The Economist, on the one hundred birthday of IBM, offered an interesting article attempting to identify factors that determine longevity in the tech sector and speculating regarding which present companies offer these characteristics. Before you look, make your own predictions.
It is an interesting topic and one that we might examine from our own personal experiences. No one reading this post has a one hundred year view, but we all have certain watched as popular tech products and the companies that back them have come and gone. We can see the end on the horizon for certain products – e.g., the harddrive, the keyboard, but this is not the same as predicting that the companies offering these products will end with them.
What about predictions regarding education? Will textbooks go away? Some are even describing a “higher education bubble”. If that commonly offered example of someone from the distant past visiting an operation room and a classroom holds true, it might be predicted that the practice of education and the systems that provide it are resistant to change.
The Economist article ends by speculating whether the Economist will survive.
I don’t know if this is a weird thing to wonder about or not. I started thinking about this because I am doing some writing and I was updating a section concerning the educational use of email lists. I wanted to provide an example. I have been a long time subscriber to wwwedu and I thought this might make a good example. I had always consider the list to be influential. When I took a look at the list, I realized that nearly all of the recent posts to the list were contributed by a single individual. The posts were of high quality but the lack of a community of contributors concerned me. If wwwedu can’t make it among educators, is there still a place for a discussion list (listserv or whatever term is now in vogue)?
If you search on the decline of list participation you do find some who believe this is or has happened. List administrators talk about the “old days” in which the list received a much higher level of traffic than is now the case – Open Source Paleontologist; UK Web Focus. Maybe it is the old-style email only lists that are falling out of favor. A Google Group, for example, can be used as a listserv, but it is more versatile (for input) and more diverse (for content). Perhaps we want social sites offering greater diversity with email participation offering one method of participation.
As far as email goes, there are always counter examples. Some companies offer services that build on email – Posterous, for example, allows a user to generate a blog by emailing content to an email address. Social services such as Fickr allow users to submit photos making through emails.
So, I would like to know what the trend here is or if the trend matters.
I can’t resist a new gadget. However, I must have a way to convince myself that I am doing research of some type to make the purchase. I had convinced myself that I needed to purchase some type of android tablet, but after my wife’s iPad 2 arrived I decided that there was no way to meet even my minimal requirements that an alternative xPad of some type needed to be explored. Maybe in a year or so. Now, the chromebook seemed a different matter and I now own a Samsung (series 5), wifi online chromebook. This is the $429 machine (if this helps keep the following comments in perspective) and I must have a wifi source available to use this device (I do – and can use my mifi when nothing else is available). I am quite aware of the connectivity issue with any device and given the cost of a data plan (so much for the “unlimited” plans) is the reality check, in my opinion, in any case for mobile student technology devices. Netbook, chromebook, smartphone – whatever the device – the usefulness of the device depends heavily on getting to the Internet.
Anyway – back to the Chromebook (Samsung version). This device (not sure what to call it) has the feel of a real computer. I am certain less expensive chrome devices will be available, but the Samsung version feels solid, is larger than some of the netbooks I purchased, and has a keyboard with great “action”.
I tend to evaluate devices according to whether or not I can do real work with them. So, mostly, I need to do Internet research and write. Internet research implies more than just reading online – I need to organize resources, download documents, etc. So, tools like Instapaper and Evernote are important to my work flow.
If you have not worked with the Chrome browser, think of it like this (or at least here is how I understand it). When you open a tab, you can use this tab to connect to a web site OR you can use the tab to select from various services (apps) you have purchased (often for $0). So, for example, I can use services such as Instapaper or Evernote in this way from within the browser. Chrome already assumes I am going to use Google apps (documents, calendar, etc.).
Learning to work within the browser environment takes some exploration and some work arounds (at least it seems this way). For example, I wanted show the apps tab in this post. Working on a “traditional” computer I would know how to do this. I would capture the screen and then upload the file (perhaps after modifying the size of the image) to my blog. How to do this from within a browser. It turns out that a) there is a way to do screen capture and b) the chromebook can store files.
In addition, there is are USB slots and external devices can be accessed. Here is where it gets tricky. Assume I am writing on one device, I have generated a doc file, I have stored this doc file on a flash drive, and I want to edit this file on the chromebook. I can see the files on the flashdrive from my chromebook, but I cannot open the doc file. To edit the file, I must connect to Google docs, upload the file, and then the file within Google docs is available for modification. I guess this makes sense within the world of chrome.
Yes, I did write this on the Chromebook. AND – no I have not received an invitation to Google plus so I cannot comment on the Plus environment within Chrome. Maybe my wife will invite me.
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