Getting Started with 3D Printing - Find a problem to solve

This week I went high-tech to go low-tech. When I taught physics I taught with a student centered pedagogy called Modeling Physics. In Modeling we have student collect data and then use that data to construct models to explain physics. Basically students do labs, graph the data, find an equation that fits their graph and then they turn that equation into a generic equation that can be used in other situations. Everything works great if you can get the students to collect really clean data and if you can actually convince them to think.

I don't teach physics anymore, but our new physics teacher, Vance, also uses the Modeling Method. He built some apparatuses last week end to collect really good acceleration data. This is just a wood disk with a golf tee glued to the center of each side. This rolls down a pair of rails and is slow enough to allow students to get some really good data. I'd thought about building these myself in the past, but I knew it would be hard to do and that I'd probably screw it up. So I never constructed any. Vance did a fine job in his construction, but he ended up having all the problems I knew I would have had.

Enter the 3D printer. Looking at Vance's system I knew I could knock something out on the 3D printer that would work. This is one of the coolest things about owning a 3D printer. You will see problems and begin to envision solutions. Once you start doing this the easier it becomes. The only risk is that you will quickly assume the 3D printer is the best tool for all jobs. As awesome as it is, it is not always the best way to solve every problem.

I spent about 10 minutes in Tinkercad on my design and then it took about an hour and a half to print. Vance tells me it worked great for the lab. I'm already envisioning modifications for future investigations. The design could be easily modified to investigate rotational inertia and energy, but maybe I'll leave it to students to create these new designs.

Acceleration Paradigm Lab - Teacher Notes

Materials (for each group):

• 2 bricks with holes or grooved sides
• 2 five foot sections of electrical conduit
• 1 wood disk with a golf tee sticking out of the center of each side, or 1 3D printed disk with cones out of each side
• Dry erase marker
• A metronome set to 60 peats/minute (or a computer program) - One for the entire class

Basic Procedure:

• Set the conduit up as a pair of rails spaced appropriately for your rolling disk
• Let the disk roll down the rails
• Mark the position of the disk at 1 or 2 second intervals
• Create a position vs. time graph and find the equation that fits the data (should be a quadratic)
• Create a velocity vs. time data set and graph from the position data using the secant line created by each pair of points on the position graph. This graph should be linear.
• Note: If the incline is too steep it will slide rather than roll.

Class discussion:

• I always have students use the actual variables in their equations, no x's or y's. In addition all constants need units.
• Once students have equations for both their position and velocity graphs I ask them what each constant represents and how they know. This is pretty easy for the velocity graph, but a little harder for the position graph. It leads to some great conversations and ultimately to a pair of generic equations we will use for the rest of the kinematics unit.

My 3D Model:

• On Thingiverse
• On Tinkercad: the Disk, the Side Cones.

This is a part 6 of my series on 3D Printers in Education. Go back to earlier parts in the 3D printer series: Part 1, Part 5

Interactive Video Widgets in iBooks

For the last couple of summers I had the pleasure to work along Tony DiLaura, Dave Bast and some great educators committed to making their own content with hopes of replacing traditional textbooks at iBooks Hackathons. I'd put together some material for those hackathons and I thought I'd share some of it here.

When I teach I try to always ask questions and never give answers. I want my students to struggle a bit and discover the answers through experimentation and discussion. This is very difficult to do in the videos I make. Due to the nature of video I don’t really give students time to think, nor do I give them a chance to investigate different answers. Derek Muller hit on a solution to this on his Veritasium YouTube Channel. YouTube allows you to put clickable hotspots on videos. Derek uses these to link to other videos he's made. He set up a kind of choose your own adventure allowing viewers to think about different answers to questions and each answer has it's own video. 

I thought this was an awesome way to get students thinking and set out to try it myself. But as it turns out, these hotspots don’t work on mobile devices, including iPads. We're in the midst of becoming a 1:1 iPad school, so I don't want to rely on cool internet features that I know won't work on mobile devices. 

After some though, I realized I could create the same sort of effect using either Keynote or Tumult Hype. Once created I can drop them into an iBook as an interactive widget and my students will be able to actually grapple with questions in their book rather than simply being presented with the answers. Each solution has its own advantages and disadvantages. Here's the version I made with Hype (I'm not sure this link will work correctly) to use with my students.

One big advantage with Keynote is it is easy to work with and if you have a Mac you probably already have it. Keynote’s biggest disadvantage is there is no way to control the video once it starts in an iBook widget. The video starts and then runs to completion, no pausing or rewinding.

