Post #4

F*#% Technology

The Active Learning Classroom is a Technology Classroom. 

That's how it's built, and that's my philosophy of working in it and with it. 

Great. Read on, O Ye Who Dare to Use More than Paper.

  Technology Fail Number 1

I wanted to teach about Earth-Sun relationships. What I normally do is display this REALLY GREAT web-based simulator, and just diddle with it as I'm lecturing: 

Here's the link, it really is the bee's knees, no joke: http://astro.unl.edu/naap/motion3/animations/sunmotions.swf

Since I do no lecturing in this class, I wanted them to work with this awesome visualization directly. I asked them to bring to class the city and exact time of their birth. They were then to find the latitude (online) of their birth city, and set the Sun Simulator to show what the sky looked like and where the Sun was exactly when they were born. They had to record the Sun's position data and give that to me. I also asked for a screenshot. Neat little activity, right? 

There are 16 tables in the room, each one with two HDMI hookups and a dedicated monitor for students to hook up anything. We have a box of adapters to connect any device.

(Except a 30-pin IOS device. That's OK though, almost all of my students have Lightning connectors. Our I.T. geniuses were spot-on about that, and I was doubtful. Never doubt those guys.)

The Sun Simulator is Flash-based. 

Did you remember that IOS devices don't run Flash? Yes? Do I remember now that IOS devices don't run Flash? Yes. Did I remember, weeks before this class, that IOS devices don't run Flash? Yes. Did I remember that right before and during this class? Um... No.

How many students needed a spontaneous workaround? About half.

Technology Fail Number 2

I had my students do the text readings on seasons and seasonality. Here's the nifty part: Their quiz was not a paper or electronic traditional quiz. I required them to use class time to shoot a video that contained a demonstration and some required content. Each table of 8 students took roles in the design and production. Grading involved me looking at 16 5-minute videos with a rubric. Their 3-5 minute videos were due by the end of class, and they could prep as much as they wanted ahead of time. Videos had to be uploaded to Blackboard via Panopto. 

Aye, there's the rub. A your-video-did-not-upload rub a dub dub.

This particular Panopto I'm talking about is a neat little app that lets you upload a video from your device to the CMU space on the Panopto server linked to my course. It's mostly great when you're not blasting the hell out of its bandwidth. Well, unless you're using a Samsung Galaxy S5. Then it just doesn't work. No one knows why. Guess how many of my Android users have the S5? Yeah, All of them. I have an S2. I'm a tech tool.

Quick-witted IOS students attempted to get to Panopto via Blackboard. They discovered that Bb wants their device to install and run Microsoft Silverlight. What? Yes. IOS devices don't like doing that, so they don't. They had to get and use the Panopto App, which worked just fine. 

But there's two things going on with that: Bb is a portal for them for this class not only in an "online environment" sense, but also it's just how they approach interacting with this class. Asking them to work with GEO 105 Active Learning without Bb is like asking them to keep their eyes shut all day. It's not natural. 

The other thing is that students resist putting apps on their phones, even free ones. They say "I don't want to clog up my phone!" With what, exactly? I can tell you, they're probably just like certain members of my family who NEVER move photos and videos off their phones until the thing balks. 

In all seriousness, I suspect I'm dealing with a pedagogical phenomenon here: students are reaching a critical point of "device-as-tool" versus "device-as-toy." I appear to be making a leap by asking them to use their phones for educational productivity. There's a paper in that somewhere.

I love the video quiz format and I'll use it again. I got an immediate sense of what they knew and what they didn't about the concept. But next time I'll give them time to transfer it from their devices to a computer and put it on our class' server space. 

Technology Fail Number 3

Citrix Receiver: It's great for letting students and faculty access remote software. But, man the students wrestled with this. For about 40%, it just didn't work. I can explain why for about half of that group. 

One big explanation is something I should have known: There's a cap of 60 on the number of people that can be logged in at any one time, specific to our environment. The class has 99 students. Yes, "I did the math." File that under "Sh*t that's useful to know BEFORE deploying." Yeah.

Technology Fail Number 4

I always teach some spreadsheet basics to my intro classes. My position on this is you can't function in today's (white collar) society without knowing how to use one. Google Docs are really useful. I can send students out to collect data and put those data all in one place. 

Last spring, I could access a Google spreadsheet from a device directly using a webpage. You get the link, right? You paste the link, right? You edit data, right? 

In spring, yes. 

Now, in fall, if you're working on a device, you have to have the "Sheets" app. Without it and through a webpage, the cells are displayed and you can't enter anything. You feel like a jerk trying to type in a cell. It took me about 3 hours to figure out I needed the stupid "Sheets" app. 

How did I finally figure this out? I f*#%ing Googled it. At least I got this squared away before class and not during class. Yay me.

********

You can add worksheets to a workbook, you knew that. In a shared class document, students can have their own worksheet in every workbook. 

Yeah, wait on that...

Google Spreadsheets has an upper limit of cells that can exist in a workbook. Yes, even if those cells are empty. Did you know this? Great for you. So, if you want 99 students to create their own worksheet, at some point the damn workbook is going to lock up. 

When do students typically complete an assignment? When I'm in bed the day before it's due. They had to create a worksheet and enter some data by 6am on one day. They had a week, and since most intro students are night owls, that meant that they could push the deadline during their normal waking hours.

I was prepared for that: I have strict due dates and I figured I would get about 7 panicked emails between 11pm and 559am from students who were overtired and underorganized. And I did. These are usually teachable moments about due dates, staying on top of things, blahblahblah. 

Except one of those emails was very polite, expressed an understanding of the due-date-teachable-moment, further expressed a willingness to take consequences of said moment, and then went on to explain the technical limitations of Google Spreadsheets. 

So I went to add a sheet. FAIL. Verified: a technical limitation that the students should not bear responsibility for.

This required me to do something of a backpedal in class. I explained the teachable moment thing to them, and said that I wasn't going to bust their chops on any more on pushing due dates. But I didn't know about the spreadsheet limitation, I said, and I should have. I also said that what I really cared about was that they understood and could show me how to do simple things on a spreadsheet. I extended the due date so that students who attempted to meet the deadline could still do it.Yes, some students who missed the due date and didn't know about the problem also benefited. Ting-a-ling.

I spent some capital doing that backpedal, but I gained some also. 

F*#% technology? Yes, because every fail is, at its core, my fault; either partially or wholly. 

So in conclusion, I love technology. F*#% technology.