What Happens When Students' Hard Work on a Screencast is Lost!

Near iPad "Meltdown!" (But Everything Turned out ok)

I wanted to continue what I started with my General Chemistry Students last week when we created ShowMe screencasts of Lewis dot structures.  (See previous post)  This time I wanted the students to create  a screencast of Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion (VSEPR) diagrams.  I needed to lecture for about an hour and then I figured it would take about one and a half hours for the students to create their screencast.  I have the luxury of teaching the same students for lecture and lab.  I had some extra lab time that I could "steal" from in order to do the productions. I also continued to use the app Mols Editor to have the students draw in 3-D what they were drawing on paper.  The assignment I gave the students was to create a 5-7 minute screencast of a specific VSEPR structure and include a "screen capture photo" of their model made on Mols Editor. (I showed them how if you hold the two buttons on the iPad down at the same time and then release them it takes a picture of whatever is on the screen and sends it to the photos.) They were to work alone.  Students need lots of practice drawing these structures (you will soon see that turns out to be a prophetic statement).  There are specific rules and ways to draw in 2-D on paper what are in reality 3-D molecules. So I had them draw a quick sketch of their structure using the iPad and stylus and then come up and compare it with my answer key.  If they received approval they could go on with their screencast.  I suggested they use ShowMe like they did the previous week.  They seemed eager to do this assignment and off they went in the hallways, adjacent rooms and one student even set up her "studio" under her desk.  I gave them a little critique on their previous work.  One of the big problems is that the students just did not talk loudly enough.  Again this is a problem when you have a room full of students recording at the same time.  But they are figuring it all out.  This time I also gave them a rubric and told them that they would get up to ten points for their effort.  Here is the rubric:

Rubric for student created screen cast 10 points

Content
Accuracy	3 points
Depth and quality of explanation	2 points
Presentation
Clarity of voice  Appropriate volume, natural sounding, not scripted	2 points
Clarity of drawing	2 points
Use of color and effects (text, photos, arrows etc. where assigned or appropriate)	1 points

Before I talk about the near disaster of a morning that it was I need to reflect on my rubric and grading in general.  Previously I wrote about assessment and evaluation.  Sometimes I wonder if we overgrade students.  What I mean is this.  Does every last piece of student work need to be graded?  What does it communicate to the students if we have to give points for everything?  What does it communicate to the students if often times or some times we don't give them any points at all for their work?  In this current situation I  was forced to wonder why I decided to give points.  Was it because I felt like I needed to motivate them?  Is telling students, "This assignment is worth 100 points or worth 10 points"  a good way to motivate students?  The reason why I am questioning my motives is because I think they would have given this project just as much effort had I not said anything about points.  I wonder if it would have taken pressure off of the students and give them more freedom to create. I wonder if I spoiled a sense in their mind that started the previous week when I just said "Here is the tool, go create!"  I wonder if I popped a bubble that I did not even know had been filled, and we all came back to the ground with, "Oh, that's right I am going to be judged on the quality of my work."  Had they for just a moment found the perfect joy of simply learning for its own sake?  I don't really know the answer to that.  On the other hand they may have needed a rubric to give them a set of standards to aim for.  I think I might need to ask them.

Nevertheless my students set off with much vigor.  

And then it started to happen.

I had a student come up and tell me that they were unable to log into ShowMe and that there screencast was not saved.  Then another student came up and said they could not upload to ShowMe and their work was lost.  Then another and then another.  As this was happening many of the students just went ahead and made another one and then another and another. When I finally decided to go onto the ShowMe website, it would not load  onto my browser.  It seemed as though there was a problem with the website and my students' work was repeatedly lost.  I felt pretty bad.  And the minutes ticked on.  We burned through the entire three hour lab period. None of the students would not give up.  I had to kick them out of class to go get lunch.  I had originally intended to do lab during the shorter lecture period.  But I decided I wanted to give the students a chance at success.  

I was not sure how they would respond.  I could tell some were getting pretty frustrated.  So it was time for some silly humor!