In Hype you do have the video controls. The other big advantage in Hype is you can embed YouTube videos. I don’t know of any way to have YouTube videos auto-play in Hype. As far as I know, there is currently no way to embed a YouTube video in a Keynote. Embedding YouTube videos means you must have internet access to view, but it keeps the iBook size down to manageable levels. Unfortunately Hype is not free. It costs $30, but if you're going to be making iBooks it might be worth it in the long run. Make sure you buy it through the Tumult Education Store to get the discounted price.

Instructions:

Make your Keynote Presentation "Links Only":

Keynote for Interactive Video:



Hype for Interactive Video:


Putting YouTube Videos in Hype:

Getting Started With 3D Printing - PLA vs. ABS

There are two main types of plastic used in most FDM printers, polylactic acid (PLA) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). ABS is the same plastic Legos are made from and PLA is a bioplastic typically derived from corn starch. I will not go into a lot of the technical differences, but will instead focus on the practical issues related to each type of plastic.

Each plastic has its own advantages and disadvantages. Most of the newest low cost printers available today will only print with PLA. In order to complete a successful print, the plastic must stick well to the print bed. Sometimes it may be beneficial to heat the print bed to 40-50°C for PLA. However, it is often not necessary and many commercially available printers designed to print with PLA do not have the ability to heat the print bed at all. ABS requires a heated print bed for parts to stick. It is necessary to heat the print bed to 110-130°C when printing with ABS. This is quite hot, remember water boils at 100°C.

There are other practical concerns related to both plastics to consider. ABS shrinks substantially more than PLA while cooling. This can often cause parts to warp. When a part warps the edges or corners lift off the platform. This can lead to a part becoming completely unstuck from the platform or even if it stays in place may be completely unusable. ABS also gives off some fumes while printing. They are not overwhelming, but they are noticeable. One of my colleagues has sever allergies and asthma and reacts to just about any type of smell or fumes in the air. She never had a problem with the ABS fumes in the room.

Since PLA doesn't shrink as much as it cools it is much less prone to warping and the finished parts are much closer to the intended dimensions. This difference often doesn't mean much. However, if you are printing something like a phone case it is much easier to design one that fits just right if you print with PLA rather than ABS.

Given the minimal shrinkage, lack of fumes, and no need for a heated bed you might be wondering why I'm even presenting a choice between ABS and PLA. PLA seems to be far superior in almost all respects. One factor to note, however, is it is far more finicky to print with. With PLA, if things are not perfect the printhead can become clogged. This is not a problem I've ever had with ABS.

I was so fed up with problems related to ABS that I've been printing exclusively with PLA for the last couple of years. For the 9 months, with my first generation Replicator, I have not been able to print something that takes more than an hour and a half before the print head jams. Often it jams much sooner. Newer printers may be more reliable, but I don't have experience to speak to that. Yesterday I switched back to ABS and was able to do a two hour print of a comet and a five hour print of a fossil skull with no problems. For my printer I may switch over to mostly ABS and just print in PLA when I need something that fits precisely.

While I'm talking about Plastic I should mention that both types should be stored in sealed containers. Over time they will both absorb moisture and this could cause problems while printing. I use a container designed for long term storage of food and I toss in some silica gel to absorb moister. The container I use was less than $15 on Amazon and will hold two spools of plastic. The other bonus with using containers for storage is it will keep your plastic relatively dust free. If dust accumulates on the filament it can cause the print head to become clogged.

Go Back to earlier parts in the series: Part 1, Part 4

Getting Started with 3D Printing - Jazz Hands

In my last post I walked you through creating a relatively simple cell phone holder in Tinkercad. In this one I want to show you how easy it is to modify an existing design. You can do this with your own models or you can do this with ones you find online in places like the Thingiverse.

We're going to add a design to our phone case we made in the last post by importing an image in svg format. svg files can be imported, resized and extruded into 3D objects. I'm going to use a public domain image from Pixaby. I like Pixaby because all the images are public domain. They do have svg files available for download, however, I haven't had any luck importing their svg files into Tinkercad. Instead I find an image (png or jpg) I like and convert it using the Online SVG Image Converter. You'll want an image that is only black and white (literally black and white, not greyscale). If your image has any grays they will be treated as black when imported into Tinkercad. The image I chose has some grays, but I think it will look fine as black and white.

Basically you just import your svg file, resize it to fit, and the position it where you want it to go. You can either do this as a raised pattern or turn it into a hole and use it as a recessed pattern. You can find full directions in the Google Presentation below.



