Creating Images in Google Forms
UPDATE: Right around the time of this post – Google released the ability to insert images into forms! However, you still cannot put images as choices in multiple choice categories, so this script will still help.
In the midst of our iPadpalooza Tshirt contest I was faced with a conundrum even Google couldn’t help me with. How do we post images to our forms so that people can vote? I thought about just sending the images separately with names and then having people open a Google Form to choose their choice based on names. That seemed terrible inefficient so I did a little bit of research and came across this guy’s blog: Making Technology Work at School
In the post he’s pretty much detailed how he wrote a script that will work for anyone out there just following his simple steps. I posted my own tips adding to his instructions here if you’d like to follow but want to make sure full credit is given to the original source. A note here – I’ve had some people reply that they are getting a “404 Source” error when using Chrome. You might want to try with a different browser if that’s the case. I used Safari with these instructions and it worked like a charm.
Since my district has some level of restrictions on publicly sharing folders/files, I did have to use a personal gmail account. You’ll be able to tell what restrictions your district has by step number three.
1. Log into your Drive.google.com account
2. Create a folder called “GFWI” (no quotes)- This is the folder that his script will pull images from.
3. Share the folder and make it publicly viewable on the web. If your district restricts this, you’ll have to go to a personal google account or create one. (maybe a “MyISDForms@gmail.com” type of account)
Note: Check your district settings on this
4. Inside that GFWI folder, make another folder called “img” (without quotes). It’ll have the same settings as the parent folder so no need to share that as well since the GFWI folder is already viewable by the public.
5. BEFORE you upload your images – a few tips – Make sure your images are 500 X 500 pixels or smaller. I uploaded some original images and they were WAY too big. I just threw mine into photoshop and resized them. Save them as .jpg and give them some easy file names before you move on to the next step of uploading.
6. Upload the images to the ‘img’ folder.
7. Make your form or add to a current form. Wherever you want the image to appear you’ll have to make a double bracket (i.e. [[imagename.jpg]] in the form itself. Since I was doing this for a vote, I just put those bracketed names in the multiple choice section.
8. Copy your live form URL.
9. Go to his form which will convert it and run the script here: http://goo.gl/RXToK
10. You will likely have to authorize at this point before going any further.
11. Paste your form URL into his script and it’ll run the conversion.
12. You’ll get a link to view the new form with images now embedded. That’s it!
Final form with images embedded as multiple choice
Are We About to Experience an Ed Tech Bubble?
In the late 90′s to around 2001, the internet boom was on. Venture capitalists were experiencing meteoric rises in revenue and stock prices because the internet was taking off all over the world. It seemed that this new avenue of commerce was as close to a “can’t lose” scenario when it came to investment. Back then, companies were funded on the idea that “growth of profits” would rule the day in this new economy.
Well, I’m here to tell you, I see another bubble coming and this one is in the Ed Tech market. I don’t have any hard evidence to support this theory other than my own experiences in the last 2+ years. There’s a lot of money in the field, as Bill Gates spoke of during his SXSWedu keynote, so everyone is trying to rush to market in order to capitalize. However, some signs are pretty glaring that this market place is about to implode. Let’s look at three examples of Ed Tech fields to see if these trends mirror those of the late 90′s.
Tablets
Early Apple Tablet
What was a blundering area of the tech market over the 90′s and first decade of the 2000′s has blown up all around us in education. Much of the reason for this can be singularly pointed to Apple’s launch of the iPad in 2010. For the first time, a consumer-centric device was useful enough and cost-effective for educational circles. Back then, there were really only a couple of choices on the market other than Apple’s iPad. The HP Touchpad with WebOS caught fire before quickly burning out in late 2011 and RIMs Playbook followed a similar trajectory and as of this year no longer exists. Little did we know this would just be the beginning.
Once the Android and Windows 8 operating systems caught hold, a whole new market of tablets hit the market place with furious demand. Nook, Kindle Fire, Samsung’s Galaxy, Microsoft Surface, Asus Transformer, and Google’s Nexus tablets now all hold some share of the consumer market but little break in educational circles to the iPad.
Enter the new world of the “educational tablet” with the LearnPad and Fox NewsCorp’s Amplify. These, and their consumer counterparts have all hit the market in the last 6-9 months and continue to increase at an exponential pace. Where the consumer models have some staying power over the long haul, the fickle purchasing of K-12 educational systems spells some rough roads ahead for those in this new educational tablet space.
The biggest reason? If we are focusing on authentic learning and digital wellness with our kids in the every day world, will that be able to happen on a tablet built to just be used K-12? Sure, tech directors get more control of the device and teachers can control the screens and learning from their desks, but isn’t that just a digital extension of the militarized structure of teaching we’ve had for hundreds of years? In the words of 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra, “We need schools…not factories”
Software/Apps
Back in the early 2000′s when I was teaching first grade, my software choices were pretty simple. I could go with a read and repeat type of game like Reader Rabbit or focus on creation using a tool like Clarisworks. In order to get some highfalutin software like Adobe Photoshop, it would take several committees, an act of congress and the blessing of the Pope to purchase it and add it to my 3 computers in my class. This process usually took about 2-3 years and tech departments banked on teachers becoming frustrated and giving up or the software becoming obsolete before it was even installed.
