Tech Tributary

Chromebooks: faceless magnificence

It's been some time since I added to my growing list of Chromebook posts.

Previously, in the Chromebook saga, a near-fatal flaw in Chrome Os had put the whole Chromebook experiment in jeopardy. Unable to get through the proxy server setup, the Chromebooks, all beautifully sparkling in their brand new charging trolley were a bit like a bank of door wedges - I might as well have bought ZX Spectrums - at least they'd have been a more wedge-like shape.

Many of my previous posts had me wrestling with complicated equipment such as paper clips and using interesting Star Trek-like phrases such as "I have now erased the stateful partition." But the marvellous Matt from the Chrome Os support team in Mountain View got me back on track. In his laid-back Bay Area voice he explained, suggested, advised and encouraged until, with the help of a more updated version of Chrome Os, the Chromebooks starting working again.

And then what?

I was expecting the next problem. This is ICT you see - it never is completely straightforward. What would be the next barrier? The next obstacle? The next mountain to climb?

There hasn't been one. All the Chromebooks work. Perfectly.

We take them into the classroom and give them to the students. The students use the Chromebooks in some or all their learning. Then we put them away again.

So the solution is even better than the Chromebooks working perfectly - it's like they're not there at all. There is no fuss about them. They have no charisma, no personality. They are faceless devices. They. Just. Work.

What that means is that the students can concentrate on using the software. So, during the last month students have:
  • used Worpress to blog (on the Chromebooks);
  • used Purple Mash to design 3D models (on the Chromebooks);
  • used Google Maps to embed photos of the school as part of the Switched on ICT scheme of work (on the Chromebooks);
  • used Google Docs to write stories (on the Chromebooks);
  • used Google spreadsheets to learn their times tables (on the Chromebooks);
  • used Khan Academy to practice maths skills (on the Chromebooks);
  • used Education City to practice phonics and literacy skills (on the Chromebooks);
  • used GoAnimate to make animations (on the Chromebooks);
  • used Aviary to create their own music (on the Chromebooks).
Some students even used Google Search to find out information for their topics...

Having had a bank of wireless Windows laptops in the past, Chromebooks have already proved to be better in the following 5 ways.
  1. The 8 second start up means that the only time wasted is distributing the Chromebooks to the students, whereas the laptops could take up to 2 minutes to boot up and access the network.
  2. No virus checker means that the Chromebooks work fast from the start, whereas the laptops would be slowed by for ten minutes by the inevitable start up of various Windows processes.
  3. An 8 hour battery life in the Chromebooks means that they only need to be charged over night, whereas the laptops would have to be charged during lunchtime to give afternoon users a chance.
  4. The light weight of the Chromebook means you can carry them around the classroom to show other people what you've been up to, whereas our laptops had been much heavier.
  5. The VGA adaptor that comes with every Chromebook has been really useful for showing what's on the screen on the classroom projector. The laptops by contrast often did bizarre things when connecting to a projector.
There have been two small non-Chromebook related barriers. The first is that sometimes the children can't log on because they don't spell their names correctly. Or they forget their password. The second is that it has exposed the frailties of the school wifi network - for most of the above applications everything was fine, but for Aviary (online sound editing) the demands of thirty children all trying to create their own "Burial of the Pharoah" music was a bit too much for the sole wifi access point. Looks like Meraki could be the answer to that. Mercifully the 2 second shut down / 8 second start up (mentioned earlier) saved the day here - when a Chromebook got stuck trying to get through the access point, a quick re-start sorted it out.

In Chromebooks, it seems like we have found a device that enhances productivity - because you don't really notice that its there. Instead of being a magnificent in-your-face piece of technical kit, Chromebooks are instead magnificently faceless, allowing all the fantastic software available online to come to the fore.

What I learned from BETT 2012 #2: Grass isn't always greener

I've never experienced a different education system than the British one, but of course the odd snippet or two has come my way over the years which have led me to the following beliefs about education in different countries:
  • The district structure in the US is ideal with between 10 and 20 schools in each district.
  • Hungarian education is best at teaching maths.
  • Finland is perfect.
This BETT washed those beliefs away like the chaff they really are.

I spoke to a Norwegian lecturer bemoaning the loss of small rural schools and the devastating impact it is on their community.

I spoke to US educators tearing their hair out at the slow pace of change exhibited in their state's education system, with each district being stalled and blocked by what they really want to do.

I spoke to teachers from Germany decrying their assessment regime in the way in categorises students into 3 categories of achievement at the age of 9 or 10 - you know whether you'll be going to university at that age.

