Cincinnati Country Day School

Cincinnati School Fosters Creative Learning with Tablet PC in One-to-One Program

Cincinnati Country Day School (CCDS) in Ohio has a long history of integrating technology into the classroom. In 1996, the school embraced the one-to-one computing pilot program sponsored by Microsoft and Toshiba, providing a mobile PC for each student’s full-time use. And when the Tablet PC and Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition operating system arrived in 2002, the school migrated to the Toshiba Tablet PC to take advantage of pen-enabled computing and ink-integration for the Microsoft® Office system programs. Later, CCDS deployed DyKnow® interactive instructional software and the school has plans to upgrade to the Windows Vista® operating system. The Tablet PC has captured the imagination of students and teachers. For the first time, CCDS has a technology tool that fully supports the school’s mission of encouraging creative thinking, individual excellence, and constructive collaboration.

 

Situation

Founded in 1926, Cincinnati Country Day School (CCDS) occupies 62 acres in Indian Hill, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. Serving pre-primary through twelfth-grade students, the school’s philosophy of student-centered learning is the hallmark of its innovative interdisciplinary curriculum that encourages individual excellence and character development. CCDS’s faculty and staff help each student reach his or her potential by providing a strong academic program, offering opportunities to participate in a wide variety of activities within a diverse community.

CCDS’s goal of encouraging intellectual, social, physical, and artistic development in a way that is meaningful for every student fosters a willingness to embrace new ideas about teaching and learning. It was this spirit of innovation that inspired a physics teacher more than 25 years ago to integrate technology into CCDS’s curriculum. He deployed a Hewlett Packard 21000 mini computer and 15 terminals around the school.

“By the time I took over the technology department in 1980, computers were an integral part of the school,” recalls Joe Hofmeister, former Technology Director at Cincinnati Country Day School. “Over the next few years, faculty, students, and parents came to thoroughly endorse the concept of technology integrated into our curriculum. When we received a letter from Microsoft and Toshiba in 1996 to come to Seattle and attend a three-day seminar about their ‘Anytime Anywhere’ learning initiative, we already had 200 Macintosh computers in 4 computer labs. So the idea of putting a laptop in the hands of every student for their full-time use seemed like a huge opportunity that fit with our idea of a student-centered learning environment.”

The Origins of One-to-One Computing

Within a month of returning to the school, Hofmeister and the school’s headmaster at the time, Dr. Charles Clark, had convinced the faculty and parents to endorse the platform change from Macintosh to Windows®-based computers running the Windows 95 operating system. By the following October, the entire school eagerly anticipated “Open the Box Day.” Every student from Grade 5 to Grade 12, plus the entire faculty, helped unwrap 600 notebooks in the school gym. This was the beginning of the one-to-one computing program at CCDS.

“Back then Toshiba and Microsoft were the only ones involved in this educational initiative,” recalls Hofmeister. “CCDS took the early leap to one-to-one computing based on conversations with Microsoft and Toshiba, and we are still doing it today. We’ve always felt that Toshiba was an innovator. Their program, Notebooks for Schools, demonstrated that they shared our vision, and over the years, they have continually backed their product, even during the tough times. Their demonstrated commitment to our success has impressed me throughout our long partnership, which spans over a decade.”

The Challenges of Technology in the Classroom

Between 1997 and 2003, faculty at CCDS shared best practices and new ideas about using the mobile PCs in the classroom, and in the process generated a school-wide endorsement of the one-to-one computing initiative based on two key concepts: transparency and seamless integration. What CCDS wanted to achieve with the one-to-one program was to integrate the technology so completely into the curriculum and the classroom experience that it almost became a non-issue.

With the Tablet PC, amazing educators will do amazing things. Quite simply, it’s a dream machine, not just for our school, but for any school. Joe Hofmeister Former Technology Director, Cincinnati Country Day School

“Our goal has always been to improve classroom pedagogy, and not to focus on the technology,” explains Robert Baker, Director of Technology and a computer science teacher at Cincinnati Country Day School. “We don’t want to be known as a technology school. Instead, we would rather talk about our learning environment, with technology woven in as a natural extension of our educational goals: individualizing the students’ experiences, supporting different learning styles, providing alternative forms of assessment, and encouraging different forms of expression.”

While the one-to-one computing program helped the CCDS faculty to evolve its learning environment to achieve some of these goals, in the words of Academic Dean, Kelly Hammond: “They were not seamlessly integrated, nor were they transparent. When I stood in front of my class, I saw the back of laptop screens, which was a distraction. Math students sometimes spent more time typing problems than solving them. I never found an intuitive way of marking digitally; the comments and track changes functions seemed too artificial a way of communicating with the students. These were little things, but they were instances where the technology got in the way of the learning process.”

