," (a 20 minute reading period during the lunch channel), "before lunch. Hopefully my teacher will let me come and finish this up before lunch."

"Great idea! I'll be over in my other room."

Well, the student came back later and said, "My teacher won't let me come finish the test. I'm sorry."

I also got an email from that teacher "explaining" to me that NFA Reads was not the time to have students come take a test. It should be used for reading. (Wait, isn't he coming to read Latin?)

So here's an honors student, who got called out of a test from his guidance counselor, trying to do the right thing and take care of his obligations before April break. And his reward? Being put in a situation where he's made to feel like he's somehow disappointed me.

But the best part is that the story doesn't end there.

This student sent me an email on Friday night (yes, the first night of vacation) to apologize for not being able to come finish the passage and to offer a proposition: would I be willing to put the passage on Google Wave for him to mark up and then translate?

Absolutely -- I even typed in the work that he had done so he had something to start with. The student finished up the passage Saturday morning (only missing a couple ablative absolutes and he'll have to review imperatives a little bit more).

If you can teach them how to be resourceful and use the tools at their disposal, you'll find that students are capable of success despite our best attempts to prevent them from doing so. But then again, having twenty minutes of forced reading absolutely creates a love of reading, right?

On winning the day before break...

2011-04-16T15:45:00.000-06:00

While certain quantitative evidence points to the various success of Operation LAPIS, and I’ll elaborate on those more this coming week, a great deal of the success can be illustrated best through the plethora of anecdotal evidence that continues to pile up each and every day. As an illustrative point, I want to spend today taking you through the last few minutes of my LAPIS class on this past Friday. Oh, by the way, this was the last period of the day before April vacation. Anyone who has ever taught high school can attest to the usual attention and enthusiasm of the last day before a break (nevermind the last period of the day.)

To set the scene up, the Recentiī (the characters the students are playing) have been cornered by Salvius and strong-armed into joining the Societās Potentium (the equivalent of the optimatēs) although they been working previously for the Militēs Lapidis (the equivalent of the popularēs). This, in of itself, was posing a huge moral dilema for them. With their very lives seemingly on the line, they had a real good debate in their teams about the pros and cons of “switching sides”. Some decided it might be in their best interest to truly join the Societās Potentium, others decided that they might try to become double agents, while one group openly defied Salvius’ not-so-veiled threats.

After working dilligently on polishing their team’s response in Latin, each group posted one by one. When all five Recentiī had stated what their decision was going to be; whether or not they were going to swear the oath to join the Societās Potentium, I immediately posted the conclusion to the episode (and mission). Salvius, outraged at the open defiance of at least one Recentius, flew into a fit of rage, issuing orders for them to be punished. As the guards came rushing into the room, the ground began to shake and the colors and sounds began to fade in an out.

There was a disruption in the mechanism of the TSTT. A disruption they’ve known before.

A familiar voice appeared. The character they’ve had the strangest interactions with; Sinistrus. Simultaneously they received a broken communique from Mission Control at Project Arkhaia. Both messages were cryptic and of little help.

Then darkness.

And a foul smell. A very foul smell.

And that’s how the class was about to end. The class right before a break. A perfect cliffhanger.

Well, they weren’t content with that at all. So after some badgering, they convinced me to at least to let them throw some guesses out as to where they actually ended up. We went around the room, all 22 students, trying to guess where they were just sent to. A few of them, unbeknownst to them, were mostly correct: Egypt. Specifically, they are in Alexandria, in a pile of dead fish near the harbor.

But they don’t know that and after they were done guesses they said, “Ok, so where are we?” To which I responded, “Oh, you’ll find out on the Monday after break when Mission 11 begins. You don’t have any work to do over break, so there won’t be a new episode loaded into the TSTT until then.”

The almost universal reaction: “Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!! YOU HAVE TO TELL US!!!”

Minutes left in the day, talk about the proverbial music to a teacher’s ears. Talk about engagement. Thinking quickly, I made a deal with them. I told them that the TSTT’s global-temporal positioning device was damaged in the latest power flux and if 10 CARDs were collected over break, it might be just enough to recalibrate to determine their time and location. They laughed. Bell rang and vacation began.

Today, after getting back from coaching the freshman baseball team, I awarded 5 CARDs. Yes, on the first day of April break, students were doing unassigned Latin work.

Play the Past roundup

2011-04-12T14:43:00.000-06:00

Well, this spring semester is certainly flying right on by! Here's a quick roundup of what I've written over at Play the Past about Operation LAPIS.

An Introduction to Operation LAPIS

About Collaboration in the Immersion

The Carta Collectionis and the Grind

The CODEX

More updates soon.

Small Gains in Imagination

2011-01-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

The largest barrier that I've had to overcome in the first semester of Operation LAPIS has been the most prevalent (and most disheartening) belief held almost universally by my students: "I don't have an imagination."

Without even beginning to unpack the significance of that statement and consequences of that deep rooted belief, it should take most people by surprise. After all, how could it possibly be that a class full of 14-15 year olds could claim that they have no working imagination? I'm going to be 29 in a couple of weeks and I have a far more active imagination than I probably should.

Having no active imagination makes it hard to exist inside of a simulated role-playing experience. It makes trying to think or act like Roman next to impossible if you can't actually imagine yourself thinking, or acting, like a Roman. It makes imagining yourself at Troy, on the Capitoline Hill as Romulus is about to kill Remus, or in Pompeii as Vesuvius is erupting a very challenging task.

The fact of the matter is this: all of the above is true. However, there have been brief glimpses that for some of these students, their imaginations are at least awakening ever so slightly. In one episode, while they were being chased through the forum by some bad men, one of them had the idea of knocking over some merchant carts as they ran by in order to slow down those in pursuit.

That may sound insignificant at first but when I read that post, I was overjoyed. Parsing those words carefully it suggests that the student is now picturing a bustling forum, filled with merchants hawking their wares. He's made concrete in his mind the type of commercial activity that takes place there and imagined himself inside of that space, able to interact with the carts and, yes, even knocking them over.

Another anecdotal example of their imagination beginning to come alive happend just last week. The Recentiī were immersed back to Aeneas' ship where, with Juno and Venus encouraging him, he's debating whether or not to stay permanently in Carthage. Their prompt was to convince him to stay or to go; it was up to them. They were given access to various support materials, including summaries of relevant passages in the Aeneid and summaries of the history between Rome and Carthage. The more savvy ones immediately picked up on the connection and were debating how to convince Aeneas to leave -- fully aware of the animosity between the two civilizations.

However, something curious happened with one student. As a little bit of a back story, each Recentius team had just (in the previous mission) decided on a class (profession or specialization in game terms). This particular group chose a poeta for their character which has the unique ability of being able to call on the Demiurge to help provide them with the perfect line of poetry to convince a character to do something. This one student was the first (out of all the groups) to ask to use their new found ability.

One thing that I feel like I must note here. This student hasn't demonstrated the greatest level of proficiency so far but he's been one of the most active and engaged participants. I praised him for endeavoring to use his ability and his group went back to discussing how they would handle this mission. They continued to debate and shortly the volume levels started to rise. We were taking some class time for this mission and eventually they called me over. The student asked, "Mr. Bal... they don't think it's possible, but I think it is... are we allowed to use our ability to convince someone who isn't actually here in the immersion to do something?"

Stop the presses. What's he getting at here? Intrigued, I said "Certainly anything is possible, what did you have in mind?"

He continued, "Well, Aeneas probably won't leave on his own, he seems to like Dido. I want to use the perfect line of poetry to pray to Neptune to convince him to make the winds blow Aeneas away from Carthage and towards Italy."

Absolutely you can.

Not only has he understood Aeneas' feelings towards Dido, the significance of Aeneas staying versus leaving, and the implications of such a decision, he's also taken on an ancient mindset with regards to the balance of Neptune and seafaring in general.

Imagination is the key to problem solving. And imagination is something that we must foster in our students if we ever expect them to become the problem solvers of tomorrow.

The Impact of (not) Grading

2011-01-12T14:00:00.001-07:00

Hump day and blizzard day in New England. How about a day away from LAPIS and technology in general? Sounds like a plan!

Back at the start of the second quarter, I discussed the changes that would be happening with my Latin II classes -- specifically the different outlook towards grading. (See: The Day the Music Died) So how did the first full quarter without putting a single grade on top of a page go?

In all honesty, given the fact that I myself am wading into very uncharted waters, I don't think I could be any happier with the realistic results. My highest powered students, at first, had the most difficulty freeing themselves from expecting the "A" at the top of the page. After the first few assessments and a couple of discussions on what an "A" means (or doesn't mean), they became far more receptive to the idea that they actually didn't need that personal gratification moment to process or evaluate their own learning. Suddenly acquiring vocabulary, increasing reading skills, or even conjugating verbs became not about how this activity will impact their grade but instead about how this activity will impact my overall understanding of the Latin language.

I found that the middle-of-the-pack students began to take far more ownership and responsibility for their learning. Ensuring that their assignments were finished not because they wanted the homework check points (which ceased to exist), but because they wanted to better understand the passages in front of them. They used their class time far more effectively and, anecdotally, I'd be willing to wager that the mathematics (had I graded normally) would indicate that they improved as well.

What about the traditionally lowest performing group? Well, here's where the results are a bit mixed. A portion of this group were given a new lease on the joy of learning for learning's sake, and a new sense of pride when they themselves could see improvements -- no matter how small that they actually were. It's easy to see how hard it would be for a student (who shows improvement) but still receives a C- on a quiz or a test to ignore any gains and instead focus on the negative ("I'm still doing poorly") The other portion of this group still struggled to produce any real meaningful gains in ability or skills, despite every attempt to find more ways to bring them into the fold. But that's a topic for another day.

So, it's the end of the semester, what happened with evaluation -- after all, I do need to report a grade to the powers that be for each student. Here's how we handled this. The last couple days of the semester, each student and I had an individual conference outside of the room while the class was working on various assignments. I can honestly say that for nearly every student, I've never had a more thorough and real conversation about their own personal learning. We talked first and foremost about strengths and weaknesses, where they've seen the most growth this quarter, and what they intend to focus on at the start of the third quarter. We looked back at the goals they set at the start of this experiment and decided how and in what ways they met them. We looked at their self-evaluation 'mastery sheets' to see where gains were made and what still needs work. Only two or three students were unable to talk with much depth about their progress this quarter.

It was an amazing experience to have conversations with each student on this level. A significant number of them even went as far as saying that this was one of the best experiences that they've had in their academic careers so far. I couldn't agree more.

How did they grade themselves? Well, I had to convince a very large number of them to allow me to give them a slightly higher grade that what they thought they deserved.

Collaborative Productions

2011-01-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I promised that I would continue the discussion about some of the collateral effects that the simulated 1:1 environment has created in my LAPIS classroom. As I noted, the students quickly realized the potential of the social aspect but they also began to pick up on some of the other more important collaborative tools at their disposal.