Go Back to earlier parts in the series: Part 1, Part 3 or go on to Part 5

Getting Started with 3D Printing - Lets make something

OK, it’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. I’ve decided to do an instructional post to break things up a little. One of the projects I had my physics students work on last year was an engineering/design problem. I simply asked them to create an accessory for their cell phones. This idea was not original to me, but I honestly can’t remember where I got it from.

In order to actually make their own accessories my students needed some sort of program to create a 3D model. Our school doesn’t currently have drafting or CAD classes, so I was left with only a few options. We have no CAD software and even if we did, my students wouldn't know how to use it.

I settled on cloud based solution, Tinkercad, for my students. Tinkercad is very simple, which also means it lacks many functions you’d expect in a traditional CAD program. It is also run in the cloud so it can be slow at times, but on the plus side if your computers have Chrome there is also nothing to install. This can be a huge plus in an educational environment. I use Tinkercad at least in part for almost all my 3D printing projects.

The basic idea behind Tinkercad involves building models by joining together simple shapes. Shapes can either be solids or holes. It seems like this would be a difficult way to create anything, but as it turns out you can create some very useful models with this very simple idea.

I originally found this phone stand on Thingiverse. I like it because it holds the phone up a little higher than most of the ones I've seen. I'll show you how easy Tinkercad is to work with by recreating it. We'll talk about the phone case in a future post.

If you have students create accounts for Tinkercad please steer them away from using their Facebook or Twitter accounts. In the past I've had a few students create accounts at home using their Facebook credentials. We block Facebook, so they were unable to access their accounts at school.

Go Back to earlier parts in the series: Part 1, Part 2, or go on to Part 4

Getting Started with 3D Printing - Part 2

This is part two in my ongoing series of articles on 3D printers for the classroom. Click here for part one.

I don't know about you, but I have virtually no training in 3D modeling software. How should a classroom teacher start with their new 3D printer? Personally, when my printer arrived I spent a lot of time looking for cool designs online. The main repository I used and still use is the Thingiverse.¹

The best way to start with your new printer is to find some models that other people have created and printed successfully and print them your self. There are lots of great ones to choose from. Some of which are simply models for demonstration while others may be tools or puzzles. My printer came with two spools of plastic. I burned through them and called it professional development. I really did learn a lot from this. You should probably do the same thing. Print stuff because you think it might be fun, useful, or you just want to see how it prints. I think the nerd word for this is experiential learning.

The bottom line is, it doesn't really matter what you print. Print small stuff, big stuff, stuff with lots of small details, stuff with overhangs. Start with the default settings on your machine, then change them to see how it affects the final print. This will begin to give you a sense for what you can print and what you can't. I also kept a small scale handy so I could determine the mass of my prints and then figure out the material costs. If I buy a 1 kg spool of plastic for $48, then each gram of plastic used is 4.8 cents. So a 20 gram part costs about $1 in materials.

Don't worry if you'll never use these early prints in your classes. One of the first things I ever printed was a replacement cup holder for my Ford Focus. While it had nothing to do with teaching it did begin to show me the power of having access to a 3D printer. I also got my first experience with warping², a problem that plagued a lot of my early 3D printing.

During my learning process I did manage to print a few tools to be used for teaching, including a Macro Extension tube for my camera so I can take extreme closeups without having to buy a $400+ lens, an adapter to hold my iPhone to a telescope, an adapter for my Canon camera that works both with our telescope and our instructor microscope. But mostly I printed random stuff like an iPad sound reflector, games to play with my son, Higgs-Bosons, Pan Tail Duck call, and a bunch of other stuff.

If you feel you must print something useful try these:

• Triangle "Missing Square" Puzzle: It's a good critical thinking exercise. Print one and play. You may have to do a little sanding to make it fit perfectly.
• Wind Puzzle: Not sure if this one is a Bernoulli effect demonstration or some other fluid dynamics principal. Either way it's fun and my students love it.
• Microscope Mount for iPhone 5: I modified an iPhone telescope adapter to work with our student microscopes. If it doesn't fit yours I'll teach you how to modify it in a future post.
• One Small Step: Cool desk placard showing the first footstep on the moon on one side and the moon in relief on the reverse.
• Lincoln Life Mask: The Smithsonian is starting to publish 3D models of their artifacts online. You can see how the presidency aged one of our greatest leaders.
• Air Powered Rocket Car: This one presents good learning opportunities. It's the first one I printed that required "supports"³.

Back to Part 1 or Continue to Part 3.

