Transitioning to Google Apps for Education

So, my district has made the decision to switch to Google Apps for Education.  I'm excited about the switch, and I've actually already moved to this platform, so I wanted to talk about this a little.  We're not exactly blazing trails here - there are lots of districts who have already been using GAFE for years, including some close to us in Chicagoland - but I think that lots of teachers still don't have this tool, or have it and don't use it, or don't like it, or don't trust it.  

I have to say at the outset that I started using Gmail several years ago, back when accounts were offered by invitation only.  I heard about the phantom browsing of email data, and how Google would use information from our email to decide what adwords to place on our pages.  I made my peace with that.  This is standard practice with so many sites now that it's almost unnoticeable.  In fact, I've started to appreciate this kind of data collection with sites like Amazon.  I don't always buy the books that Amazon suggests, but I often find copies of these books and learn a great deal from these recommendations.  That never bothered me as much as I thought it would.  And I've rarely had issues with my e-mail account.  It just works.  

From gmail, I began using Google Docs a few years ago.  I enjoyed the simultaneous editing feature, and I really pushed hard for teachers at my school to start using this, even though it wasn't officially sanctioned, for less important work.  I started using Drive only a few months ago, mostly because I had files in too many places and needed somewhere where I could put everything, or at least everything teaching-related.  

Now, my e-mail and calendar data has been migrated to a new Google account managed by my district.  I have uploaded most of my files on my school laptop to my new Google Drive.  And I have tried to focus most of my work on Google Apps.  I try to create new files in Docs instead of Word, and I try to share files with co-workers as much as possible.  

So far, with about three weeks experience using GAFE, here are the things I like:

• Using the Chrome browser with a Google Apps account feels like I'm finally using the right set of tools for the right job.  They work well together.  Prior to this, I switched back and forth a lot between Safari and Firefox, depending on what I was doing, because sometimes one worked better than the other.  Chrome just seems to work for everything now.  
• I LOVE the document sharing feature.  I LOVE the simultaneous collaboration.  We have already noticed a big difference with tasks like note-taking during meetings or creating a plan together.  For the most part, this has allowed more people to be involved in large-group tasks.  It has also allowed us to jigsaw (or "divide and conquer") larger tasks into smaller pieces without having to re-assemble from the pieces later.  
• Docs lacks some features, but it's simple and easy to follow.  There aren't five or six different ways to change your page layout, there's only really one way.  
• Chrome Apps and the "connect more apps" feature - which are really two different things but are related.  I've added a lot of tools that I don't quite understand yet, but I've been playing around a lot with Voice Comments, some different calculator features, templates, and lots of other tools.  
• It's kind of silly, but I like the huge amount of fonts available in Docs.  Some of the names are odd (like not in a good way, such as "covered by your grace" - can't tell if it's trying to be ironic or actually making fun of religious zealots), but I like the variety and most of the cheeky names they have.  
• It's a little overwhelming at first, but there are so many different ways to customize Gmail, and so many different tools, that it's like discovering the Internet over again.  

And, so far, here are the things that I don't like:

• Random or arbitrary limits on storage, seemingly set only to extract more money from users.  While I know that it will be (or already is?) something that can be modified, why are we given 25 gigabytes for mail but only 5 gigabytes for Drive?  
• Some files don't work with Drive.  The most noticeable file type right now is Keynote presentations.  I started using Keynote a lot this year, and encouraged my students to do so too. Now, I have 40-50 Keynote presentations that need to be converted to PowerPoint so that they can be shown in Google Slides.  
• I use a lot of short video, and I would love to be able to upload these files to Drive.  But they take up a lot of space, aren't playable/streamable through our filter at school, and would take a long time to download from Drive even if I chose to upload them all and then download them to play them at school.  
• Sometimes it seems like Google can be fickle about services they provide.  Rumors swirl about Google Groups disappearing, for example.  Some services are just not offered to GAFE users (like Blogger, for instance). 

I'm sure I'll think of more to say about this as the summer progresses.  I'm going to be helping some fellow teachers learn this new platform this summer, and that will help me think about what I like and don't like.  I'd also like to do a bunch more research on what I can use this for.  I have a couple of Chrome apps that I want to try out for creating animations.  I'm still shaky with Forms, but I've used it a few times to great effect.  And the whole world of Google+ seems really cool - though I'm not sure about all of what it does, and I still feel like I don't know how to navigate through it.  

