Its well known that giving easy digital content creation tools into the hands of more teachers and students is a great way to encourage focus on higher order thinking skills in the curriculum. For schools with Macs and iPads, the release of Apple’s iBooks Author software in January made this even more possible.
Attached to this post is 1.0 draft of a ‘know-why’ guide to using iBooks Author to make digital content thats localised and personalised just for your students. Download and enjoy, plus leave comments if you have questions or feedback.
To load, just download directly onto an iPad with iBooks 2 installed, and tap ‘open in iBooks’, or download to your PC and sync via iTunes.
I’ll also attach a PDF version for those who want the info but don’t currently have access to an iPad with iBooks 2 installed.
DROPBOX DOWNLOAD LINKS:
(If tapping to download on an iPad, please wait 1-2 mins for the download screen to appear, then several more while it downloads)
UPDATE – have taken the iBooks file link down as enough time for the feedback version to be up has passed. Will post the final one hopefully in the near future.
I’m sure a whole ecosystem of support products will arise to help educators get the most out of the interactive features in iBooks Author – 3D object galleries etc. The tips below are even better in that it concerns a program that’s already out so you can start right now:
I hold very strongly to the idea that there are two ‘tablet device’ markets – the first is the much older ‘slate PC’ one that saw PCs and laptops gain expensive convertible options around 2003. These slate PCs are still around today and provide a reasonable compromise between a full PC and touchscreen device, but generally come with a higher price. One still has to know how to operate a full computer to use one.
Since the rise of smaller, mobile devices that mark the start of a Post-PC era, elements of ‘full computing’ have increasingly become available as part of their feature sets. Such things as the light productivity of email and web surfing, as well as viewing and consuming documents and media can all now be done almost anywhere at anytime, and with better battery life and often direct touch control. I have been calling these ‘Tablet PCs’, but the launch of the Amazon Fire tablet has got me thinking that phase 2 of the Post-PC era is upon us, and that we should instead be using the term ‘appliances’, or ‘Appliance computing’. Why?
In phase 1, I think large segments of the tech industry and their user base have stuck to the idea that a slate or tablet computer should just be the classic PC plus touch, and nothing else really needed changing. When the iPad debuted and didn’t try to be just a PC-replacement, it really messed up all these notions and led to nearly two years of discussion about what a tablet PC should be. Most similar devices released since by Motorolla, Samsung, Sony, RIM etc have tried to hedge their bets by ape-ing the form factor while still advertising their ‘PC’ features – USB ports and multi-tasking. Perhaps they do offer a useful middle ground or transition zone for those used to the PC-only era, but the general public has not adopted them in numbers any greater than they did the previous convertible Slate PCs. So what have they been adopting?
I think we all know. Not a tablet focused on being a PC replacement, but one that I see as having deliberately left-out USB ports and as many buttons as possible so it can’t be confused as a PC. Now for almost the first time since it debuted, a tablet is being released by a major player that also doesn’t seek to be seen as a PC-replacement. The Amazon Kindle Fire is a touchscreen eReader and media consumption tablet – and e-Content appliance basically – and at US$199 is also priced as such. So now that another ‘tablet as appliance’ device by a major company has entered the market, I think this space just got a whole lot clearer – Slate CPs for the older and smaller ‘PC in a tablet’ proffessional market, and and ‘appliance tablets’ for everyone else. Which market would you like a company that you hold shares in to target?
NB. Of course what I haven’t stated is why the appliance tablets are the ones that are selling – just for the record – its because they are simpler (and in many cases, cheaper).
NB2. Of course Microsoft’s Windows 8 on tablets may muddy this space again in 2012, but I think you can see that if all it does is go for the ‘a tablet and PC should be the same’ model, then they will miss the ‘computing for everybody-else’ potential of the Post-PC era.
NB3. Of course these are my own thoughts entirely and don’t necessarily reflect those of my employer or other professional groups of which I am a member.