We've been using Google Docs since the start of the program to keep their Character Sheets, Operative Dossiers (grade sheets), and their Carta Collectionis. For the most part, all of those items were individual pieces of information shared between individual students and myself so they weren't viewed as a real collaborative tool. Something interesting happened after, on the fly, I created documents for the teams to share with the .jpg image of the inscription that they were working on deciphering. For the first time the students saw how instantaneously a collaborative experience could unfold. They also saw how, in an instant, four of them could be working on the same document trying to figure out the meaning behind a very cryptic (albeit fake) inscription. Believe me, if you want to see true bewilderment on the eyes of teenagers that have never been exposed to a lot of these tools, watch what happens when they can see three other people typing in a document simultaneously. It blows their minds.

So within a few days of that exercise (and it was very successful to get them working both face-to-face and digitally at the same time) a few of them starting making 'class notes' documents, and color coded spreadsheets with noun endings and verb forms. Then they began to ask the best question that students can possibly ask: "How can I share this with so-and-so?" And then came the realization that they could share with everyone in the class. They also realized that they could start more collaborative documents with their teammates to work through difficult sections together or sketch out ideas. It was amazing to see them figuring out new ways to use this brand new magical power. Again, we forget that without any guidance at any stage in their careers, these students don't know how to utilize or harness this untapped power in front of their noses. But to stress the above, the most amazing thing is that after they discovered how to start using it as a personal organizer (like any old notebook), their next thought was how they could share what they created with their classmates. Incredible.

Something so foreign in just a few days became so natural. Within a few short weeks, a group of Latin I students took another big step in empowering themselves with tools to further their learning experience. I wish that I had the resources to provide this kind of experience with all of my classes.

Unintentional Hiatus

2011-01-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

I've been quite busy trying to juggle all of the various responsibilities over the past two months and I hate that fact that I haven't posted anything to techna virmumque cano. I hope to make up for it this week with five straight nights of "quick-ish hits"-- a few things that I've wanted to post about and just having found the time. Starting tonight, I'll make the time.

One thing I do want to mention is a project that I've been collaborating on with a host of very intelligent humanities people (who, by the way, love to talk about games as well.) That is, of course, Play the Past, spearheaded by Ethan Watrall of Michigan State University. If you are at all interested in intelligent conversations about games, keep PTP on your radar. We publish new articles Tuesday through Thursday and we'll be coming back from holiday hiatus starting next week.

So what's new with Operation LAPIS? Well, we're about to let the Recentiī (the student-controlled characters) perish in the eruption of Vesuvius. Of course we'll bring them back albeit a couple of years ahead in the timeline, and in Roman Britain, but who's counting? However, that's just the start of things. Since around Thanksgiving I've endeavored to create as close to as 1:1 laptop environment as I can during the actual class time portion of the class. This is not without extreme challenges; we have no wireless network readily available for anyone, students are not allowed to use their own devices while on campus, and we have a single mobile laptop cart for an entire building. No problem, the system allowed for me to book the cart every day for the rest of the year during my scheduled period. (You can insert a devilish grin here.)

I can't stress enough how foreign this setup is to the students. Having access to their team discussion forums, Google Docs, and a plethora of other resources on a daily is something that just doesn't happen in any other class in which they are enrolled. As a result we've had to do a lot of scaffolding on how to use a device like a laptop to your advantage while in the classroom. For me, it's painful to see how lost they are with something that I see vital to my daily life. It doesn't take much searching to find the mounds of anecdotal evidence that disproves any thought that this is a "technologically-savvy" generation. They aren't. At all. With the only exception being chat and social media-- which they discovered how to take advantage of with great facility inside of Google Docs.

They (wrongfully) assumed that once I discovered what they were doing that it was going to be shut down. But then again, given the climate and the culture, I'm not surprised. However, we had a little discussion about just the nature of a back-channel chat, how it could be useful and why I was so happy to see that they had created one. Surprised that I wasn't going take away that outlet from them, they willingly added me to their chat document (in case any issues arise), which was complete with a set of rules that they created and a couple of self-promoted moderators to keep people on task and focused on class material.

A lot of the comments that they post in their back-channel chat is drivel about when lunch starts or any number of other senseless things that are of the utmost importance to freshman. Since it's creation, though, it's been perfectly clean and occasionally provides an opportunity for students to ask each other to explain something in greater detail. An opportunity that many are eager to respond to and, as a result, strengthen the community of learners inside of the classroom.

Tomorrow I'm going to talk briefly about how the make-shift 1:1 laptop setting has sparked an even greater degree of collaboration and community in the classroom.

The Day the Music Died

2010-10-15T18:56:00.002-06:00

With the early (and overwhelming) success of Operation LAPIS, I'll willingly admit to not putting a lot of energy or effort into improving my Latin II curriculum knowing that this will be the very last year that it looks the way that it does. Over the spring and next summer, we'll be hard at work developing the second half of LAPIS. I figured, "Hey, I can get by on doing what I've always done for one more year. I mean, what's one more year of the old tried and true method, right?"

A lot more challenging, it turns out, than I had originally thought.

On Thursday of this week, I was working with one of my Latin II groups on some English to Latin composition sentences: building command of the vocabulary and grammatical concepts (in this case, the relative pronoun.) As we were working through the sentences I glanced over at one of my students with whom I have very good report. She had this brutally honest look on her face that just screamed, "I'd rather jump off a bridge than continue doing this." So I stopped almost mid-thought and said, "Hey {name}, what's going on? Talk to me."

*sigh* "Latin kills me inside."

If this were a cartoon show, you would have heard the canned effect of screeching brakes. Suddenly the relative pronoun seemed not in any way important and instead we had a little state of the union talk. The can of worms was already open, there was no taking it back, and so after some gentle prodding of the student (and other students in the class) we finally started to have an earnest discussion. This particular student went on to clarify what she meant:

"Mr. Bal, I'm sorry but there's just nothing appealing about this at all. It's not you, you're one of the best teachers that I've ever had, it's... just... I don't know, it's hard and it's hard to do well because there's so much pressure to do well... not just in here, but all classes. It's just not enjoyable."

OK, now we're getting at the heart of the matter. Because of this student's willingness to step forward and share what she really feels (and, undoubtedly, countless others) we were able to have a genuine conversation about homework, grades, quizzes, tests and learning in general. These students, as they talked with each other and with me, started to realize that the grades that they receive have very little to do with their learning or growth as students. They realized that it's because of the sheer volume of compulsory homework that they don't enjoy acquiring new knowledge and new skills. The realized that because of the necessity of cramming for that quiz, or that test, they are sacrificing the long term for short term (and meaningless) gains.

We also spent some time about the nature of independent "learning" at home (via traditional assignments) and the nature of collaborative work while together as a group in the classroom. They, unanimously, explained that they get almost nothing out of the assignments that they do at home (in any class) and instead find that they get a more meaningful experience from collaborative work while in the class. They also made the clear distinction between true collaborative work and forced group "busy work", which they see right through when teachers assign it.

We had a pretty candid and highly meta conversation about learning for a room full of mostly sophomores. It wasn't a visceral "I hate homework, it sucks" but rather a real discussion about why they do what they do in school and at home... and why that might not be the best way to go about things. So where do we go from here? What can we possibly do to turn this around after ten years of these kids being groomed for "the test." How can we turn things around and, with 7/8ths of the school year still to come, convince these students that learning can be an enjoyable and worthwhile experience; not for a grade, a meaningless letter on a sheet of paper, but rather for the sake of learning itself.

Well, we're going to start by tossing the traditional grading system out the window. Their "homework" over the weekend is to set three goals for themselves for over the next few weeks that will be tangible and attainable, but meaningful and challenging. We're still going to move through the material that we need to move through in their second year of Latin, but we're going to approach it from a different angle. Rather than live or die by the grade, each student is going to be responsible for his or her own personal growth. We'll still take quizzes and tests, we'll still work on assignments in class, but that's not going to be the driving force behind acquiring the skills. Instead the students are going to keep organized records that demonstrate their learning, that demonstrate their growth, and demonstrate if they are attaining the goals that they are setting for themselves. When it comes time for me to do my mandatory reporting of a letter grade, each student is going to have a one on one conversation with me to talk about where they've improved, what skills they've acquired, and the growth that they've made. They will decide, with me guiding, what their grade actually should be based on the best analysis of learning; their own evaluations of themselves.

I'm not sure what is going to happen with this group but it was clear that the current course of action wasn't going to be sustainable for the year. Coupled with my own rethinking of what Latin instruction is going to look like because of my work on LAPIS, hearing the words "Latin kills me inside" couldn't have come at a better time.

We're sailing into uncharted waters here. It's exciting and it's invigorating to see a group of students start to question their learning and want to do something about it. "That's the way it is because that's the way it always has been" died on Thursday, Oct 14th, 2010.... and for a lot of people with that world-view, that's analogous to the day the music died.

Discussion on Homework

2010-10-11T14:38:00.001-06:00

I'm interested in starting a discussion on homework, hopefully my education friends and colleagues will play along.

What is your typical homework assignment?
What are the goals of that assignment?
What % of your students complete the assignment?
Are there negative incentives for non compliance?
Why do you assign what you assign and how do you determine how much is enough?

For those that have read about Operation LAPIS so far, you know what a typical night looks like for the students in this particular class. For those who haven't, I'd encourage you to read back a few entries and see what my Latin I students are doing this year.

For my other classes, the "traditional" Latin courses, most homework assignments consist of either translation passages or exercises. The goals are either to improve translation ability (and thus grammar and vocabulary) or to hone in on specific grammatical elements via those sentences. On any given night I probably have between 50 and 75% completion of the assignment. Traditionally I don't give any negative incentive but the positive incentive is that most of the homework looks and feels like the larger assessments do, so if the students are staying up on their homework, odds are they'll find more success on the quizzes and tests. The determining factor for me is a rough estimate on what should take the average student 20-25 minutes to complete, knowing full well that some will take more and some will take less.

Who else is willing to participate in this conversation?

Active Assessment

2010-09-23T14:45:00.002-06:00

The House of Caecilius

Episode 1.3.a gave the students an opportunity to explore a bit of Pompeii. They were finishing up their conversation with Sextus at his house (the actual House of Menander) and they were required to use two different maps (here and here) to figure out how to get to the House of Caecilius. They also had knowledge of their current location from previous missions and the embedded Google Maps (with location markers.) What we had hoped would be a simple mission to allow the students to get their bearings in Pompeii turned into an amazing chance for active assessment and lesson adjustment.

As the teams began discussing how they would move from Sextus' house (location 51 on the map linked here) to Caecilius' house (location 34), it was abundantly clear that they had very little, if any, experience in reading maps. Among the many different emails that I received over the course of the night asking for help, one of my favorite was from a student that asked if I could just give him Sextus' address so he could plug it into a GPS-based mapping system and get the directions. In fact, more than one of the teams posted turn-by-turn directions as if they were in some sort of ancient car, complete with distances measured in meters. "Ok", I thought to myself, "this going to be a long night." Each subsequent post by the operatives indicated a further disconnect from being able to read and interpret two maps and merge data between them. In fact, most of the students threw their virtual arms up in the air and said "I give up, I have no idea what I'm looking at or how to find this house." The most creative post went to the team that said their Recentius was confused and decided to follow another one of the characters.

