Tag: technology in the classroom

UxPlay: Sharing iPad Screen on Linux (Ubuntu)

My setup for teaching online and in school students simultaneously requires me to mirror/share my iPad screen, which I’m using as a whiteboard, with a computer that’s doing video-conferencing for the online students and is hooked up to a projector for the in-class students.

I’ve been using X-Mirage on a Windows computer, but this week my Windows desktop started having trouble connecting to the internet in the middle of classes, and I’ve not been able to debug. Fortunately, I’d been setting up a donated laptop with Ubuntu Linux, mainly to use as a machine for programming, but a quick internet search lead me to Rodrigo Ribeiro’s UxPlay that allowed me to switch over to the Linux laptop for the last two days.

The installation instructions are straightforward, but I wanted to make a note to myself for future reference, because I did this on two different laptops and both times I had to run one of the commands I found in the comments.

So, to install run:

sudo apt-get install cmake
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-libav
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-vaapi

The last command was redundant on at least one of the computers, but didn’t seem to hurt.

You then download the UxPlay program from his webpage, and follow his instructions to unzip the file, cd into the directory, make a ./build folder, cd into that, and then run the commands:

cmake ..
make

At this point you may be able to run the program, but I was not able to connect my iPad until I ran:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad

Then I could launch the program (while still in that build directory) with:

./uxplay
Screen mirrored using UxPlay showing my Jamboard notes that were written on the iPad.

Now, I just need to figure out the best way of streamlining the use of the program.

Update: I copied the “uxplay” executable into the “/usr/local/bin” folder so it’s now accessible from everywhere, and available to all users on the laptop.

The Technology I Use for Teaching in Person and Online at the Same Time

This year we’ve been doing a hybrid system with most students at school and a few, who’re more sensitive to the COVID risk, at home. Setting up the technology to accomplish this has been quite tricky, but we’ve settled on a system the works reasonably well.

Hardware

The standard system involves:

  1. iPad: for notes that will normally be written on the board,
  2. Computer: the iPad screen is mirrored on the computer and then,
  3. Projector: to project what’s on the computer/iPad the kids in the classroom.

In practice it looks like this.

The iPad is mirrored to the computer which connects to the project and shares the screen with the kids at home.

If it looks a bit messy, that’s because it is.

Software

Video Conferencing

We’re using Google Meet for our video conferencing software, pretty much because we’re using Google Classroom for our classes and it’s built in. However, all you need is something that can share the computer screen with the kids at home, so Zoom, which we used in the spring, would probably work as well. One advantage of Meet is that it’s easy to set up a meeting for the class and the link is posted at the top of the page every time you log into Google Classroom.

Jamboard as a Whiteboard app.

After trying a few programs we’re using Google’s Jamboard as a whiteboard program for the iPad. Jamboards are shared documents, just like another Google Doc or Sheet, so in theory, if I shared the specific Jamboard document with them (which I do) the students at home could just follow along in the same document in real-time. In practice Jamboard can be extremely laggy, so I’ve given up on that approach and now I just share my entire computer screen over the video conferencing program.

One nice thing about Jamboard is that they are files, so the whiteboard notes can be saved and cataloged with other materials for a particular lesson or assignment. It’s also probably a good thing that you’re restricted to 20 slides otherwise I’d end up with some really large documents.

The ability to save them as files with all the other google documents, and the fact that it’s free, are the main reasons I prefer Jamboard to the other whiteboard options I’ve tried.

Mirroring the iPad (X-Mirage and UxPlay)

Mirroring the iPad to the computer turned out to be quite tricky. Since we’ve been working primarily with Windows PC’s, I ended up going with X-Mirage. I’ve set it up so X-Mirage automatically launches when you start up the computer, but it’s another piece of software to pay attention to. This program has a mac version as well. On the downside it costs about $14 for each computer it’s on.

I recently got my hands on a couple old (donated) laptops, and installed Linux (Ubuntu) on them for the operating system. In the few days I’ve been testing them they seem to work very well. For these I’ve used UxPlay as mirroring software, which has slotted into the system very, very well. Because it’s a command line program, setting up can be a little tricky.

In Summary

In summary, I have a system, and it works well enough that all of the other teachers have adopted it for their classes as well. This works for us because we can mostly use the hardware we have (we did have to buy iPads for the teachers who did not have them), and the software is fairly cheap. The kids at home appreciate it because it allows them to see and hear what’s going on in the classroom, especially what’s written on the board, pretty clearly. I’ve not heard many complaints from the kids at school.

As for the future, I am somewhat excited that I can effectively use the Linux computer now, and I’m always looking for ways to streamline.

Devices

I tend to let my students have a lot of freedom to use their myriad technological devices as they will. Just as long as they use them responsibly (i.e. for academics during class time). What’s most interesting these days is seeing how they combine the various electronics.

Working with pen, paper, tablet and laptop.
Working with pen, paper, tablet and laptop.

This Chemistry student is referring to her textbook on the iPad, while she creates a presentation on her laptop. Yet pen and paper are still integral parts of the process.

The Hazards of Too Much Technology

New technology has a tendency to be used badly, but that does not mean it can’t be a powerful tool. Konstantin Kakaes argues that the increased use of technology is hurting science and math education.

A 2007 congressionally mandated study by the National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance found that 16 of the best reading and mathematics learning software packages—selected by experts from 160 submissions—did not have a measurable effect on test scores.