Footnotes:
1. Now I should say that many people have philosophical objections to the Thingiverse. Thingiverse was started by Makerbot. Makerbot had it's origins in the Open Source Hardware movement. At some point Makerbot moved away from Open Source and was later bought by Stratasys, a large traditional 3D printing company. However you feel about Makerbot's abandonment of Open Source or their later acquisition, the Thingiverse is a great place to find cool models to make.

2. Warping can happen with larger prints. The corners of the print lift off the build platform. Sometimes the part will still be usable, but more often it will not and sometimes can lead to the whole print coming unstuck resulting in a completely failed print job. I'll talk about what to do to deal with warping in a future post.

3. FDM printers build from the bottom up. For some prints you will have parts that can not be printed because there is nothing below them to hold them up. Supports are typically a series of thin "walls" added below these areas, designed to be easily broken off the final print.

Getting Started with 3D Printing - Part 1

I’ve had a 3D printer in my classroom for a couple of years now and it is totally awesome. Last year I wrote a blogpost answering a question I received as a tweet. The question was, “What resources or designs do you wish existed for teachers/students when you got your printer?” I’ve decided to do a series of posts from an educator’s point of view to create the resource I wish I'd had when I first got my 3D printer.

There are a lot of emerging technologies that are capturing attention today. Of all of these, I think 3D printing has the most power to inspire students. I managed to get the first generation MakerBot Replicator a couple years ago and every time it’s running in the back of my classroom it acts as a student magnet. Some would just stand and watch a print run from start to finish if I’d let them. I have to say it is pretty awesome to watch an object get made seemingly out of nothingness.

When I got my printer, it cost just under $2,000. Today you can get a pretty respectable machine for under $500 and if you want to go into the $2,000 to $3,000 range you can get a really nice printer. If you’re in the market for one I would highly recommend picking up a copy of Make: Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing. The last two years Make Magazine has done a great rundown on the consumer grade 3D printers that are available. If I was going to buy a new printer, this is where I’d start.

The main thing you need to know, is there are two broad categories of 3D printers you might consider for your classroom, Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) and Stereolithography (SL). My printer does FDM so that’s what I’m familiar with and able to speak to. I really want to try SL, because it’s totally cool. The most common printers in classrooms today use FDM, but this may change in the future.

In a nutshell, Fused Deposition Modeling printers melt plastic and push it out through a nozzle like a hot glue gun. The nozzle in this case is much smaller and hotter than a glue gun, however. The printer builds the object up one layer at a time.

Stereolithography printers use a liquid resin. The resin solidifies when a light is shined on it. These printers also build an object one layer at a time, but the do so a bit differently. The light source in an SL printer will either be a laser that traces a path similar to an FDM printer or a DLP projector that will simply project an image of the whole layer at one time. Once the layer at the top of the liquid solidifies, the printer lifts the growing object and the next layer is illuminated.

If you’re looking for more resources to get you started I’d recommend:

• Make: 3D Printing: The Essential Guide to 3D Printers
• The Invent To Learn Guide to 3D Printing in the Classroom: Recipes for Success
• Printrbot Learn
• Make Magazines 3D Printing Site

Continue to Part 2 in the series.

Thinking about PD part 1 - Evolution not Revolution

Is it really a problem to repackage old ideas in a new way? I suppose it depends on what I mean by this. Technology Integration is the big buzz word that just won’t die. Most teachers think it can mean simply turning old overheads into PowerPoint presentations or replacing the overhead projector with an Elmo. I suppose they’d be correct to a degree, in both cases they’ve updated the technology. However, many people would contend that both of these “changes” would have little impact on learning. If the technology use stopped there these nay-sayers would be correct. For some teachers both of these would constitute a bit of a leap. In both cases they have a new piece of technology to learn about. They know what to do when the overhead isn’t quite working right, but what do you do when the Elmo isn’t showing up on the screen?

It seems like a small step to many, but for some it’s kind of a big step. But it’s a step and it’s a step in the right direction. When it comes to changing the practices of teachers who’ve been at this for awhile we need to stop thinking revolutionary and start thinking evolutionary. Big change is very scary. So scary in many cases we won’t even make the smallest step along the path. Small changes can still be scary, but we are more willing to take a step and see what happens. It’s really about degree of risk. Smaller risk means smaller reward, but it’s still a reward.

Evolution vs. revolution? How do we get there. With revolutionary change we start with the end point and then try to design professional development to get us there. There’s kind of a big problem with this. We want our students to own their education, but then we don’t seem to expect the same thing from our teachers. Shouldn't we let our teachers to "own the process". If so, should we tell them what the endpoint is? If we think evolution we don’t need to know the end point. In fact, every teacher may have their own distinctly different end point.