Twitter in the Classroom?

So, I signed up for Twitter a few months ago, and I've become a big fan.  To my surprise, I was also given a school account by my district.  I was at a loss for how to use it at first, but then I thought about the hashtag concept.

If you aren't familiar, the "hashtag" is a way of making your "tweets" - the things you post on Twitter - instantly searchable.  If you tweet something with a hashtag that others are using, people can watch the feed for a specific hashtag, and they will see your contribution pop up as part of a conversation.  For example, a recent hashtag was #5words.  People tweeted a five-word phrase that they considered important or enlightening, and then tagged it.  Then everyone else could search for that hashtag, and follow the tweets as they came out.

So, it occurred to me, why not create a hashtag and use that to have an ongoing, synchronous conversation with another classroom?  I posted something about this on the English Companion Ning, and I had two or three responses almost instantly.  That was cool, but I had no idea what to do about that.  Now that I have the Twitter account, I don't know that I have the time to insert a text or unit that we can collaborate on with another classroom.  (As is usually the case, at this point in the year, I'm dumping cool ideas that I've been putting off, and trying to jam as many cool ideas and new ideas for next year into the classroom as I can before school is over.  Between the required stuff and the stuff I want, I don't have much room left.)

So, since that didn't work, I just started actually using it.  I felt like I had waited too long, and tried too many different propositions, and ended up wasting time.  So, I just started tweeting "cool sentences" on my school Twitter account.  Students volunteered these sentences, and I tweeted them.  I recently tried the #5words hashtag (though I didn't use the actual tag because I didn't want too much unwanted attention drawn to the school account), and that worked really well.

So, with five weeks left of school, I'm thinking about other ways to use this.

I think the goal for the next several weeks is going to be just tweeting as much student work as I can.  It should be - or it seems like it would best serve as - a student publication tool, of very short student texts.  So, I'm going to publish anything and everything that I can, without breaking district rules.

I would love to hear other ideas, if anyone has suggestions.

Gee and Learning

Let's take another look at these principles from Gee:

6) "Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle - 
Learners can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are lowered.

7) Committed Learning Principle
 - Learners participate in an extended engagement (lots of effort and practice) as an extension of their real-world identities in relation to a virtual identity to which they feel some commitment and a virtual world that they find compelling.

8) Identity Principle
 - Learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a a way that the learner has real choices (in developing the virtual identity) and ample opportunity to meditate on the relationship between new identities and old ones. There is a tripartite play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity.

9) Self-Knowledge Principle
 - The virtual world is constructed in such a way that learners learn not only about the domain but also about themselves and their current and potential capacities.

I think that P6 is kind of obvious. Learners are happier in a safe space. I think I've probably read that a dozen times.

P7 seems to be the interesting implication of P6 in a video-game environment.  Players have to care about the game, and the identity that they assume in the game, before they will put serious effort into it (Gee 59).

P8 and P9 are the real gold here.  P8 is about how assuming an identity is part of the learning process - we step into the shoes of a scientist and pretend to be one, when we really sink our teeth into science.  To really learn and understand writing, you have to adopt the persona of the writer.  And by doing so, the learner starts to think about the reasons that these identities look the way they do, and what modifications can be made to these identities.  Conversely, learners in these situations start to think about their own identity - prior to this adoption of a new one - and they can begin to reflect on the identity they normally assume, and how it can be adjusted, or the consequences of elements within it.

Let me illustrate with an oversimplified example.  Ted wants to try science.  He assumes that scientists use "big words."  He starts to try using big words.  Of course, he has to feel like he won't be made fun of (or that it won't hurt when he is), and he has to think that it's worth trying.  Once he begins experimenting with this identity - Ted the Scientist - he starts to think about why scientists use big words.  Can Ted be a scientist without using big words?  Not exactly.  Can Ted use big words and be a scientist - is it an essential part?  Yes, but the "big words" matter.  What are big words for, really?  Hopefully, Ted starts to think like this about what it means to be a scientist.  The next step occurs when Ted asks himself, why don't I use big words?  Do I want to?  What will happen if I do?

