Teaching with Technology

Why Classroom Management Software?

Imagine a telephone, The New York Times, a dozen magazines, stacks of CDs, a video game console and a pile of personal mail delivered to each student desk every morning. No educator would tolerate it, yet every day students sit down in front of machines that allow them to talk to anyone in the world, read the news, listen to music, play games or read personal mail in the classroom. Students have never had more access to so much - both good and bad.

Educators know that creating an orderly and safe environment is essential for student learning. The strategies educators use to manage student behavior and create successful classroom environments have changed dramatically over the last decade with the introduction of computers into the classroom.

Classroom management used to simply mean the external cues to influence student behavior - the physical arrangement of the desks and the routines and guidelines established to ensure a productive learning environment. The challenge of teaching in a technology environment requires new tools and strategies.

The answer to this challenge lies in classroom management software, which provides the tools teachers need to guide student learning on computers. Classroom management software gives teachers the power to engage and inspire students while teaching easily and effectively with technology.

Well, tradeshow number three is concluding today. I’m excited for all of our travelers to return to the office so I can get the scoop on how things went. I was nervous sending them off, and I am anxious to hear the comments as they return.

Our product marketing manager, Chris, and our East Coast sales rep, Sam, were in Massachusetts and New York for just over a week. I woke up to my cell phone ringing on Sunday morning. It was Sam, calling from New York.

“Wanna hear some good news?” I know Sam, and I knew this was not, in fact, going to be good news. “We had to take the train instead of the plane because of the storms on the East Coast. Don’t worry, we only lost one bag.”

Oh, great, just one bag? Too bad it was the bag with all of the booth equipment in it. Our three giant banners that cover up the standard conference draping. Our two literature stands that hold our software data sheets. Our table drape that covers the bare counter at the conference. Our popcorn that advertises the Vision movie to hand out. Oh, just that bag? Perfect. No worries, then.

Sam took pictures and sent them to my cell phone. The Massachusetts show looked beautiful. So GenevaLogic, so put-together, so perfect. The New York show? Hideous green and purple drapes, a short table draped in black instead of the maroon GenevaLogic-draped counter, no literature stands. I was, and still am, horrified.

I’ve decided it’s true: no matter how much you plan, inevitably things still go wrong. I’m glad it was Sam and Chris; they’re a great team that can handle anything and I’m sure they still did a wonderful job. At least they were wearing their GenevaLogic polos. I can’t wait to hear the stories when they get back and I extend my deepest apologies to anyone who stopped by the booth at the New York show - the color scheme was a nightmare.

GenevaLogic is hitting the road! I joined the GenevaLogic team in October and could not be happier to represent our products and help our regional account managers travel the country to share them. We’re going to six shows in November and December which will take us from New York to Tennessee to Minnesota and back home again. I just posted our tradeshow schedule through the end of the year to the web site; I encourage you to check it out and see if we’ll be near you. We love to meet our customers in-person and chat, or meet educators who are just curious about GenevaLogic and talk about ways Vision6 or our other classroom management tools could benefit you.

We will also be at eleven shows in January, February and March of next year; I’ll post those shows to the web site in December. If you’ve been wondering how classroom management software can help you to better teach with technology, there’s no time like the present. Stop by and say hello. We’d love to see you.

Best regards,

Jessica

Although GenevaLogic gets lots of great feedback from teachers who love using Vision classroom management software in their classroom or computer lab, it can sometimes be difficult to convey the full impact of Vision to someone who hasn’t used it. With that in mind, GenevaLogic decided to make a film this summer that shows how Vision works in a real classroom. We were delighted when the Lake Oswego school district agreed to let us use one of their computer labs for filming over the summer break. Even better, Larry Zurcher, who teaches technology classes in the district, agreed to star as the teacher in the film so that we could capture the way a real teacher uses Vision in his classroom. 

   Larry was incredibly patient throughout a lengthy film shoot which lasted from 8:30 in the morning to 9:00 at night. We were all impressed with his ability to entertain and instruct our twenty-five student volunteers as together they re-enacted a typical day in the life of a technology teacher. Although the students had fun playing video games in between filming, it was fascinating to see how rapidly their attention returned to their teacher when Larry used Vision to blank their computers screeens and lock their keyboard and mice. Everyone at GenevaLogic is very grateful to Larry, to our student volunteers, and to the Lake Oswego school district for their wonderful support. We’d also like to thank our director, Curley Johnson, and the whole team from @Large Films for their very professional work. The “Release Date” for our film is October 1st — look for it on our web site at www.genevalogic.com — but in the meantime, here are a few pictures showing the classroom in action.

I found this interesting article from Andrew Zucker on the Internet. We here at GenevaLogic are heavely interested in feedback and research reports about 1:1 computing since we believe that this model will have a huge impact on classroom management and teaching in general in the future. Therefore we are already putting a lot of effort and time in investigations and research for the futher development of our products toward supporting extensive 1:1 use of computers in school.

