Day: January 24, 2006

We ordered a 5 pack of the new version of iLife as soon as we could. There was a sticker from FedEX on my door when I got home tonight and I was anxious enough to experiment with the software that I drove out to the delivery center to rescue our software from the truck.

Here is what I hope. The efficiency with which students can generate multimedia products plays a signficant role in whether some and probably many teachers will involve their students in such projects. I hope iWeb (the web authoring, blogging, etc.) program that is part of the new iLife will be easy enough to use and impressive enough that it meets teacher expectations for efficiency and student expectations for “cool.” The comment about “cool” many annoy some – I happen to think we are all motivated by the opportunity to generate something we know to be attractive. The comment about the need for efficiency is simply a recognition of the reality of life in classrooms.

My experiences are not yet extensive enough to generate a strong endorsement and I would like to see what students can do with this product, but after an hour or so of experimentation, I am willing to say the product is worth a look.

A demo web site hosted on .Mac.

When I listened to Job’s presentation explaining new Apple strategies, an issue that concerned me was the connection between software and .Mac (this probably sounds like my typical Microsoft complaint). The price for iLife seems reasonable, but I would guess many would balk at the $100 annual fee for a .Mac account. To me, the software would have extra value if it could author resources to be delivered by any server. This is the case – here is the same demo web material as available from my own G3 (an old machine for non-Mac people).

Here are some things that do concern me (again I have not had the chance to explore a great deal). iWeb creates impressive looking content by using templates. A user can create new entry points (text, images), but is encouraged to drag images, video into designated locations and enter text in designated boxes. As long as the focus is on authoring and not web design, this is probably OK. The finished product looks great partly because of the sophistication of the template. Translate sophistication as consists of many components, complicated, etc.

My concern is that simple is sometimes valuable. For example, when I work on my own web content, I often do so incrementally. I might create a new page and link this page to the home page. To alter my actual site, I upload the new page and also the altered home page. My changes are simple enough I can remember what has to be uploaded OR I can use the publish option of my authoring program (GoLive or Dreamweaver) to identify the new pieces and take care of the upload for me. I am guessing this type of complexity is not an issue when using iWeb with .Mac. I do wonder about creating more complicated sites and then trying to figure out what should sent to a personal or school server. You really wouldn’t want to resend the entire site each time a small adjustment was made to the web site or a new blog entry was created. There are software tools for comparing the resources at two locations and uploading only those files that are different. However, this is now becoming more complicated than I would like.

So, I like this product and it meets my criteria for simplicity when connected to a .Mac account. This is not a bad solution for some folks. I will have to explore a little more before I decide what I think about the opportunities for using this system with a school server.

Some issues seem to keep resurfacing. The topic of whether students should now spend time learning what they can “learn to access” may be one such topic. I see this issue surfacing in a variety of ways. Cindy recently directed me to a link focused on “legalized cheating“. This article combined a discussion of ways students had discovered to cheat and alternative assessment approaches some educators have implemented to allow students to access such resources. In some ways, the suggested approaches would be similar to an “open book” exam and would be nothing new. From a different perspective, the opportunities being described are somewhat different than “open book” in that these approaches encourage students to take personal responsibility for locating the resources they would use to respond to course assignments.

You know this reminds me of? Do you think the minds behind “Who wants to be a millionaire” don’t know that some “phone a friend” contacts are attempting to use Google? Does it matter? Perhaps an Internet search should be a new life line? Why not just give the contestant say 20 seconds to use the Internet? Anyway …

This topic brings to mind a previous post in which I suggest that it is important to think carefully about this topic and to listen carefully to what individuals are advocating. When educators used to generate open book exams, I assume they created different kind of evaluation tasks. It would not make sense to evaluate understanding of terminology by allowing students to look up definitions in the text. While I automatically use Google to answer all kinds of simple questions that come up, I also see the value in knowing (meaning in my own memory) some things. For example, my professional conversations, even my teaching, requires that I know specialized vocabulary, relevant research from my field, etc. There is nothing wrong with admitting that I cannot remember a study, a name, etc. and searching for that information within a professional context, but a complete lack of internal knowledge would be a great liability.

So – I am for learning to “find information” and I am for “knowing” some things. I think we must just think more clearly about when each is appropriate.