According to Hofmeister, the mobile PC’s limitations stem from the way it restricts personal expression. “You have only limited ways of being creative: through the keyboard and, to a slightly greater extent, through the mouse,” he says. “To truly achieve our goal of uncovering each student’s unique talent and learning style and helping them succeed by exploiting those talents and adapting to those learning styles, we needed a more flexible technology tool.”

This need was especially evident in the school’s interdisciplinary studies, which CCDS designed to help students with different learning styles to engage in course material by exposing them to the interconnections between ideas and disciplines. Hammond’s Grade 9 Humanities class, which combines English, History, Fine Arts, and Art History, is a case in point. “It’s an amazing course that captures the students’ imaginations in so many different ways,” she says. “We really needed a more natural technology platform that the students could use to express their enthusiasm for learning with the same flexibility.”

Solution

Recognizing CCDS’s appreciation of innovative tools in learning, Toshiba had been discussing pen-based input with Hofmeister and the possibilities it posed in the classroom. In the spring of 2003, Toshiba presented Hofmeister with a sample unit of its Portégé® 3500 Tablet PC pre-installed with the Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition operating system. Seeing the device and testing the inking function, faculty and students were instantly intrigued about the possibilities of pen-enabled computing. “I remember we took the Tablet PC straight to my senior history class, and one of the students immediately grasped its potential,” recalls Hammond. “The student said, ‘Why don’t we grab a map from the Internet and annotate how the geography affects the development of culture?’ When we saw the kids take the initiative with this new platform, we were sold.”

Toshiba Tablet PCs used by CCDS students and faculty are convertible Tablet PCs. This model offers all the features of a regular mobile PC with the added benefits of a swiveling screen, stylus input, and digital ink. Students work with the pen directly on the screen in place of a mouse to select, drag, and open files, or they can use the pen to handwrite their notes, making notations on the screen as if it was a paper-based notebook. For times when typing is preferred, students simply release and lift the screen, swivel it into position, and type on the keyboard like any other standard mobile PC. They also use the Tablet’s unique record feature to record classroom lectures, study sessions or their own voice for playback later, which significantly enhances retention.

Toshiba supplied six Tablet PCs for CCDS to use for the rest of the term. During that time, they were in daily use in math, science, arts, and humanities courses. “It was amazing to see the kids in Kelly’s class studying Shakespeare and working in groups using the Tablet PCs to draw set designs and costumes,” recalls Hofmeister. “By the end of that year, we had decided that every new machine we would buy would be a Tablet PC.”

Toshiba Public Sector Vice President Dan Rosensteel wasn’t surprised at how quickly CCDS understood the potential of the Tablet PC. “CCDS has always been very forward-thinking in the way it integrates technology into the curriculum,” he says. “Over the years, teachers and students have provided us with valuable feedback about how our technology performs in the classroom, and Joe has been a passionate spokesperson for our Notebooks for Schools program and the benefits of one-to-one computing.”

Establishing the Tablet PC at CCDS

The next fall, CCDS deployed Tablet PCs to the entire Grade 5 class and to students in Grade 9 who were due for a new computer in accordance with the school’s hardware refresh cycle, which changed from a three-year to a four-year cycle when Tablet PCs were introduced. “We demonstrated the students’ work on the Tablet PCs to the faculty, and every single teacher who saw the demo signed up right away,” recalls Hammond.

That first year, students used Microsoft® Office XP and the Windows XP Pack for Tablet PC that pen-enabled Office XP programs. Teachers encouraged them to use Microsoft Windows Journal, a note-taking accessory that students can use to handwrite and save notes and drawings, and also to convert handwritten notes to text. “Very quickly, we upgraded to Microsoft Office 2003,” adds Baker.

Because you are not limited to paint, the Tablet PC lets you work with a lot of unique styles in a way you couldn’t do if you were working on canvas. Ilanah Habib Grade 8 student, Cincinnati Country Day School

Today, all students between Grades 5 and 12 have a Tablet PC, and there are 30 more Tablet PCs available on mobile carts to share among pre-Kindergarten to Grade 4 classrooms, with Toshiba models ranging from the original Portégé 3500 to the M200 and the 4th generation Portégé, M400 that added an optical drive and built-in EasyGuard drop protection for increased flexibility and durability. All Toshiba Tablet PCs also come pre-installed with the Microsoft Office OneNote® note-taking program. Since the beginning of the Tablet PC one-to-one program, CCDS has upgraded the operating system on all Tablet PCs to Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (also called Windows XP Service Pack 2).

