What is SAMR? (my journey in learning and teaching)

What is SAMR?

SAMR is an acronym found in education that stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. R is the highest level of technology integration where “Technology allows for the creation of new tasks that were previously inconceivable”.  It is a framework that can be used to guide technology integration in the teaching practice and to assess the level of integration on lesson plans and tasks. Kathy Schrock wrote a fantastic in-depth article here that digs far deeper into the subject than I intend to go (http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html). She even maps SAMR to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and other taxonomies.

My goal is to simply share my discovery from personal experience. About 10 years ago I got involved with OETC's EdTech Cadre initially for my personal professional development and to build my PLN as a new member of the Oregon educational community. My involvement continued as part of the required professional development in support of a grant I had written for my district.

My 2nd year in the cadre, we were given the option to select an area of teaching and learning that integrated technology appropriately and effectively, and create a session to ultimately share with the group at the end of the term. As one of my personal goals was to improve my presentation and teaching skills, I took the challenge.

As an amateur artist, professional musician and private music instructor, and a firm believer in STEAM (where the Arts are included with STEM), I chose to use my love and knowledge of the multimedia arts as the basis of my cadre project.

The basic idea I had was inspired by a connection I made with Kevin Honeycutt at an ISTE conference, where he shared his concept of “tra-digital” jam sessions, that is combining the use of easy to use iPad music instrument apps (digital) with traditional musical instruments (guitar), to inspire and engage students. I took this idea and integrated the use of simple iOS video production apps with the idea of creating music videos with tra-digital instrumentation. This continued to evolve as I prepared to share my session. I added the use of a shared google doc for session attendees to collaborate on creating content for the project which was designed to be completed in a 50 minute class session.

My first session was just following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan so the class, attended by 10 people, agreed to do a version of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. On the google doc we collaborated to create new lyrics that focused on the Pangaea Ring of Fire and voila- this became an earth science project! In the group of 10 educators we had one or two musicians, and some who were comfortable singing (although it’s my belief that everyone has a voice and should sing but that’s another story!) and others who took on the roles of choreographers and videographers.

Following this first project, I was further inspired and informed by the work of the North Point Church iBand which was one of the first groups to do music entirely using iOS devices. I refined my presentation over the next few years and wrote and won a $5000 grant which funded the purchase of 6 iPads, wireless audio equipment and many of the apps that North Point used in their video. After doing two repeat sessions with my OETC EdTech cadre friends, I took it on the road, doing sessions at the local farmers market (Sweet Home Farmers Market, sung to the tune of Sweet Home Alabama), a Sudbury school (Sudbury School for Learning, sung to the tune of Strawberry Fields Forever- yes, the students chose that song on their own!) , and finally multiple years at the ISTE conference.

At Iste 2013, I tweeted out the link to a google doc for lyric creation, collaborated with several folks to gather video of people attending the conference and produced ISTE2013 (sung to the tune of Misty).

In hindsight, and as I came to understand what SAMR was, I discovered that I had achieved the Redefinition level of the SAMR model, creating something that exhibited learning in multiple areas, and produced “something previously inconceivable”, as well as incorporating many of the ISTE standards.

It’s not about producing high quality professional looking music videos, it’s about engaging the students in fun and innovative ways using technology to collaboratively create artifacts that show their knowledge while gaining new skills along the way. The way I put it initially was: when I was in school, the really cool teachers let us do an art project like a collage or a sculpture or a painting when doing a social studies report on Egypt. When my kids were in school it evolved to where teachers would let students use mom and dads VHS camcorder to record a skit about the given subject. I think today we are obligated to allow or rather encourage or even mandate that students use the vast array of digital tools available to them. Teachers don’t need to be expert at the use of the tools but can and should be “the guide on the side”. And in so doing will likely find they have also achieved Redefinition.

                      

( Here is the link to the playlist of videos produced )

Online Safety with Email

Lessons on online safety often focus on cyberbullying, predators and privacy. But there’s another realm of digital citizenship that’s equally vital for students to understand: online scams and hacking.