The other benefit of evolution vs. revolution is it can easily adapt to changing technologies and technology availability. When you have an end point and a plan to get there you lock yourself in. As new tools become available you either have to figure out how to shoehorn them into your plan or you have to ignore them. Not very satisfying in either case.

So how do we build PD that is evolutionary? First, remember we don’t need to know the end point before we start. It might be nice to have some ideas of where you’re going, but the environment is always changing. Work on picking up new skills that can be used to “increase fitness”.

Natural Selection - Darwinian selection is all about survival of the fittest, right? Well, that's actually an over simplification. What we’re really talking about is less grandiose than that. Traits that increase fitness lead individuals in a population to have more offspring before they die. This means those traits will have a higher frequency in the next generation.

So, what does “fitness” look like in education? That’s a good question. Ideally the “fittest” ideas would be ones that lead to increased learning. That said, there are two other ideas that should also be factored in when judging the “fitness” of a new trait. Any idea that leads to a decrease in workload without impacting student learning should have a selective advantage. In addition, any idea that causes student excitement and engagement without a decrease in learning is also advantageous.

All it takes are small changes accumulating over time to lead to big changes. It is important to remember that in nature most mutations are deleterious and lead to no change. You must try new things, but don't be afraid to cull these deleterious mutations from your practice quickly. This is the scary part. “How much time will I lose if it doesn’t work?” It is important to try, because without new traits evolution can’t happen.

Can you be successful without change? You will always have some crocodiles. Crocodiles haven’t really changed much in tens of millions of years. They inhabit the same ecological niches and they keep on living the way they’ve been living for millions of years. They seem to be getting the job done and they will continue to get the job done as long as their ecosystem doesn’t change. However, things always change.

GoAnimate4Schools is cool

I mentioned GoAnimate the other day and now I've gotten a chance to play with GoAnimate4Schools. GoAnimate4Schools offers both more and less than the free version of GoAnimate. So, what's the difference?

First and foremost I can create student accounts and give them access to stuff I create or upload. With GoAnimate4Schools, I get a lot of the features of GoAnimate Plus. I can upload my own backgrounds or Flash objects. I can even upload videos (up to 10MB) that can be incorporated into my animations. However, I have no way to get my animations out of GoAnimate4Schools.

With GoAnimate Plus you can export animations to YouTube or even buy a downloadable HD video version. In GoAnimate4Schools I seem to have neither option. Right now if I want to save my animations in another form I have to do a screen capture video.

I can create as many characters as I want. In GoAnimate the first character was free, but after that I needed points for the various pieces and parts I'd need for another new character. Points cost money, but you get a bunch of "free" points when you pay for a GoPlus subscription. While I can create lots of characters for free, I have less options for costumes/props. That said, any characters I do create should be available to my students (I haven't confirmed this yet).

So, what will I use it for? I'm not sure yet. I'll probably give students a way to show what they've learned in class in some sort of creative way. But I'll also use it myself. I plan on investigating the ideas presented by Derek Muller in his critique of the Kahn Academy videos. It seems like this may give me a way to make mistaktes in my videos in a more authentic way. So, hopefully students will get a chance to see the sort of missteps they are likely to make.

GoAnimate4Schools.com: Elevator Math by Steve Dickie

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate4Schools. It's free and fun!

I Really Hate Hidden Pricing!

OK, I just want to rant a little. A few people from our school are at ASCD right now. One of them sent me an email saying I should check out Bubble Score. So I went to the site a clicked around. The only thing I can do is get a video demo.

From there I went to Mastery Connect, their real product. I have to say, after the video demo of Bubble Score I was ready to whip out my credit card. However, there's no way for me to buy it. In fact There is no pricing information anywhere on either website. Why do companies do this? I just want to know if it is something I can even consider or not and I don't want to have to deal with email or phone tag!

It makes me feel that the program will only look good in the hands of a salesperson. Why not give me a way to really see the whole thing and tell me the price? The fact that it's hidden and only a sales representative can show it to me makes me think it must be not that easy to use or not nearly as cool as they make it out to be. Otherwise why not let the product shine on its own merits.

The other annoying part is that this appears to be a service with lots of parts (unfortunately not everything we need) and I just want to have one piece of it. From the site it looks like an all or nothing thing and it seems they only want to sell to entire schools or districts. Oh well, I guess they don't want my money.