The CCDS Tablet PC image also includes the Microsoft Experience Pack for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 and the Microsoft Education Pack for Tablet PC. The Experience Pack includes several applications that take full advantage of the Tablet PC pen, such as the Snipping Tool, which students use to grab a portion of a screen from a Web site, document, or application, add handwritten comments, and save it or send it in e-mail.

The Microsoft Education Pack for Tablet PC, available for download from the Microsoft Web site, includes the Equation Writer application for converting handwritten mathematical expressions to text with the touch of a pen; the GoBinder Lite student planner application by Agilix; the Send to Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 feature, which enables students to import Web pages, pictures, and other files to OneNote and annotate or highlight them with the pen; and Ink Flash Cards to help students study for an exam.

Depending on their course selection, some students use electronic textbooks, or add specialized software like Adobe Photoshop Elements. The Tablet PCs also come equipped with Secure Digital memory card slots that students use to facilitate their digital photography projects, and Lower School faculty members use to simplify assembling electronic portfolios for the students.

“In the fall of 2007, we will deploy Office OneNote 2007,” notes Hammond, and the school is looking forward to deploying the Windows Vista® operating system in the fall of 2008. With Windows Vista, inking capabilities are built right into the operating system.

With approximately one access point per classroom and in the common study areas, the school’s well-established 802.11B wireless network needed little modification and CCDS is planning on upgrading to 802.11A and 802.11G for the fall of 2007. Each faculty member has his or her own Web site, and teachers and students communicate by means of the school’s intranet, dropping off homework and retrieving assignments on a regular basis.

“We wrote a script that creates all class lists based on the roster in our system, so if I type in my last name and a specific class in Microsoft Office Outlook®, it automatically sends that e-mail to everyone in that class and to me,” says Baker. “The students use this feature as well. So in class, I often say, ‘That’s a great example, e-mail that to the whole class,’ and everyone will have it to study that night.”

Discovering DyKnow

In his capacity as programming teacher, Baker has a particular interest in assessing his students’ problem-solving skills as they learn to build algorithms, so when he heard about education software from DyKnow that teachers can use to watch their students solve problems in real time, or later after the class, he was interested. When he realized that the company’s products were built to take advantage of the mobility and intuitive pen-based computing experience of the Tablet PC, he determined to try the software.

Teachers can use DyKnow Vision to transmit both prepared and spontaneous content to student computers for annotation. Teacher content can include notes, images, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® presentation graphics program slides, Web pages, or content from other applications. Student annotations personalize the DyKnow notes, which can be replayed and reviewed in step-by-step detail during or after class. Similarly, teachers can collect and view a student’s work in progress by playing it back, inkstroke by inkstroke. Other DyKnow Vision features, such as polling, help teachers assess individual and class comprehension in real time, allowing teachers to adjust instruction on the fly. DyKnow Vision also encourages classroom collaboration by using a shared space and placing students in virtual work groups. Teachers at CCDS use DyKnow Vision’s partner software, DyKnow Monitor™, to manage their classroom environment and keep students on track for learning. Teachers can view thumbnails of student screens, as well as block specific applications or URLs.

“I simply can’t imagine having a Tablet PC one-to-one program without using DyKnow,” says Baker. “The best analogy for DyKnow is when you use DyKnow with a class it’s like giving every student their own electronic whiteboard. It’s as flexible and intuitive as the Tablet PC itself, so the possibilities of creating engaging and collaborative classroom experiences are virtually limitless. I first saw DyKnow in August of 2005, and by December of that year we were using it in the school.”

Laura Small, President of DyKnow, remembers Baker’s enthusiasm, and credits his continued interest in the development of DyKnow software for some valuable feedback over the last two years. “Rob is a thought leader, and he put our product through some very detailed and sound evaluation before buying a perpetual license for CCDS,” she says. “Since then, we’ve had an open and mutually beneficial relationship.”

Both Baker and Hammond are quick to point out, however, that the success of the Tablet PC does not depend on one program or capability alone. From the simplest tools that are available for free, to sophisticated interactive software like DyKnow Vision, the Tablet PC lends itself to creative expression, both in teaching and learning. “DyKnow is one piece of a very rich tapestry that the Tablet PC has woven here at Cincinnati Country Day,” says Hammond. “It’s the combination of all these software packages, downloadable tools, and the features built into the hardware itself, like the wireless capabilities and the SD reader, that make this such a rich platform for educators.”