Welcome to the wild west of apps in 2013. All the sudden, having 10 CD’s or 30 floppy disks aren’t required to install software. In fact, most software isn’t even loaded at all, it exists on the web. Apps aren’t seen as software, but they are in essence. Of course, with apps, it only requires a quick couple of taps and BLAM!! Instant installation and gratification. This consumerization of IT has a lot of benefits to personalized and customized learning, but there is a downside. When are these apps and web tools being vetting for educational value? Who is making the district purchasing decision now?
It seems that in the last year especially, app and web-based tools are praying on the “first one is free” approach to break into school districts. I like the idea of organically grown tools being brought up by the end-users, but wonder if there isn’t some sort of legal line that’s being crossed in all of this. I mean, we had 80 teachers using Edmodo with their Eanes email address when Edmodo finally called me to say “Hey, we noticed a lot of your teachers using our product, want to have your own domain with us?” While Edmodo is a great (and free) service, many other companies are following that lead and giving away “30-seat classroom licenses” for free in the hopes that enough users getting hooked will over-power the purchasers.
With over a million mobile apps on the market, how can our teachers hope to sort through all of that to find relevant, useful educational tools? Add in the new tablets hitting the market, along with the expansion of Google Apps for Education, and the market is ripe to burst.
Learning Management Systems
The race to build the perfect LMS has almost become so flooded its hard to make sense of it all. This market place was dominated by two choices about 5 years ago: the paid route of Blackboard or the free route of Moodle. While Blackboard was still focused on higher ed, it was the first to really jump in with both feet in the K-12 market. However,unlike the tablet market, just because it was in there first, doesn’t mean it will win out.
While there it’s hard to determine how many K-12-centric LMS companies are out there now. Findings from this June 2012 Education Week study show that there 163 commercial educational LMSs and 66 Open source LMS platforms. Those numbers alone are staggering, but when coupled with the fact that I have personally seen at least 6 start-up LMS-based companies since then, tells me this market is over-flooded.
This level of healthy competition can spawn some amazing advances in a fairly dull field, but there is a lot of risk for the administrator taking a gamble on a company that might not be around in a couple of years. I think a company that is device-agnostic, web-able, and inexpensive on a per-user basis has a firm ground to stand on in K-12 space. But in terms of staying power, it has to be transformative for teaching and learning, not just digital extensions of the classroom.
Summary
What does all this mean for us in the Ed Tech field? It’s obvious the iron is hot. As Gates said in his keynote, there is upwards of $9 Billion dollars available in this market place so someone is going to grab a large slice of that pie. The question for the users and purchasers of these devices and software packages is, will it have any level of sustainability? Does that even matter any more? Maybe instead of looking for stable-long term solutions, we need to start being more flexible and able to pivot when the situation calls for it.
Then again, we are in education and the reality is this growth is exciting but while the Ed Tech marketplace is exploding, we need to take the focus off the “what” and focus more on the “why” when it comes to anything we do. That’s the key to surviving any future bubble that might be coming our way.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some .cwk files that need converting…
Tragedy and Technology – What Roles Should Schools Play?
The Boston Marathon bombing was a tragic event for a myriad of reasons. Attack on our own soil adds a layer of harsh reality, whether it be an international faction or a domestic “lone wolf” at the heart of the attack, we are left to deal with the aftermath. I was teaching first grade on September 11, 2001 and remember the day as if it were yesterday. Teachers coming in and giving me updates (via television) about what was happening. Me trying to keep a “game face” on with my students even when my own worst fears were creeping into my mind. The reality hitting all of us when we took our kids outside to recess and noticed the strangely silent sky as all air traffic had been grounded.
We all have stories about that day and until yesterday’s events in Boston, I didn’t think much of the effects of our technology integration tying to these national disasters. However, when every student in your school district has a portal to the internet in their hands, there has to be a discussion about what is our role in this? I’m not sure there is a right answer to this question. What age is it appropriate for kids to “discover” the carnage of reality? We can’t shield them forever and teachable moments are important, but how do we as a school district set that level of “old enough to understand.”
My first answer is, that’s a parent’s decision and not ours. However, with 1:1 and BYOD access, that line has been blurred when we welcome and encourage technology usage in our schools. We play a role in how information is being monitored and guided with our kids. I had a middle school principal call me today to ask if we should consider “turning off the internet” if a tragic event of the 9/11 scale ever happens again, god forbid.
I had two responses to that request. The first was: “Yes! We need to shield/protect our kids from this in whatever way possible.” The second response was: “I wonder if others out there have considered this already?” Feeling that my first response was more based on emotion than logic, I took to twitter. Here’s a few of the discussion points brought back my way and some of my non 140-character responses.
I’ll address this point a little later, but Chris is right, if students want to find something inappropriate on the internet, they can. Us blocking them on their school-issued device may make us feel better and think we did the right thing but….
To Vin’s point, they all have the access available to them through other means. Maybe us turning off the internet isn’t enough, especially with older students. Better for us to take the lead in learning and adjusting to tragic events rather than just turning a blind eye?
