Swing Your Partner, Doceri-do

There are two hot trends in education today. One is flipping the classroom and the other is using iPads. Doceri is a way to combine both.

Doceri is a tool that allows you to remotly control your desktop via your iPad. It works in two parts, an app on your iPad and Doceri Desktop ($30). Through this application you can open files, look at pictures or surf the web, all the while projecting your findings through your classroom projector, without being tied to your desk.

Doceri has a drawing mode where you can openly write out mathmatical equations or diagram the phases of mitosis. You can choose different pen types, colors, and tip sizes to write on everything from a whiteboard to a map to a musical staff. Everything you write while in drawing mode (provided you don't erase anything) will be saved to your iPad as a image file and you can email them to yoruself as a PDF. My favorite part of this who thing, you know EXACTLY where you pen is while you are writing, unlike with a Slate or a Mobi.

But wait, there's more...

Now, I bet you are wondering where flipping the classroom comes in. Doceri has a record button. So, if you prepared a lesson a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation you can open the file on your desktop and controll the presentation through Doceri on your iPad. As you are presenting, hit the record button and it will record your presentation, any notes you wrote on the presentation and obvously, your lecture. Just e-mail, Post to YouTube or even integrate the presentation into some LMS like Canvas and viola you have just flipped your classroom.

Potential Pitfalls:

 There are two major pitfalls to working with Doceri. The first is Doceri only works one way. Meaning, you can view your desktop on your iPad but you cannot view your iPad apps on your desktop. If you want to display your iPad to the projector I know of only two ways to do so at the moment. AirPlay is one, which is costly and may not work with your district's network. I am not the most IT savvy person, all I know is it eats bandwith. The other way is through the WiPad. This dosn't work through AirPlay and works within the network, but it costs $300+. The final issue is you may experiance issues connecting Doceri within your district's network. Doceri uses the wireless internet to connect the iPad to the Desktop remotly, which the firewall sees as an invader and blocks it out. If your district is like mine it has several wireless networks to choose from, and some are less secure than others. I highly reccomend downloading the free version of Doceri Desktop and play around with your networks to see if you can find one where it may work.

Every Day I'm Tumblin'

Tumblr is one of the most popular micro-blogging sites for Middle to High School students around. It easily allows people to blog or re-blog pictures, quotes, videos, etc. Which the kids love because it allows them to express themselves in a highly visual and semi-artistic way.

So, why not use the students love of Tumblr to your advantage? One of the issues I always had with other blogs is that it it is difficult to follow people, you need to subscribe to a feed reader of some kind and it was always something I didn't feel like dealing with. Tumbr, allows you to see everyone you are following on your dashboard all at once. Which makes it more like using Facebook and easier to keep up to speed on what the students are posting.

So how can you use this in your class? Well, there are lots of ways, and you can leave it up to your imagination.

You can use your personal blog to post homework assignments, articles or videos of things you find interesting in your subject area. You can have students post pictures or video relevant to whatever content you are teaching, and then require commenting on other peoples posts. One assignment I did last year was with chemical and physical changes. I had my students search YouTube to find one video that showed physical change and one video that showed chemical change, WITHOUT using the terms physical or chemical change in the search. If I had been using tumblr at the time, I could have had my students post the video on tumblr and had their classmates debate, online what kind of change was occurring and how they knew that change was taking place.

If you teach a higher grade level and have multiple classes then this would be a good way to encourage communication across classes, which can increase student learning, especially if you teach varying difficulty levels.

Problems & Pitfalls

With introducing any main stream social media you will always encounter problems. From a classroom perspective, the biggest issue would be managing the student interactions. On Tumblr students can chat and email each other, which could be an issue with cyber bullying. Before you take on this project, enlist the students parents, and have the students review review the rules of nettiquette.

You will have to be diligent on making sure students are posting appropriate materials as well, this would be another good place to enlist parents help. Also, if your students already have Tumblr accounts, make sure they know they must have a separate account for school (or make the accounts for them) so their personal blogs are not linked with the school blogs. 

An unexpected problem you might encounter would be a block in your districts web filter. If this is something you want to use, and it is blocked by your district, you might want to talk to your network people and see if it can be added to the filter. I doubt this will happen since in most cases, to unblock it for you is to unblock it for everyone. I would suggest using it for homework or if you district is embracing BYOD then you can have the students download the app.

Using unorthadox technologies is not easy, there are a lot of problems that can occur. It is a matter of wether you think you and your students are up to the responsibility. However, the benefit of using a site like this is you engage the students and you get them excited about learning, with just the name of the website.