It was then I decided to abandon my plans for the next day and instead focus on improving our map literacy and how to use the many different online sources to figure out where we needed to go. I also figured that I would poke a little bit of fun at the fact that they were trying to use modern directions and place markers to navigate the ancient city. During the actual class on the next day we took some time to pinpoint on the Google Map where each of their Recentius characters ended up using the modern directions. One of the best "tricks" that I did was open both maps up in two separate tabs and align them up so that flipping back and forth showed how the satellite image and the charta aligned perfectly. This was going to be yet another notch in the belt of practomimetic learning; we could add geography to the growing list of skills that the whole experience improves and builds upon.

Then something amazing happened.

Two students, not content with giving up for the night, were determined to figure out where the House of Caecilius was on the charta and how their character, Octaviana, was going to get there. As the all powerful Demiurge figure looked on curiously, they traded posts in their team forum, piecing together the information from the two maps. Eventually, between the two of them, they discovered in the legend of the charta that the House of Caecilius was indeed on the map, now it was a matter of reconciling the satellite image with the other map. Around 9:50 (50 minutes after everyone else had logged off with their work for the evening completed - we have a 9:00 deadline for the online portion of the class) they finally discovered the location of the House of Caecilius and plotted a course through the streets of Pompeii to arrive at the "gignormous house on the right that would seemingly be hard to miss" (their words, not mine). You could literally see the sense of accomplishment in their words and, as the Demiurge, I made sure to offer them a hearty congratulations for their persistence.

The next day in class we traced through the logic and the thought process that these two students did the night before to figure out (together) where the House of Caecilius was and how to get there. When the rest of the class had that "ah-ha!" moment and put it all together, it was then I revealed to them that their two fellow operatives had accomplished all of this the night before, with no aid from the Demiurge.

I had no intention of spending as much time as I did on map reading skills but thankfully I was able to see that they desperately needed assistance in learning how to use that type of data to their advantage. We talked about why you couldn't always rely on a GPS device for directions and the usefulness in having the ability to read maps. Do you think that we'll be doing more travel activities during the rest of the practomime during the year? You bet.

This wouldn't have happened in a traditional setting. We look at maps all the time, discuss certain features, landmarks, points of interest. However, never before have I required teams of students to get from one point to another as a part of an ongoing narrative. Without the narrative, without the practomime, I would not have had the chance to actively assess the students as they floundered about getting from the House of Sextus to the House of Caecilius on that evening. I wouldn't have entirely adjusted my lesson plan to compensate for a deficiency in a skill that goes beyond the Latin classroom. I wouldn't have even discovered just how little experience they had in reading maps.

And, for those two students, they wouldn't have felt the pride that goes along with accomplishing a challenging task collaboratively as a team.

Early Thoughts on Student Engagement

2010-09-21T19:43:00.002-06:00

It would have been completely unrealistic of me to assume that LAPIS and practomimetic instruction would be the magic elixir for one hundred percent student engagement every time. In some parallel universe I had secretly hoped that it would happen, but the reality of the situation is that some students in any given setting are going to find themselves disengaged at various points for a variety of reasons, many of them not having anything to do with my class or their quest to save the world. I did, however, want to talk about some of the net gain in engagement that I've seen so far and what that means going forward with Operation LAPIS.

The engaged get more engaged. This sounds like something that is not even worth bothering to discuss. In fact one might say, "Well, that's great Kevin, those students who are already plugged in continue to excel, where's the excitement in that?" On the surface, that person would be correct in thinking that it isn't necessarily something to get excited about. However, I'd argue that the very fact that those students then are pushing themselves to go above and beyond the required expectations right out of the gate means that something important is happening in the dynamics as a whole. It is easy to take those students for granted; your A's, your pleasers, the ones with their hands raised for every question. But, when these students then are pushing themselves in the team discussions to not just frame their response in English but instead try phrase every response in Latin, it models the ideal learning environment for the rest of their team. If they are constantly pushing the limits of their Latin knowledge it will force the rest of their teammates to push themselves as well; both to be able to work with and contribute with the team and a bit of peer pressure to produce the same caliber of work in comparison. I firmly believe that if your top performing students are more engaged you will find that it has a snowball effect on everyone else in the class and that very potent effect is magnified in the practomimetic setting.

The moderately engaged step it up. The students that are traditionally the middle of the road have so far shown that they are capable and willing to stretch themselves further inside of the practomimetic setting. As evidenced by the frequency and amount of contribution to the team forums, these students are able to contribute to their team (partially because they are compelled to, partially because they are empowered to, especially as the Lead Operative) and thus feel, I believe, far more accomplished than they would otherwise feel in a traditional classroom setting. I can’t measure this with any rubric, test, or evaluation, but rather by their captive attention and energetic responses while in class. These group, arguably the largest in any class, is in stark contrast to their counterparts in the section that is not partaking in Operation LAPIS. I'll spend more time in a future post talking about the overwhelming difference in the first month between these two sections in terms of their "Engagement Gap."

Some not engaged become engaged. The most compelling aspect of LAPIS so far, to me anyway, has been the effect it has had on a very small minority of students whom I think would otherwise be totally disengaged in a language they care little about. One of the key examples of this is a student who has yet to finish a year in any language. At this point, and I'll admit that I know it is still very early, he's continued to play an active role in his team's decision making process. This particular episode he is acting as his team's Lead Operative, which has put external pressure on him to stay active. Will he continue to stay involved through the entire year? That's certainly yet to be seen, but, if he does make it through the course, I think it certainly could be chalked up to the captivating potential of practomime.

Those disengaged continue to stay disengaged. This is where I give an audible sigh and concede that neither practomime nor the Lapis is truly the silver bullet. At this point, I really only have one student that I'm overly concerned about because of their lack of participation in the team forums and in the collateral activities. I know that internet access and computer familiarity is not a limiting factor on account of initial surveys from the first night. So what could it be that's holding this student back from participation even when their grade depends on? I'm not sure right now what it is. It is my hope that in the next week or so I can figure out if it is something that can be remedied in the current structure or not. The other couple of students who were lagging a bit behind on the participation scale have really started to come around in the last week and they have become a lot more comfortable posting and contributing to their team's discussion.

Overall, the early returns are showing an incredible net gain with regards to participation and engagement both in and out of the classroom. The out of classroom engagement is easy to measure through their discussion posts. The in class engagement? Well, that's a bit more subjective (at this point) from my point of view. However, the ace in the hole on my end is that the two periods that I teach Latin I (both the LAPIS and non-LAPIS section) always fall back-to-back, four days a week. I have instant and direct observations of the performance, behavior, and engagement between the two sections. As noted above, will spend more time on these early observations in the next post.

The First Days of Operation LAPIS, finale

2010-09-14T17:52:00.002-06:00

Continued from Part 3

With the Lead Operatives assigned and their first TSTT immersion prompt underway, the LAPIS operatives left class on Thursday heading into uncharted waters. I had reasonably high expectations that most of them would at least be able to fumble their way through the first mission in which they encounter a Malus (a bad man) in the road ahead of them and are forced to answer his question: Quid nomen est tibi? (What is your name?). Now, the caveat here is that because they know that this man is a bad guy, they aren’t forced to reveal their ‘real’ names (i.e., the names of their Recentiī characters.) Instead they were free to choose any name they wanted to try and trick the Malus. What would they come up with? Here is the prompt in its entirety:

>Outskirts of Pompeii, Italy, 79CE<

Your Recentius is standing, on a bright Italian summer day, near the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Refer to the TSTT Navigation Device for geographic orientation.

There is a field nearby, with an olive tree in it.

Persona tua est in viā.

Malus est in viā.

Malus inquit, "Quid nomen est tibi?"

Prompt: Answer the ruffian; you are not required to tell him your actual nomen.

Before we talk about what the students were able to achieve with this prompt, let me first break down a few elements. First, you’ll notice that they have a clear setting and the TSTT provides a helpful navigation device built right in for the Operatives. They are able to view (via Google Maps) exactly where they are in relation to Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius. They also have a HUD layer which provides for them helpful information (as would a HUD in any game.) This HUD, ideally, would be opened in a second tab along side of the TSTT immersion prompt. Lastly, after the narrative itself, they have a clear and concise task for this mission.

Almost immediately after the school day ended I began to see new posts appearing in their individual team forums. Each of the five Recentii are controlled by a team of 4-5 operatives. They must first discuss and debate what their action will be and then a single person (the Lead Operative) posts in the official immersion thread. This discussion, and not the public post, is what is ‘graded’ for Latinity Points. Guidelines that they should follow are as follows:

Try as hard as you can to use Latin. Broken Latin is absolutely acceptable (e.g. “Pono money meum in arca” [arca means "safe"] would be perfectly acceptable, if you should happen to forget that argentum means “money”), as is incorrect Latin (I would never e.g. tell you that you should have used a Future Less Vivid condition instead of the simple present one you used).
Try hard, also, to use the Latin we’re seeing in the Cambridge Latin Course stories.
Try to find out things about the story you’re in. The course is going to put you in situations conducive to discovering the information and developing the cultural skills that will satisfy course objectives. How you do that discovery and development is up to you.

The operatives are also encouraged to cite the resources used for external support, especially websites and other tools at their disposal. Other than that, they are free to be as creative as they want to be in advancing the narrative in the way that they choose to do so. So what did these teams come up with on the first night?

The first group to start their discussion began by looking at the character sheet for their Recentius (Gaius Recentius Bellator). They saw that had a military background and was a soldier-type. Using that information, the first operative suggested that because he was a soldier, they should tell the Malus, “Mihi nomen est Maximus”, clearly influenced by the movie, Gladiator. The second member of their group continued with this line of thinking and took an extra step: he looked up their Recentius’ cognomen (Bellator) and realized that it actually means ‘warrior’. So he shared this information with his team and they continued discussing the merits of choosing a name that would at least be plausible to their character.

Another group spent time looking up important sounding Roman names and figuring out which one would be best suited for the situation. Yet another group flirted with the idea of telling the Malus, “Mihi nomen est Amicus” (friend) or “Clement” (kind-person) in order to try and get out of the situation peacefully. Yet another group discovered the little known Roman god Averruncus who is the one to invoke when trying to escape a harmful situation. They felt it would be fitting to tell the Malus that this was their name given the circumstances that their character was in.

In figuring out when and how to discuss this, one group set a time to all pop online at the same time so that they could quickly hammer out the details. Another group asked for me to enable the poll feature of the phpBB system so they could vote on their response democratically. By the end of the night, all of the Lead Operatives posted in the immersion thread in their attempt to tell the Malus an incorrect name. They soon found out in the start of prompt 1.1.b that he didn’t buy their fake names and thus the story continues. Now the operatives have to save the boy in the tree that the Malus is after. What could this bad man want with just a helpless boy?