So, version 2 of the device that has spurred the tablet computing market into the mainstream over the last 12 months (15 million sold) has been announced. Despite being a consumer device, it has seen massive adoption by professionals in business, medicine, and education. In Australia, there are iPad trials occurring in nearly every state, with over 500 deployed officially in Victoria alone. So it only follows that there will be great interest in the next version (to be released in Australia March 25). Here are the top 3 things that iPad 2 has going for it as far as education is concerned:
1. Screen Mirroring – Almost from day one of the release of the original iPod touch, the number one question that educators have asked is “can I display the screen on a projector or tv?”, and the answer has been “no”, then “no, but yes if you use a document camera”, then “yes some apps can, but its still limited”. Now FINALLY, the iPad 2 (and presumably all iOS devices going forward) will support full screen mirroring of everything via the VGA cable or the new HDMI cable. For showing apps and using the iPad as a shared whiteboard etc, this is a huge leap forward.
2. Lighter – apparently the new iPad is 15% lighter – just enough of an improvement to make it more usable by students. I know my first generation iPad does get heavy even for my adult arms after 15mins or so – for primary school students especially, the weight drop might be just enough to allow for extended mobile use of iPads without as much hand/arm strain.
3. Price drop of the old model – for now at least, the iPad 1 has had its price dropped by large amounts – up to AU$200 on some models – so its a great time for schools with limited budgets (ie all that I know) to do a learning and management plan, then purchase iPads at the cheaper price point.
So what does the iPad not have yet for education? As mentioned above, the iPad is a consumer device – its not been designed with the needs of education in mind specifically. So we still need a good system for managing and syncing more than a few iPads. We also need clarity around education use off apps and iTunes content. The hope is that the app volume licensing program available in the US will be extended overseas and enhanced with provision for iBooks and music/movies as well as apps. For Mac users, the next version of the Mac OS (due in around 6 months) will reportedly include iOS device management built in. Until then, proceed with caution; join an online iPad in education community, and create a good learning/management plan as always!
Planning resources:
> www.slidetolearn.info – beginners guide for iPad, iPod touch and iPhone in Education (updated regularly)
One of the most popular categories of iOS apps is that of notetaking, for obvious reasons. It is one of the areas where nearly all the benefits of working digitally come together to provide real enhancement of the teaching/learning process. There are several really good ones – Penultimate is beautiful for handwriting, Soundnote is great for recording audio notes that are mapped to typed notes, Smartnote lets you add all kinds of widgets and graphics to enhance your notes. But far and away the most useful, most comprehensive notetaking app I have ever used is Underscore Notify – I know I’m making this sound like I work for them – not the case. I’m just one grateful educator. Here’s a quick overview of its features:
- Type notes anywhere on screen; multiple font and text colour etc options
- draw, highlight etc again with multiple pen and colour options
- import PDF files or other documents to annotate and highlight
- import images as backgrounds or to illustrate notes
- use the built-in web browser to clip webpages straight into your notes
- use the built-in maps function to clip google maps straight into your notes
- add audio recordings to your notes
- built-in web server – you can share your screen live to anyone with a web browser
- VGA out- you can display your screen live as you create your notes or present pre-made pages
Of course just having all these features is no good if the app is too messy or complicated for them to be easily used, but Notify has a great inbuilt help function and tutorials (although these load from a website) meaning that it doesn’t take to long to puzzle out all of its extensive functions.
The obvious use of this app is for notetaking right? And certainly from the features above you can see how powerful it would be. But here is my usage scenario to illustrate how I think Notify can be by a teacher:
Because the VGA out / web-server allows you to share your screen, I have enjoyed success using Notify to present and facilitate a teaching session. I draft up a series of pages (slides) as an outline and fill them with some images, info etc, but as the session goes on, Notify allows me to add in web pages, maps, extra documents, whatever that enrich and extend the lesson – all right within the one app and immediately viewable by everyone who is participating. The dynamics that this allows fits in very well with my ideas of how the 21st century classroom should operate – flexible and adaptable.
Even better, its US$1.99 price AND the fact that its universal (pay once for the iPad and iPod touch version) makes it a no-brainer to download and try. It does experience crashes on my iPad (probably due to low memory), but seemed to always have saved my work when I restarted. The sheer number of features does give it a learning curve also, but as I’ve said, the help and tutorials sections are very good. Overall, 8/10
Nearly two years ago, I closed down my Google top ten Mobile Learning blog after 3 years and over 10,000 hits. I felt that the time of calling from the roof tops that mobile learning existed was over. People had started paying attention to the rise of mobile phones etc as the preferred computing platform of those who education should be centered around, ie. students. Reports like New Media Consortiums ‘Horizon Report’ were including mobile learning as one of the top educational trends. Game-changing next-gen devices like the iPhone were just appearing, and when I went to write an mLearning paper for my Masters thesis, I discovered there were plenty already.