— Kakaes (2012): Why Johnny Can’t Add Without a Calculator in Slate.

He makes some good points –a lot of technology is used employed simply because it’s “new technology” and not for what it can do– but I think he’s missing one fundamental aspect, probably because stuff is so new that we’re still figuring out how to use technology properly. The key missing aspect is that the increasing ubiquity of technology is changing who we are.

Technology is like an amplifier for our cognitive abilities –memorizing facts is less important because you can quickly look up the answers; how much time should you spend solving matricies if your can program your own matrix solver? –, and technology is becoming more closely integrated into who we are –we’re becoming inseparable from our smartphones (and it’s only a matter of time before they become implants).

$25 computer

Here’s a real computer, the Raspberry Pi, for only $25. It has only two ports, one for a monitor and another for a keyboard. I’d suggest it needs one more USB port so you could hook it up to external devices (like robots), if you can’t split the single USB.

Its intention is to bring computer hardware and programming into schools. I’d love to get hold of one.

(Articles from BBC and geek.com).

iPod stands

Red paperclip iPhone stand.

I’ve been hoping for a wireless keyboard for the iPhone for quite a while, and Apple has finally produced one. As far as my students are concerned, with a full keyboard to write useful amounts of text, the iPhone is almost as good as having a “normal” computer. And the same applies to the iPad as well.

Once you have the keyboard, however, he next question is, how do you get the iPhone to sit at the correct angle for you to do your work. My students have dug up a couple solutions, starting with the paperclip version you see above. Simple, cheap, and elegant; I really like it.

Lego iPhone stand. The bright sparkles are purely a function of unapologetic awesomeness.

A couple days after seeing the paperclip stand in action, I came across the Lego stand.

“Why,” I asked.

“Because it’s awesome.”

“Oh,” I replied.

And it is.

Seismic vibrations of the heart

You should be able to see three heartbeats on the bottom line (labled Z), though the Z obscures part of one of the waves.

We were working on plate tectonics last week, and the conversation went from earthquakes to heartbeats.

I think it started with the question of, “How do we know what the inside of the Earth is like if no one’s been down to see it?”

I agreed that we’ve not even been down to the bottom of the crust because the heat and pressure would collapse any hole we tried to drill. I did not mention that terrible movie, “The Core”, because beyond maybe the first ten minutes where there is some actual speculative science fiction, it’s really not worth seeing.

But beneath the crust, how do we know how thick the mantle is? How do we know that the inner core is solid metal (mostly iron) while the outer core is liquid metal?

Not wanting to go into too much detail I tried to explain about seismic waves. Different types can go through different materials and if you monitor their reflections off different parts of the Earth’s interior you can puzzle out the layering and composition. I just gave the simplest demonstration: if you tap a piece of wood with you knuckle, could you tell that it was wood and not metal? What if you tapped a bucket, could you tell if it was full of water or not? Well seismic tomography work in much the same way, except that you’re usually picking up the reverberations from the earthquake rather than making it yourself by hitting the bucket. There’s also a bit more math involved.

But tapping the bucket gives a quick easy feel (pun intended) for the process. My students at least seemed satisfied.

So then I pointed out that you could use an app called iSeismo, to detect seismic waves. Both the iPhone (and its variants) and the iPad have accelerometers that can be used to pick up motion in all three dimensions. My students from last year remembered it, and at least one already had it loaded on his phone.

A quick test showed that the phone’s pretty sensitive. You can pick up two people jumping together all the way across the room. This part of the demo is nice because it helps prove that seismic waves from earthquakes can go very far. You can also see the little squiggles as the waves are picked up.

I did not try it this time, and I’ll need to confirm if it will work, but since the time on the phones should be well synchronized over the network, and iSeismo can output the actual data, we should be able to use three iPhones to triangulate the location of the jumpers. This might work in nicely with geometry now that I think about it.

Checking for a heartbeat using iSeismo.

Anyway, finally, a student asked if the phone might be able to pick up his heartbeat if he lay on his back.

We tried it. Lying on his back on the floor while holding his breath, we could see his heartbeat quite clearly.

The future of education?

The innate will to learn is the basic premise of the Montessori philosophy. So we emphasize giving students the freedom to explore the Montessori works, and allow them the time an space to teach each other, rather than intervening all the time. I know I find it hard to shut up sometimes and let them make the obvious mistakes, but they learn so much better that way.

Sugata Mitra wondered what would happen if you gave a computer to bunch of developing-world kids and let them use it as they would. As with Montessori, it turns out that the kids learn a lot, especially because they end up teaching each other.

Mitra’s TED talk is quite interesting in that it’s amazing just how much students will learn from a computer, even if unmediated by a teacher, if you just let them at it. Based on this work, he wants to add more computers and more unmediated spaces, all around the world. I think it’s a good idea.

In middle school we don’t have all the Montessori works students use in pre-Kindergarten through Upper Elementary. Students and their studies are getting more abstract. Instead, there are lots of individual and group projects. I like to view it as a set of apprenticeships: learn to be a scientist, learn to be an author, learn to be a geographer, and so on. One of the key questions I juggle is how “real” should their projects be. Should I give them a basic assignment and have them figure out the questions on their own, or should I point them toward specific resources, like chapters in the textbook. The answer is somewhere in between, but there is a constant tension. I also just try to mix it up a bit.

At any rate, Mitra’s work is interesting and I think its long-term results will probably affect the way we teach Montessori middle schools.