These are both understatements and also harsh reality. These stories become such big deals in our news and online world because they are rare. However, I wonder (and worry) a bit about how desensitized we and our kids have become? Not saying the media is solely to blame for this, but think about how prevalent death, dismemberment, explosions, etc are in our media culture? Heck, I’m a zombie-show lover myself but I can feel the difference between the reality of yesterday and what’s on a show. I spoke with my boss about this and he brought up the Kennedy assassination. He said, no one had ever seen anything like that before. When Jack Ruby shot Oswald on live national television, it was completely un-fathom-able. Is that not the case anymore?
Laura is an 1:1 elementary teacher. The elementary setting is a lot more controlled in terms of access to technology and smartphones aren’t quite as rampant. Turning off the internet (or WiFi likely) at that level, especially at the time immediately following event could avoid any chance lasting images a child may stumble across. At any rate, her response made me harken back to my 9/11 experience. The teachable moment has a lot of value and I think as a parent, I want to have that discussion with my child even if just to soften the blow of reality.
I think Lucas and Renaud land on a solution that makes the most sense. With the older students (middle school to high school), we need to be there to support in the moment as well as the day after when it’s on every students’ mind. Validation of resources, historical attacks, and in some cases, rumor control, are all important discussions to have with your students during moments like this.
Outcome -
So it appears that there is not a true “right answer” to this other than we need to be aware and ready to leap into action should a crisis happen. That could mean restricting some level of access at the elementary level or having the teachers prepared to change plans when looking at their tech-integration lessons. I do think at all levels a crisis plan for student access should be discussed. Staff need to be prepared and ready to discuss when unfortunate moments in our history happen. It’s our job to not only protect our nation’s most valued resources, but also to teach them when tragedy strikes.
Thanks to my Twitter PLN for their viewpoints - @rbolsjoly, @jacobtech, @kreyus, @profvinnycho @wrightsbatclass, @KSLibraryGuy Please add to the discussion by commenting your thoughts below. Thanks.
Why We Lie and How Technology Helps Us
We all lie. Plain and simple, there is no way around it. The depth at which we lie depends on the reasons and motivation behind lying. No matter what the excuse, if there’s any truth it’s that we all lie. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the basis for why we lie, specifically in education, and how new technology now enables us to lie with greater ease.
A study on cognitive neuroscience by the Discovery channel posts the following explanations of why we lie:
We tell untruths for several reasons. Sometimes we actually lie to gain others’ respect. For example, maybe a coffee-fetching intern tells friends he’s a “research assistant.” Other fibs help stave off the consequences of making a mistake. Still others, a great many people, perhaps, will lie to spare someone’s feelings. While their hearts might be in the right place, and diplomacy may best trump the absolute truth, technically they’re still telling a lie. Want more reasons? Some men and women may lie to each other to present a better first impression. (So much for a good foundation for a relationship!) Clearly, there’s no end to the reasons people lie.
Work of art?
With all this lying taking place on a regular basis, it only makes sense that our educational systems provide the early fertile grounds for this learned behavior. We in education may not like to take blame for this and rather eschew blame to the parents (lie #1). The truth of the matter is, we can’t help but lie in education. When little Johnny comes up to us to show us his “work of art” (that looks more like a lower intestine) we applaud him for his work and effort. We don’t say, “You know John, I have to say, what you’ve made there is quite disgusting. It looks nothing like the object I asked you to create. As a matter of fact, it looks like some sort of internal organ.” We tell this fib to instill confidence in little Johnny, so we pass it off as allowable. Since we are trying to develop confidence in our pupils, let’s take the teacher-student interactions out of the equation and see what that leaves us with.
Even without that interaction, we are still borderline pathological in our lying habits. One only need to observe a parent-teacher conference to see the tapestry of fabrications weaved to make the parent feel at ease about their child’s short-comings. Make no mistake about it, this deception also helps the teacher. With a giant class-size, testing pressure, administrative oversight, and all other things that weigh into a teacher’s day, it’s a miracle they can even come up with an helpful anecdotes about their students. Luckily, with the invention of technology, we know have “hard data” that we can easily show parents that want more evidence. We are data-driven junkies, not because we like interpreting data, but because we need it as back-up for the brief observations we may have with one of our students during the day. Having a report or graph to show a worried parent, informs the parent that his/her child may have some faults, but it’s not the teacher saying it. It’s the computer-generated read-out’s fault.
Technology allows us to be more impersonal and in some cases avoid possible conflicts too. A few decades ago, when a principal or administrator had a problem with a teacher, he/she would call the accused into his/her office. There would be a conversation, albeit an uncomfortable one, about how that teacher needs to improve upon his/her practice. This is not only hard for the teacher to hear (imagine being told how to parent better) but it’s also uncomfortable for the boss trying to communicate steps for improvement. Enter the magical world of technology and specifically in this case, email. Rather than point out some faults to a few teachers, a carefully crafted “all staff” email can now point out the fact that jeans are only acceptable on Fridays or that recess should be no longer than 20 minutes in length.