Earlier in the week I met with my son Sam's 6th grade teacher for the quarterly parent teacher conference.  She told me about an app called Tellagami:

What an app!  You type in text and an instant animation is created.  You get to choose things like gender, hair color and voice but the animated person speaks whatever was typed.  There is a typed character limit of around 500.   Here is the quick, goofy Tellagami I created to tell my students what I had decided to do:

You can also go to this URL to see it.  It is worth it, I assure you.  But I warn you, you will want to download the app and start making these animations yourself!

https://tellagami.com/gami/ZJN1H8/

My wife Lisa thinks it sort of looks like me.  I even chose a downcast emotion. Can you tell?

So we burned up the hour and 45 minute lecture period.   After about three and a half hours, much longer than expected, all but two students sent me a link to their screencast.  The last two spent about another 45 minutes trying to upload.  In all some students performed their work up to 5 or 6 times!  I guess they got lots of practice.  I was impressed with their persistence for sure.  Seventeen students stayed with ShowMe and nine decided to use the similar app Educreations. As before I sent them a URL of a Google form in which to put the link to their screencast.  I also ask them questions like "Rate the experience" or "Rate the use of the app." Even after a stressful day for me the students still seemed quite positive.  There was only a small number of students, about two,  that were very frustrated or negative. One said, "I used to like iPads, now I hate them."  But she had a wry smile.  So after a day in which I felt like I as a teacher did very little "teaching of chemistry" I was quite worn out.

Here is an example of the day's work creating VSEPR Diagrams

Assessment and iPads: Questions, Questions, Questions!

How do we know what students know?

That is the million dollar question isn't it.  How much money is spent trying to figure out what our students have learned?  How much political wrestling between states and districts go into trying to see what is in the heads of the students?  How do we measure knowledge?  What do we measure?  Should we use multiple choice tests?  She we make students write essays?  Should we make students perform?  Do we try to find out how much a student has memorized?  Or do we want students to utilize knowledge and demonstrate their reasoning?  Those are the big questions that drive educational discussion.

I was told by my own high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Rice,  when I went back to teach at my own high school in Downey California, "The pendulum always swings from one extreme to the other.  When you get hit by the pendulum three times, it's time to retire!"

Being born in 1965 makes me not quite a baby boomer and not quite a generation x'er.  I am often stuck in the middle of extremes, so I will go with balance between different approaches to things.  I like to use multiple measures in multiple situations.  Here at Cerritos a few years ago we used the term "visible knowledge".  I like that term, knowledge I can see.  We began a conversation  ten years or so ago about learning outcomes which at the time it seemed related to visible knowledge.  Our learning outcomes for students were things that they would create, that would demonstrate their knowledge.  It was a product we could look at that maybe collected different types of work that we could look at from different angles.  This work would show knowledge but also present it in a larger, more whole way.  When I taught high school we used portfolios as a way to evaluate student growth and knowledge.  Portfolios were collections of "best work" that were diverse enough to give us a big picture view of the student.  It showed how well the student could integrate knowledge from different areas and present it in different ways.  A good analogy would be an artist's portfolio.  A good portfolio would demonstrate that the artist has multiple skills and maybe even could tie different works together with a common theme.  Portfolios also gave students a sense of accomplishment.  It was not just some score on a multiple choice exam.  It was tangible.  It was visible knowledge.

It seems as though the outcomes discussion has taken us away from integrated tangible demonstration of knowledge and brought us to discrete learning objectives that are just like those I used when I first started teaching high school 25 years ago. Duck, the pendulum is coming!

But maybe with innovative technology we have began to find our way back to balance.

iPads will not solve every problem.  Ha! Indeed, hey will create new ones.  Nevertheless the technology will allow us to jump ahead, and by trying new means of assessment and evaluation we might be able to bypass some of the arguments that have been blocking our progress.  Innovation often does that.  I would like to take a minute to define some terms.

