Writing a Proposal

When writing my proposal I had to take three things into consideration.

1) Why do I want to use iPads in my classroom?
2) How will I use iPads in my classroom?
3)  What does my dean, who holds granting authority, need to see in my proposal so that she will grant me the funds?

Here is the finished product of my proposal.  I did it really fast in about four or five drafts over three or four days in April 2013.

Trust

I think the key to the whole thing was not just my proposal but my relationships.  My dean and especially the secretary that is administering things trusted me.  I think the key is trust.  I have been building on these relationships for years not knowing that the trust that has grown would ultimately be what brings forth the fruit.  This is not a manipulative sort of relationship.  This is just (hopefully) good people doing good work day in and day out.  The result is a trust.  Many of my colleagues do not take the time to go and talk to the dean and secretaries and then they wonder later why there is not an automatic trust when it is needed to accomplish a task.  Now I don't go "downstairs" to talk to people just so that someday they will give me what I want.  I just go because I like to talk to people and work on problems together rather than in isolation.  Well it pays off in unexpected ways.  The pay off is not for me.  The benefit is ultimately for my students.  I think in many ways that trust is a "good" that is its own end, something worth pursuing for its own sake, but going deeper on that subject is perhaps for another blog.

In the process of writing the proposal for my dean, my colleague Cheryl said, "Jeff, ask for 60 iPads, I want to be in on this too."  Now Cheryl has been a mentor to me for 16 years so I happily said yes.

Second Guessing

Many times early on I asked myself, "Do I really want to do this? This is going to take so much time!"  Now comes the selfish part.  I have been doing a lot of reading and going to conferences on the future of education.  I also read the book recently Who Moved my Cheese? Things are changing in education. At the time of this writing I am 48 years old.  I have a lot of semesters ahead of me, I hope.  I need to change.  Sometimes I wonder if "Bricks and Mortar" schools are going to go the way of Borders Bookstore.  So I decided that iPads is a good way to go.  But I have had a lot of second thoughts!

It's not about the technology....mostly.

When I first came to Cerritos College in the late 1990s the then College President billed Cerritos as "The Most Technologically Advanced College in the State."  Now nobody knew if this was true, but we almost unconsciously tried to grow into that moniker.  Much of our staff development was geared toward technology.  And one wise old friend, Kent Colbath, always said "Technology does not drive content; content drives technology."  I have always leaned on that statement.  But having said that, technology will allow us to go places that were never possible before.  It is sort of like how the growth in technology from a covered wagon to a Ford Model A to a 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 Berlinetta.  The Ferrari just gets you places you could not go in a covered wagon.  And it is much more fun too! So, yes it is all about the destination (learning chemistry!), but maybe the destination has changed just a little because the vehicle will take us where we could not previously have gone.

Why do this?

So where is the "there" that a Ferrari (iPad) can go that a covered wagon (books, pencil and paper) cannot?  After reading the books that I have posted as my favorite books on technology in education I have learned that technology can do two big things better than before.  We can soon begin to apply the algorithms used by websites like Google and Amazon to "individualize their marketing to our specific marketing "needs" to a student's individual educational needs and goals.  Technology will also allow students to "master" content before they move to the next level rather than move on after they have simply sat at a desk for a particular period of time.  I think mastery of content knowledge could really move us forward.

The second big thing that technology can do is what interests me the most and is what drives me to use iPads: the development and fulfillment of creativity.  My big goal with iPads is to have my chemistry lab students create new ways of presenting the information they generated in the lab.  Right now my lab reports are all hand-written in duplicate and can be up to 10 pages long.  I make them right detailed scientific discussions that analyze their results and integrate the practical lab findings with the chemical and physical theory behind the experiment.  My goal this semester is to have my organic chemistry lab students create multi-media lab reports or iBooks.  This can be done very well with the iPad and appropriate apps, like "Showme", "Touchcast", "iMovie", or "Bookpress" just to name a few.  So my main focus is going to be on the organization, creation and presentation of scientific reports using the iPad.

Most teachers know of Bloom's taxonomy.  Recently I found a modified Bloom's Taxonomy that elevated creativity to the highest level.

My colleague Cheryl Shimazu is mainly interested in the content uses of the iPad.  She is going to be using apps that illustrate molecules.  In her General Chemistry class she wants to use the iPads to illustrate concepts like the shapes of molecules and their bond angles.  There are lots of apps out there to do that.

Ok, one more thing.  I am in the middle of my career.  I have a long way to go.  I could start to "mail it in".  But I think I would be really bored.  And I don't think I would be doing much good for my students.  I have found that using these new tools to help students develop deeper creative and analytical skills has lit my own creative fire.  I am at times exhausted, trepidatious, and in way over my head, but I am having a delightful time of creating new (for me) ways of teaching and learning. I really enjoy watching the students go to a higher level than they thought possible.  Overall, I feel energized by being creative myself.  I have no problem saying I believe in a Creator God who created us to be creators ourselves.  In that understanding, I find tremendous fulfillment.

Some first steps at creations

In the Spring of 2013 I told my Organic Chemistry students that I wanted them to create a "digital lab report."  I was bad.  I gave them very little parameters.  I told them that they need to cover the same material as a written lab report in the same depth but it needs to be done electronically.  And by that I told them that I did not want a PowerPoint or Word doc.  I did not tell them how long to make the report or exactly how to do it.  I said they could use pictures, video, voice etc.....Go!  Here are some of the results:  here, here, here, here.  I was quite impressed with their efforts and resourcefulness.  I had many more that were just as good.  When I saw how well they explained these difficult concepts I was hooked.  I showed them to my colleagues at a division meeting and they were very impressed too.  I believe that when they use their voice to explain difficult concepts it is a demonstration that they possess the knowledge. Talk about assessment!  I do not plan on getting rid of writing detailed lab reports.  I highly value writing.  But I plan to balance it out with multi-media reports done on the iPads. When I asked the students about the experience, they said it was very hard.  The hard part was learning the technology like Camtasia for example.  But they felt like they really understood the chemistry at a new level.  I am hoping that the iPads will ease the technology difficulty so that they can really focus on presenting the science.

What?

Here is what my college ordered for me and my colleague through our stem grant:

60 iPads
2 smart carts
8 MacBooks (two to run the iPads and six for students to edit video and create iBooks.)
2 Apple TV devices (these are to connect the iPads with the projector in the classroom.)
All of the supporting cables and connectors.

The price was around 1000 per iPad.

How?

As I said above, my main use of the iPads is as a tool to help students create content.  My colleagues main goal is to have students utilize and manipulate content which already exists on various apps.  My proposal outlines more of the details.




y do this?