P9 comes from all of this.  Taking on identities, discovering what you are good and bad at, with the constant feedback provided by the video game, and with the experience of multiple games, and multiple scenarios, and multiple successes and failures within each game, helps learners discover a great deal about themselves.  Video games - and learning in general - are about much more than so-called "hand-eye coordination," although that is a component skill.  There is much more at stake, and learners gather quite a lot of data about themselves and their abilities as they play.

The video game example and the example of Ted as a scientist use Gee's notion of a "projective identity," a kind of identity experiment that a learner will adopt for the sake of playing a game or engaging in deep learning.  I think that this is the most exportable idea from this set of principles.  I think that getting students to adopt this - assuming that they will be motivated to do so - can be really powerful.  The key is the voluntary buy-in.  That's hard in a classroom.  That's where "affinity groups" come in, and that's where Gee's earlier comment - about "mindless progressivism" can be challenging.

"Mindless Progressivism"

While I was thinking about how I want to digest the 36 principles listed below, I came upon this comment on James Paul Gee's site:


"It surprises me how often educators who know better lapse back into “mindless progressivism”, a theory that children learn best by participation and immersion in interest-driven activities.  People can participate in an interest-driven group and still gain few of the higher-value skills that participation in the group leads others to attain.  That is why an emphasis on production is important.  Learning to produce the knowledge or outcomes an interest-driven group is devoted to leads to higher-order and meta-level thinking skills.  If only a few are producers and most are consumers, then a group is divided into a small number of “priests” (insiders with “special” knowledge and skills) and the “laity” (followers who use language, knowledge, and tools they do not understand deeply and cannot transform for specific contexts of use)."


To re-state (if necessary): putting kids into groups based on interest doesn't guarantee learning, or at least not the higher-level stuff that teachers really want.  Teachers need to emphasize the creation of some kind of appropriate product (the students need to make something).  If only a few students move into this way of thinking, instead of all, then the group can be divided and less effective overall.  


I take this as a caution.  I'm on the cusp of pushing students into groups, hopefully with an appropriate emphasis on a product.  But that doesn't guarantee learning all by itself.  


Thanks, Jim.    

36 Learning Principles from James Paul Gee

36 Principles of Learning 
(from James Paul Gee, What Language and Literacy Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy)

(found online at http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/jamespaulgee2 - )

1) Active, Critical Learning Principle - 
All aspects of the the learning environment (including ways in which the semiotic domain is designed and presented) are set up to encourage active and critical, not passive, learning.

2) Design Principle - 
Learning about and coming to appreciate design and design principles is core to the learning experience.

3) Semiotic Principle - 
Learning about and coming to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex system is core to the learning experience.

4) Semiotic Domains Principle - 
Learning involves mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and being able to participate, at some level, in the affinity group or groups connected to them.

5) Meta-level thinking about Semiotic Domain Principle - 
Learning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains.

6) "Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle - 
Learners can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are lowered.

7) Committed Learning Principle
 - Learners participate in an extended engagement (lots of effort and practice) as an extension of their real-world identities in relation to a virtual identity to which they feel some commitment and a virtual world that they find compelling.

8) Identity Principle
 - Learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a a way that the learner has real choices (in developing the virtual identity) and ample opportunity to meditate on the relationship between new identities and old ones. There is a tripartite play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity.

9) Self-Knowledge Principle
 - The virtual world is constructed in such a way that learners learn not only about the domain but also about themselves and their current and potential capacities.

10) Amplification of Input Principle
 - For a little input, learners get a lot of output.

11) Achievement Principle - 
For learners of all levels of skill there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning, customized to each learner's level, effort, and growing mastery and signaling the learner's ongoing achievements.

12) Practice Principle - 
Learners get lots and lots of practice in a context where the practice is not boring (i.e. in a virtual world that is compelling to learners on their own terms and where the learners experience ongoing success). They spend lots of time on task.

13. Ongoing Learning Principle
 - The distinction between the learner and the master is vague, since learners, thanks to the operation of the "regime of competency" principle listed next, must, at higher and higher levels, undo their routinized mastery to adapt to new or changed conditions. There are cycles of new learning, automatization, undoing automatization, and new re-organized automatization.

14) "Regime of Competence" Principle
 - The learner gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the outer edge of, his or her resources, so that at those points things are felt as challenging but not "Undoable."