So I was forced to research where mLearning was going, and to think about what was the next phase that the world of education needed to be hearing about. It seemed logical after a time that of course as computing became more miniaturized and mobile, it would eventually become ubiquitous, or an unnoticed part of everything – invisible as all other technology that has proceeded it has after enough time has passed. So in a world such as that, what will ubiquitous learning need to look like?
I’m still not really sure exactly what it will look like, but as you know if you’ve been following this uLearning blog, I’ve been continuing to follow several mLearning developments as a way to track the overall journey. There are two in particular I’m most involved with here in Australia, and I’d like to detail whats been happening and what learning that takes them into account looks like.
1. Single use – multi-use – ubiquitous uses
The first is the continued convergence of the standard mobile device from being a phone or a mp3 player into one that does everything. Dedicated devices will always be around, but what has also occurred is that the average device, especially now that touch-screens have replaced buttons and mobile app stores are proliferating, is becoming ubiquitous-use devices. Its safe to say for instance that the 300,000 apps in the iOS App store provide at the very least thousands of potential uses, be it as a digital level tool for building, or a portable weather radar etc, as well as the more traditional phone, camera, GPS etc.
Learning?
In Australia, the uptake of the iPhone is the highest in the world. That alone has to tell you something about how deeply entrenched these kinds of devices are here already. The state of Victoria is trialling 800 iPads, and I personally know of over 40 schools (there will be many times that number I don’t know about) here in Queensland who have deployed iPod touches and now iPads. In fact the second Slide2Learn conference focusing on these devices in education recently sold out 80% of its places in only 2 1/2 days.
Here are some links to explore more of what the actual practitioners are doing:
Also significant has been the spread of educational net-book programs into countries that have skipped the desktop PC era (for various reasons) and gone straight into the mobile computing one. In this category we have the One Laptop per Child XO laptop, as well as the Intel Classmate. OLPC has seen over 2 million XOs deployed, with many more ordered. Classmate numbers are harder to get a hold of, but large orders have been placed in addition to the many schools that have opted for standard netbooks.
Learning?
Like the iPod touch and iPad deployments happening here in Australia, the OLPC XO laptop is much more in the complementary/ personalised learning device category. What this means is that most schools already have PC labs and other ICT infrastructure, but they don’t have mobile devices that allow students constant, anywhere access to the potential benefits of having connected, personal tools in student hands. The rugged nature of the XO device in particular makes it ideally suited to use by early and primary school aged students, especially in remote locations far from repair sites.
Here are some links to see more of what has been happening:
I just found out that I’m one of about 20,000 people in Australia working in the area of information and communication technology in education (http://www.acs.org.au/statistics/compendium2009/pdf/ICTStatsCompendium.pdf). Wow. That’s a lot of us. My first reaction was, why aren’t we having a bigger impact?
Turns out this figure is actually only 3.71% of all the nations ICT workers, so maybe thats why. You see what I did there? The big picture perspective does matter.
I’m fortunate that my job does have scope for analysing research around ICT integration and pondering these kinds of matters so I can best support schools who are moving towards mobile and transformational learning programs (specifically the XO laptop, but also other platforms such as iPad’s and iPod’s). This led me today to this big picture article: Global trends in ICT and Education http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/10-global-trends-in-ict-and-education that lists mobile learning, cloud computing, 1:1 computing, ubiquitous learning, gaming, personalised learning, redefinition of learning spaces, teacher generated open content, smart portfolio assessment and teacher managers/mentors as the top 10 trends happening in ICT and education right now. Shorter and easier to quickly read than the similarly useful Horizon reports (http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD5810.pdf), this blog post has however inspired a series of comments many times its length, my summary of which is: ‘lofty ideals vs on the ground realities’.