I spoke to an Italian teacher shocked at how much technology was available to British schools and how little to Italian schools.

And I thought, it's not actually that bad here.

What I learned from BETT 2012 #1: Cloud is the new Interactive Whiteboard

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1. Cloud is the new Interactive Whiteboard

My first visit to BETT was last year and I was struck at that time by just how many companies were marketing interactive whiteboards, or products that somehow augment interactive whiteboards. They just weren't there this year. The obvious few had stands - Smart, Promethean and so on, but I didn't notice many more.

What I noticed instead was the word 'cloud'.

It was everywhere, usually alongside some alliterative slogan that also used words like 'connect' and 'collaborate'.

It seems to me that loads of companies are on the cloud bandwagon, hoping that schools will invest in some product somewhere on a server in a secure room on a business park in Milton Keynes.

Now I'm not averse to cloud stuff. As a Google Apps for Education user I have a lot of time and effort invested in the cloud and it has begun to make good efficiency savings at my school. It's even helped some kids do some learning. Alongside Google Apps (which is free), I've also invested in Incerts, Purple Mash, Education City and Espresso, not to mention other free Cloud-based products such as Manga High, PixlR, Prezi, Aviary, Wordpress, Posterous and Khan Academy. That's quite a daunting list, and if I'd had the school check book with me I could have quite easily come away with another half-a-dozen products from the show. Moople was particularly interesting as it presents a kind of one-stop wrapper for a load of different cloud-based products, effectively providing a single sign-on for all users. Single sign on is critically important for younger users as they often have difficult remembering one username and password, let alone twelve.

What concerns me with all this is not really the huge range of products, but the fact that they can act as a barrier between the teacher and student. One-to-one teaching is the most effective way of raising a child's attainment and skilled teachers spend their time finding opportunities for these one-to-one's to take place throughout the course of a school week, no matter how big the class size is. One danger is the temptation to think that teachers can facilitate the use of these technologies to somehow engender learning. But teachers are trained to teach - the proven way of developing a child's knowledge - and using cloud-based technologies can, if used incorrectly add an extra layer of complexity between the one-to-one teaching relationships that exist in classrooms across the country.

Similarly, for years interactive whiteboards have been seen as the must-have piece of kit in any classroom, but have also come with cautionary tales of only being used for presentations at the start of a lesson, or being hidden in cupboards only to be discovered by a particularly eager Ofsted inspector. I wonder if cloud technology will become that next big thing - used well be some, touched on by others and hidden in cupboards by a few.

And I also wonder if it really matters - I mean to education as a whole. Would students at my school really be disadvantaged at their secondary schools if they've never collaborated on a Google Doc before they get to Secondary school? Of course I'm going to continue using Google Apps and the many other cloud products I've brought into my school - but where's the evidence that it really makes a difference?

Welcome to my fully armed Lapsafe Chromebook trolley

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It wouldn't strike many to be that important, but over the next few weeks I reckon I'm going to be counting my blessings that I forked out for a top of the range trolley from Lapsafe.

Surely it's the quality of the technology - the laptop, the iPad, the Chromebook - that's important. Surely it's the product support / the software / the training that is the key to succesful deployment.

Nope. I think it's the quality if the charging trolley (or Cart if you're US).

The next few weeks will prove me right or wrong.

"Wow - Purple Mash looks ace!"

Today was the first time that all the staff got their hand on the Chromebooks.

It was a mixed success, mainly because of the ongoing problems we're having with how Chrome Os talks to the proxy server. I've already written about those particular problems. I had put the Chromebooks out before the staff arrived and of course they all started playing with them. That's great - I normally encourage such practice. However I knew this time it would augur a disaster. You see I had 'backdated' all the Chromebooks to version 14, which has no proxy problems. But unfortunately version 14 automatically updates itself to the next version, which does have proxy problems. So of course, those staff that started playing with the Chromebooks first couldn't use them by the end of the session.

However, for some staff (those teachers who had left their Chromebook lids closed), the experience was very positive. They accessed our new learning platform and played around with some of the tools that the students could use, including Purple Mash, which was a real hit. From the simplicity of software such as Simple City - great for Early Years children, to designing your own cut out car, it all looks great. My particular favourite, though I admit it's quite gimmicky, is 'Mashcam' where the children take a photo of themselves using the Chromebook webcam and it gets pasted into an outline of some other figure, like a spaceman or a police man. I'm particularly looking forward to the Year 3 children picturing themselves as Tutankhamun in a few weeks time as they get their Egyptian topic underway.