Authentic

I like structures assessment that have two characteristics.  1) The form of assessment should not be that different from the actual learning experience.  For example, we don't normally teach in a multiple choice setting.  In many of my educational experiences I was "taught" by a lecture and then I was evaluated by a multiple choice exam.  Many times the questions were not even related to what was covered by the lecture.  Here is an example an authentic form of evaluation.  Students in a lab may perform several lab techniques to solve different practical problems.  In an evaluation or exam or test a student would be given a similar assignment that may involve needing to show mastery of one or more of the techniques learned over the semester and one or more of the algorithmic problems.  The test may even integrate several techniques and require utilization of several types of the reasoning skills learned and use these to solve a new problem.  2) It should be difficult to tell the difference between "normal" everyday learning and when the process of evaluation is happening. In real authentic evaluation, the method of measuring knowledge is so close to the method of instruction that an outsider cannot even tell the difference?  Even more the students' knowledge may increase during the authentic evaluation.  Learning never stops.  I don't think multiple choice testing, although there is a place for this, is very authentic.  I think it is quite different from the teaching and learning experience and I don't remember learning much during a traditional exam.  Imagine learning just as much during a test as you did at any other time during the class.  Please bear with me for a couple more definitions.

Evaluation vs. Assessment

So far I have not distinguished between assessment and evaluation.  So let me do that now.  I will just give you the way I use these terms and hopefully you will thoughtfully consider how you use them.  I think that although evaluation and assessment overlap, they are different.  For me evaluation is a test or exam or assignment that gets graded.  I am evaluating the student's progress or knowledge at a particular point or over a particular period of time.  Assessment to me goes on constantly.  Assessment tells me how well I, the teacher, am doing.  Do they seem to "get it".  Is my method of teaching working? Do the students understand?  So assessment could be looking at the level of performance on an exam and saying, "Too many performed poorly on that question, I better reteach it or find some  other way to help them do what I want them to do."  Perhaps I am assessing an assignment and how well they learned what I wanted them to learn or maybe I am assessing a book to see if they learned from what they read.  Often I ask questions in the middle of a lecture or lab to see if the students are understanding.  I read their body language, I walk around the room to see what they have on their paper, or iPad.  If I am not satisfied I make the change.  To me that is assessment.  Evaluation is for the grade.  Assessment is a gauge to see how my current students are learning in the current environment and situation. Assessment and evaluation overlap.  But that is how I distinguish between the two.  Assessment is not a euphemism for the dreaded examination,  a euphemism we will just have to replace in five years.

Formative vs. Summative

What I am describing as the day to day minute by minute checking on my students is what I think many people call formative assessment.  I am assessing how my students are "forming their knowledge" and figuring out what I can do to improve that learning process.  For me, formative assessment demonstrates that teaching is all about the relationship between the student and the teacher.  It is a both/and process.  And it is balance.  As a teacher I must know my students and care about them.  I am so profoundly grateful that at the place where I teach the previous sentence describes what drives the vast majority of my colleagues!  Teaching and learning is a relational experience.  So let me say loudly technology is not a substitute for the relationship between the student and the teacher!  For me summative evaluation is that test or assignment that gives me the big picture view of a student's knowledge and output over a broader period of time.  The summative evaluation could be an exam at the end of a few weeks or it could be a project we have been working on for some time.

Good people disagree on all of this.  I am just sharing my own experiences.

Finally, to the iPads!

Today was another big day for me because I gave my first "digital quiz" in my Organic Chemistry lab.  At the end of each lab experiment every professor in our chemistry department gives a lab quiz on the previous week's experiment.  Today I "cracked the mold" a bit.  I have stated in this journal before that I think it is good if students not just write their responses to questions but also get to explain audibly what they have learned.  I think it uses a different part of the mind and requires different kinds of thinking and different skills.  It seems to me that the students think that when they talk with their voice, they better know what they are talking about.  So in today's quiz I asked my students some of the same questions I might ask them on a common paper quiz but this time they had to create a screencast using their voice, photos, drawings and text.  They were told to use the Explain Everything app to make the presentation and them upload it to Youtube.  I knew this might be stressful for some.  So, for the first quiz like this I let them choose if they wanted to work alone or in pairs.  I also let them use their lab notebook but not the lab textbook.  I gave them 60 minutes to make a 5-7 minute presentation.  Here is a copy of the quiz: (If you click on the image of the quiz you can get a larger readable version.)

As you can see I included a rubric.  I will talk about rubrics in a minute. But when I handed out the quiz I tried to use a little humor to keep the students from getting too stressed out.  I want them to keep thinking that they have a good chance to succeed.  If that is the case then the stress level will be lower.  I also think trust is important here.  When doing something new like this I think the students have to trust that I am not going to destroy their grade.