We seem to waste so much time in this field debating which of these two extremes deserves to be the guiding light. In response, I’m going to commit the cardinal sin of saying – there is an easy solution (more on that in a moment). Basically the commenters were saying either that yes, these big picture trends should be what educators aim at, or that no, realities close to the ‘coalface’ (there’s that industrial vestige still hanging around) of schools and classrooms should be the priority. One comment from a teacher in Morocco in particular really effected me (‘the true trends’, anonymous). This teacher states that “that in most parts of the world teachers are still fighting to get colored chalk from the administration of their schools”. Wo. Didn’t see that one in the top ten trends. They go on to say that while their school has one multi-media room with PCs, its little used, and that a training program for teachers to encourage ICT use only focused on theoretical topics, not practical issues, and thus was largely irrelevant. The teachers own efforts in using a blog to enhance learning had gone completely unnoticed and supported by the schools administration. You can understand a person like this questioning the if the global trends were trends or just buzz words.
So instead of ‘global’ trends, perhaps we should say ‘western’, or ‘for those who can afford it’, or ‘for those who live in cities’ etc. My own work in partnership with One Laptop per Child Australia’s 1:1 XO laptop deployments is giving me a unique and treasured chance to see what education in some of the disadvantaged schools of my own country is like. One Laptop per Child could certainly be said to have lofty goals. “Give poor, disadvantaged children a laptop?!” Many people say “What about food, clothing, and water?” Even those who can see that a digital education is key to help give students a chance to connect with a wider world and create their own solutions to such problems may have other questions such as “what about our existing curriculum and mandated testing?”, or “we don’t have a culture of individual ownership here, how can we give laptops to kids to take home and expect them to come back to school?”.
So, should we aim high? Or take care of local problems first? If we do aim high, how can we stop on the ground complications from impacting the benefits that ICTs might otherwise bring? Does it have to come down to a one or the other choice?
“There is another” (- Yoda, Empire Strikes back). My offering here in this debate, gleaned from spending a few years now working in my own school, with teachers across my state, and now across the country to help teachers integrate technology in their pedagogy amounts to this – there is a middle way. See, easy! Don’t take one or other side – look for the exact mid-point. Ok? Article over.
So why doesn’t this occur? Why is it that the continuous commentary on the success or otherwise of One Laptop per Child on a site like www.olpcnews.com, or the debate on the Global Trends post referred to in this article always come down to aim high, OR focus on local problems almost exclusively?
Hard work, thats why. Not that educators are avoiders of hard work, far from it. But whether you are an administrator planning a technology deployment, or a teacher dealing with a busy classroom, you are no doubt already working at your limits, and finding an approach that marries the best of two lines of thinking is always going to be harder than sticking with one or the other.
So am I going to specify what this middle way is to ease the burden so to speak, if I really am saying this is the way to go? I would, except I don’t fully know yet myself… , sorry.
See what I did there again? I raised your hopes, only to leave you somewhat disappointed. Why would I do that to someone who has faithfully read the last 850 words? Because, you don’t need my solution. In effect, you are your solution, as long as you know not to stick just to one camp or the other.
What I do humbly suggest though, is these two things:
1.Plan plan plan: The most lofty but potentially transformative ideas tend to convert into hot air if left to do all the work themselves, or if its assumed that a ‘one size fits all’ approach is sufficient. Please don’t allow this to happen. Effective transformation opportunities in schools are too rare to not do the hard work behind the scenes of planning every step, and answering every local question first before they get asked. In this way, you can base your plan on the right big picture goals, but address on the ground issues as well.
If you’d like a basis on which to do this planning, have a look and download this detailed planning guide that gives 21 steps to take your school through http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/pdf/scbyte-21steps.pdf. It bravely but sensibly leaves handing out the actual technology until step 20. Have a read to see why.
2. Change the minds. “THERE IS SOMETHING WHICH COMES BEFORE TECHNOLOGY. It’s the mind of people.” So says our anonymous teacher from Morocco. Research shows that teachers are the biggest factor effecting the long term success of technology deployments (see page 10, http://escholarship.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1236&context=jtla). Therefore, it is vital that teachers engage in processes that allow their pedagogy to best support the possibilities that 1:1 classrooms and technology rollouts in general offer. This means effective teacher training that gives the theoretical big picture argument as well as the means to apply this locally in ways that enhances existing practice as a means to starting them on a journey where the potential of ICTs to inspire transformation can begin.