Benefits

With the Tablet PC, Cincinnati Country Day School found a technology platform that teachers could seamlessly integrate into their classrooms. “This was not just an incremental step up from a laptop, it was a whole new paradigm,” says Baker. “With the introduction of the pen and digital ink, suddenly we no longer had to think about how to make the technology fit into the pedagogy; instead we were challenged to think of how to enhance the pedagogy to take advantage of this liberating new tool.”

The success of the one-to-one Tablet PC computing program at CCDS lies in how well the faculty has risen to this challenge, and the enduring results of their efforts are reflected in their students’ achievements. Fully integrating the Tablet PC into classroom learning at CCDS has fostered creativity, supported constructive collaboration, and encouraged individual excellence—all fundamental underpinnings of the school’s educational philosophy.

“With the Tablet PC, amazing educators will do amazing things,” confirms Hofmeister. “Quite simply, it’s a dream machine, not just for our school, but for any school.”

Fostering Creativity

According to Hofmeister, the key to unlocking creativity is to provide a student with a multi-purpose learning tool that encourages different forms of interaction—drawing, typing, talking, listening, and doodling. “With the Tablet PC in hand, students are free to do all that pre-writing stuff, the creative plotting, prioritizing of ideas, and working out a thesis,” he says. “That’s the joy of it for students. They have a tool that actually mirrors how they think.”

When students see how to shift their thoughts around on digital paper as freely as they do in their brains, it encourages innovative thinking. Kelly Hammond Academic Dean, Cincinnati Country Day School

This concept is given formal expression in a note-taking unit, required for all Grade 9 students. Working with Microsoft Windows Journal and Office OneNote 2003, teachers take the students through a series of exercises on the Tablet PC that teaches creative thinking in the context of note-taking. “I show them how to use the capabilities of each program: color coding, shrinking small details, making important concepts bigger, and using the Lasso tool to brainstorm and move and categorize ideas creatively,” Hammond explains. “When students see how to shift their thoughts around on digital paper as freely as they do in their brains, it encourages innovative thinking.”

Within Hammond’s multi-disciplinary Humanities class, Microsoft Windows Journal is one of her favorite programs on the Tablet PC because it provides her students with the opportunity to learn visually through the creative layering of ideas, geography, and historical events. “When we study Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, I give the students a Microsoft Windows Journal map of the Middle East in which they trace over the borders and label the modern countries,” Hammond explains. “They copy the tracing three times, one for each religion, and on each copy there are different scriptural references to historically important places for that religion. When they have researched and labeled where all these locations are on the different sheets, they layer them over each other to see where the places intersect, and of course, discover that Jerusalem is sacred to all three religions. So when we move on to current events, they have an understanding of why this is such a hot spot. It’s a great, materials-focused project that delivers a moment of enlightenment that’s just not feasible without the Tablet PC. It’s when you put ideas and context and history together to see where they intersect that you really start thinking creatively.”

In Anna Kennedy’s Cyber Arts class for Grade 6, students use the Tablet PC to learn Photoshop Elements. For her tableau vivant project, after picking a favorite artist and work, each student dresses up and poses as the main person in that painting. Then using Photoshop, students take the Tablet pen to hand-color the photograph and manipulate the lighting and the filters to match the work, before inserting it into the original. “There’s a very distinct difference in their ability to use Photoshop with the Tablet PC,” comments Kennedy. “In terms of creative expression, the ability to draw and have more precision with the tools in Photoshop has greatly impacted my classes. The Tablet PC has given my students many more ways to express themselves.”

Ilanah Habib, a Grade 8 student in Kennedy’s @rt.edu class, agrees. For a self-portrait project, she took advantage of the Tablet PC to express herself with more than just visual imagery. “Because you are not limited to paint, the Tablet PC lets you work with a lot of unique styles in a way you couldn’t do if you were working on canvas,” Habib says. “I’m a big music person, so for my portrait I used the paintbrush setting to write my own lyrics and those of my favorite bands and then merged a lot of photos into one big picture of myself and the people I look up to in the music scene. It looks like a scrap book, with the lyrics laid over top.”

In Baker’s course, Introduction to Programming, students learn ActionScript scripting language in Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) under the guise of game design, and the Tablet PC is key to supporting the strong creative element that Baker brings to the class. He uses DyKnow Vision to work through commands in ActionScript and talks about step-by-step development of an algorithm. “Then I give students an open-ended assignment to encourage a creative response—for example, make a game of something falling from the sky and catching it with something,” Baker explains. “The next day, each student will bring in something unique, like a gorilla using a basket to catch bananas that are falling out of a tree. The Tablet PC is perfect for this because everything is drawn by hand. The students are still problem-solving, they still have to get the commands in the right order to make the computer do what they want, but they are problem solving creatively.”