OK, I'm done ranting.

YouTube Lifting Limits - Implications for Education

Yesterday I inadvertently uploaded a video that was just over 16 minutes long to YouTube. Once I realized what I'd done I was surprised to see my video on my YouTube Channel. So I tried another and it worked to! Last year the limit was raised from 10 to 15 minutes. So, being a nerd I searched for an answer.

The help files on YouTube still list the 15 minute limit so I had to go to Google. This turned up a New York Times article. Apparently, last December YouTube began lifting the time limit from some users accounts. Now, I ask, why didn't YouTube tell me I now have no limit? I found out completely by accident. Beyond that, what does this mean?

Well, now I don't have to stress too much about cutting up ideas to keep my videos short. I'll still shoot for 10-15 minutes, but I don't have to worry if it goes to 16 minutes. Additionally, I can now upload full lectures if I choose. This could be huge for education. I try not to lecture anymore, but sometimes I really need to. Now I can record my lectures and easily make them available to my students. Or, we can record presentations at in-services and drop them on YouTube for future staff development. I've used Blip.tv previously and will probably continue to do so. However, now I can have all of my videos on both Blip and YouTube! Redundancy is a good thing.

As an aside. If your school or district currently blocks YouTube you should ask if you can have your channel unblocked. Often times YouTube is blocked due to bandwidth concerns. If only teacher channels are being used the bandwidth requirements should be much lower. And, if teacher videos are so popular that they cause a bandwidth problem then I say that is totally Awesome and that fact should be celebrated!

Anyway, here's the video that let me make this discovery.

Teacher Created Textbooks!

First I need to say I'm not really a big fan of most textbooks. I think most of them spend too much time and add more and more pages to make sure they have more checkboxes checked than their competition. The other thing I don't like is the price tag they have. One reason for the outrageous price tag is the overhead inherent in the publishing and distribution models of the past. What can we do about it?

Personally, I plan on writing my own textbook. I'll attempt to avoid the trap of throwing everything in and just focus on what is pedagogically important. I can always toss in the kitchen sink on the web so it'll be available to those teachers who want it. Anyway, I've just launched a project at Kickstarter to fund my idea. I'll spend this summer writing it and working with folks to get it into publishable shape.

My current plan is to distribute my text in some sort of electronic format and have print versions available though a print-on-demand service. So, I won't really need money for maintaing stock or delivering books. What then do I need money for? I'll need to hire an editor, pay for artwork, pay someone to do design and layout, and have some copies to give away to reviewers and such. If I make my project goal I should have just enough to get all that done, I hope. Ideally I'll hire people I already work with to do a lot of the work. Most schools have an over educated workforce, why not tap into the expertise all around me. Maybe this could be the beginning of a model where teachers are paid what they're worth by monetizing their own ideas?

How come I'm not approaching a publisher with my proposal? There are multiple reasons, but the main one is that I want to own what I create. I want to be able to post pieces (or maybe all of it) on my website for free without having to get permission. Anyway, if any of this interests you please check out my Kickstarter project.

Totally Awesome Video Abstracts!

This morning I sat down to reed Google Reader and I stumbled across a blog post by John Burk referencing a tweet by Andy Rundquist listing another blog post (I love social media). Anyway the gist of all that social cross-linking is the New Journal of Physics has just launched video abstracts for its articles! It does not look like authors are required to submit videos, but are strongly encouraged to.

So, why am I so excited by this? Well, two reasons really. The first is it gives me lots of ideas for what I can have students do to demonstrate mastery of concepts. Whether it's in my physics or electronics classes. Sure, people have been having students create video summaries/presentations of projects for years. But here are some real world scientists doing it. The ones I've watched are awesome. They can easily serve as a model for students to emulate.

The second reason for my excitement over this relates to the difficulty inherent in reading and understanding real research. I'm a physics teacher and I often have no idea what authors are saying in scholarly articles. So, how can I expect my students to really read and understand the primary literature? These videos offer a window of accessibility for non-physicists. There's a good chance that students will be able to get more out of the actual article when combined with the video. I'll definitely be trying this with my students.

One final thought. What if educational conferences had the expectation that presenters create short 3-5 min video abstract for their talks. How great would that be? I never know which sessions I want to catch. Often just 5 minutes in I realize I'm in the wrong room. It's not that the presenter is bad, it's just the 50 word abstract in the program was too short to really tell me what I needed to know. I think I'll propose the idea for the MACUL conference and create my abstract this afternoon (how come I can't just relax on a snow day?).