As soon as the students got the quiz and understood the expectation they really got serious and started having an intense discussion.  I was quite surprised by this.  They took this very seriously and their discussions went to a very deep level.  That does not frequently happen in the lab setting.  I could tell they wanted to get it right.  And since they both had to talk on the video, they both had to understand and agree on what they were saying.  I think the team approach went much further than I had expected.  They also planned out their presentation.  They made a rough outline and tried to be organized. I was very impressed by this effort.  They really dug in and invested 100%. Not only did this exercise allow me to have an end product that I could assess and evaluate but being able to watch the process the students went through was a huge added bonus! Visible knowledge.

Rubrics

So what is good work?  What is an A or a C?  For me that might be the hardest question I as a teacher have to answer.  Most teachers I know take that very seriously.  But it kind of boils down to another question:  "What do I expect of my students?" Do I really know what I expect of my students?  Do my students know what I expect of them?  Those last two questions really get at the heart of the matter.  I want to have realistic expectations and I want my students to know very clearly what those expectations are.  Now, I have to make a huge confession.  This is a hard one.  I have to say that when I try something new, I don't always know what I really expect and I don't always know how to tell my students very clearly what my expectations are.  Usually the first time I have tried some innovation in my teaching I did not do a very good job of telling my students what I expect.  I must say that over the last 25 years I have had the priveledge of working with some of the finest young students!  So being purposely vague with my expectations has often worked.  I have gotten some very good work.  Some of that work I have displayed in this blog.  But once I have seen what top students can do I think it is my responsibility to communicate what good work is to the students that might not have performed as well.  So I usually make a rubric from the best student work the previous time I assigned it.  Sometimes I am purposely vague so the students have to reach high and use their creativity.  Today with so many new forms of technology and new types of skill that my students have I want to see what they come up with.  Maybe they will think way outside of my box.  They might come up with something way better than I ever imagined. Most of the time I am real clear on what I want so that every student has a clear understanding of my expectations.  Often I will show students an example of quality work.  I especially do this when it comes to writing lab reports.  I think one of the keys to life is having realistic expectations and communicating those expectations very clearly. So for a quiz like the one I gave today I tried to very clearly express my expectations.  Here are two examples of the students' work. There are some errors.  But remember they only had 60 minutes.  I am quite impressed with what they accomplished.  (Ok some of them took a little longer than an hour.)  But for the first time at this I thought they did a good job.








When it comes to learning and measuring learning iPads are just tools.  But sometimes tools can help us get much farther with them than we otherwise could have without them.  Technology is not the answer to all my questions.  But I think I see evidence of student learning and not only is this a good tool to evaluate their knowledge the very process itself of creating these screencasts was a wonderful thing to see.  I could witness the students learning as they were "tested".  So for me this was a form of authentic assessment even as it overlapped with evaluation.

Molecules!

Using an app to draw molecular models

My original plan was to use screen casting apps to have my Organic Chemistry Lab Students create "electronic" lab reports.  At the end of this post I will show you an example of one of the first efforts to do just that.  But I have found more success in my General Chemistry class using the apps to help the students learn content, specifically molecular shapes.  Today we used the app "Mols Editor"

to draw the VSEPR or "Valence shell electron pair repulsion" model of molecular structure.  The properties and function of a substance is determined by its molecular structure.  The shape is a significant contributor to both structure and function.  So it is critical that students develop the ability to look at the formula of a molecule and determine its three dimensional shape.  There are several apps available that allow one to build molecules and also see its shape in three dimensions.  Many of these apps are not easy to use when constructing molecules.  Others have big molecules and beautiful pictures of them that can be rotate but no building function.  I just wanted a simple app that allows us to build small molecules to look for specific shapes predicted by VSEPR theory such as linear, trigonal planer, tetrahedral etc.  After much searching I found it in Mols Editor.  With just a few taps on the screen one can build a structure and it is in the correct orientation.  Here is an example of building CF₄ :