Internet hacking, which costs consumers and companies an estimated $445 billion dollars a year, rarely has anything to do with your computer’s hardware or software. Most of these scams rely on social engineering, where hackers dupe people into opening attachments or clicking links in email. 

Some hackers are looking to steal identities while others are skilled at tricking people into sharing sensitive financial information. Regardless of the type of scam, most are not that sophisticated and can be prevented by taking simple precautions. 

Share these five email red flags with students so they know how to stay secure online.

1. Not even PDFs are safe. If you receive an attachment from an unknown sender, be wary. Even if your antivirus scanner reports the file safe, there could be macros embedded in the file that launch malware or Trojans, which let hackers see and control all your files and keystrokes. The only file type that is always safe to open is TXT.

2. Closely examine the URL. One clue that an email is malicious is if a company name in the URL is misspelled. But it’s not always easy to tell. An “r” next to an “n” looks a lot like an “m.” So make sure that the email in your inbox is actually from Microsoft not rnicrosoft.

3. Check the time. Was the email sent at an odd hour? If you receive an email from a friend or colleague at 4 a.m. and that seems out of character, look for other clues that the email is phony. 

4. Don’t be fooled by urgency. If an email message demands immediate action, slow down and think. Take the time to verify the request. When in doubt, throw it out!

5. Hover over the link. Does the sender’s logo look legitimate but the email still seems fishy? Rest your mouse over hyperlinked words to see the actual URL. You might be surprised that it looks nothing like the address of a legitimate sender.

Minecraft 102 (or The Family that Plays Together, Learns Together)

So by now, most have heard of Minecraft. Many have seen their children playing it at home and may have even heard kids talk about playing it at school. I first saw my grandkids using it eight years ago, when the game arrived on the scene.

For those unfamiliar with Minecraft, it’s a block-building game designed to engage kids on various adventures in the process of building structures in the Minecraft world. Watching my grandkids play intrigued me, and I did what anyone with curiosity would do; I asked the kids questions, like, "What are you doing?" and "Why are you doing it that way?" My interest in learning and teaching prompted me to ask them what they were learning while playing. They almost always answered, "I don't know" or "nothing."

That’s not an unusual response. The fact is, kids don't always realize they are learning critical thinking skills as they "play" the game. For example, building certain structures in Minecraft requires trial and error. I watched as my kids struggled through several iterations to complete a bridge-like structure. The process taught them how to layer and stagger bricks to make the construct stand up, a basic engineering concept not easily articulated to elementary school children. But they learned it by doing it.

This is why teachers will always be a necessary component of the learning process, not as a “sage on the stage,” but as a "guide on the side." Learning by doing, or project (or problem) based learning is often used by teachers to supplement and enrich students’ learning.

Today, my youngest grandson is 7 and recently started to play the game and figure out how it works. In order to play alongside his son, his dad researched and learned how to setup a Minecraft Server. Now father and son collaborate and work together, building and exploring in the world of Minecraft.

I continue to be amazed at the engagement of the program, the numerous elements of STEM incorporated in the learning, and how this engagement and learning spanned any age or generation. While Minecraft can help students learn many academic skills, it does so much more. It builds collaboration among students and even within families. I highly encourage families play games together, whether online or in real life, as whatever new thing we do together builds familial ties (or collegial ties in the business/education world), strengthens our relationships and makes us all collaborative life-long learners together.

Are You Ready for the Next Disaster?

Lately the news has been rife with disasters: fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and mudslides all within just the last few months. And then there is the looming threat of terrorist attacks including nuclear missiles from North Korea, not to mention a hardware failure of your critical server(s). Is your business ready to sustain any of these events, and remain viable, continuing operations? Even more insidious, and with a much higher likelihood of happening on your network systems, are the threats from the internet, such as spyware, ransomware, worms, virus’s, DDoS, and data leaks or breaches.