Instantly, through the power of quickly delivered written words, a suggestion for improvement switches from personally threatening to professionally informative. The teachers “hear” the message and the administrator avoids any uncomfortable situations. We can also wield technology to help us out of sticky situations. Like in the above “jean” scenario, when the boss sees an employee in jeans on a Thursday, he/she can refer to the email sent clarifying dress code. ”Don’t shoot the messenger, heh heh, it’s the email that said it.” It’s amazing how brave people can be over email and how that impersonal communication can be a scape-goat much like the “office memo” in this great Office Space scene:
Of course, lies can also flow in the other direction in this scenario. Technology like text messages, give us a false sense of immediacy in conversations. I will admit that I have seen part of an email or read a text message from someone and not acted on it right away. The amazing thing about all the ways we communicate now is that email or texts are seemingly equated to the spoken word. ”Didn’t you get my text?” is a favorite comment relayed at my house. While I don’t try to avoid, neglect, or ignore a text message asking me to pick up even more specialty diapers or the seemingly endless amount of prescriptions required to raise my three girls, I have seen a message and not acted on it right away. And what happens when I’m called into question about whether or not I received the text? I lie.
Little angels…all of them.
The ultimate vehicle for lying with technology is social media. Look no further than Facebook to see not only how rampant lying is, but also how it’s become the new normal when it comes to how we tell our story. For instance, if you examined my page from last Easter Sunday, you’d see that my estrogen-abundant family had quite the special day. We woke up to presents from the Easter bunny, full of smiles and joy. My kids spent the day, posed beautifully in their Easter clothes, exploring the grandparent’s backyard with our cousins. We ended the day dancing and laughing with Grandma before quietly settling to bed preparing for the next week to begin anew. The reality of the day is a lot less picturesque than the one I painted on my page. Sisters screaming at each other over candy, a near death incident with a baseball bat and an Easter pinata, and three very cranky, sugar-laiden girls that refused to go to sleep. With social media tools like Facebook, we can now paint pictures of ourselves that are far from reality.
This is the basis for our own personal “PR” if you will, but it’s also true with school districts. Don’t believe me? Go look at any school’s Facebook or Twitter page. You won’t find anything about the fight that broke out in the cafeteria or a heart-warming story about the C-student that quietly sits in the back of the class. We promote what we chose to promote. This isn’t lying to the true sense of the word, but it is deception. One of my most read posts of all-time is the 10 Things Not to Do in a 1:1 implementation. I wrote it to show the ugly truth and hard work that goes into these sort of initiatives. I did it to help inform others, but also to show that while it may seem all rosy in the press, the reality is this new technology is messy, disruptive and hard to adjust to for everyone. We need to continue to tell those stories in education as well as the good ones to paint a more accurate picture of what is taking place in our institutions. Otherwise, we may not be telling lies, but instead, revealing only the truths that we deem worthy of telling. Paint that picture for too long and we may end up with something short of a work of art and more like little Johnny’s lower intestinal masterpiece.
A more accurate view of Easter Sunday from my youngest daughter
The 21-Day #TwitterGuide4Beginners Challenge
An interesting thing happened during the #txed chat on Wednesday night. Many in the chat were asking the question “Why aren’t more teachers on twitter?” I often wonder the same and think back to my early days on twitter where I didn’t do much. In fact, it took me nearly two years
from account creation in 2007 to where I actually really started using it and not just following what Demi Moore and Ashton Kutchar were eating.
So I started the #twitterguide4beginners hashtag inside the #txed chat and started listing ideas. Since most people on the interwebs say it takes 21 days for a habit to stick, I challenged the group to list step-by-step days of what a newbie to twitter should do to make it stick. While I’m sure there are tons of other guides out there, what I love about this is that it was created on twitter, via a hashtag chat. What follows is the cleaned up and re-sorted 21 days, but you could also check out the chat here for the brainstorming: #twitterguide4beginners
Day 1 – Create your account and follow some people with similar interests
“Egghead”
Day 2 – Figure out how to change your egghead picture into a nice catchy profile picture (note: you should try to have your twitter pic look like you somewhat, you never know who you’ll run into face to face)
Day 3 – Lurk and figure out how to favorite something.
Day 4 – Retweet someone else’s tweet.
Day 5 – Find a good app to use twitter on your mobile phone or device of choice. (See: Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, the actual Twitter app)
Day 6 – Make your first official tweet. Make it a good one and make it relevant to what you do. Share something going on in your work life.
Day 7 – Tweet a link from an interesting website or blog you discovered, maybe something your school or district is doing.
Day 8 – Figure out how to tweet out a photo. (this is easiest from a mobile device)
Day 9 – Mention some people in a tweet. Remember, they don’t know you are trying to talk to them unless you mention them with the “@” symbol and their handle. Also, know that anyone can see this.
Day 10 – Direct Message someone. This is a short, private message that is like email.
Day 11 – Create a hashtag (#) and find one to follow.
Day 12 – Tweet from multiple devices to test your diversity (will accept phone, tablet, laptop, desktop or all of the above)
Day 13 – Start to learn Twitter slang like RT, DM, MT, #FTW, from some resource like this: Twitter Dictionary
Day 14 – Post 5 tweets during this day. Make one of them a famous quote that you love.
Day 15 – Don’t click on the link in your DM that says either “People are saying bad things about you” or “LOL. I was laughing about this video about you.”
Day 16 – Have a twitter conversation with someone that you’ve never met in person. This could be as little as a response, but see how long you can make it go.
Day 17 – Participate in a “Twitter chat” one night. Here’s a good list of twitter chats by @cybraryman and when they happen: twitter chats
Day 18 – Test your Twitter-bility – Post a tweet that is longer than 140 characters, however, use clever short-cuts and lingo to make sure you message fits. (like “4″ instead of “for” to save characters)
Day 19 – If you haven’t yet, post your 100th tweet. If you are short, get to work! If you already have at least 100 tweets, take a day off. You have earned it.