As a chemist knows carbon can only have four bonds in a molecule like the one above. So each time an atom is "tapped" another atom is bonded to it.  However, the app will not let the student create more bonds for an atom than is chemically possible. So in the picture above we see the tetrahedral structure of many carbon compounds.  If the central carbon atom is tapped again the student gets a message box that tells the student that no more bonds can be made with that atom.  What is really good about this app is it lets students rotate the molecule with their finger and they can see the molecule from different angles.  I sent my students a quick survey on google forms asking them to rate the app for me.  They were all very positive in that it helped them see the structure.  The one downside is that the app does not provide the bond angles.  I really think this experience helped my students get a good foundation in VSEPR structures and I plan to use it again.

Small steps towards a digital lab report

As I mentioned, I wanted to have my Organic Chemistry students create lab reports that are digital using multimedia presentations.  The screencasting apps seemed like a very good tool to do this.  I gave my students the option of doing the traditional hand-written lab report or going electronic.  Only two students took me up on the offer to go digital.  I was surprised by this.  I think the hand written form is much harder.  I expect them to write a 1 1/2 to 2 page discussion with much deep analysis of the chemical concepts applied to the practical aspect of the experiment.  Nevertheless, 13 out of 15 chose to write.  I need to figure this out!  Maybe they are just fearful of the unknown. Maybe they are not sure of my expectations.  Maybe they are worried about their grade.  I need to have an honest talk with them.

I must first say that these are top-notch students.  I have had many of them in previous classes.  And I know their writing quite well.  This group is a selection of very good technical writers.  I have no problem if they write a few less lab reports in order to try to verbally explain their analysis in a screencast.  I just have to figure out how to get them over the threshold.

Here is one of the two "digital lab reports" I received today:

Chaotic but Productive Day!

Be specific

Things have not gone quite as well as I had hoped with my Organic Chemistry Lab class.  I have repeatedly encouraged them to try out different screencasting apps and create a digital lab report.  There are a couple of problems with this.  First, we are not allowing the students to take the iPads home with them.  This means that they don't really have enough time to put together a presentation in addition to all of the other things they have to do in the lab, like produce good experimental results.  Secondly, I have not been clear enough for many of them to know exactly what to do.  I just expected them to pick the iPads up and run with it.

So I decided to hand the iPads out to another set of students in which I have for both lecture and lab.  I gave them a very specific assignment:  make a ShowMe screencast of a Lewis Dot Structure for a specific molecule or ion.  I lectured for about an hour and then showed them a ShowMe I had created.  I assigned them a molecule and said, "Go create a lecture on how to draw the electron dot structure for your molecule.  The end product should be a screencast that is shorter than 5 minutes."  Silly me!  When I make a 4 minute screencast lecture it takes me all of...4 minutes! I suppose that is because I have been doing this for so long.  I figured I would give the students about 30 minutes and then we could go work on the lab. Ha!  It took some of them well over an hour, and I missed the faculty meeting!

The Students Took it Very Seriously

I like screencasting because it is a quick way to answer a student's question over the weekend that I cannot just answer in an email.  I whip out a screencast and post it for all to see.  In creating their screencasts my students really took their time.  They made several "takes".  They would mess up and then start all over.  I was really impressed by this.  One problem we had was lack of space.  How do 27 students all make a movie in one room?  So I told them to go out into the hall way and into the adjacent rooms to record.  It was quite a site to see them spread all over the building earnestly working at getting it just right.  The uploading process took a long time.  Each student had to sign up for their own ShowMe account. Then the screencast had to be put up onto the ShowMe website.  I wondered how much our building's wifi could actually handle...now I know!  Students had to "wait in line" to upload their screencast.  That took quite a long time.  It was funny seeing them walk around the room to find the best place to get a good connection.

Some of the students loved the process, others dreaded it.  I am starting to see which students could be the teachers in the bunch.  But I think they realized how much depth of understanding one must have in order to actually explain a chemistry concept in an orderly and understandable way.  I have told my students that "if you cannot articulate it, you don't understand it."  I think the screencasting method is a fantastic way to assess a student's knowledge.  And most of all I am seeing "mastery"  of the content not just coverage.