One thing we learned from 911: the businesses that came out OK were those that had business continuity plans that included maintaining off-site backups of their data. Many companies without usable backups never recovered and were out of business. In the last few years, the threat of cyber-crime in the form of spear-phishing, phishing, CEO fraud, hacking and ransomware have been in the headlines usually resulting in many large corporations reporting data loss, data leakage, and huge financial losses. Costs for ransomware have grown 350% since 2015, up from $350 million to $5 billion in 2017.

Today many options are available to mitigate the risk of disaster. Individuals can use tools like Carbonite, whereas enterprise organizations might want to look at DRaaS (disaster recovery as a service) or complete hosting in a private, virtualized cloud network, such as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). In between there are solutions, such as backing up your data to an off-site warm location using Veeam. The best of these solutions involve moving data to the cloud, which is no longer an option; it’s a requirement.

To protect against cyber threats, anti-virus/anti-malware software should be implemented, but even with those protections, it is likely not enough. With social engineering tactics used by cyber-criminals, through phishing and spear-phishing exploits, as well as the “drive-by” payload dropped on your systems simply by visiting a compromised website, your only real defense is training staff to be vigilant and aware of the tactics the hackers use. Annual security awareness training and regular inoculations of staff are the only way to maintain a human firewall.

In order to choose the right solution, there are many considerations, such as cost, how much of your critical data is necessary to recover from a disaster and how quickly you need to resume operations. These are measured by RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective). To determine these objectives, analyze your data transactions. For example, how frequently does your data change? If it’s minimal -- on a hourly or daily basis – then your RPO can be longer than an organization whose data changes by the second. The other question is how quickly do you need to be back up and running (RTO)? If you are losing millions of dollars per minute, then your systems need to be back online within minutes or less.

Once you have determined which method of backup to use, whether it is a real-time set of systems running in tandem from two disparate locations (always on availability groups) or high availability, or simply running a nightly Veeam backup to a warm site, you’ll want to make sure you select a vendor who can meet your SLA (service level agreement) based on your RPO and RTO.

Some of the larger cloud hosting companies (Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s AZURE, Google Cloud) can do quite well, but you may have difficulty getting the support you need from a larger provider. Finding the right balance between a reliable host who can meet your needs and provide you with the level of hands-on expertise and support is a challenge. Research the vendors thoroughly so you are comfortable with their capabilities and establish a working relationship. A high availability system running in tandem in two disparate locations will give you the best RPO and RTO but it can be costly. A thorough cost/business analysis is definitely in order.

When starting out, consider moving to the private cloud using Veeam backups to a warm site. You may be tempted to start replacing your data center hardware as the refresh cycle comes around. Don’t! This is your opportunity to have your provider spin up some virtual servers, saving you hardware replacement costs going forward and improving your disaster readiness footprint. Over time, you can become completely virtualized in a private cloud environment. Once that has been completed, you can upgrade to a high availability, fully synchronized, real-time live secondary system with automatic fail-over. That is the ultimate solution for a company that requires up-time no matter what happens and data that is as current as can possibly be.

Remember, the IT component of your disaster recovery plan is only one small but important piece of the plan. If you don’t have a DR Plan, get one. The main components of a DR Plan are: safety and security of staff and visitors, communications (to staff, customers, public), and finally, business resumption. You won’t be able to resume business without a solid IT backup solution.

Music video production:Problem Based Learning

On the subject of project based learning (or problem based learning if you prefer) the following is my recent personal experience. I am a musician and composer and have believed for many years that simply posting mp3's of my songs on social media such as sound cloud wasn't enough. Video is the new medium by which one can attract and engage viewers more effectively by providing a full multi-media experience. I am not alone in this assessment; other bloggers have put out the fact that folks often turn to video first when trying to find answers to questions. YouTube is the new Google. Several years ago I learned this when I was trying to repair my lawnmower. I googled the problem and found many documents and knowledge-bases that tried to provide the information I needed to resolve the problem but they were either inaccurate or very complex PDFs which as we all know aren't the easiest thing to read on the web. The solution to my lawnmower problem was found in a YouTube video which clearly gave me the steps to fix it (and I am most definitely NOT a mechanic in any sense of the word!).