Moore v. Kutcher
Day 20 – Go back and follow more people and follow people who have followed you. Oh yeah, and go back and unfollow all those celebs you followed in Day 1.
Day 21 – Sync your Foursquare, Pinterest, Scoop.it, LinkedIn, and/or Instagram accounts (but not Facebook) to your twitter account.
Congratulations! You graduated and are now a Twitter Jedi Master! May the Tweets be with you!
Editor’s note: Special thanks to contributors to this guide: @pwagnerlcisd @troybagwell @CMBPensacola, @smussle @mg529. You made this a collaborative PLN effort!
#NoEmail4Lent Dies a Quick Painful Death
What started out with a bang, ended with a whimper on Sunday afternoon. I had made it nearly 19 days without interacting with email but the wheels were starting to come off some time late last week.
Our district is in the midst of it’s final iPad roll-out to 6th & 7th graders to complete an entire K-12 1:1 district. My position plays a key role in a lot of the decisions being made about these roll-out events and I have been out of pocket from these conversations to the point it was starting to hurt.
So, on Sunday (appropriately) at 4:53PM, I ended my ban on email by taking part in some discussions around the roll-out. My immediate reaction was a mix of depression and relief. I had made it a lot longer than many thought (including myself) and gained quite a bit of knowledge out of this experiment.
Logistics - If I had to do it all over again, I would have planned this better. I didn’t need 15 ways to get in touch with me. Turns out I only needed about 6 or 7. Every night while doing my counts for the day, I would catch myself skimming the previews of each email in case there was something exciting happening. While I focused my energy on my work email, I included my consultant email, my personal email and even my iPadpalooza account in the initial research.
Timing - It’s everything, right? At least that’s how the saying goes. While Lent seemed to outline a good amount of days to do this research, I had other events begin to get in the way. One was the fact that we were closing the early bird registration on iPadpalooza and the only way districts could register with PO was by emailing iPadpalooza@gmail.com. That meant I had to check those email’s and auto-forward them to our PO person. Not exactly fair to her.
The latest Hooker ver 3.0
Personally, I had two major events happen in my life within 12 hours of each other. I was named an Apple Distinguished Educator and became a father of 3 all in the same day. The ADE notice came….via email. My twitter friends quickly pointed that out to me. It was nerve-racking but once people started to tell me they were in or out, I had to sneak a peak.
The birth of my 3rd daughter meant time away from work, which meant the experiment and data changed course. Before I went on paternity leave, face to face interaction had definitely increased and in fact, led all other non-email interactions. Now that I wasn’t there in person (and a little pre-occupied) I had to rely on other means to communicate with people. To be quite honest, unless you were on Facebook, text, or Twitter, you probably didn’t hear from me for a while.
The Hypothesis -
The original hypothesis was that by giving up email as a primary communication tools, others would be forced to try out new means and hopefully expand their horizons. This both succeeded and failed in some senses. I noticed within the first day or two that while almost everyone was on board, there were a few that felt I was cutting myself off from them by not being on email. I got called to task about making others find different ways to get a hold of me when “email is just the easiest.” While that was the point of the experiment, I didn’t want it to negatively effect teachers who already have a lot on their plate, much less trying to figure out how to reach the tech guy.
Other (hopeful) outcomes -
I had hoped that I’d be able to do “more meaningful” work while not checking email. While I did get quite a few more personal chores done in the evening, work seemed largely unaffected. It seems much of my “meaningful work” came from the sometimes mundane tasks assigned to me via email. I feel like this wasn’t as much of a success also largely to the fact that I had to spend more time checking all the various methods of communication. (see Logistics above) That said, I was able to read an entire book for the first time since I can remember (World War Z – zombies of course).
My other hope was that not sitting behind my screen as much would force more face to face communication and collaboration. I can say without a doubt, this was the greatest success of this experiment. I spent more time with my family, talked to district staff I hadn’t seen in a while and even got to sub in a first grade classroom! While this seems like a simple idea, I was amazed at how touched people were by this concept of walking away from email to spend more time with others. I even had a small group of people (in admin no less) suggest we have an “unEmail Day” once a month to get out and see the kids, campuses, and staff. This will be something I employ going forward every month.
My last hopeful outcome was that I would have others communicate in different ways. Aside from a few folks that were stuck on email as the only method of communication, I felt this was a success as well. I had a principal join twitter, a GT teacher chat with me via Edmodo, and I got to chat with someone face to face (virtually) via Skype rather than a back-n-forth email exchange. I even had one parent communicate with me using smoke signals. The use of Dispatch for collaboration came in handy and will likely be a continued resource going forward with the team. I also finally got myself on Instagram (hookertech) since that seems to be the preferred communication method of kids. While the only letter I got was a printed off email, I really feel like making others aware of the alternative methods and the way kids communicate put things in perspective for most.