Cross-posted to FLOSScience.com

How much do Credentials Matter?

So, I guess I've been sleeping or something, but apparently Jon Stewart has been shaking the tree again. This time calling out the Republicans on their filibustering of a bill to help 9/11 first responders. Now, I don't want to ge all political here. What I want to address is a passing quote I heard on the the news.

Stewart has been called a journalist by some, but on the news report that I heard only in passing a professor (not sure who, or from where) said Stewart is not a journalist. When asked what it took to be a journalist, he responded that journalistic training was required. He did not talk about what a journalist does, only how they are trained. So in a sense, you can only be a journalist if you went to school to become one. I wasn't aware that there was any sort of journalist certification.

How many jobs today are ones that our students could do in the future without any formal training. There is this great wealth of material available on the net totally for free. I could take computer programming classes from universities such as Stanford or MIT just by downloading them. I could get 90% of the benefit of those courses without leaving my house. So, what do credentials really tell us today?

They seem to tell us only that the holder of them spent the money required to get them. They also tell us that these people ostensibly took the courses and got the training. Now, if we put them next to a really motivated person who went to all the trouble to learn the material themselves... Personally, if I was running a company I'd rather hire the person who trained themselves to do the job. But, how does someone demonstrate they have the skills?

Well, I suppose you start to do the job you want, but do it for free. The web today really makes this a possibility. Want to be a journalist? Start a blog. Want to be a film maker? Make some films and put them on YouTube. Want to be a musician? Do what JoCo did. Want to be a computer programmer? Write some code and release it on the net. The web today is an amazing platform that can allow the best to rise to the top. All you really need is to be good and be willing to work for free for awhile. What better time to do that then while you're in school living at home.

I mean what will look better on a college/scholarship application? "I know how to program in Objective C," or "Here's the app I created in Objective C"? (Monarch Express, created by two of my students)

Now, how do we teach our students to do this? How do we get them to be the entrepreneurs they can be? All you need today to start your own business is a computer, a connection to the internet, and persistance!

Enough with the iPad Already

OK, seven of my last ten posts have been related to my iPad. It really is awesome! However, this is a technology in education blog, not an iPad blog. To that end I've begun documenting my iPad knowledge on a Google Site. As I learn new stuff I'll add it there. If I make get any huge revelations I'll blog about them here as well. I may also periodically post a list of updates here so they'll show up in your RSS feed.

Anyway, I promise to get back to my ongoing investigation into how technology can be a powerful tool for transforming teaching. You can find my collected ramblings on the iPad at ipad.flosscience.com

iPad as Teaching Tool after two months - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

So, I've had an iPad in my hands for two months now. I use it daily both for serious and not so serious stuff. It has replaced my laptop for almost all of my at home net surfing and such and is the device I never set down while at work. So, what's the good, the bad, and the ugly?

The Good:

• Wireless Display - I've been using AirSketch for this and it works pretty well. I've just learned that AirDisplay may fill the bill and may in fact work better than a VNC solution (more on this in the future). In the past I've used a bluetooth Wacom tablet for this, but I'd underestimated the value of being able to see what I'm writing actually on my tablet.
  
• Portable Data Gathering - When I first got my iPad I used Google Forms for data collection. I've switched over entirely to Numbers. When I'm not using my iPad as a presentation tool I carry it around and collect data on my students' apparent mastery of concepts. I still haven't found my perfect tool, but Numbers is the closest so far.
  
• Personal Learning Network - I now consume almost all my news on my iPad. For Twitter I use Flipboard and the official Twitter client. For RSS I use MobileRSSFree and Pulse. I've also leaned a lot of useless trivia by doing crosswords in the USA Today app. The PBS, NPR, and TED apps also give me something to do when noting else is happening.
  
• File Access - I'd been using DropBox for this, but I just started playing with ZumoCast. ZumoCast is primarily designed to stream audio and video from a computer to the cloud, but you can also share folders full of documents. These documents can be downloaded and then opened in other apps as well. All my important teaching docs are now shared and I can have them on my iPad when I need them without having to take up lots of space when I don't.
  
• It's Fast - It's pretty snappy. Everything works pretty well. I've had programs crash, but it doesn't take down the whole system. This may be part of the justification of the Bad and the Ugly below.
  

The Bad:

• Still no Flash or JAVA - There is lots of good stuff out there that I just can't access. Yes, I know most video sites are now working around this, but I'm talking about some really good simulations that I'd love to be able to use.
  
• No File System - Well, no real accessible file system. I could be wrong, but it seems that if I want to use the same document in different applications that each application has its own copy of that document.
  