What I Learned from my "Gelato Guy"

Here in Fullerton where I live we had a gelato shop open up and it was fantastic.  I talked the owner one day into giving me a tour of the place.  When he talked he spoke like he really understood the chemistry behind the gelato.  I asked him about it and he told me that he had taken organic chemistry in two different languages!  (English and Italian)  He told me that in Italy his exams were oral.  He had to stand in front of the class and clearly answer the professor's questions and explain the concepts.  "When you have to explain a concept like Organic Chemistry in a foreign language, it proves whether you really understand it or not.  My gelato guy went on to medical school and became a doctor in Italy.  When he retired he studied gelato under the top gelato maker in Florence Italy.  He move to Fullerton and set up his shop.  He invited me to bring my students on a field trip.  What a wonderful day!  Boy, did they learn...and eat.  What a sad day it was when my gelato guy went to set up shop in Napa, California!  He hit the big time.

But my gelato guy taught me that the Italians are onto something, and not just gelato.  I think that if a student can clearly explain a difficult concept without a script, just like standing in front of the class at the whiteboard, then I think they really understand it.  What more of an exam do we need after that!  The iPads make this possible.  I don't have time to have each student come up one at a time in front of the class and explain a concept or problem.  But with the iPads it is possible.  And it is recorded for the long term.  Even better, if I had the student come up to the whiteboard they get one chance.  If they mess up too bad.  But with the iPads they can try over and over.  They can realize that maybe they don't understand it as well as they thought they did and they can study it better to be prepared to present their screencast.  I really think that in this way the technology can take us to a place we could not go before without it.  But there is a sacrifice.  Time.  How much time do I give to using the iPads?  Do I sacrifice lab time?   Do I cover less material in the lecture?  These are the difficult questions before me now.  I know the iPad is just a tool. The iPad is not an end in itself for me as a chemistry teacher.  The students' deep understanding of the chemistry content is the goal.  On the other hand, I learned something else from my gelato guy.  When the locals of fullerton realized how good he was at making gelato they brought him fruit from their garden and he made these wonderful desserts for the whole community to enjoy.  He created.  And I think that is where the iPad can take us that a text book and pencil and paper cannot.  I am watching my students create and I am allowing myself to create and in that way I think we are all a little more human.  My gelato guy taught me about the right mix of creativity and chemistry!

The Product

Here are a couple of the ShowMe videos that my students created today!





I suppose I could make a bunch of these videos myself.  But for some reason it is way more satisfying when my students produce them.

If all that weren't crazy enough...iOS7!

How was I going to update all these iPads to iOS7?  Would I have to update them all individually?  Is this the job for my IT superman Patrick?  I decided to google the term "Mass configuration iOS 7.  And it turns out that there is an app for the Mac called Apple Configurator.  I downloaded it onto the Mac Book Pro that I have dedicated to the iPad cart and simply followed the directions.  It was pretty intuitive.  It updated all of the iPads with a couple of exceptions.  One or two of them had to be restored.  This is a bummer because my students had saved pictures on those iPads.  I should have backed them up first.  Other than that the process was very simple.

Slow and Steady

Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration

One of the reasons we got 60 iPads is so that they could be shared amongst colleagues.  This week I witnessed my fellow teachers dive in to the iPad-in-the-classroom experience.  First, Michelle Navarro tried them out in her Biology class.  She asked the students to draw a "signaling pathway" using a whiteboard app.  The app was supposed to let two students work on the same drawing at the same time through bluetooth.  However, I think our internet blocks this from happening.  We are also unable to talk between iPad and Apple TV so we are unable to project the individual iPads wirelessly.  The students have to walk up to the front of the class and connect their iPad directly to the projector.  We are working with our IT department on this.  Anyway, when I visited Michelle's class the students were engaged even if not exactly as planned.

My other colleague Cheryl Shimazu used the iPads in her Chemistry 111 lab.  In this first semester General Chemistry class, she had the students use a "screencasting" app called ShowMe to perform and record a chemistry problem as they solved it.  They got so into it that the students and Professor Shimazu forgot about the time.  I came in to pay a visit at the time the class was supposed to be ending and they were still very much involved!  When Cheryl realized that class was already over it was quite a scramble to collect all of the iPads.  But just the fact that they forgot time tells me a lot.