Final Data -
Thanks to Google Docs, I was able to track all the data on a spreadsheet. Final numbers:
Unread email = 1545 Twitter conversations = 299* Facebook = 256 Face to face = 185 Text = 149
Next steps -
As stated, I’m going to continue to increase my face to face time in the district via self-imposed “unEmail Days”. I’m also in the process of sorting and labeling all 1500+ emails I received while I was away. Once I gather that data, I’ll go through and see areas that I can optimize in my own email to make it a more efficient tool for myself and hopefully others. While this social media experiment is over, I’m actually still in the midst of a 12-week social media diet challenge (via Facebook group). Only 5 weeks to go, but I’m down 25 pounds and in second place!
As for the next experiment, my wife has kindly suggested (or insisted) that the next challenge be giving up my iPhone for Lent. Just the thought of that makes my stomach hurt. How will I get anywhere? How will I contact people? That sounds a little too crazy for me. But then again, maybe that’s why I should do it…
#NoEmail4Lent Week 1 in Review
Week one of not using email to communicate is in the books and let me just tell you…it was HARD! Despite some smirky grins and sighs from colleagues I made it all the way to 5:14 PM today without checking my email.
What happened at 5:14? I cracked. When I started seeing the news fly about the Apple Distinguished Educators acceptance/rejection I had to go in and check. I felt guilty about it (hey, I’m Catholic). However, technically I didn’t use it to communicate or interact so I think I’m still in the clear.
Week 1 Challenges:
First off, I could tell this would be tough when on day one I had 15 screens going at once. Getting “meaningful work” done would be a problem with all those screens going for communication. I needed to streamline it. Today I altered my auto-response to list ways to get in touch with me immediately (chat, text, twitter, phone, f2f) and ways to send me a longer message (Google Docs, Dispatch.io) or other ways to send me general stuff (Facebook, G+, Edmodo, etc).
My bigger challenge is that I’m starting to find that I’ve missed out on some important conversations or work related topics going around. I started feeling bad for others that would have to work harder to get in touch with me. While the point of this is make them think of other methods of communication, I don’t want this to turn into a situation where teachers can’t get help because of my Lenten goals. I’m trying to figure out a way to make that work.
Week 1 Positives:
From day one, I could tell right away that I’d be more apt to face to face conversations than before. Whereas in the past I might have either hid behind email or opted to send someone an email rather than have an actual conversation, I couldn’t do that any more. I even had random people tell me that it might be a good idea for all of us to do this once a month or so. I loved that idea! I’m hoping to start an “Un-email” day around the office to encourage people to get out to campuses and talking more.
Another positive has been the amount of different ways people have gotten in touch with me and the overwhelming support many have shown from the community, from member of our School Board to my Superintendent to even my wife (who was one of the biggest skeptics in this whole experiment). It’s been nice to hear stories from all over and people sharing ideas with me. I had a class of students from the Dallas area offer to send me letters which I thought was sweet. I even had one community member try to send me smoke signals (via his Brisket smoker) as an alternate form of communication not on my list.
Week 1 Data:
Some interesting findings for week one. I only counted email in my inbox for my 4 email addresses that get the most email (yes, officially I have 8 email addresses, could be part of my problem there). That means many hundred filtered messages were not counted. Final week one numbers:
Unread email = 725
Non-email interactions = 406
Top 3 forms of non-email communication:
1. Face to face = 68 (doesn’t include repeats)
2. Twitter = 51 (not tweets, just interactions)
3. Texts = 23
Here’s what the 7 days look like in Graph form, ranking from highest to lowest.
You can tell when the weekend hit (days 4 & 5) and also that Monday (day 6) was a holiday for our district. Email has started to decline slightly, but not much at this point.
Week 2 forecast:
We are having our third child this Thursday, at which point my auto-response will change to “Paternity Leave”. I’ll be curious to see if that affects people in any way. Anyway, should see a dip in interactions, especially face to face. (except for doctors and nurses 
Follow my daily log here: #EmailLess
Day 1 Reflections on #NoEmail4Lent
While I won’t publish something every day, I thought it might be a good idea to reflect on how day one of my challenge of no email went.
Logistics -
I felt tremendous pressure during the first few hours to have all my variety of methods of communication open. That means Skype, Twitter, Edmodo, LinkedIn, etc. were all open up on my screen. It was pretty overwhelming. By the end of the day I had worked out somewhat of a must-have list of applications running while I sat at my desk so that I actually could spend some time working on meaningful projects instead of darting back and forth between tabs. I’ll go one more day that way, but it’s obvious to me there are some clear favorites when it comes to communication already.
Day 1 Data -
With a Google Spreadsheet open on my screen, I tallied all the interactions I was having via non-email ways. I had a total of 83 non-email interactions as of 8:00pm on day 1. I also have 111 unread emails sitting in my queue. I’m curious how much this will increase or decrease as the days go by.
Out of all the interactions, face-to-face was first with 20 total interactions. Of the face-to-face interactions, I tried to determine which were had because I couldn’t use email. Out of those 20, over half were had because I wasn’t able to be on email. In one situation, I saw our Transportation Director and had remembered I was going to email him about the possibility of WiFi on our buses. However, knowing I couldn’t do that, I tracked him down the hallway and ended up having a nice chat about a great many other things and ideas that wouldn’t have happened over an email exchange.
Twitter was the second biggest form of interactions with 17. I counted any reply or response as an interaction, not just me randomly posting how the day was going. I also counted all direct messages toward that total. All in all, this will be one tool that will remain open throughout the day and checked on my phone as I’m out and about.