I’ll have more to say about this stage of the process in a future post…
NB. The thoughts and opinions expressed in these posts are all mine, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone else, including my employer.
Hi everyone – well the amount of schools looking at trialing the iPad has just exploded since the device came. There is of course a bit of ‘shiny objects syndrome’ going on – but here is a series of links to some trials that are happening right now that we can all learn from:
Its hard to deny that in the book that tells how computing has become more and more mobile such that its already almost ubiquitous, the current chapter would be titled ‘tablets’. While they have been around for some years in various forms, the recent maturation of mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS to match the slate style has seen an explosion in the adoption rates of tablet computers. The iPad is selling over 1 million devices a month, and it seems that conversely, about a million different Android tablets get announced each week. The Dell Streak, Asus EePad and Samsung Galaxy are all examples of high profile Android tablet computers that will be released in the next 4 months. There are also education specific initiatives around Android tablets in the shape of the Marvel/OLPC $99 project, and India’s $35 slate. Of interest also is what HP releases in the way of a ‘PalmPad’ tablet that will run the WebOS they bought along with Palm.
Ok, so enough about the hype of devices. What can they do? And specifically, what can they do for learning? Not having access to an Android tablet yet myself, my observations are based on the using the iPad. For a list of Android education apps though, go here.
I’m aiming then to post semi-regular articles on what these tablets can do, starting today with this example: iBrainstorm (free from the appstore). This app (an others like it) allow you to map out ideas, plans and thoughts visually. Where it really provides a new experience is that, being available on a tablet, all the work is done by direct touch, just as we would have once done pre-PCs. So we get to arrange notes and draw in a paper-like way, but with all the advantages that working digitally brings – such as instant sharing and storage of the brainstorm session. And, you also get to instantly collaborate. iBrainstorm allows other devices (iPhones or iPod touches as you’d expect from this platform) to connect via bluetooth and create their own sticky-notes which can be passed to the main iPad with a flick of the finger.
In a classroom, I can just see the group work possibilities. You could have four – five students summarising a topic, with up to four students creating sticky-notes of key points and flicking to a fifth student with the iPad tablet who then arranges them. I am really hoping that in near future the developers will add a video-out capability so the work could be projected to a big screen to show the brainstorm taking place live – that way the whole class could contribute.
If this is any indication of the kind of applications that tablet computers of any platform are capable, I for one am excited about the the kind of learning they will help enable. Of course it all depends on teachers facilitating their use – would love to hear from other teachers attempting to do so.
Amidst all the hype, here is a look at 10 intriguing iPad apps that may just be useful in your classroom.
This video was created 100% on an iPad alone.Apps:Time BOM, The Australian, SIB Romeo & Juliet, Popplet, AudioNote, Caster, ReelDirector, Mover+, TypeDrawing, 2Screens, and Paperdesk
If a major technology company like Apple can launch a new mobile device and only 1 month later find itself selling more of them than it does of its desktops and laptops, and when a recent survey showed that more kids owned mobile phones than books, I’d say perhaps the move to a world of ubiquitous computing is getting closer.
The reality of this move (the coalface as teachers like to say), is the emergence of tablet devices, and as I’m currently testing one, please be prepared for a few posts around what I find.
My investigations of the iPad from the perspective of how it can enhance my teaching (as opposed to how it might be used by students) have led to me playing with three intriguing types of apps that I thought others may be interested in, two of which have the common feature of working via the video out cable of the iPad:
1. ‘Whiteboard’ type apps that allow you to draw on the screen but have the results shared up on a big screen. This brings all kinds of collaborative planning/ visual definition applications to mind as I think about classroom use. Some of these apps even allow audio to be recorded while the session is going on – brilliant for students who need to review what occurred. I’m testing JotBook and PaperDesk in this category (both have free lite versions).
2. Apps that get around the ‘must be implemented by individual apps’ limitation of the iPad video out by combining multiple functions. Basically, they allow you to show all kinds of file types, from powerpoint/ keynote, PDFs, Word, images – and even web pages via built in browsers – all from within the one app. As a teacher, I can imagine this allowing me to load all the files I need into the app via iTunes sync (or later via email if I’ve forgotten something), choose during the lesson/ workshop what I want to show, and during the session, switch to the web if need be as I need to also. The app I’m using is Big! Browser.