So in both of these cases the planned activity took much longer than expected but the students appeared to be quite motivated and engaged.  This seems to be the theme with my own experience as well, which I will share later.

Nuts and Bolts

Obviously we need a system to make sure that these devices don't grow legs and walk away.  To keep it simple I assigned my students the same iPad.  The two sets of 30 iPads have different colored covers, red and gray.  So with a label maker we labeled the iPads 1-30 for red and the same for the gray iPads.  We put one label on the screen (not covering the view), one on the outside of the flap and one on the back of the cover.  We tried to make the labels look as professional as possible.  I think if it looks like we are taking good care of the iPads the students will too.  However, we picked a bright yellow label.

For the check-out sheet, I decided to go digital.  I thought it would be best to use a Google form to that the students could simply fill out digitally and send.  Michelle created the first one and I used her basic idea for my forms.  I made one for each class.  You can see the form I created below. (If you click on the image of the forms you get an enlarged version that you can actually read.)

The students fill this form out when they first get the iPad and then again when they return the iPad.  Their responses go directly into a spreadsheet in my Google Docs file.  Each response is time stamped so I can see which students have checked out and which have not.  I do not have to worry now about a piece of paper that I would probably lose.  Google Docs was so easy.  If you have never made one before get a gmail account, log onto Google Drive and start making forms.  It really is that easy.  You can choose to have the responses sent right into your Google Drive folder.  When I created the Google form a link to that form was created.  It is a really long link!  But if you go to Tinyurl.com you can paste  that long link into a box on the Tinyurl website, and bingo you get a Tinyurl!  that is the url that I gave the students.

There needs to be accountability.  So my colleague Michelle created a contract:

I included the tinyurl on the contract.  It was easy for the students to input this url into the web browser and go and fill it out.  But I don't want them to have to input this url every time they use the iPad.  There is this neat little trick with Safari on the iPad. There is a button in the top left corner with an arrow.  (On iOS 7 it is an arrow pointing up from a box)  Once you hit this button you will see this:

If you click on "set to home screen" you will see this page appear on the home screen amongst all of the rest of the apps on the iPad.  So this is a good way to save webpages you will go to often.  This way I don't have to put the web page of the sign in sheet on the web browser bar and the students don't have to input the url.

Although the contracts were paper, much of the rest of the "management" can be digital.  That way I have no forms or slips of paper to lose.  Thanks to my colleagues for the help and ideas.

In Styli

There are lots of kinds of stylus out there.  I decided to go with Griffin. It turned out to be well under ten dollars. (Thanks for finding that price purchasing department!)  I have had a Griffin for a long time and it seemed to be dependable.  I am sure there are others that are just as good, but I had to end the online research.  I should have ordered the styli months ago.  Not having them slowed things down.  But once we got them I had a student label them with the same bright yellow labels as the iPads.  I gave them the numbers 1-30 again.  These styli have a clip on them just like a ballpoint pen.  So I simply have the students hook the stylus over the flap of the iPad when they turn them in.  That was the best idea I could come up with.  At least I know if one is lost what number it was and can go back to the student.

Students are already starting to see the value of the iPad on their own

At the beginning of the semester I had this one student come up to me holding her own personal iPad.  She asked me if she could input all of her lab data directly on the tablet.  I usually require the students to go to my web page and print out the lab manual and bring it to each class.  She wanted to do it all electronically.  I remember telling her "No, I am just not there yet." But I think as soon as I got home I regretted that decision.  So the next week I told her that she could input her data onto the tablet.  The app she is using is "Notability".  That app allows you to import pdfs. and then write on them with a stylus or finger and it works just like writing on paper.  I think there are lots of issues to settle.  Could students then just email or post their work on line for the next group of students to just put on there iPad and then turn in as their work?  I need to work this all out but I think that more and more students will be bringing iPads to school and will want to use them to collect and record lab data.  Another issue is, how will this student turn in her work?  Will she email it to me?  Will she just end up printing it out anyway?  If she emails it will I have a management disaster trying to organize all of the student work?  How will I know that the work is original to the student?  Anyway, I decided to try it out now since it is only one student.