The Ugly:

• Google Apps - There's still no way to edit a Google Site from an iPad. You can easily add or remove text from a Google Doc with their mobile editor, but to do any real work you need to use the Desktop editor. While you can do this on an iPad the experience is not great. There are some third party apps that can edit Google Docs, but I haven't tried any yet.
  
• Printing - So if I happen to have one of half a dozen printers then I can print? Really?
  
• Projector Support - Why can't all apps share their screen with the projector attachment? Seems like this should be in the operating system rather than in individual applications. If you plan on projecting you should read app descriptions carefully to see if they support it or not.
  
• The App Store - Both good and bad. There are some great apps there. However, I'd love to see what people would do if Apple loosened up their policies some.
  

Teacher TechBites ep 019 - AirSketch for iPad

In this episode I show AirSketch a cool whiteboard program that allows you to project what you're doing on your iPad through your classroom projector wirelessly. Basically, what AirSketch does is create a web page that another computer can access. All you need to do is point a web browser at your iPad and then the magic happens. As you write or draw on your iPad the writing appears on the projector. You can be anywhere in your room as long as you have a Wifi connection.

In the free version all you get is a whiteboard with a black pen. In the paid version ($6.99) you can change your pen tool and import pictures or pdf files to write-on/mark up.

Cross posted from TeacherTechBites.com

iPad as Teaching Tool after two weeks

My main goal for the iPad centered around tracking student progress during class discussions. I've not had much success with this yet. I've been using forms created with Google Docs. These are ok, but not quite there yet. I think I'll need to buy a good spreadsheet program, maybe Bento or Numbers. I like the idea of using Google Forms, as I can easily track how results change over time. Unfortunately they prove a bit problematic when I use them during discussions. It's just not as fluid as I'd like and I can't see the past data while filling in new data. However, I absolutely love the iPad plus Google Forms when I'm scoring tests and quizzes. I just poke the dropdown of student names, check off what they know or don't know and enter their score. Awesome and much faster than trying to type all this into my computer or writing it down on paper (I done both of these earlier this year).

So, iPad as tool for teaching? Jury's still out. I've used it with AirSketch and MobileMouse (more on these apps in the future), but these haven't really changed the way I teach. However, as a tool for personal professional development the iPad will be tough to beat. I've already shown off FlipBoard for getting me back into Twitter. But I've also downloaded a number of apps for media consumption. These include:

• NPR - Full audio and news stories
  
• PBS - Has some full episodes of great shows, including Nova!
  
• TWiT - The Twit network is a great place to keep up on changes in technology
  
• NASA - Includes some great pictures, videos, and info from NASA
  
• NY Times & USA Today - I far prefer my newspapers in this form. No stacks of paper to deal with
  
• TED - Great inspiring talks.
  

Now all these apps are just pulling information I can already get from the web. So, why not just use my laptop? The iPad is a heck of a lot lighter and I'm not tied to a wall outlet. The battery life in my laptop is about 2.5 hours. I have yet to run into a time when I have to charge my iPad during the day.

In addition, it makes a great ereader. It's pretty easy to pull in PDFs, I've been using GoodReader as my app of choice for this. Again, noting I couldn't use my laptop for, it's just more pleasant.

The bottom line is that I've been consuming more media related to education and improving my teaching with the iPad than I was before the iPad. So, the direct impact on my teaching may be minimal so far, but the indirect impacts will likely be large.

Teacher TechBites ep 016 - Tracking Student Progress with Google Forms

This year I've started teaching differently. I've embraced a teaching methodology called Modeling Physics. The largest component of this style is Socratic Dialog. Basically, we end up having a lot of class discussion where I ask questions without directly giving answers.

I've started using Google Forms to not only track who I've been calling on, but also what they know. So far it's working well, but I'll know more once I get enough data.





Crossposted from TeacherTechBites.com

Teacher TechBites Ep 015 - Twitter and FlipBoard

So, I got a new toy. It's an iPad. It really has helped me to rediscover Twitter. I've used Twitter on an off for a couple of years, but FlipBoard on my iPad has gotten me addicted to it.

For all the haters out there I need to say it's not about stalking or public exhibition. For me, it's about learning and collaboration. I don't follow people who obsessively tell me what they are doing. I follow people who tweet interesting, relevant stuff. And now I follow them in a really easy to read attractive format. FlipBoard formats my feed in a magazine like format. In short, It rocks! Check it out below.



Crossposted from TeacherTechBites.com