3. Note taking/ audio recorders – that do pretty much what the Livescribe Smartpen does – records audio while you take notes and allows you replay the audio by tapping on sections of your notes so you hear what was being said at the time the text was written. SoundPaper seems to be the best one in this category at present if you can see the potential for rich, searchable meeting notes for yourself, or automated podcasts of each lesson for students to review.
Several observations have occurred to me in the last hour since taking the obligatory unboxing shot above that I’d like to share:
1. My 2 1/2 year old, who is a 2 year iPhone veteran, upon first seeing it, took one look and told me it was an iPhone.
2. Despite the gorgeous gorgeous screen, this is currently my favourite view of the iPad:
It may seem strange, but this shot of it as a blank slate is how it most appeals to me, just empty ready for whatever I choose to (load on) make it. I think this personalization potential is really the thing that marks such devices out from others currently being integrated into classrooms.
3. It’s heavier than I expected. And it’s taking me a while to figure out to hold it. Do I prefer landscape or portrait? Actually most apps seem to have different functions according to the view. Do you lean it on something, or curl your fingers around it? How will it be used by the smaller hands of students.
4. The keyboard is brilliant in landscape on ones lap (it’s how I’m typing at present). I’m not a touch typist on a desktop keyboard, but I can type faster on this because A. It has auto-correction, and B. where the words appear and where my fingers are typing are so close, whereas when typing on a laptop or pc, I’m looking back and forth, back and forth from keys up to screen and back.
5. I can’t believe mobile safari still can’t be used to enter and edit text in some web pages, like say edublogs or etherpad. Writing this post in email and serving out by posterous is great, but I really wanted just to load edublogs.org like i would on my desktop and write. This is a big limitation, and potentially limits it’s use by students accessing me education departments LMS.
Finally, on my homepage are all the iPad specific apps I’m dying to try out to see what they offer on this new platform – consider these my fave iPad apps for now. iBooks and Adobe Ideas I’m especially interested to explore in terms of use by students.
For about 5 months I (with help from friends) have been writing a guide to using the iPod touch, iPhone and now iPad in education. Nearly every day I get an email or query as to how to approach deploying these devices in schools. I’m passionate that hard-working teachers not fall into the ‘shiny-things’ syndrome and just spend school money on whatever is the latest cool gadget – although I am secretly stoked that finally, most are actually looking at mobile devices rather than dubiously fixed IWBs.
To help answer some of the questions that these time-poor teachers have, there now exists THISguide – www.slidetoLearn.info . It takes its name obviously from the ‘slide to unlock’ home screen of iPod touch, iPhone and iPad devices – a nice metaphor for unlocking potential. My favourite description of this platform is that it is a ‘blank slate’ ready to become whatever the user/ student/ teacher wants. Sure its not a perfect platform (no true video-out, can only act as clients of a desktop pc) – but its flexibility and ease of use put it at the head of all mobile eco-systems at present. (I’ll be happy to write an Android guide if I ever am able to get some devices).
The guide has five main sections – and is still in beta and receiving feedback – so please feel free to comment/ email back.
Well, I started this ubiquitous learning blog just over 12 months ago as a successor to a long-runing mobile learning blog. My reason was that while mobile learning (or mLearning) had finally started to catch on amongst educators, we are often a conservative lot, and I felt there was much more yet to be done – such as using the mLearning as a basis to start preparing for the real show – what learning would have to look like in a world of totally universal, ubiquitous computing.
Writing now some 14 months later, and being based in Australia as I am, I see currently three movements that indicate we as a country are further along the road to computing becoming just another human right/ utility in the same way as electricity say. The first is the rollout of the federal governments Digital Education Revolution (DER) – a catchy election promise that is becoming a reality such that all year 9-12 students will have 1:1 access to a computer by the end of 2011. The program is about halfway deployed at present, and its only 3 year timespan has meant that every high school in the country wether ready or not has had to adapt to suddenly embracing the digital world. Some are taking advantage of all the value-adds that 1:1 and digital environments can bring, others are struggling to take traditional pedagogy and make it work when students have such regular access information and the tools to re-shape and share it.
