April 21, 2013 1 Comment

Read Past the Headline

Between Twitter, my RSS feeds, and email, at least a dozen people in the past few days have pointed me to an item with the breathless headline “1-Year Educational iPad Pilot Complete: Students Writing Markedly Improved“.

Very exciting. We certainly could use more solid research on the effectiveness of technology like the iPad for instruction. 

However, this ain’t it.

The post is nothing more than the complete text of a press release.

A narrative of how iPads were used in the classes of one teacher at a relatively exclusive private school for boys.

With very few details to validate the “markedly improved” metric.

And written by the company that publishes the $10 app used in the “study”.

I wonder how often this PR piece was passed around in an effort to justify iPad purchases without reading past the headline or questioning the source.

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March 12, 2013 1 Comment

Homogenizing Tablets

Here in the overly large school district we are buying lots of iPads.

Nothing particularly unusual about that. While the brand of the tablet may vary1, many educational institutions are trying to figure out if this new format could be a good classroom tool.

And I think most of our schools don’t understand what they have purchased.

Most iPad owners probably realized very quickly that it’s not a computer. There really isn’t a good, short generic label for it, but everything in this relatively new category of mobile communications devices2 was designed to be for individual use and to be easily customizable.

Schools on the other hand want to use these devices in the same way they’ve used “standard” computers for the past twenty years: very clone-able and offering the exact same experience for every person who sits down at it.

In some ways this dichotomy mirrors the disconnect between our traditional factory model of education and the growing personalization of learning out there in the real world. We continue to try and maintain an homogenized approach to schooling while the opportunities for individual and high social learning is exploding.

Ok, maybe stretching things a bit, but the point is that these can and should be highly individualized learning devices if we were thinking in those terms for school as a whole.

In the meantime, there are more than a few companies trying to build a “school tablet”, one that does allow for the tight controls our IT department lusts after (and those in other districts, I’m guessing). The latest example is the Amplify Tablet, announced this week at the South by Southwest Education conference (aka sxswedu).

According to the company, Amplify is designed to give “teachers the ability to both monitor and control what students do with the device”.

Teachers can conduct lessons with an entire class or small group and can instantly see what websites or lesson areas students are visiting. A teacher dashboard allows them to take instant polls, ask kids to “raise their hands” virtually and, if things get out of hand, redirect the entire class with an “Eyes on Teacher” button that instantly pushes the message out to every screen.

In other words, Amplify is really no different from what we have now, both in terms of computing devices and how we use them. The purpose of this table is to foster the same nice, neat, uniform, teacher-directed instruction that has been the centerpiece of schooling for more than a century. If it’s not there already, I fully expect Amplify to come with an app for taking standardized tests since the whole package is designed to address the holy grail of American education: higher scores.

One of the reasons I’m such a big advocate for bring-your-own-devices programs is that I hope it will force a change in the way we use technology in schools by making it more individual and personal. Unfortunately, it will take more than allowing kids to use cell phones and tablets inside the building to force the kind of major changes in the traditional school structure we need.

By the way, all the press on the Amplify announcement calls this a “start up” company but it’s hardly in the same class with other small tech groups scrambling to make a name for themselves. Amplify Education Inc. was formed following the purchase of education start-up Wireless Generation by News Corp., and its CEO is former New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Klein is very wedded to a traditional, test-driven vision of education while News Corp is very driven by making money any way it can. Not a good combination.

1 Not a fan of Apple? From this point on, feel free to substitute your favorite tablet brand for iPad. My point won’t change.

2 MCD? Nope, that doesn’t work.

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May 10, 2012 1 Comment

Personal Tech

One of the conclusions from a new study of computer use says that “[i]n the next five years, tablets will displace notebook-style computers to become the dominant personal computing platform.”

I wonder if the word “displace” shouldn’t be replaced with the word “supplement”?

Based on my personal, very not-research-based experience, the functionality of my iPad has developed grown over two years so that these days my laptop usually remains on my desk while the tablet goes with me for most daily activities.  I still have a desktop machine at home (an old Mac Mini) but it now exists only to store and serve media and files. I expect that once the capabilities and reliability of all those many clouds improve, that unit will become unnecessary.

So, for me at least, the laptop has become the desktop and the tablet is the portable device, pulling into the same relationship the laptop and desktop had a few years ago. For a while, the convenience of the laptop was nice but it didn’t have all the power and features needed for some tasks. That changed over time and my laptop is now a complete desktop replacement.

The same will happen with tablets and whatever lightweight, portable communications devices are coming (Google glasses anyone?).

As part of this evolving world of portable devices, the research company speculates about something they call “frames” which would act like wireless docking stations.

Frames will be large, stationary displays that a person can use to wirelessly show video, documents and any other tablet-based content. They’ll be laden with sensors, so people can interact with them through touch, voice and gestures (via motion sensors similar to those in Microsoft’s Kinect).

Forrester envisions frames as fixtures in homes, offices, hotel rooms, coffee shops and conferences. Forrester analysts expect them to reach the mass market in 2015, when they will spark an acceleration in the displacement of laptops.

Conference centers and offices maybe but I really don’t want to show the whole coffee shop what I’m working on.

Anyway, I sometimes use a bluetooth keyboard with my iPad but I’m not sure I see the point of having a whole setup like this in a fixed location. If these frames are coming I certainly hope they are better than the physical docking stations for current laptops. For a while, everyone in our offices wanted one, until they discovered just how badly they worked, not to mention being incompatible with the next model computer they received.

In the end these predictions sounds like a report for IT managers in businesses, not a reflection of how most people seem to want to use portable devices. It certainly doesn’t sound like my experience, but then I’m probably not reflective of the audience the research company is trying to reach.