I really think that Purple Mash is an ideal match for the Chromebooks - sitting alongside our Google Apps domain, I think it will enhance the children's experience and give opportunities for younger children in particular to access 'The Cloud'. I've been aware that it is mainly our Key Stage 2 classes that have been using our Google Apps domain and Purple Mash looks just the right thing to draw in the younger children (especially the teachers of those younger children).

Back to the technical issue with the Chromebooks. After the session was over, the post arrived and there were the flash drives sent from Google Europe in Ireland with the experimental patch for version 16. Hopefully it will soon all work.

Chrome Os and its Serious Product Failure

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In the last couple of weeks I've had to erase the stateful partition on several occasions, upgrade to the Beta Channel and even upgrade to the Dev channel (which, by the way, happens to be very unstable). In addition, I've had to block automatic updates, which is the same as saying go to manual override. It's a mercy that I haven't had to reverse the polarities or change the Dilithium Crystals. No, I'm not re-enacting an episode 1960s' Star Trek, rather I've been trying to get my Chromebooks to work.

I know that in my last post about Chromebooks I wrote that I intended to delve into the depths of the Google Apps Management Console, however the next day they stopped working.

You see Chromebooks update themselves automatically, as many things do these days, but unfortunately, version 15 didn't work. Version 14 had worked fine, swimmingly even. You might possibly say dreamily. The students, even after two sessions had started to: Love. Their. Chromebooks. But version 15 let us down. A crucial part of the Chromebook experience had stopped working - the sign in screen. So I upgraded to the Beta channel - version 16 and that did work. Then to the Dev (Development) channel but that didn't work either.

It was something to do with the proxy setup in my school and authority. You see, Birmingham runs a system where a local 'Squid' server, based at the school, links to a central parent server somewhere in the depths of a shady building in the city centre. With this setup the local server caches the internet sites that students visit. This means that the first student that visits a website will bring the content both onto their computer and onto the Squid where much of the content is cached. Any students that follow up will then have a much faster experience because most of the content can be delivered to them down the metres of cable on a 100Mb connection, rather than down miles of fibre on a 10Mb connection. The central parent server has the job of filtering out unwanted websites, which it generally does a very good job of doing.

Something to do with that setup didn't work in Chrome Os 15 - it just didn't hold any of the proxy information or network information, so any new user wanting to use the Chromebook couldn't do so. The Chromebooks were dead in the water. As the guy at Google told me - it looks like a serious product failure. 

However the marvellous thing about Google is that their product support is absolutely brilliant. If you ever want an experience of being spoken to politely and humbly by people who really know what they're talking about - go talk to Google product support. Within a couple of days some flash drives containing version 14 of Chrome Os were winging their way towards me from Dublin. The instructions, which included the use of the paperclip shown in the photograph, demanded that I block the update server: it would be a nightmare if I fixed the Chromebooks by downgrading them to version 14, only for them to re-update themselves to version 15. The technical guys in Birmingham were equally quick at sorting this - responding to the request to block the update server within a day and also providing me with some insightful tips on how proxy servers work (which in fact helped me right the paragraph above).

It amuses me somewhat that, after all that technical stuff about proxy servers, it should be a paperclip that I would need to sort the problem out. I've all but had the Chromebooks inside out over the last couple of weeks and it has finally been a paperclip (and version 14 of Chrome Os on a flash drive) that has fixed them.

Onwards and upwards then - I'll have a full set of working Chromebooks by tomorrow and I'll look forward to version of 18 of Chrome Os with considerable anticipation.

Is this the beginning of the end for the proxy server?

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Proxy servers have been great for schools. The ability to apply policies, filters and firewalls to a range of academic establishments has helped keep millions of students protected from less than savoury websites. In Birmingham, UK, Europe's largest education authority, nearly all the 420+ schools use the same proxy, meaning that the costs of maintaining it are much lower than they would be should each school have to manage their own one.

Essentially a proxy server is an extra computer that sits between your network and the rest of the world, although if you want a more technical article, see the wikipedia article.

In short, proxy servers do a good thing and they save money.

As an ICT co-ordinator, I have seen the proxy server as a necessary evil.

It does more good that it doesn't.

I need the proxy - but it does often cause me problems.

For example, to make the school Kindles work, I have to take them home to set them up (where I have a direct internet connection). This is a bit frustrating.