My latest experience with using YouTube videos to help me started a month or so ago when I decided I needed to up my game as it relates to recording of music I've written. I invested in a more powerful desktop computer and software for music production (an iMac and Logic Pro). At the same time I came across a copy of Final Cut for video production so naturally I got that as well. Previous to this upgrade I was using an iPad with N-Track Studio and iMovie.

After several hours configuring my musical hardware interface to work with the computer (that's another story!) I was ready to begin.

For those of you familiar with professional music and video production software, you know these tools are not simple, but I have been doing this sort of thing for many years so I figured I would just jump in with both feet and get started. Not so much!  These programs are not intuitive and what I found was that despite my experience using similar software over the years, I was literally quite stuck.

I entered search terms in YouTube "how do I (fill in the blank with any number of functions required to proceed). I started with "how do I use Logic"!  I found more than enough videos to allow me to complete my music recording project and to make a long story shorter, applied the same steps to figuring out how to use Final Cut. In the end, I learned a lot and am continuing to learn, thankful for the huge community of people who love to share their knowledge on YouTube. An interesting point of fact- some of the better videos were produced by young people apparently high school aged students. Their common story was one of discovery guided by a teacher who led them on a path of project/problem based learning.

So here is a link to my music video, admittedly not perfect, but it is my piece of art and I am passionately in love with the process and product. Enjoy, and thanks in advance for any commentary.

~Chuck

Shadow IT: the consumerization of technology

Another way in which IT management is being transformed by the consumerization of IT:  In the past IT leaders would often mandate what tools were used in an organization; now they need to be sensitive to and aware of what tools may already be in  use by staff- often to great effect and benefit to the business - and then figure out how to ensure they are being used appropriately and can be integrated into the IT infrastructure,  allowing enterprise systems level management and security. Grassroots adoption of apps can work if you pay attention to what's happening in your business and collaborate with staff to find the balance between the plethora of constantly evolving tools they might want to use and what is reasonable to manage while maintaining tight security, software application and endpoint management.  IT can provide the tools to allow innovation and improved business performance.  Shine the light on shadow IT and leverage it to benefit your business.
FWIW-cd

Keep It in the Cloud

Over the last few years, I have been promoting cloud computing to improve accessibility by giving users anytime/anywhere access to their stuff. This “stuff” has expanded to include not only simple files, but also applications. As an IT services director in K-12 schools for many years, it became increasingly obvious that the best solution for delivering services was by using web accessible applications (web apps) and that became the preferred choice at my districts.
But as mobile computing becomes the norm, it is important to raise that standard to ensure that these web apps include mobile applications and not just simply web apps. More and more students and staff will have mobile devices in the coming years, and they will expect to be able to access district services. I was thrilled when a principal at one of my schools informed me that her son was accessing one of the district’s standard reading applications from his iPhone while they were driving home. This is the type of ubiquitous access our students and teachers are coming to expect.   
Recently, I was trying to pay my bills online but my bank’s website for bill pay was down. A message on the site said, “You may access the site and pay bills by using a smartphone and the mobile app.” Strangely, it worked! The lesson here is that whether we’re dealing with an instructional application or a business application, it needs to be accessible anytime/anywhere from any (mobile) device.
In the past, it was difficult to store and share large files using cloud-based apps, but that is no longer the case.Today, users can collaborate online using many different file types and platforms. For example, a colleague recently created a training video that she uploaded to our Google Docs site. I accessed it, converted it, and uploaded it to our YouTube channel and then posted the shortened URL to our internal intranet. The file was originally 335 mb. Prior to having services such as Google Drive, Drop Box, or Sky Drive, sharing and transferring  that file would have posed a significant challenge. It simply would have been too large to email.
Protection from lost data on local machines and freeing users from being tied to specific computers are two more reasons for embracing cloud computing. Users need to save files to a location separate from their computer hard drive to safeguard data. And the ability to access files from any web device is liberating. It also gives the IT department an opportunity to offload some data storage needs by using resources in the cloud.