Security! Security! Security!

So I had my first breach of contract this week on my iPod touch contract. Two breaches, really. The kids took the iPods home to do their video homework, and I had two girls come in the next day without their homework but with iPods with nearly dead batteries. Hmmmm, I thought.

The first flag was that they had changed the settings on the iPods to have a beautiful flowery background rather than the number of their iPod. This was a problem. The kids signed a contract saying that they wouldn't change the settings, and these kids had. (The ipods have numbers as their backgrounds so that I can instantly see what number iPod that I'm using. I also don't want the kids to personalize the iPods because I don't want them to start thinking that these are theirs.)

The second flag was the dead batteries without the homework.

So I went into the internet icon on their iPods, and there was no history. Hmmmm, I thought. What on earth were they doing? Oh, they cleared the history.

What they didn't realize is that there is a separate history for Youtube. And I went into the Youtube app, and sure enough, they had had the time of their lives watching videos all night long.

Now let me say this. I want my kids to have internet access at home, and many of them can't afford home computers. So if a kid takes home my iPod touch and has wireless access at home, I'm all for them surfing away on the web. My students are normally so NOT tech savvy that any trouble they get into is more accidental than anything else.

However, in this case, I was livid. These are two of my lowest students. They make the least effort of all the students in my class in terms of studying and advancing outside the class. And the fact that they had taken home the technology and then used it to watch Burmese videos all night rather than at least trying my homework made me rather angry. And on top of that, the fact that they had changed the settings on their ipods when they had signed a contract promising (among other things) that they wouldn't, also had me rather angry.

I got a professional translator on the phone because I wanted to be clear. I explained that they had violated the terms of the contract that they had signed and that there would be punishment accordingly (they lost free time and had to "pay" me a computer card that they would normally get to use during free time). Then, I asked them about the homework. And the one student (the stronger of the two) actually told me that she didn't know how to use the camera, so she didn't know how to do the homework. I was born on a Saturday, but it wasn't last Saturday. I actually have my students do a practice run or two for their homework and then show it to me in class to make sure that I know they know how to use the technology. Add to that the fact that she had managed to find Burmese music videos all night on Youtube, and she had changed the settings on the phone, and it was just a big, fat lie.

Long story short, they were punished. The rest of the class knew what was going on because I wanted them to know how seriously I took this. But really, what was most revealing to me was the character of the student in that moment. I think the lie is more disappointing to me than anything else.

On another note, I'm going to be posting some iPad apps and activities (and iPod activities) that I'm developing for my kids in the upcoming weeks. The kids just finished their first iMovies, and those are published to Schooltube. It's amazing to see how far they've come.

Ipods and Ipads and all kinds of fun.... oh my....

I spent last night pondering ways to make my students speak English after they leave my classroom. I love homework. I especially love homework when it has more of a purpose than just assigning homework for the sake of having homework. On the other hand, there are days when I do want to assign homework just for the sake of it. I want homework to be the norm and expectation in my class, not something unusual. I think the iPods are going to make it just that.

We are studying adjectives right now. I usually do this in conjunction with some sort of a content-area lesson, but this time I'm just studying adjectives for the sake of studying adjectives. Of course, later on they'll need these words when we are comparing things in science or talking about different countries in social studies, but for now we're just learning some adjectives.

So this morning I had them build a vocabulary notebook of some adjectives I think are most common. We took pictures from a photo dictionary and pasted them into their notebooks, and they wrote the adjectives next to the pictures. Then, we dug through some other magazines to find the words that had not been listed in their dictionaries. Students got to present their photo concepts of young and old and short and tall to the class. We followed that with some practice constructing some sentences orally. "The baby is young. The mother is old." We're not doing comparatives yet. We are just learning the vocabulary.

And then the cool part. I challenged the kids to take their iPod touches somewhere in the room and to videotape themselves making a comparison. They could do any of the vocabulary that we had done in class that morning, and they came up with some good stuff. The keys were to find two things and then orally compare them on the video so that they could be heard clearly saying the sentences. The kids really got a kick out of it.

Homework? Five more comparisons at home tonight. And they have to teach at least two of those words to someone in their family. I'm checking on the video comparison, not on the teaching. But I think it will be good.

So many presentations, and never enough time...

...and the weather of New Orleans is incredible. We spent the afternoon out for a trolley ride, but I'm back at the TESOL conference for a great presentation. I have so many things I'd like to learn about technology now that the iPads and iPod touches have arrived in my classroom.

I should have videotaped the roll out of the iPads. I had a specific plan for them, but I can't remember what the plan was now. I just remember the excitement. And the fact that I told the kids before I handed them out where the magical black button is on the iPad that makes all things go, but some were sp excited that they didn't listen. The despondency over not being able to figure out how to make it "go" immediately was amazingly sweet. And then I gave them about 10 minutes just to play with the apps that I had loaded onto the machines. Amazing excitement.

This week, we got out the iPod touches. The cool part? They have two cameras on them. It's a whole new world for the kids. They took their cameras home for two days this week to get pictures for a project we would be doing at the end of the week, and one student took 293 pictures and a couple of great videos in two days time. I can't imagine what kind of language this is going to generate.

While I'm in TESOL, the kids are making movies of their lives using the photos they took at home. I can't wait to see what they have come up with.

Reporting in from TESOL. More tomorrow.