Day 1 Surprises -
On the technical side, I was surprised by the lack of Facebook (5) and Edmodo (0) interactions. I think that Dispatch.io (13) is an early favorite for an “email-like” replacement. I also had the most chat conversations (6 different people) than I had ever had in one day.
On a personal side, I was surprised by how many people have been supportive of this endeavor. While I notice some saying it with a smirk or a sarcastic tweet, I truly feel like people are behind me on this. The flip side of that is the couple of people that were not supportive, and in fact, somewhat upset by the fact that this is happening.
Day 1 Challenges -
I mentioned logistics of having all these forms of communication open as a challenge, but surprisingly for me, the biggest challenge is emotional. I am a social creature that loves to communicate with everyone all the time. At one point today I felt like a weight had been lifted, but only because someone cut off my right arm. Most of the morning I sat with a pit in my stomach, worrying that the world had stopped because I hadn’t check my email. That was exasperated by those that were questioning this whole experiment. I’ve got to overcome that feeling.
Early Side benefits -
I can tell already the side benefits of this are that I will be having a lot more actual conversations with people. I had 6 phone calls on top of my face to face interactions and even got to Skype with the lovely and talented Amber Teamann (@8amber8) about a project she’s working on. Rather than sit and “sort through email” this afternoon, I walked down to the elementary near my office and visited with some teachers participating in a BrainPop pilot. I can honestly say, that would have been something I passively avoided because of “work” I had to do (i.e. email).
I’m trying to keep a log on my #EmailLess page of this blog as well as Storifying the #emaillesslent hashtag. Think I might change that to #NoEmail4Lent (thanks @classroom_tech!).
1 Day down….39 to go….
Going #emailLess for Lent
Tomorrow, with the beginning of Lent, I’m giving up email for 40 days. I know what a lot of you are saying – “Oh jeez, that’s pretty easy, wish I could do that.” It’s not going to be as easy as you think though, especially with our dependency on the now 43-year old communication tool in business and education. So why even bother? I have many reasons, but it all started a few months ago…
An idea is born
Sometime in September, I sent an email out to all 2700 Westlake High School students. It was a simple request, asking them about an update for the iPad and how many had done it. Two weeks later, ONE student emailed me back. I was so grateful, but at the same time exasperated at the lack of response. I asked the student, “Thank you so much, but why did you take two weeks to email me back?” His response left me floored – “we don’t use email.”
There it was, plain and simple. Much like the music shifts from generation to generation, apparently forms of communication have shifted. This may seem obvious to anyone reading this, but I started thinking, what am I going to do about it to keep the adults connected with the youth (especially in a profession like mine)?
The Hypothesis
By giving up email as a primary communication tool for a period of time (40 days), others trying to get in touch with me will be forced to use alternate means of communication, thus making them much more aware of the many other ways we can communicate besides email.
Other Theories and Data
I spend on average between 2.5 to 4 hours a day on email. When I say “on” email that means reading it, replying to it, checking it on my phone, checking it on my iPad, deleting, archiving, sorting etc. The actual tasks that come to me via email may actually be less than the amount of time I’m on it. While communication is important, I’m hopeful that with alternate forms (chat, phone call, tweet, etc) of communication, I’ll be saving time in my day to work on other tasks and more meaningful projects.
One other negative about always checking email is that I’m spending time either on my computer (at work) or on my phone (at home) rather than actually communicating with people or my kids face-to-face. I’m hoping that by freeing up this time, I’ll be able to spend more time on campuses talking to people and less time in my office alone. I’ll be tracking data on increases in human interactions, increased connections via social platforms, and time spent working on meaningful projects.
Alternate forms of communication:
You might be surprised at the number of alternate ways we communicate. I have set my auto-response on my email and when listing all the other ways to get in touch with me, I came up with 15! Here’s a screen shot of my actual auto-response that will go out starting tomorrow:
Since I don’t have unlimited text messages and I don’t want my personal cell number going out to the world, I’m using the Google voice app to gather voice messages and texts. Besides the auto-response, I’ve also rearranged the apps on my phone into a folder called “Communication 2.0″ in hopes of having all my messages go there.
Positive Expected Outcomes:
This social experiment will be a success if:
- I can get at least one person to communicate in a different way
- I can work on more meaningful projects
- I can actually talk and visit with more people in person
Challenges
The main challenges lie with my peers. Email has become the easiest tool for many of us, so learning a new way to reach out to someone will be frustrating for some. I’m fully aware that many of the administrators in my building and at other districts use email as the primary and sometimes only form of communication. That might get me in some hot water as this challenge goes along, but that’s also why I tied it into Lent. After all, I can’t get fired for religious reasons right?
Follow the progress
I’m starting an #emailLess page on this blog where I’ll post updates every so often. I’ll also be tweeting to the hashtag #emailLessLent as I encounter challenges, interesting stories, and hopefully, some positive outcomes.
Want to run your own Ed Mini-Con? 10 Tips to help you out
After last year’s successful iPadpalooza, we learned a few things. One is, never plan a conference or event like that in less than two months. It was successful, but only because I had people like Carolyn Foote (@technolibrary) to help out when I was drowning in details. What started out as an idea and a website in January had turned into a major head-ache and full-time job by April.