In addition, some websites are rightly filtered by the proxy for all the schools in Birmingham, but on occasion it would be useful to open them up. Facebook is a good example of this - not only do I manage a school Facebook page that I can update from school via email but cannot see in school unless I borrow a child's mobile phone, but I would also like to offer parent workshops about safe Facebook use. The people who manage the Birmingham proxy server (Link2ICT) are very responsive and offered to unlock Facebook and similar social media sites for a specific computer at a specific time - but this does require extra organisation and time - it would be handy if I could control this myself.

A further problem is a clash with external providers. Increasingly schools such as ours are forging stronger links with external software providers. 2Simple are an excellent example - they provide software that is just perfect for the primary child - uncomplicated, powerful and fun to use. However their support solution involves a tool called Logmein, where they can access a computer remotely from their offices whilst speaking to me on the phone. Now in the past I have been literally shouted at by a colleague from Link2ICT for daring to experiment with Logmein as it jeopardises the integrity of the whole Birmingham network, apparently. This is a bit of a conflict - do I turn to the software company for support, or do I only rely on the services of our local people?

And when schools are increasingly asked to be accountable and autonomous at a school level, not a local authority level, is there a balance to be struck between the systems that work at a local authority level (like Proxy servers) and between commercial software providers?

Managing my own proxy would be completely out of the question. Not only would I not have the time or the inclination to learn the skills, but I'm sure it's far cheaper to share a proxy between a range of school like we currently do.

However, just in this last week, I have noticed something in our Google Apps domain that does some of the jobs that the proxy server does.

This week I have been experimenting with our Google Apps management console to set up our Chromebooks in different ways for the different user groups. For example I can set up the teachers so that the school calendar and their email open at startup. Or I can setup the year 6 students so that they get straight to a Google spreadsheet we have been working on for our Switched on ICT scheme of work. Or I can setup the Year 3 students so they get straight to Purple Mash, that they have been trialling this term. I've noticed too that I can control the Chrome extensions and web apps from the chrome store - I can make Angry Birds appear as an icon in the corner of the desktop. Or I can ban it so it never appears.

What I am most excited about is the URL blacklist / whitelist section (pictured above). I can blacklist everything, and then whitelist all the websites I want the children to access. I can use this to have complete control over the Chromebooks and change their accessibility according to the needs of the students and the curriculum. The question I need to answer now is how much work is this - managing a blacklist / whitelist filter? Is it the kind of thing I can do for my school or do I need to share the responsibility with other schools? And if I can find those other schools to work with, do I still need a proxy server - does it offer some functionality other than a web filter that I am ignorant of?

Lots of questions, I know. Hopefully answers will come in future posts as I begin to look at how the Management console affects learning.

Product support: the efficient, gentle arrogance of Google

It's no secret that I'm a complete Google fanboy. You know how some people are so keen on Apple products they almost froth at the mouth. Well I'm a bit like that with Google. Given that, you may find it surprising that I've used the word 'arrogance', which for many people has negative connotations.

One of the things that has made buying Chromebooks from Google so pleasant is the amount of positive interactions from Google people during the process. When I first contacted them in about June there were no plans to extend Google Chromebooks for Enterprise into the education market in Europe. But during the summer break someone from Google Europe emailed to say that Google had formed a Chromebooks for Education in Europe and we were "good to go" (that's a shameful use of US expression).

Since then the interactions have been many and positive, helping us through the purchasing agreement, which was of a type we hadn't seen before at our Primary School and making sure the Chromebooks were delivered in good time.

Shortly after arrival I received a phone call from a friendly chap calling all the way from Mountain View. He'd got into work really early to speak to me mid-afternoon, given the 8 hour time difference. This was our deployment advisor, Hubert, who would guide us through the steps to successfully deploy our Chromebooks. And guide us he did. 2 Chromebooks didn't work at all at first and it was looking like I would have to go through the faff of having to put them in boxes and send them back to Dublin. However Hubert saved the day. His precise advice worked perfectly and the 2 Chromebooks were resurrected - they now work perfectly with our wifi system.

When all was sorted, he rang me one more time as a kind of debrief of the whole process and we went through my deployment experience. It concluded with a conversation in which I managed to express some of the things I'd like to see on the Chromebooks or in Google Apps - like a child-friendly version of Google+ for example.

In the email that followed he went on to say that I had "been one of his better customers." 

Now I know my school is only a tiny primary school and Google is a huge multinational company with thousands of employees, but it struck me as remarkable that any company would say this to their customers. I asked one or two friends who run businesses and they agreed that saying such a thing might make them lose business. It would be a bit like me saying to a parent: "You're one of our better families." I suppose there's a certain sensibility - maybe even a 'Britishness' - that might be offended by this. It could produce comments such as: "fancy rating us as a customer... how arrogant!" But of course for me (the Google fanboy) I just felt like a seventeen year old who'd just been told he was really good looking, despite his spots and gangly legs. I walked around the school just that little bit taller for a couple of days. If it is an arrogance, it's a gentle one, because I didn't mind it one bit.