So just to recap what the student’s achieved after only the fourth class meeting:

Created a Gmail/Google Account
Learned how to navigate and use Google Docs
Registered for and posted in a collaborative online forum
Took part in an on-going role playing exercise as a Roman in order to gain better understanding of the culture
Used Google Maps through the TSTT Navigation Device for geographic orientation
Translated Latin into English
Composed original Latin responses
Used unique vocabulary previously unknown
Looked up and cited online sources to aid their response
Decided collaboratively and democratically how to respond to the prompt
Came to class the next day feeling accomplished, excited and eager for more
Their teacher came to class the next day feeling accomplished, excited and eager for more

This bears repeating: these are mostly freshman after only their fourth class meeting in a school of 2600 students. That’s what I would call real learning.

I’m looking forward to share their continuing mission to explore strange new provinces, seek out new cultures and new civilizations, to boldly go where no Latin class has gone before. Stay tuned for more and, as always, your thoughts are greatly appreciated!

The First Days of Operation LAPIS, part 3

2010-09-12T08:47:00.000-06:00

Continued from Part 2

As I noted at the end of the last entry, we had a rather large gap between meetings after the first two classes. A total of six days had passed by before I saw them again. My biggest fear was that all of the momentum we had from the first week would be lost after such a long layoff. I worried that they would have forgotten all about the mechanics we talked about in week one and I would have to spend much of the coming week reintroducing everything rather than moving forward. Another rather large concern of mine was taking a step back with regards to the atmosphere in the classroom. Anyone who has ever taught a level one language or a group of predominately freshman, especially in a school as large as ours, knows that getting the students to participate and readily volunteer in the first few weeks is always a very difficult task. They often don’t know very many other students in the class and they are extremely shy and reserved lest they make a mistake in front of twenty new faces. Would we suffer a setback there as well?

One of the really great things about the way my schedule is set up for this year is where my two Latin I sections fall during the school day. Our schedule changes every day, but these classes are always back-to-back and so I have an immediate comparison between the LAPIS section and the non-LAPIS section. When we came back on that Wednesay after a six day layoff, it was a full six days for both sections. They both sat through the whole period, mostly non-responsive despite my best attempts at the whole dog and pony show. The LAPIS students did need time looking back at things we discussed in the previous week. They needed a refresher on things like the TSTT Forums, the HUD, etc. Many of them had not checked their email and so they did not know who was on their team nor did they visit the forums at all. I had mostly expected this and, while disappointed, nevertheless we went through all of those topics again and by the end of the class they started to come back around a bit. Their task for Wednesday evening was the log in and post in their newly assigned Team Forum and just say “hi” to their new teammates. The main goal was the ensure that they all could post in the forums and reinforce how to navigate around.

I made myself available via Google Chat and email for most of the evening and quite a few of the students took advantage of that in order to figure out how to do everything. They received a new CARD for doing so; Mons Vesuvius (and of course the LPs that go with it). In the end, 21* out of 22 accomplished the task and started engaging in conversation with their teammates. I was unprepared, I think, for the effect that this would have on the classroom dynamic the next day.

I saw the non-LAPIS class first and it was a fairly standard experience: they file in and sit in silence before the class starts, it is still a struggle to get them to open up to myself, to their classmates, to volunteer, to answer questions or contribute. Nothing new or nothing surprising there. Usually by the third week they start to come around and by the end of September we’re really in full stride with the atmosphere that carries through the rest of the year. The LAPIS class, on the other hand, which came in directly after the non-LAPIS was an entirely different story. They came in chatting to one another and immediately started talking with their teammates. The dynamics for the rest of the class stayed at that elevated level. While doing activities, a far greater number of hands shot up to volunteer, they more readily engaged in discussion back and forth about topics. They responded to comments made by fellow classmates. They more actively engaged with me. To say there was a stark difference between the two classes after just one day would be a gross understatement. There is absolutely no question in my mind that this came as a direct result of the relationships that they began to forge online the night before in the Team Forums. You want a sure fire way to increase student engagement in the classroom? Find a way to increase student engagement with each other outside of the classroom.

With the energy and enthusiasm firing on all cylinders, the Operatives were ready to head off Thursday night to do their first TSTT immersion prompt: Episode 1.1.a, The Boy in the Tree. I had no idea when I left school on Thursday that what would unfold Thursday evening would exceed even my wildest expectations. I’ll discuss what happened in my next entry.

*The 22nd student was the same student from the previous entry that was unable to accomplish the task. He voluntarily approached me before class and asked if he could stay after school with me on Thursday to go through how to access the forums and go over, one on one, how to post, reply, etc.

The First Days of Operation LAPIS, Part 2

2010-09-06T08:27:00.001-06:00

Continued from Part 1

With almost the entire class having succeeded in their task to to create a Google Account and move on to the next steps, I congratulated them and promoted all of them from ‘Recruit’ status to ‘Operative’. A few of the students who were not confident in their computer abilities questioned whether or not they had done everything correctly. This sort of thing is to be expected. I assured that all of them had indeed done all the steps just as I had wanted. After some general discussion and feedback about the visual guide, we moved forward to talk about other aspects of the course.

There was still a rather large feeling of anxiety and apprehension in the air but I knew that this was going to be an important first week to quell those fears. My goal for day two was to introduce some new components while still moving at a slow pace in order to prevent any kind of panic. One of the students asked about the ‘Demiurge’ and so I explained to them that I, too, would be playing a role in the story as the Demiurge (think: The Architect in the Matrix). I think it helped them to know that I would be role-playing along side of them and that most communication outside of class from me would actually be coming from the Demiurge. After fielding another question of just what ‘Demiurge’ meant, I displayed the second email that they had received the night before and went through the links and instructions that were contained in it.

First I opened up an example Operative Dossier (LP “grade” sheet) and walked them through the layout and what all of the information was included on it. For many of the students, they thought it was very beneficial to do this. They all had opened up the document the previous night but weren’t sure what everything was. We did the same with the Carta Collectionis (Collection Sheet) and they had the reaction that I had hoped they would have: they were excited about the CARDs. It was abundantly clear to me at that moment that we had hit the nail squarely on the head and tapped into the ‘Pokemon-thing’. They were very excited to hear that there were many more CARDs to collect, and each one had a different set of circumstances to earn them. They also immediately picked up on the other benefit of CARDs: LPs. The CARDs can help them advance in levels and thus advance in grade. “Gotta catch ‘em all?” I have a hunch that more than a few will try to collect ‘em all.

The first CARD that they received (which was a foil edition of Pompeii) came to play an immediate role in the next step of the process. I brought up the TSTT (the discussion forums) on the screen and we walked through the different sub-forums listed and how each one functioned differently. Again, this visual walkthrough (even though they had a print guide in their email) was a big step in making it more accessible and not so scary to the students. We even took a look at the first immersion prompt, Episode 1.1.a, and talked about the role those will play each night. They immediately picked up on the TSTT Navigation Device (a custom Google Map link), so we took a look at that as well. The first point in their narrative takes them just outside of the city of Pompeii, on a road, by a tree. The shadow of Vesuvius looms overhead. For many (if not all), they weren’t sure where we were geographically and so I showed them how to use the TSTT Navigation Device to their advantage. Zooming out just once gave us a clear image of where Vesuvius was in relation to our characters. Ah hah! That volcano! Now we are getting somewhere. Some did know that Pompeii was one of the towns devastated by the eruption so my next question to them, “When did this happen?”. The first response blurted out was “That was on the CARD!” Success! The Operatives now know that they can gain relevant and important information from their CARD collection.

Their task for the second night was to log into the TSTT and create their own personal achievement thread in the appropriate forum. This area is where the Demiurge is going to offer public congratulations and dole out titles and honors. Two more students picked up special titles and some real honest learning took place. Not satisfied with my assurance that they could think of the Demiurge as an all-powerful-creator-figure, one of the students looked up the Greek origins of the word and posted it for all the other Operatives to see. He confirmed my definition, used the internet as a valuable research tool, and shared his discovery with the class. For his efforts, he was awarded ‘Venātor Verbōrum’ or ‘The Hunter of Words’ as his title.

Day two was an overwhelming success. It was apparent that a few who were very uneasy after the first day of class started to come around and be more receptive to the whole idea of what we were going to be doing. It is too bad that I lost day three to “Hurricane” Earl. I’ll meet with the Operatives again on Wednesday, so stay tuned for a discussion on the third (and final) day of the introduction to LAPIS where they will receive their Recentiī Teams and start learning their first bit of Latin.

The First Days of Operation LAPIS, Part 1

2010-09-04T08:32:00.001-06:00

Operation LAPIS has launched at the Norwich Free Academy with great fanfare; at least in my mind, anyway. I want to spend a little bit of time to put down my thoughts from the first few days about what transpired, what worked and what could be improved for version 2.0 next year.

The first day of school is a shortened day in which every class only meets for thirty minutes. Thirty minutes is not a lot of time to explain to a room of mostly freshman, in their first day at an enormous school, that what they will be doing in Latin this year is going to be completely different from anything they have done previously in any academic setting. At our stage of development (both of LAPIS and of practomime in general) one of the biggest challenges we face is still explaining, in a concise manner, just what exactly we are doing. The question of how to go about this task preoccupied my mind the weekend and first part of the week leading up to Wednesday.

What I ultimately decided was to move at (what I would consider) a very slow pace as I introduced the various components over the first three days. After letting them know that they would be doing something that hasn’t ever been done in a high school course before, I (at the very least) had their attention for the remainder of the short class. We spent some time talking about the idea of ‘practomime’ and I tried to help them wrap their minds around the ‘role-playing’ aspect of the course. My goal was to try to explain everything in a way that didn’t use other comparisons as a crutch (i.e., the Matrix thing). In the end, using examples from popular culture proved to be more useful that I had originally thought it would be, and after making the loose connection of TSTT = the Matrix, conceptually we could move forward.

Throughout the entire class, part of me was a little terrified internally because of the looks on the student’s faces. I could see it in their eyes that they were all thinking to themselves, “Holy cow, this guy is completely insane.” Which, in all honesty, is to be expected given the drastic departure from “business as usual” that we are hoping to achieve with LAPIS. Their homework for the first evening was simple: use the visual guide that I handed to them to create a new Google Account and to make first contact with the Demiurge (me) by sending a simple email that read “Awaiting further instructions.”

I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea if half the class was going to run in a panic to try and get switched out of the course. I couldn’t get a good reading from them at the end of the first thirty minutes. I later found out that day that one of the students was in such a pensive state about the whole concept of LAPIS that they went to the wrong class the following period and sat through the whole thing before realized that they were in the wrong place. While I feel bad about that, it reaffirmed that I had done something right in the presentation of the first steps. If anything, it was a compelling enough start to have them momentarily lose themselves in the idea of Operation LAPIS.