Here the report from Andrew Zucker: Lessons_Learned_Brief.pdf

One of the things I like best about attending conferences is the opportunity to speak directly with educators who are using classroom management software to enhance their ability to teach with technology. This year at NECC I was particularly impressed by the positive feedback on GenevaLogic’s Vision6 classroom management software. There were many teachers and technology coordinators who stopped by the GenevaLogic booth to let us know that they had recently made the decision to adopt Vision6 and were delighted with the results they were seeing in their classroom. I had a chance to speak at length with Becki Teague, the Coordinator of Instructional Technology for Edmond Public Schools in Oklahoma, who joined us for dinner one evening. She has championed the use of classroom management software within her schools because of the ability that it gives to teachers to demonstrate lessons directly on the student’s computers, as well as the control that it provides over student computer activity. The Edmond school district is growing rapidly, and wants to take advantage of new methods for teaching with technology. After working with Vision for several years, Becki was convinced of the benefits of classroom management software and made the decision this spring to expand their adoption of Vision6 to all the junior and senior high schools within their district. It was such a pleasure to meet Becki in person, and to hear from her, and from so many other educators at NECC about the difference Vision6 is making in their classrooms!

Here some short information about recognized products or services of the second day:

NetTrekker – a platform that qualifies Internet content and sites in terms of quality and relevance for kids and indexes it so that kids easily can surf and search appropriate and good content. I think this is an interesting approach and we discussed with them how we could integrate this in our SurfLock2.

One-to-one Computing – we had a nice diner the evening with our key partners and customers. One issue we were discussing was a 1:1 computing program (every kid has in school a computer) about 2 years ago and the key results of a concrete test program over this time was the following:

1. The kids reacted very positively. The district had almost no damages on the computers.
2. A big problem is the battery! And I have to admit that I never thought about that. But after 1.5 years the district had to replace all batteries which was very costly and not foreseen. Also there is a time problem in class that after 2 to 3 hours the batteries have to be changed.

The district now has put the project on hold till these problems are solved.

EarthWalk – Interesting mobile classroom solution specifically designed for notebooks in school. The system has a special Cart with battery charging system and also a battery changing device. Also they have developed a special battery for the notebooks with guaranteed power for at least 8 hours.

I arrived on Tuesday night after a chaos flight through Dallas (heavy thunderstorms) here in San Diego. On Wednesday I had the first day at the exhibition. NECC 2006 is definitely bigger than the last years show and having Adobe, Autodesk and other big players on the exhibition shows that the education market definitely gets more momentum. What I can see from a first glance at some of the buzzwords at booths is the following key issues addressed:

• Web collaboration platforms between students, teacher, parents and school administration
• Wireless classrooms are one big trend – tablet PC’s!
• Supervising all computers in districts and schools

And there is a clear momentum for classroom management software like Vision.

Also very interesting is the fact that after the rumour it is now clear that Danware is no more represented by Crosstec in the US. According to official information in talk with people from Crosstec they now offer an OEM version of NetSupport School instead.

I had a very interesting talk with a happy customer addressing the issue of supervising not only the classroom PC’s. It became clear that a key issue for schools and administrators is to supervise all computers in a school environment. What is going on at the library PC’s? Who is trying to reach this forbidden site? What is Peter again doing knowing that he is not the easiest kid in school? To monitor and to log all the activities and to be able to prove misuse are issues that we will address with a new and innovative product called “On-Sight” coming soon in early next year.

Although jetlag is kicking in it is great to be out in the “field” and talking to our customers!

My vision is that technology in education will become both ubiquitous and invisible at the same time. That education through technology will become the great liberator and equalizer, helping teachers of every culture, geography and discipline ensure, not that no child is left behind, but that all children are brought forward. That the potential of technology will be fully realized where every student has access to an education, every teacher feels confident in their use of technology and learning opportunities that could not have been thought possible to my generation will be common place to children of all future generations.

My vision is that no teacher should fear technology, be threatened by it or replaced by it. That the integration of technology into the classroom will be as easy and as necessary as the use of a pencil or book is now.

Today many educators view technology as the proverbial glass half full, a promise yet to be kept or at best a work in progress. Edward R. Murrow once said, “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box”. He was speaking of the television in 1958, but the same could be said of the computer in today’s schools.

Some educators have made great strides with technology, yet many barriers lie before us. Computers are too expensive, content consists of a patchwork of offerings, the computer learning environment is not universally reliable and most teachers still feel uncomfortable trying to manage technology in the classroom. In time these barriers will fall but the questions of when and how are not easily answered.

My vision is to accelerate the removal of these barriers, but I am a realist. I cannot lower the cost of computers, I am not in the business of creating content and I cannot train every teacher how to combine curriculum with technology. My contribution is to help create tools that make technology easier to use for teachers. To that end the measure of my success will not be the amount of sales GenevaLogic generates, the growth in the monetary value of the company or how well our products compare to the competition. The measure of my success will be how many teachers and students derive benefit from technology through the use of our products.

At the beginning of this article I said my vision was that someday technology in education would be invisible. It sounds like a strange concept, to make something with so much potential benefit irrelevant. But that would miss the point. The technology, the wires, the pixels, the disk drives and all the rest are just tools. Their relevance lies not in that they exist at all, rather, their relevance is determined by how those who educate and those who learn use them. If we, who are in the business of developing technology for educational purposes succeed in putting the focus on the educator and the learner then we succeed in realizing the full benefits of technology in education. That is my vision.