15) Probing Principle - 
Learning is a cycle of probing the world (doing something); reflecting in and on this action and, on this basis, forming a hypothesis; reprobing the world to test this hypothesis; and then accepting or rethinking the hypothesis.

16) Multiple Routes Principle
 - There are multiple ways to make progress or move ahead. This allows learners to make choices, rely on their own strengths and styles of learning and problem-solving, while also exploring alternative styles.

17) Situated Meaning Principle
 - The meanings of signs (words, actions, objects, artifacts, symbols, texts, etc.) are situated in embodied experience. Meanings are not general or decontextualized. Whatever generality meanings come to have is discovered bottom up cia embodied experience.

18) Text Principle
 - Texts are not understood purely verbally (i.e. only in terms of the definitions of the words in the text and their text-internal relationships to each other) but are understood in terms of embodied experience. Learners move back and forth between texts and embodied experiences. More purely verbal understanding (reading texts apart from embodied action) comes only when learners have enough embodied experience in the domain and ample experiences with similar texts.

19) Intertextual Principle
 - The learner understands texts as a family ("genre") of related texts and understands any one text in relation to others in the family, but only after having achieved embodied understandings of some texts. Understanding a group of texts as a family ("genre") of texts is a large part of what helps the learner to make sense of texts.

20) Multimodal Principle - 
Meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions, abstract design, sound, etc.), not just words.

21) "Material Intelligence" Principle - 
Thinking, problem-solving, and knowledge are "stored" in material objects and the environment. This frees learners to engage their minds with other things while combining the results of their own thinking with the knowledge stored in material objects and the environment to achieve yet more powerful effects.

22) Intuitive Knowledge Principle
 - Intuitive or tacit knowledge built up in repeated practice and experience, often in association with an affinity group, counts a good deal and is honored. Not just verbal and conscious knowledge is rewarded.

23) Subset Principle
 - Learning even at its start takes place in a (simplified) subset of the real domain.

24) Incremental Principle - 
Learning situations are ordered in the early stages so that earlier cases lead to generalizations that are fruitful for later cases. When learners face more complex cases later, the learning space (the number and type of guess the learner can make) is constrained by the sorts of fruitful patterns or generalizations the learned has founded earlier.

25) Concentrated Sample Principle - 
The learner sees, especially early on, many more instances of the fundamental signs and actions than should be the case in a less controlled sample. fundamental signs and actions are concentrated in the early stages so that learners get to practice them often and learn them well.

26) Bottom-up Basic Skills Principle
 - Basic skills are not learned in isolation or out of context; rather, what counts as a basic skill is discovered bottom up by engaging in more and more of the game/domain or games/domains like it. Basic skills are genre elements of a given type of game/domain.

27) Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time Principle - 
The learner is given explicit information both on-demand and just-in-time, when the learner needs it or just at the point where the information can best be understood and used in practice.

28) Discovery Principle - 
Overt telling is kept to a well-thought-out minimum, allowing ample opportunities for the learner to experiment and make discoveries.

29) Transfer Principle - 
Learners are given ample opportunity to practice, and support for, transferring what they have learned earlier to later problems, including problems that require adapting and transforming that earlier learning.

30) Cultural Models about the World Principle
 - Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about some of their cultural models regarding the world, without denigration of their identities, abilities or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models that may conflict with or otherwise relate to them in various ways.

31) Cultural Models about Learning Principle - 
Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about their cultural models about learning and themselves as learners, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models of learning and themselves as learners.

32) Cultural Models about Semiotic Domains Principle - 
about their cultural models about a particular semiotic domain they are learning, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models about this domain.

33) Distributed Principle
 - Meaning/knowledge is distributed across the learner, objects, tools, symbols, technologies, and the environment.

34) Dispersed Principle
 - Meaning/knowledge is dispersed in the sense that the learner shares it with others outside the domain/game, some of whom the learner may rarely or never see face-to-face.

35) Affinity Group Principle - 
Learners constitute an "affinity group," that is, a group that is bonded primarily through shared en devours, goals, and practices and not shared race, gender, nation, ethnicity, or culture.

36) Insider Principle
 - The learner is an "insider," "teacher," and "producer" (not just a consumer) able to customize the learning experience and the domain/game from the beginning and throughout the experience.

Gee also has a good site at http://www.jamespaulgee.com/.