After the day finished and the students boarded their buses, I enjoyed a fun lunch upstairs in the lounge with some of my colleagues, laughing and joking about the first day back. Little did I know that while I had been eating my turkey sandwich, a half-dozen LAPIS ‘Recruits’ had rushed home and done the steps necessary to start the process of becoming full blown ‘Operatives’. By the time I had finished my hour long drive back home, another half-dozen had done the same. At the end of the evening, 21* out of the 22 students in the class had followed the instructions perfectly and created their accounts. The majority of them waited for the followup email and performed those challenges as well (registering with the forums, viewing their first CARD, etc). The first student to finish all the challenges was awarded a special title, ‘Celerrima’ (‘the quickest’), which will display by their name every time they post.

Day 1, by my reckoning, was a complete success and set up perfectly a productive second day. I’ll go into the details of that in a post later this weekend. Stay tuned for more.

*I talked to the 22nd student before class started on the second day. He gave the standard student excuse for not doing a computer-based assignment that I’ve become accustomed to hearing: “Oh, my computer is like broken or something.” I explained to him everything we are doing outside of class required that he have access to a computer and that if he couldn’t get his computer fixed, we’d have to see about moving him to a different section of Latin I. By 2:30pm that day (school ends at 2:15), he had taken the steps required to move ahead.

Latinity Points

2010-08-18T15:24:00.000-06:00

On Monday, I discussed the CARD mechanic and the cartae collectionis. Today I would like to explain our mechanic called 'Latinity Points'.

Latinity Points (LPs for short) are the mechanism through which grading occurs during Operation LAPIS. As you may know, in role playing games (RPG’s) like Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft, players advance towards game objectives by collecting 'experience points' (XP). Once a character has gained enough XP (at predetermined milestones), that character is able to advance a 'level' and usually gains new skills and abilities. We wanted to capture the same essence with LAPIS and so that naturally lead us to LPs.

Operatives (that is, the students) receive LPs for everything they do in the operation (that is, the course). Some of the things they do happen inside the role-playing (practomime) activity-- the time-machine/simulation called the TSTT; other things happen in a more traditional-looking way in the classroom. A carefully constructed practomime response will earn more LPs than one rushed, incomplete, or lacking in any research or Latin. Likewise, standard looking assessments (called attunement exercises) also award LPs in a scale that looks very familiar to students, parents and administrators alike. For example, if on a vocabulary quiz, the operative received what would be a 90% ordinarily, he or she would receive 90 LPs. It is a system that scales incredibly well depending on the gravity of the task.

All of the activities in any given mission (there are 14 in course) add up to a total of 3000 LP. As in real RPGs, these numbers are artificially inflated for no reason other than that people like to receive really big numbers for doing tasks. It is a mechanic that has been a staple of RPGs for nearly three decades. In LAPIS we hope that it'll have the same effect. Receiving 47 LP for a great practomime response is a whole lot more gratifying than receiving 5 LP or even a 9 out of 10 on the top of a page.

So what do these LPs mean for the student? A couple of things, actually. For starters, we do have a level scale built into the practomime. In this version of Operation LAPIS, levels don’t have an effect inside the role-playing portion of the course, but every operative will have a private dossier that prominently displays his or her level. For reasons of privacy, we can’t display that information to the rest of the class, but we suspect that students will want to do so themselves, creating healthy rivalry inside the operation team as a whole. In future iterations, we expect that we'll be able to devise other uses for these levels including different skills, options available during practomimetic prompts, etc. Even with the current simple system, though, there is something to be said for the gratification that accompanies 'gaining a level', even if it is just cosmetic. The current scale is listed below:

1. 0
2. 100
3. 350
4. 850
5. 1,700
6. 3,000
7. 4,850
8. 7,718
9. 10,730
10. 14,435
11. 19,738 (25,500 - maximum total at the end of the 1st sem. for 100% LP awards)
12. 24,143
13. 30,755
14. 37,690
15. 45,523

As the scale above indicates, the maximum total for each semester is 25,500 LPs. Most students should be able to hit level 11 by the end of the first semester. Level 14 will equate to a grade of B and level 15 to a grade of A. We may still play around with the LP distribution a bit, but at this point I am pretty happy with how the levels span out over the course of the year.

Likewise, here's the other half of the LP system: actual grades. We use a traditional grade scale, multiplied many times over. This system counts the LP gained from the CARD collection mechanic as 'alternative ways to advance', something that might be called ‘bonus points’ in a traditional course. With the amount of work (and learning) that will go into earning those points, it makes much more sense to factor them in more substantially.

Grades (per semester) are determined as follows:

>21,855 - A
21,854...21,056 - A-
21, 055...20,351 - B+
20,350...19,411 - B
19,410...18,706 - B-
18,705...18,001 - C+
18,000...17,061 - C
17,060...16,356 - C-
16,355...15,561 - D+
15,560...14,711 - D
14,710...14,100 - D-
<14,099 - F

All in all, the Latinity Point system should prove to be another in a series of mechanics that serve to further motivate and engage the students beyond the traditional way grades are handled. Each student will have an online private dossier viewable in Google Docs (which can only be edited by the Demiurge and only viewed by the student signed in to their Google account) which tracks their LP awards for all missions, broken down by episodes and activities, and provides them with their current total LP and level so that they know exactly what their current status is in the class.

Again, thoughts, feedback and ideas are always appreciated!

Radio Silence and CARDs

2010-08-16T06:36:00.002-06:00

When I started out this summer, I had every intention on blogging fairly regularly as we worked through the development of the first introductory language course in a series of fully practomimetic courses. Obviously, I didn't follow through on that goal, but it wasn’t because I was slacking! Seriously! The project became so engrossing by itself that all of a sudden it became the middle of August. Over the next few weeks leading up to the 'launch' (the start of the school year), we'll be spending the time talking about the mechanics of the course. Be sure to keep an eye on the blogs from Roger Travis and Karen Zook for more details.

Since Roger has already eloquently defined 'practomime', there's no need to regurgitate that in this post, you can read all about it here (and I strongly encourage you to do so.) The first course that we have developed for this year is Operation LAPIS. The operation is intended to be the equivalent of a Latin I course at any institution. In this case, this first offering will take the form of sections of Latin I at NFA and at UConn taught by Karen.

This post in particular, though, is about one specific mechanic from Operation LAPIS: the cards (or CARDs) you might have seen me post on Facebook. CARD stands for (Classical Attunement Reward Device) and is a key element to the success of one particular mechanic in LAPIS which is easy to follow regardless of your familiarity with the concept of a "practomime". This mechanic is called "cartae collectionis" (or, "collection sheets") since the operatives (students) are scouring through their text building their collections of morphology, syntax, culture, etc.

How does it work? Here's the introductory communication about the collections that they will receive:

BEGIN TRANSMISSION
HUD PARAMETER: “CARTA COLLECTIONIS”

Carta Collectionis (Collection Sheet)
Instructions

Operative, the Demiurge has optimized this mission activity to build your attunement to the demands of the TSTT’s increasing complexity. You will progress in knowledge of and facility in using and analyzing key elements of Latin morphology and syntax, and of Roman culture.

You may collect from the stories in your text or from the material in the TSTT itself. You collect by copying the appropriate element, with a citation and translation, into your collection sheet (located in Google Docs). It is important to note that you can only claim a word once per Episode or passage. For example, even though ‘servus’ may appear multiple times in a passage, you can only claim it one time.

Example claim:

Nominative singular nouns

servus – slave – “Cerberus” (pg 7)
malus – bad man – Episode 1.1.a

You will obtain increasing attunement rewards–commonly called “CARDs” (Classical Attunement Reward Device) as you progress, by accumulating longer lists of collected elements. Each element has a certain number of items specified for earning a CARD, and you receive an LP bonus for each CARD you receive.

Not all collection elements are known at this time. The TSTT will occasionally update your HUD with new elements. The Demiurge will communicate to when this occurs through the COMM LINK section of your HUD. You are responsible for updating your own carta collectionis when new categories are available.

HUD PARAMETER: “KNOWN ELEMENTS”

Morphology

3rd person singular verb: CARD at 100
nominative singular noun: CARD at 100

Syntax

subject-verb unit: CARD at 100

The operatives will build their carta collectionis in a document they share with the Demiurge via Google Docs. When they reach their goals, during periodic checks, the Demiurge will award the appropriate CARD to them in that same document in a section reserved for their CARD collections, For example, when an operative records their 100th nominative singular noun, they will receive the following CARD:

Why the CARDs? There is something in human nature that compels us to collect things. In games it is even more profound (think Pokemon, MMOs, or even basic Facebook games like Farmville): there's a drive to get complete 'sets' of items, even without an apparent reason to do so. Sometimes this can be for purely cosmetic reasons; sometimes there are nominal rewards attached to it. The idea here is that once the operatives realize that there are rewards attached to the collection mechanic, the extrinsic motivation of receiving the CARDs will hopefully compel them to continue doing the collections. The operatives will also receive a small Latinity Point reward for completion as well. (We’ll cover the concept of LPs in future post; briefly, they are the LAPIS grading mechanic)

The collections themselves are an alternative way to think about and learn both "endings" and (the bane of every Latin student) vocabulary. They'll quickly hone in on "-us" or "-a" for their nominative singular endings and since they are required to type the definition for everything, they'll be subconsciously building vocabulary without doing the traditional vocabulary studying (flashcards, etc.)

Lastly, the CARDs themselves contain vivid images of people and places in the ancient world. As the students look at their CARD collections, they'll also be familiarizing themselves with some important names. These CARDs, as you noticed, also contain a little blurb about the person or place. Every part of the carta collectionis will reinforce continual and on-going learning. After all, who wouldn't want to have a limited edition foil of Julius Caesar in their collection?

Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? We'd love to hear them!

iPhone Launch Day

2010-06-24T15:43:00.001-06:00

For the Apple faithful, today marked another significant unofficial holiday: the official launch of the iPhone 4. Having skipped out on the launch of the 3GS (only 1 year into my contract), my only previous events to which I can compare are the iPad launch (sorta) and the 3G launch (2 years ago). Since the announcement up until the day of the pre-order, I wrestled with the decision to get the iPhone 4 versus stretching as much life out of my fully capable iPhone 3G as I could. After all, it is another $200 investment for a phone (that basically does the same thing my current phone does, or so I wanted to convince myself.)

In the end, as always is the case with anything Apple, I'm a born sucker and I loves me my Steve Jobs and if Uncle Steve says I need a new phone, well... I need a new phone.

Pre-order day (becoming like Christmas Eve to the Apple fanatics) was an absolute mess on account of AT&Ts servers getting hammered with "upgrade eligibility requests" and for thousands upon thousands of people, it was a frustrating experience. Fortunately for 600,000 people (myself included) it eventually worked out and I was able to secure a reservation at the Apple Store in Westfarms Mall through Apple's Apple Store App released on the App store that same day.