And since then the support has been equally as good. I'm currently experiencing a glitch with our Google Apps Chrome Os Management Console (I'll be blogging about what happens with this in a few days time). I emailed at the start of the day and already two people have contacted me from Google until I've got the email from just the right expert, who will be giving me a call next week.

So in short, it's early days, but the product support has been brilliant - efficient, quick, precise and ever-so-gently arrogant.

Chromebooks to the rescue!

This Monday my plans were put on hold when as Key Stage Co-ordinator I was directed by the Deputy Headteacher to cover the Year 6 teacher who was poorly. In addition the ICT subject leader proposed a further challenge - the half term's unit from the Switched On ICT scheme of work was as yet untouched and needed to be started. Fortunately I am both ICT leader and deputy headteacher - so it's all my fault really.

It's difficult to get a day of lessons ready with half an hour's notice, but the Chromebooks helped me in all sorts of ways on the day. The students had only had one previous session with them, in which they had mainly been testing them for me and seeing if there's anything decent in the Chrome Webstore. The students were keen to use them again, but I feared they would just want them to play. "Can I play Angry Birds, Sir?" would be the question I was most anticipating. Now while I've seen Angry Birds work in a classroom context, today was not the day for it. You see, I was behind on teaching year 6 the 'We Are Fundraisers' unit in the Switched on ICT scheme from Rising Stars that I quoted above. In fact I hadn't touched on it at all. The unit covers data handling and real life money problems (amongst other things) and I was keen to work with year 6 on developing their skills at using spreadsheets and calendars. The Christmas Market was three weeks away (it takes place on the 2nd December) - and this was the event that the children would actually be carrying out their business ideas in.

So how did the Chromebooks help?

Direct Teaching

I moved the chairs and tables into rows (yes I know - unusual for primary schools) and had all the children facing the board. Each child had a Chromebook in front of them and was logged into a sample Google Spreadsheet I had created for them. In this I taught them how to add, multiply, divide and take away cells; find a total using the sum function and make predictions of how much profit they make if all their plans came to fruition. Each child then copied my sample spreadsheet to experiment themselves with their own business idea.

Group work

The 'communcations officer' in each team was given a Chromebook. Each group then discussed their ideas with each other of how they might money at the Christmas Market. When an idea was sufficiently well formed, the communications officer would input it into a shared Google Doc that was also projected onto the interactive whiteboard. Each group could then see what other groups were coming up with and as a class we could make sure that no business would be duplicating each other - you can have too many lucky dips.

Independent work

Once each business had a rough idea to work on, each individual worked on the tasks associated with their roles. For example, treasurer, advertising, coms officer. Managers would be using Chromebooks to investigate prices and put together costings of prizes or materials they needed. Treasurers would be putting together a projected profit plan, considering how much money they might make. Communications officers would be putting together a list of questions they might need to ask other adults in the school. Advertisers used Google Drawings and Aviary to create adverts for their business. In many of these tasks the quick start up of the Chromebooks, their long battery life and the stability of their systems proved invaluable at keeping the groups productive.

Whole class presentation

At the end of the day, each group presented their plans to myself and the teaching assistant in an almost 'Dragon's Den' atmosphere, with the rest of the class listening in to the interaction. In this we talked about the realism of their plans, suggested new ideas or alterations and then decided whether to approve their business plan. Again the Chromebooks were useful - keeping the Google spreadsheet open was useful to look at how the numbers changed if, say only 30 people came to their stall instead of the hoped for 200. It also helped me, with my ICT hat on, spot whether students had really got the learning about using formulas within the spreadsheets and write down those who might need further work in that area. Of the 6 groups, 4 businesses were approved. The other two went away with ideas of how to improve their plan and return at a later date.

Given that this was the second time the children had used Chromebooks, I was delighted at how useful and glitch-free they had been. Some students had previously moaned that they couldn't get used to the trackpad (which is more akin to the way an Apple works than the PC laptops they are used to), but none complained in this second session. The Chromebooks blend really well with other activities - in one group the treasurer was working on her spreadsheet while right next to her two other children were painting and advertising poster - I love it when technology is so seamless it's just there - just another way of doing things - like picking up a pencil or using a number-line. It's seems like Chromebooks are already becoming that way in Year 6. And what's even better is not one child played Angry Birds, or even asked the question.

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