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April 26, 2012 Leave a Comment

Changing Education? Not Likely

The breathless headline promises to explain How the iPad is Changing Education.

Just the latest in a growing collection of hundreds (maybe thousands) of similar declarations made in publications large and small over the two years since the iPad was released, trying to make a cast for how revolutionary the device (and tablets in general) is/will be to “education”. 

Certainly Apple has sold a bunch of them (something like 67 million world wide), include many that are part of well-publicized projects in some K12 schools and colleges. There are even a few studies suggesting students benefit instructionally from the interactivity the device provides.

But changing education? Not likely.

Just in my lifetime we’ve had a long parade of technologies for which claims of “changing education” were made and still very little about what we call school is different from when I sat in a classroom as a student. The institution of what we call school is extremely resistant to meaningful modification, including from the pressure of new tech.

What’s different with the iPad is the way that some of us, still a relatively small minority, are increasingly using it in new ways for our personal learning.

However, that’s more about a networked device becoming more portable and easier to use than anything else. Not much different from the way that lighter, more capable laptops made personal learning easier than it was when the computer was too big to move from a desk.

The iPad, and other interconnected mobile devices yet to come, does have the potential to make major changes to the way kids communicate, collaborate, and learn. Potential that could be used by schools and teachers that are willing modify their traditional approaches by sharing control over the learning process with students.

But iPads changing education just by existing? Not likely.

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March 7, 2012 1 Comment

Plenty of Choices. Just Not Good Ones.

With the next version of the iPad being announced later today, I was thinking about the way some in leadership positions here in the overly-large school district talk about using “tablets”, using the generic term when it’s pretty clear that most others are hearing iPads.

They try very hard not to lean toward a specific product since the system has also blessed the purchase of the Xoom device by Motorola and running Android. In effect, they want schools and offices to think of the two operating systems as equal and to make a choice based on needs. Or something like that.

Early in the school year when we started working with tablets in the system, I tried to be balanced when discussing which device someone should consider, with a collection of plusses and minuses for each. Now, after spending some time with the Xoom and watching others struggling with it, I’ve pretty much given up on being “fair”.

The big problem is that iOS and Android are not equal, not even close, especially when implemented on tablets.

I could go into my long list of reasons why, but instead read what Fraser Speirs, who has a whole lot more experience using mobile devices in a classroom, has to say on the matter.

His conclusion is that Android represents solid engineering on the part of Google. However, the way manufacturers deploy it – with multiple versions, confusing upgrade policies, inconsistent user interfaces and hardware integration – is a “deal breaker”.

Read the whole post which is a great analysis of Android’s problems. Speirs is focusing on a school environment but many of the points he makes will be relevant to anyone considering purchasing any mobile device.

Other than the rumors being passed around, I have no idea what Apple will show in their presentation. But I do know that whatever the products, the hardware and software involved will be tightly integrated, producing a user experience that’s just not available on any Android device.

You may not like Apple or iPads or stuff with i names. But the company’s recent successes (computers sales are also growing fast) shows that there are plenty of us who like our technology to just work smoothly without a lot of fuss.

And, of course, when it comes to tablets you do have plenty of choices. Just not good ones.

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July 12, 2011 2 Comments

Is This What You’d Call a “PC”?

I’ve been working on a presentation for the VSTE Mobile Learning Conferences (one next week and another the week after), which means I’m paying more attention to anything related to the subject at hand.

Like this view of the tablet business from the president of Microsoft phone division.

The use of the mobile OS would be “in conflict” with Microsoft’s notion of having the full speed of a computer in any design, including truly mobile tablets. He insisted that users would want to do PC-style activities on a tablet and saw Windows 8′s networking and printing support as being important.

“We view a tablet as a PC,” Lees said.

Interesting. I think I’m doing a “PC-style” activity, namely writing this post, on this iPad right now.

Anyway, I suppose it really depends on what you want, when, and how you want to do those PC-style activities. Certainly I’m not going to write the great American novel on this thing (not without using a bluetooth keyboard) or work with complex spreadsheets.

But I can edit video, record audio, and create music, as well as do a whole host of other things that a few years ago would be considered “PC activities”. And more functionality is being added every day, some of which would be difficult to do on your standard PC.

So, while the concept of what is considered a computer is getting fuzzier, the remarks of this exec makes very clear the distinction between Apple’s concept of post-PC devices and Microsoft’s dedication to more PCs.

I rather like the post-PC vision.

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February 7, 2011 Leave a Comment

The Daily Loser

Preceded by plenty of breathless rumor, The Daily was released last Wednesday, promising once again to revolutionize the news business.

In case you missed the hype, this is the iPad app developed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp at a cost of $30 million and supposedly backed by a staff of 100 creating exclusive material.

I’ve been playing with The Daily since it showed up in the app store and there’s no way I’ll be paying the 99 cents weekly charge ($39.99 annually) when the sample subscription runs out.

Beyond the version 1.0 bugs (slow, inconsistent navigation, way over-cute interface, annoying crashes, did I mention slow?), the biggest problem is the content.

First of all, there’s nothing unique about it. Several of the articles showed up in other places on the web and the rest is full of gossip and fluff pieces.

Then there’s the fact that the material is updated daily (hence the name), a concept that’s dying as fast as the paper version of the Washington Post that lands on my porch each morning (not my choice). Plus, the actual news consists of stories that show up in my aggregator as soon as I open it.

However, more than anything, I don’t want to pay for news from the megacorp that offers such crap as the New York Post and Fox News.  Just being picky I guess.

Ok, who’s next to revolutionize the newspaper industry?

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