Then a brilliant idea hit me. Why don't I sell my iPhone 3G on Craigslist? I listed it on Tuesday of this week, sold it last night roughly twelve hours before I would get my eager little hands on a shiny new iPhone 4. I managed to get two hundred dollars for it from a guy who was going to unlock it and slide his T-Mobile sim card in. So, those of you who are quick with math just realized that my iPhone 4 cost me nothing to upgrade. Score one for the tech savvy there.

When my alarm went off this morning at 5:30, I rolled out of bed, threw on shorts and a shirt, and was out the door on my way up to West Hartford. A quick trip through the drive-thru at McDonald's for a coffee and then I pulled into the parking lot at Westfarms near the Apple Store entrance. Much to my surprise (though, at this point, it shouldn't surprise me at all) the lot was bursting with cars and news trucks. "Good thing I have a reservation", I thought to myself.

I walked inside to a Disney-world-esque line of winding ropes and a small horde of people. At this point, the reservation-only line was much shorter than the non-reservation line, so that was some good news. I estimated that I was about 150 people deep when I got there and it quickly swelled to double that within fifteen minutes. It seems that I had a little luck with my timing. The walk-in line continue to swell as well prior to the official 7 A.M. opening.

While in line I chatted to some very friendly people (as are most of the people at Apple launches); a older gentleman who taught political science in Hartford, the head librarian at the Loomis Chaffee School, and a systems engineer with Pratt & Whitney. We talked about Apple products, education and technology in general. So, basically, the content of this blog. Meanwhile, the Apple Store employees were assisting with what would be the most well-run launch that I've ever seen (going all the way back to working at Electronics Boutique for the PlayStation 2 launch). The employees were very well organized, friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. Constantly they were wheeling around a coffee cart populated with fresh Starbucks brew, water and other beverages. They had large picnic baskets full of Kashi bars, Nature Valley granola bars, coffee cakes and other breakfast type items. From what I heard from friends around the country, this was the standard fare at every other Apple Store as well. Talk about going above and beyond what would be acceptable for a company to provide to people who would stand in that line regardless. Does Droid do this? :)

Once the store officially opened to a roar of cheering, the line moved fairly quickly. Shortly after 8 I was inside the store with my personal shopping assistant (or whatever the term Apple uses for them). He had previously been helping out with line control and so I was his first customer. He got to start with the difficult problem right away. Since I'm a Premier account holder (read: discount), the basic system that Apple uses at the Apple Store didn't really appreciate my complex account situation. Short of the matter is that when you had to select a mandatory data and message plan, the current txt message plan that I have (a feature code that nets 1500 messages for 7.99) wasn't coming up. After talking with the on-site AT&T rep, we took a chance and selected "No messaging" with the hopes that it wouldn't override my feature code (which is now expired and unable to be added to my account again). No dice, my code was overridden and I lost a really sweet txt message deal.

I was slightly upset but I knew that it was probably going to happen. The alternative was to walk out of the store without the iPhone at all. I completed the transaction, activated the phone, and walked out of the store still thrilled to be a part of the experience and having the latest and greatest piece of communication hardware. I walked out to the car and immediately called the AT&T Premier customer service line and talked with a rep. After doing some digging around, he confirmed that my feature code was removed but he couldn't add it back on, so he escalated the case (although it is estimated to be completed on July 5th). In the mean time, because the 1500 txt messages for $15 was added to my account (basically doubling the cost), and the inconvenience of the difficult activation without asking he credited my account $25 to cover the increased txt message cost for the month and the $18 activation fee moving to the iPhone 4.

Even AT&T got it right today!

All in all, it was fun to be a part of another "cultural event" involving an Apple product. I'll write some more later about the actual iPhone 4 itself. I will say that Steve wasn't kidding around about how good the retina display is. That, alone, is worth the upgrade.

A fairy tale... problem?

2010-06-15T09:14:00.002-06:00

This post is, more or less, a place holder while I think about the strange phenomenon that I've witnessed last week into this for my Latin II exams.

Pleasantly pleased with myself, I came up with a great alternative to a traditional Latin final. Instead of doing the 'nuts and bolts' of paradigms and all that jazz, I gave them 'The Emperor's New Clothes", translated in Latin of course. To prep them for the type of assessment (after we had finished our last test of the year), we read through "The Three Little Pigs."

Only a small handful knew that story and even fewer have any idea what they are translating as I type this.

In fact, one of the only students who had heard this particular tale comes from a fairly traditional Asian home.

What has happened that an entire classroom hasn't heard two (I had previously thought) well known fairy tales that most kids will have heard growing up?

Is this a problem?

Do we have new fairy tales that I just found a niche market to publish in?

Or, are my darkest fears being confirmed that the reason that these kids don't know these tales is that their parents really didn't do a lot of reading to (and with) them growing up?

My students are starting to get it...

2010-06-02T17:25:00.004-06:00

Today before class -

Student #1: "Mr. Bal, I was thinking about something just now... since a bunch of us have iPod touches that we use, couldn't we just get one of those small airport things and plug it into the network so that we could all share the access?"

Student #2: "Oh man, that would be awesome!"

Me: "Sadly, I don't think it would work nor would it be allowed."

Student #1: (With a look of disappointment) "That's really lame."

They are starting to get it. Access is so vital.

The Culture

2010-06-01T17:11:00.004-06:00

Today, some food for thought.

A small quote from Dangerously Irrelevant on the topic of Technology Directors (the writer is one).

A technology director ought to be a bit of a rebel, a diplomat, and a life long learner. Today's technology directors have to work together with curriculum directors and technology integrators to make sure that today's students are really being prepared for the twenty-first century. Today's technology directors must be agents of change, they have to envelope pushers but at the same time they have to work with other professionals who can shape curriculum. No one can do everything and certainly not everything well without help. We are bridge builders who should be familiar enough with the building blocks that underpin our networks. We have to be open to change too.

A rebel? Ensuring preparation for 21C? Agent of change? Envelope pusher?

I couldn't agree more. I completely understand the logistics and the pragmatism that must accompany any kind of technological capital investment. I get that, I'm not oblivious to dollars and cents. What I don't get is resolved defeatism and negativity. What I don't get are decisions to put a stranglehold on access out of fear of abuse. (I'll address this again further on below.)

On a campus with almost zero tech integration in the classrooms, almost zero student access to basic Web services (never mind Web 2.0 stuff), why are items like ten new IWBs heralded as a crowning achievement? Shouldn't our number one priority, at this point, be how to increase the student's access, both at home and on campus? Shouldn't we be figuring out solutions that allow more students to tap in the potential of the internet from their chair (probably on their own internet-enabled device)?

I've wrestled with why it has been so difficult to get a lot of the students to buy into the idea that having a central hub (my course website) for all of their materials is far better than the old alternative of making 100 copies of each worksheet, having trays and folders for when they inevitably lose them, having to update and make corrections (in class) when the assignment sheet gets off track or out of date... etc. It has taken me an entire year to realize that it just is not in their culture (and I'm severely bucking the trend) because it isn't in the school's culture. It is that simple. Most of their other teachers, through no fault of their own, are relying on 20th Century instruction methods because that is the culture of our school. I know this because I look down at the desk of one of the rooms that I teach in and see a pile of printed out emails. How do you combat a culture like that?

My answer? Open more eyes. Decide to take a more active role in shaping the tech conversations. I've made it a point to have some sort of tech and education integration discussion daily with my building principal; not out of some misplaced subversive nature, but because I'm genuinely interested and genuinely concerned for the lack of preparation we are giving to our students. I'm hosting a tech workshop this Thursday on the untapped potential of Google Apps in the classroom (beginning with simply creating Google accounts, to using Docs, their wiki-sites, blogs, and even Wave to its fullest potential). I'm going to make myself available to ANY of my colleagues this summer, at any time, to find better ways to integrate 21C skills into their classrooms while continually finding ways to improve my own. I can't change a culture on my own, I can't change a culture overnight. But that culture will change eventually because it must change.

Now, a couple of loose ends to tie up.

First, I promised to return to access and fear of abuse. One of my colleagues was shocked (and in turn, so was I when she told me this) that none of our students can currently access any of Google's services while on campus. No gmail, no Docs, no blogs, and I assume no Wave. What possible reason could there be for blocking such a powerful (and free) suite of web based apps? Every single time that I hear about frustrations with firewalls and access (again, pragmatism also applies here) I think of Princess Leia's response to Admiral Tarkin (yes, I'm a huge geek, deal): "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your finger,"

Translation: the students know how to bypass most of the firewalls already. They have access to their email through their smart phones and other devices. They even know how to get on the very limited, but there, wireless network that is in select areas of the campus. Restrict first, ask questions later. That old paradigm needs to come down now. Yes, you need to restrict certain things (although I'd even argue that Facebook should be let through, but I know that is an argument that you can't win).

Lastly, as I looked up while shaking my head at that pile of printed emails, I saw quite a few of my students taking out their iPod touches (and a couple of other devices) ready to start going over the story of Echo and Narcissus.

The culture can change because it has to change.

Full of Win

2010-05-29T06:50:00.002-06:00

Last night I was setting up some of the framework in Google Wave for the Latin I Summer group when I saw that the starter thread was active with a student. I bounced over to see who it was and then proceeded to chat with this student for a few minutes, showing her how to do a couple things within Google Wave. After a couple of minutes of fumbling around with editing, replying, and just generally playing around with Wave, her last blip was "Wow, this is so cool, this is going to be so much fun!"

Yes, at 10pm on a Friday night, I had a high school student excited about doing some Latin in Google Wave this summer.

Wave, iPods, oh my!

2010-05-27T15:40:00.002-06:00

What a whirlwind couple of days here.... all in a very good way.

The battle for wi-fi has begun and I like the conversations and discussions that are being held among my colleagues. There is general anger and frustration at the lack of any kind of 21st Century technologies in our school as eyes are opened - hopefully all the way up to the Board of Trustees.

Two great things happened, other than that, in the last 24 hours.

One - I've started to get my students into Google Wave. I had one student who broke his ankle at the beginning of the week, he did his translation assignment in Wave, I marked it up and commented on the few errors for him to correct. By chance he was on as I was finishing up (only took about 5 minutes) and we had a mini-discussion about Google Wave and the really neat stuff that was going on with it and his homework. He couldn't believe how useful it was to have feedback given in this manner and he's excited for this summer (when we'll do some extra work with anyone interested) and then next year. I'm excited, as well.

Two - had a crazy domino effect happen in class today with iPhones/iPod touches. One student asked if he could take notes on the translation on his Touch instead of writing them down, because he forgot his Latin notebook at home. I said that anyone was always welcome to use whatever device they wanted to in class as long as the focus was on the task at hand (and not txting, tweeting, solitaire or anything else). Immediately a good dozen students took out their devices and were focused on both the translation (as we worked on it via the digital projector and the white board) and ensuring that they took good notes on the vocabulary and grammar.

We then had a discussion about downloading the files to the iPods (either through an app like GoodReader) or something similar and how to use that to their advantage when studying (flashcard apps, etc).

I wish I had a camera to capture that moment of transformation among a third of the classroom.

The students want a 21st Century education, we need to stop providing them with a 20th Century one.