Supporting Constructive Collaboration

Baker uses DyKnow software extensively in his Introduction to Programming to collaborate with the students and have them collaborate with each other. He can use DyKnow software to show them a sample of working code, spontaneously add elements to his lesson plan and engage the students to work out the same algorithm with him. Then he can walk around the classroom and ask for input on different variations of the problem; if he tests a student’s suggestion in front of the class and it doesn’t work, that’s an opportunity to review common mistakes and encourage the class to collaborate on fixing the problem. When the suggestion works, he can insert it into everyone’s DyKnow notebook so they can have it to study.

Educators who shy away from technology in the classroom should be the biggest advocates of Tablet PCs because they remove all boundaries to infusing a curriculum with relevant, usable technology. Robert Baker Technology Director, Cincinnati Country Day School

“I’m a great proponent of teaching by example, and the students love to have their work as examples,” Baker says. “Using DyKnow Vision, the kids know I can grab anyone’s work and show it to the class at anytime, but they also know that everyone else is in the same position. It keeps everyone on their toes and helps me with spontaneous formative assessment to test if the kids have really grasped a concept or not.”

In Marge Rockwell’s Grade 1 class, she uses the Tablet PC as the foundation for a group project that encourages children to use their imaginations together to redecorate rooms in the Broadwell House, a 200-year-old settler’s home on the school’s property. When the class went to visit the house, Rockwell took a picture of the main living room and loaded it onto the Tablet PC. She opened it up in Microsoft Paint and projected it onto a screen so everyone could see the empty room. Then the children took turns drawing pieces of furniture that they thought would have been in an early settler’s room. Then they repeated the exercise, drawing furniture and decorating the room as if it were a modern home.

“The Tablet PC was perfect for this collaborative exercise because the children could use the pen naturally to express themselves, and they had fun guessing what their classmates would draw,” Rockwell recalls. “I’m also going to be using the Tablet more to encourage writing in a way we never could do with a laptop.”

Grade 1 student Jenna Macrae is looking forward to that: “I first used a computer with my Dad, but I only knew where the A is. It’s much easier with a pen.”

Encouraging Individual Excellence

Students throughout CCDS are adapting the Tablet PC to fit their personal learning styles and in the process are learning about themselves and discovering hidden talents. Hammond uses Ink Art in her Humanities course to encourage visual learners to approach core courses in a way that makes the most sense to them. Her students keep a parallel sketchbook on the Tablet PC wherein they process course content creatively. “I had one student who really struggled to represent himself artistically using a traditional sketchbook, but when we started using the Tablet PC and digital ink, he found this a less intimidating medium. He quickly developed a unique style, a mix between Chagall and Jackson Pollock. Now when we share our work every two weeks we can’t wait to see what Nick’s done!”

Baker is adamant that it is the Tablet PC that gets students who would typically shy away from a programming course interested in his subject. Last year, he gave the computer science award to an artist, who graduated with the intention of becoming a game designer. “In this class everyone gets to shine,” he says. “I see strong programmers who are humbled by the great artwork of their classmates.

“Most people unfamiliar with the Tablet PC dismiss it as a laptop that can convert handwriting to text,” Baker continues. “The Tablet PC extends all of the benefits of digital information to ink. Educators who shy away from technology in the classroom should be the biggest advocates of Tablet PCs because they remove all boundaries to infusing a curriculum with relevant, usable technology.”

Some of the most impressive artwork Hammond has seen done on the Tablet PC came out of her colleague, Matt Dahl’s Advanced Placement Biology class, where a student discovered her artistic talent while sitting by the microscope with her Tablet PC, drawing sophisticated lab illustrations. Another student found his calling in Hammond’s Humanities class: “I had a very shy student,” she recalls. “Now he’s the star cartoonist for our school paper because he gained such renown for his sketchbook drawings in Humanities.”

For the faculty at Cincinnati Country Day School, the biggest benefit of the Tablet PC is how it inspires students to find the best way to learn for themselves. “The Tablet PC has helped us open up the disciplines through technology to appeal to different types of learners,” concludes Hammond. “We still have kids solving quadratic equations, writing essays, and doing presentations on astronomy, but with the Tablet PC they are empowered to find their own ways of organizing and representing their thoughts. Our students are attaining traditional mastery of a subject, but with a deep passion, creativity, and understanding that reflects who they are.”

Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Windows Tablet PC Edition provides a more versatile computing experience, enabling you to use your PC in more places and more ways.

For more information about Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/default.mspx

 

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For more information about Cincinnati Country Day School, call (513) 561-7298 or visit the Web site at:
www.countryday.net