The second sign is at the opposite end of the Australia schooling system – remote primary schools. One Laptop Per Child Australia (with and partly for whom I am currently working) is at the very beginnings of deploying up to 400,000 XO learning devices to remote schools in Western Australia, Northern Territory, and Queensland. About 1500 have been deployed in proof of concept rollouts so far, all with the express philosophy of saturation – whereby every teacher, aide and student receive the same machine. Similar to the DER and high schools, this can be a shock at first – but all signs point to the ubiquity of the approach as being a key to its success – there is no going back or choosing to be the non-XO class so to speak.
Finally, I turn to a computing movement that doesn’t even qualify definitional-y as one. You won’t find it (yet) being supported officially through Education Departments – but it is one that grassroots educators are embracing exponentially just as their students have – I’m talking about the iPod touch, iPhone, and soon (for us non-US citizens) the iPad. What started first as individual teachers spending their own money on an iPod touch for their classroom has spread to school-wide deployments of 30 or even up to 200 iPod touch’s. In my state alone we have well over 200 educators active on our iPhone and iPod touch in education discussion list. They have been called the first computer you can use without instructions, and they and their ilk (we need more Android mobile devices here please Google et al) seem to be building up a momentum that even more than the many hundred of thousands of laptops mentioned in the first two examples may be bringing Australia towards a ubiquitous computing environment (apparently over 1 million iPhone’s have been sold in Australia for instance).
And what should an educator’s response be? Possibly you’re already in the middle of deploying one of these options – and if so, my biggest suggestion is – reflect. While our sector has stood still for so long, the current rush might make us forget our usual values of tying everything we do our learning vision first. So reflect first then on how these devices can enhance learning – don’t make learning fit to them. I’ll be sharing more shortly on a guide to the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch for educators that may also be useful if that is your area (you can check out the beta HERE)…
I am aware dear reader that much of my writings on how learning is handling the inevitable rise of ubiquitous computing centre’s around the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad platform. But in this post I’d like to reflect a little on the other great mobile education movement of the last three years – that of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) ‘children’s machine’. While even the latest version 1.5 of the XO laptop they build and supply has tech that is getting a little behind, it does have at least three distinct advantages over the iPod/iPhone/iPad platform:
1. Designed for children – yep, rather than being a consumer or business device that crafty educators are able to integrate into educational settings, the XO was designed ground-up to be in students hands. I mean its bright green! When a student first sees one, they know already this is for them – and that means their use of it for learning starts at a unique place. This is a factor not to be underestimated.
2. Automatic collaboration – while there are a growing number of iPod touch apps that can use wifi or bluetooth to do some basic screen-sharing or sending of files etc, another of the distinguishing features of the XO laptop is that sharing and collaboration is built in automatically to practically every activity, even the camera. Its not something students even have to think – ‘oh can I work on this with someone?’ (or two, or four etc), but is simply a matter of switching to the dedicated ‘friends’ screen and sending the invitation.
3. Dual screen modes – the announcement of the iPad means that one of the XO’s advantages (larger screen) will shortly be neutered, but the ability of the screen to work as a regular colour LCD indoors, and a black and white screen outdoors with full readability in direct sunlight gives the XO a big advantage over the glossy iPad as far as true mobile learning goes.
4. Ok I know I said three – but this one is not one of mine – Flash support. I don’t use flash hardly at all, but I know alot of educators that do rely on it for hundreds of interactive learning objects that are totally unavailable in the Apple mobile world. How long it takes for these to eventually be ported over to Java/HTML5 or turned into the mobile apps (via Adobe conversion software) that are becoming more of the standard for such software I don’t know, but until then, educators are great hoarders, and so Flash support remains an issue.
Of course there are downsides to the XO laptop also (such as the aforementioned aging hardware, and the fact that a more natural touch-based version may be more than two years away). As a final note to this comparison, I don’t know how many of the 140,000 iPod touch apps are educational, but a developer in that space recently mentioned a figure of 3-4000 to me. Anyone reading out there know how many XO activities (the OLPC name for apps) there are?