Open letter on wifi

2010-05-25T08:33:00.002-06:00

What follows below is a draft of an open letter to administration and IT on the need for the Norwich Free Academy to make establishing a wireless network a top priority as a sort of table setter for all initiatives to follow. Your thoughts and ideas are welcome, I'll willfully admit point #3 is the weakest of the batch, but also part of the reasoning.

An open letter on the need for a campus-wide wireless network.

As we move into the second decade of the 21st Century, the necessity to establish a campus-wide wireless network is now greater than ever. The longer that we refrain from taking the steps required to advance the data infrastructure at this institution, the harder it will be to play catch up with the rest of the state, the rest of the country and the rest of the world.

What follows below is an outline of five key benefits of establishing a wireless infrastructure here at the Norwich Free Academy. I believe that these benefits, long term, will far outpace the initial cost and growing pains that accompany the transition from a tethered environment to a fully wireless experience.

1) Space, facilities, access. As classroom space continues to tighten, more and more faculty members are forced to vacate their rooms during their prep and study hall duties. With an extremely limited number of desktops available which are not placed inside of a classroom, it is often very difficult for faculty to share resources. Take, for example, the faculty lounge in Tirrell. There is only a single desktop available for use that room and when multiple people share a common prep period, it becomes a race for the chair. That is not conducive to a productive work environment. By having an established wireless network in place, any number of faculty members could be engaged in productive work in the same room on their own laptops or other internet enabled devices. Per the wiki, I understand that there is a proposal on the table for a faculty computer lab. With all due respect, another physical space with a finite quantity of devices is not the solution that will serve the needs of a faculty base that increasingly will become more adept in Web 2.0 services.

2) Shifting the equipment burden to the faculty. By allowing open access and use of personal devices on the wireless network, the task of maintaining the numerous campus desktop machines would continue to trend downward. Given the option of working with your own machine, your own files, and your own programs, I believe that each year more and more faculty would move away from relying on the monolithic desktops in the corner of the room. With the sheer number and quality of open source software solutions, the task of equipping Individual devices with the necessary tools and programs to integrate into existing systems would be minimal. All of our existing needs are accessible in web based format as well as the traditional desktop application.

By encouraging the use of faculty owned devices, the institution could instead focus on purchasing equipment that would allow greater access for students, rather than supporting and maintaining the current line of faculty computers.

3) Reduction of downtime from class to class. This is especially true for the growing number of faculty members who teach in multiple classrooms. By allowing for a plug-and-play approach to data projection (VGA ports open and accessible, rather then be tied to a permanent desktop) and wireless access for Edline, web and other services, classroom teachers could be up and running in a fraction of the time that it currently takes to log in and set up for the rest of the period. The benefit of having individual devices again shines in this argument because the end user knows that without a doubt, the presentation, video, or any other type of file will work on the device because it was created and maintained on that device. No guesswork of saving down to the correct version, no wondering if the computer will read the flash drive. In the last decade, I have yet to encounter a data projector that would not display or interface with any of the numerous devices that I have owned with standard video connections. As the analogue VGA standard is phased out and replaced by the newer DisplayPort standard, this will continue to become an easier task over the next few years. There should be no reason why any teacher should not be able to walk into a classroom, attach the video cable, and be ready to go without a lengthy log in process. One cable for video and instant network access equals more time spent on instruction.

4) Encouraging collaboration and experimentation. With the inevitable shift to cloud computing and Web 2.0 services, the need for a stable and consistent connection grows by the day. We will be the last generation, without doubt, that makes the distinction between off and on-line. Having access to these services, anywhere on campus, at any time will more easily facilitate the collaboration of faculty in planning and experimenting via wikis, Google Docs, discussion boards, blogs and cutting edge things like Google Wave. As it stands now, it is virtually impossible to do any kind of face to face collaboration that is combined with digital collaboration anywhere on campus. The juxtaposition of the two is where the world continues to trend towards and we are doing a great disservice to our students by not modeling the very 21st Century skills that we expect them to master. We want our students to take risks in the classroom with their education yet we aren't willing to take risks in our teaching with new and innovated ideas and technology integration.

5) Growth for the future. Assuming that the initial network would be for faculty use only, it wouldn't take any leap of the imagination to envision a time when all students would have equal access on campus with either their own devices or school issued ones. Make no mistake, this is the direction that the world is not just moving towards, but already in. There are plenty of examples throughout the country of schools that are 100% wireless, 1:1 laptop to student, and working knee deep in Web 2.0 services. Foreign language students are collaborating on translations and compositions in Google Wave, history students are creating their own wikis and materials for us in aiding their learning, science students are compiling class data sets in real time via Google docs and other cloud services. We need to be the leaders in southeastern Connecticut and provide this level of access and this level of experience for our student body, especially for those whose access at home is not as reliable.

Public Misconceptions

2010-05-18T18:06:00.000-06:00

I wanted to sit down and write this post earlier last week, I just never got the opportunity to.

Having served the first of the next three years on the Teacher of the Year selection committee was a great experience, especially since this is my first year at this school. I got to read through nominations and subsequent essays written by some really wonderful teachers doing amazing things in the classroom, not to mention the actual interview process before we ultimately selected a very worthy candidate.

One thing absolutely floored me from those interviews - and it was consistent across all of the candidates. Everyone feels undervalued by the greater community. I'm not necessarily speaking about those who are directly impacted by education like students and their parents, nor administrators or colleagues, but the larger chunk of the population who seems to have unfavorable views of educators and the profession in general.

I wonder how prevalent this really is or if it is our own self-consciousness projecting inward. Does the community really think we just work from 7:30-2, September through June? Do they really not understand the time it takes to develop plans, write assessments, grade, evaluate and reflect? The time after school, before, and in between helping students with their organization and comprehension? The emails, calls, and other meetings with colleagues, administrators, parents and others?

Is this an actual problem? As budgets are slashed, taxes and funding withheld, does the education profession have an image to shed or re-brand? Yes, there are those who on the first day of school start the 180 day countdown... but they are very few and very far between; quickly becoming relics of an earlier age. I look at my department, my building, and see an overwhelming number of educators who truly go in every day ready to connect and engage their students. I see thirty year veterans looking to learn new technologies, new ways to reach their classes and stay on top of the latest theories and strategies. Why, then, does the one with the paper on the desk and the busy-work on the board become the caricature of the profession?

Those of you not directly involved in the education community let me ask you this. How is the public perception on the other side?

One small step...

2010-05-07T11:48:00.001-06:00

Along with the announcement of upgraded Edline features (our grading program) to include a centralized course hub, calendars, discussion boards (albeit archaic ones)and online access to grades, our school is also going to be staring a new initiative oveq this summer into the next year.

We will be sending txt messages to any student who ops into the program. These will range from reminders about school events, vocabulary words of the day, quotes, etc. Many of the faculty are both confused and outraged that we would be using something like txt messaging to reach the students. Then again, this is also the same group that can't believe that we would willingly allow students access to their grades through their own individual portals.

That group aside, I'm happy to see some forward thinking ideas coming out of the IT and administration with regards to different uses of technology. While I think that we could be doing so much more to increase student access, we are at least taking some small steps in the right direction.

I just wish we would go all in with Google Apps for Education and get each of these students their own email address and build from there.

Computer Labs

2010-05-03T20:57:00.002-06:00

Computer labs in schools are interesting places - mainly expensive areas that eat up valuable classroom space and, aside from the times that they are booked by a teacher, unused and sealed off from the students.

Why is that?

I was asked about my thoughts on a potential lab in my building today. In unequivocal terms I said that I would strongly oppose spending all that money and taking away an already precious commodity (a classroom) if the lab was NOT open for all students, all periods of the day, unless otherwise booked by a teacher for a specific class. In my opinion, it makes absolutely zero sense to build a physical lab with desktop computers if it doesn't actually increase our abysmally low access to computers and the internet during the school day for our students. Why waste that money there when there are so many other things we should spend the coin on that could increase student access?

It's about access to the tech. That access doesn't come in the form of 'labs' which are under lock and key for the entirety of the day. Staffing issues? Make it an optional volunteer duty (so people who want to be there and could actually help the students) in place of the standard study hall duty.

What do others do or use their labs for? How open are they for student use?

New look

2010-04-26T20:50:00.001-06:00

One of the benefits of being married to a graphics designer: free design support!

I like the new clean look of the banner. The brushed metal corresponds nicely to the mostly Apple spread in front of me (and the preferred platform for most of my work.)

I really don't want to keep writing about the iPad, but the more that I use this thing in everyday situations, the more convinced I become of where it'll ultimately fall in the larger population, especially in education. I have been reading over the past week, as more people start receiving their 'iPad camera connection kit', the interesting support that the USB adapter has. So far, among the camera support as it was designed for, the Apple usb keyboard is supported as well as many USB audio devices. I wonder how long before printer support is enabled?

While it is billed as a content consumption device, this thing is proving more and more capable as a content creation device as well. If I'm right, it's little siblings (the iphone and iPod touch) are those ones that were truly designed to be the content consumption on the go. The iPad is something much more.

iBooks, readability and education

2010-04-15T19:10:00.001-06:00

Starting last night and finishing during my free periods today, I decided to test run the readability of an entire book on the iPad in the iBooks app, Apple's ebook store. I downloaded The Time Machine to be my test subject since it was free and it is has been on my very long list of things that I just had never got around to reading.

For the most part, despite the nice look of the double facing page view while in landscape mode, I think that I prefer reading in portrait mode with just one page visible at a time. I read in my living room while in my awesome Ikea chair, in bed with both my side lamp on and off, and in the teacher's lounge while under the bright fluorescent lights. In all those different lighting conditions I did not find myself feeling any noticeable difference while working through the novel. The text at the stock setting was very easy to read, even without my glasses on. When I use my laptop in bed, I find it hard to read text from websites, docs or just about anything without them. With the iPad, I had absolutely no issues reading, just like I would a normal boo without my glasses/contacts.

At the end of all my reading sessions, I didn't seem to experience any eye fatigue or headaches even though this is very much a computer-like screen. As far as that argument for the eink on the Kindle, for me anyway, the screen on the iPad seems to be just fine.

As I showed off the iPad today to some colleagues, the initial reaction to the iBooks app was almost universal: image giving a student an iPad loaded with their course books for the year. Between the rich color, ease of access, long battery life, built in dictionary, and numerous other things, I don't blame them for their bit of drool just thinking the possibilities. If Apple works on making a lower cost version of the iPad for edu use and the textbook industry finds some common sense to charge less for a digital version, rather than the print, some amazing things could happen in the edu arena.

Couple quick access to all their books with the built in web and collaborative tools and suddenly things get mighty interesting in the classroom. We aren't there yet, and you would need universal access to wifi throughout the school to really make it work, but we're getting there.

Some data to digest

2010-04-12T11:20:00.002-06:00

At the risk of making this blog morph into something that its not (an iPad blog), this entry will have nothing to do with the iPad (or will it?).