I loved the event, but I had little left in the tank when it was over and was determined not to make the next year’s event anywhere near as stressful on myself or my team. You should enjoy these opportunities and cherish them when they happen but I could barely remember the actual day. How often do you get to create and take part in a major movement like this? You should come out feeling stronger, not exhausted. So, after learning lessons in little failures last year (a common theme of mine), I cleaned up my act and got started early. Here are some tips of things I’ve already done this year that will make iPadpalooza 2013 even more successful:
1. Delegate – As a man, I suffer from CAFD Syndrome (Can’t Ask For Directions). As someone in a leadership role, I suffer from a bloated ego (I am kind of a big deal) and think I can do everything myself. Combine those two traits and it’s a recipe for disaster and inefficiency. To make amends, this year I started “sub-committees” for iPadpalooza. While I still serve on pretty much all of the sub-committees, it’s been great to have someone else drive and organize a particular part of the event. Beside having help with minor details, it keeps you sane.
2. Give your self plenty of time - As I stated earlier, throwing everything together in two months was not ideal. This year we started planning in December (iPadpalooza is in June) and formed sub-committees before the winter break to start planning and organizing various parts of the event. While I’m sure crunch time will still happen in May, taking care of things like presenters, sponsors, registration, food, t-shirts, etc all before hand will not make it seem like a head-ache.
Tony Vincent!
3. Invest in talent - You need a headliner to sell tickets but you also need familiar faces to drive interest. Last year we had about 80 people registered before I announced Tony Vincent as the keynote speaker. Within a week we had doubled registration and in three weeks we were sold out. Part of this was word of mouth, but a big part of it was promo-ing the heck out of who was going to be there presenting. Since iPadpalooza started as an idea for Eanes teachers, we made sure to have a couple of them listed on the official site as featured speakers. Something we liked doing so much, that these year, they will have their own feature section.
4. Do something different - In a world full of no original ideas this is hard. For me, I wanted this event to not be just another conference. Being located in Austin, Texas, it was required that we have live music, BBQ and t-shirts. We really wanted people to feel like it was a festival, much like ACL or SXSW here in Austin. This doesn’t happen overnight but there are little things you can do to make your event unique and make others feel special. This year, we are upping the ante. We are bringing in food trailers from around Austin and bringing in even more live music. (including a potential headliner band to close the show!) Whenever possible, capture some uniqueness of your community and let that “flavor” be a living part of your event.
5. Make it exclusive and buzz-worthy - Social media is great for driving buzz, but how do you do that when only 5 people follow your event’s twitter handle? Word of mouth is important, but only works if you have something to actually talk about. (see point #3) Reach out to contacts in other area districts and offer them access to the event for a discount if they bring a group. Put a cap on registration too. If 15 thousand people can come, they won’t. However, if only 500 can come, 1000 will want to get in. Once you have a core group of attendees, they will spread the buzz and share the love for you, but just know that takes time and individual communication, no sending out an email blast to all your contacts.
Poster for this year’s event
6. The price is right - If you make an event free or cheap, people won’t expect much which can work in your favor. The downside of that is you limit what you can do in some cases and who you can bring in. The flip-side of that is that if it’s too expensive, no one will be able to afford to come. Consider offering the first year of an event for cheaper than an average mini-Con. The average price of many 2-day mini-Conferences in the U.S. is around $250. If you take that as your benchmark, make it half that to start and build the budget and buzz for the next year when it’s a huge hit!
7. Details, details, details - I can’t mention it enough but the details will DROWN you and your team if you don’t stay on top of them. Who is in charge of designing and ordering the shirt? Who will reach out to vendors? What’s the cost and deadline of registration? Who will be speaking at the event and how do we come up with a schedule? These are all questions I fielded with about a month to go last year. This year, details have been delegated and are in motion. We have some deadlines set for certain things (food trailers contacted, t-shirts ordered, etc) that way it’ll go smoother closer to the event. The sooner you can get to these, the better your life will be on event day.
Gotta have help!
8. Volunteers are invaluable - The bigger the event, the more people you will need to help out. Again, thanks to Carolyn here. She took charge of this for me and really thoughtfully designed where volunteers should be placed throughout the day and what shifts they would run. Basic rule of thumb; for every 25 people, you’ll want a volunteer. You can try to do it with less, but in our case that meant 20 volunteers. They ran registration, gave out directions, manned the information booth and helped monitor room limits.
9. Know your venue backwards and forwards - If you are hosting a mini-Con offsite, tour the event location regularly. You’ll want every detail taken care of BEFORE you arrive at the crack of dawn on the day of the event. Parking, WiFi signage, booth set-ups, etc. - all should be set-up and tested the day before. Consider getting some walkie-talkies for the event day so that your team can communicate quickly when issues arise (and they will). We ran out of toilet paper in the women’s restroom by lunch time. Talk about a paperless conference! (rimshot…thank you, I’ll be here all week!)
10. Enjoy it - A midst all the chaos of the actual event, make a point of taking time with your team to soak it all in. Capture the moment in video or pictures to review later when it’s all over. This will feel very much like a reception on your wedding day. You’ll sort of remember showing up, seeing people, and watching stuff happen, but it will go by in a blur. Take 5 minutes to sit, breathe, and take in what you’ve just accomplished. You deserve it!