Over the past week as a way of experimenting with Google Forms and to satisfy my curiosity about my student's technology habits, I created a very simple survey for them to complete as part of their homework assignment. Because the assignment sheets, materials, and anything else they would need are already accessible online through the course website, asking them to click on an extra link was not at all Herculean in its magnitude. Also, the prevailing argument across the faculty and administration here is that student's don't have as reliable access to the internet as we think (or want) them to. I wanted to put that argument to rest.

The Questions:
The original catalyst for this was to find a quick and easy way to gather a class email list without collecting note cards with information written on them, typing in the addresses, etc. Once I had set up that portion, I said "Why not expand it a little more and learn a small bit about what they have and what they use?". So I did just that. I asked them about the various pieces of technology in their household, the web services that they use, and what platform (Mac, Windows, other) they are most comfortable with. The coup de grace question was direct data mining about whether or not it makes sense for us to push harder for a wireless network on campus. Just so you know, we're one of the top schools in the region, piles of awards, and our overall technology access and integration is horrible. There is no official method for faculty to use their own devices on the network, never mind students using their own netbooks, laptops, etc.

Responses:
One-hundred percent of my students responded to the survey before the next class meeting (it was, after all, assigned as part of their homework.) Yes, 100%. No excuses - I showed them where the survey was located, how short it was and they did it. In my larger classes (26 and 30 respectively), I haven't had 100% compliance on anything all year. That intrigued me right then and there.

From there, the responses (I felt) were fairly typical and predictable. 80-85% of all the students have their own personal email address, nearly 95% of all my students have facebook/myspace/other social networking accounts, a relatively small percentage (under 20) use AIM/Google Talk/Skype, and all other web services are overall very low.

90% of all respondents said that they had internet access- although a handful of those that said they didn't, responded that they had a wireless network. I think the terminology is what confused them. Given the compliance of the survey, and the time stamps on responses that were no, I'm inclined to believe that the actual number is closer to 100% for internet access at home. Far more students have video game systems than laptops: again, not at all surprising.

Lastly, and this surprised me given the prevalence of the iPod-Apple-ecosystem... Preference of using Mac OS X was in the single digits. Over 90% use Windows in their homes.

The Wireless Response
Over 50% in every single class responded that if the school were to establish an open wireless network for students to access that they would bring a netbook or a laptop to school and use the device in their classes. I had a hunch that the number would be statistically significant, I didn't know that it would eclipse a majority.

We are doing such a disservice to the students in equiping them with 21st century skills for use beyond their high school years. Even now, in April, I'm still struggling against the accepted culture of technology use and integration in my day to day teaching. However, this small sample of around a hundred students is indicating to me that they have the desire to use more and to make their lives as students more simple. The other side of this argument is that if more students are using their own devices during the day time, it'll free up more of the school's computers for students who may not have as reliable access off campus.

Now the hard part is fighting the uphill battle with those in charge of IT to figure out ways to get access to these students. If the faculty can't have a wireless network (especially those who float), it is tough to see the student's gaining access any time soon.

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the iPad

2010-04-11T20:46:00.004-06:00

Well, I lasted an entire week. An entire week of reading blogs, forums, reviews and other comments and I caved. I got up this morning and drove down to Best Buy to pick up a 32gb version. (I actually tried to get one last night, but the Apple Store only had the 64gb versions in stock.)

What changed your mind, Kevin? I thought you said that you needed to have the VGA out capabilities n order to justify spending the money?

Yes, yes I did say that. Multiple times. In many different places. So what changed?

When it boils down to it, I decided that missing out on experimenting with this device was not worth waiting for a single feature that I deemed necessary. Yes, the video out is a really big deal to me and I'm voicing my opinion on it in a few different venues along with 3rd party developers. The bottom line is that this device is incredible on so many different levels. Using it for today convinced me of that even more than I already was previously.

Most of the positive reviews are spot on, as are the ones with some of the negative complaints. Like vie said before, the flash, camera and USB complaints are all non starters. I'm also becoming increasingly convinced that a traditional file system isn't needed, though there needs to be a better system for document management - Goodreader is certainly on the right track, especially for a 99 cent app.
I'll be sure to write more in the coming days about individual features, but this thing is good. Real good.

And the typing? It is wonderful, in fact this whole blog post was written while lying in bed with my iPad on my lap.

My Letter to Steve Jobs

2010-04-03T20:41:00.001-06:00

My wife said, after witnessing my glum expression while walking out of the mall, "Why don't you write to Steve Jobs?".

Ok. Sure, why not. Here's the email that I sent this afternoon to Steve himself.

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I want to first congratulate you on, by all indications, a very successful launch of the iPad. At my local Apple Store (Farmington, CT), the staff were all very enthusiastic, organized, and helpful.

I do, however, want to comment on the 'deal breaker' for me when it came to purchasing an iPad. I had every intention of walking out of the store today with one and it broke my heart to walk away empty handed. But, after talking with the Geniuses about the video-out capabilities through the VGA-adapter, I just could not justify purchasing the iPad at this time since I intended it to be used in my classroom as a replacement for a laptop.

Limiting the video-out to just Keynote and Video files severely cripples the functionality of the iPad in the education arena. As a Latin teacher in a public high school, I use my laptop to project .pdfs of text onto the whiteboard for markup and diagramming, to project websites and other types of media, and to edit collaborative works together. With Keynote as the only way to project anything other than video, the iPad (much to my great dismay) just has no place in my classroom.

I hope that at some point more things can be opened up to video-out, including Safari, Pages, and iBooks (or at least the preview app for pdfs). Until this happens, a rather significant use of the iPad is going to go untapped.

Best wishes,

Will I get a response? Probably not, but a fanboy can dream, right? :)

An Apple Fanboy's (and Educator's) Thoughts on the iPad

2010-04-03T13:51:00.004-06:00

After turning over in my mind one-hundred times strong whether or not to jump on the iPad ship, I resolved myself to the fact that there are few guaranteed things in this word; death, taxes and if there's a new Apple product, I'll buy it. And so unknown to my wife (who really is a sport with all my tech-insanity) we went to the Apple Store at Westfarms under false pretenses of just 'seeing the new iPads in person'. If ever there was a time to use my well practiced evil-overlord laughter, this would be one of them.

The store was packed and they had roughly twenty units on display for people to play around with. It only took about five minutes of patient waiting to get my hands on the real deal and bask its warm glowing warmth. The iPad itself is very solidly constructed, perfectly balanced, and seemingly very durable. The screen panel looks and responds just like an iPhone. The accelometer responds a lot better than the iPhone (in my opinion), but Christine was having a hard time getting the iPad to be 'right side up' for her. I have no idea what was going on there for her. The weight of the iPad is a bit heavier than most would be looking for in a pure eBook reader, I think. However, compared to my Macbook Air or most netbooks, it'll feel light and nimble.

The screen itself is very rich, very vibrant, and overall a real joy to look at. Images from the Photos app are stunning and media looks great on it, at least the items on the demo unit for you to see. Items encoded specifically for the enhanced resolution should be a joy to watch on trips, in bed, on the couch, or anywhere for that matter. The revamped iTunes for the iPad is a really nice interface and Apple continues to set the bar for a media player well above what anyone else has in the pipes.

Web browsing with Safari is everything that is good about the iPhone in a much larger format. I absolutely love it. As more and more sites switch from the power hungry, poor performing, Flash in favor of HTML5, the web experience will continue to get better. I'm sorry for all the naysayers, the no-Flash thing is a complete non-starter in terms of complaints. It'd kill the performance, kill the battery life, and expose the OS to more malicious items. Safari on the iPad is faster and more responsive than its counterpart on the iPhone (although, I have a 3G, not a 3GS). As a device for browsing the web, reading blogs, visiting forums and everything else, the iPad will quickly find its place in a lot of living rooms.

The iBooks app is simple, powerful, and intuitive. Books look great on the iPad, especially in landscape mode (side-by-side pages). You have quite a few options with the fonts (6 different ones, I think) and sizes. I know the Kindle is hyped by the e-ink, but since my eyes are as adjusted to reading text on the screen, I saw no issues with reading on the iPad. I'd have to really sit down and read a full length novel to really gauge how it would be, but flipping through some pages of the latest Steve King novel felt natural. There are plenty of converters available on the web to convert pdfs to the epub format for import into iBooks, so places like Project Gutenberg will become a treasure trove for the public domain works.

The iWorks apps are a real shining point for the launch. Pages, Numbers and Keynote are almost as fully functional as their OS X counterparts. In terms of content creation (in apposition to the consumption side), this might be one of the most under talked about aspects of the iPad. Even with just the on screen keyboard, typing in Pages felt entirely natural. In fact, inserting images, shapes and tables is easy to do and with the touch screen, makes it cake to reposition on the screen. I was very impressed with the job they did with the initial release of the iWork suite. For students, this could be a very strong selling point.

Alright, so now we come to the part of the review where Kevin's hopes and dreams are dashed by the limited functionality of the iPad. Since my intentions for the iPad are not so much personal use (although it would see a lot of use in that arena) but instead as a replacement device for my laptop in the classroom, I had some very specific questions about how the VGA-out adapter works with the iPad. All the literature on the official site talks about the video out with Keynote, but nothing more. I would need the iPad to do three things in addition to Keynote in order for it to truly serve the role that I would like it to serve. It would need to do video out on Pages, iBooks (or the PDF Previewer), and Safari. In my classroom I use my laptop (with the limited tech that we do have at our school) for projection of Latin text on the whiteboard to mark up and diagram. Now, ideally I'd love to see tablet-like drawing right on the screen for this purpose (whiteboard markers are expensive!) but I knew going in that wouldn't be likely at the launch. However, after talking with the quote "geekiest" member of the Apple staff at Westfarms (their terms, not mine), I found out that the iPad does none of these things. ~~It won't push video out for any of the apps above, it won't even push video out for the media (photos, movies, etc)~~. (Edit: The Genius was wrong about movies, it'll push those to a tv set, but only in 480p) As of right now, it only pushes video out for Keynote presentations.

Deal breaker.

In the end it wasn't the lack of Flash, or USB, or a front-facing camera for conferencing, or a full fledged OS X that did me in. It was something that seems (to me anyways) a no-brainer if Apple really wanted to see these fall into the hands of educators. To handicap the video-out capabilities of a device as revolutionary and amazing as this one let me down substantially. The Apple store employees couldn't believe that single reason was why I wouldn't be walking out of the store with an iPad in tote.

And some of you make wild claims that I'd buy a bag of turd if Steve told me to ;)

Will I have an iPad at some point? Absolutely. Will it be sooner rather than later? Most likely. Is this the future of personal computing? Absolutely. They need to clean up some quirks (I assume iPad OS 4.0, rather than iPhone OS 3.2 will do a lot of great things) and drop the price about 100 bucks to make it mass market. For most people in the world, the traditional desktop interface as we know it is finally on the way out. Will there be individuals that need that type of machine? Sure, about one computer per household will still need to look like computers as we know them today. Everything else? Less is more.