Month: June 2014

iTunes U and Course Management

Apple has announced that enhancements to iTunes U allow an instructor considerable flexibility in shaping content for his/her class.

The new in-app updates to iTunes U give teachers full course creation capabilities on iPad, with the ability to directly add rich content and learning materials from iWork®, iBooks® Author or any of the over 75,000 educational apps available for iPad.

My opinion is that Apple will continue to trail companies such as Amazon and Google in providing content to the broad education market until Apple is willing to offer content cross platform. The iPad is very popular, but cross-platform is the reality in schools using a BYOD, android, or Windows platform. For whatever educators want, this seems an industry struggle based on whether companies benefit most from software or hardware adoption.

Loading

The Outside Aisle

Today was spent in the exhibits hall. My feet are in bad shape, but there should be no problem meeting my 10,000 step goal for the day. 

I have a tradition associated with the ISTE exhibits hall. I select one of the smaller booths for recognition based on what amounts to the criteria of the moment. This year’s recognition goes to Hoverlabs. The company sells kits for assembling hovercraft and fits with the STEM and maker movements. The company offers several kits, but the one below caught my attention. You can estimate the size by understanding it is sitting on my hand. I tried to get a shot in the air, but focus was difficult with my phone so I settled for the still shot.

Hoverlabs also caught my attention because I had just listened to a TWIT podcast Know How that includes a quadcopter project.

Loading

Marketing “research”

Research Supporting STEM Education

Discover cutting-edge research for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Whether you represent a business looking for market research to drive growth or an educator looking for solid research, we’ve compiled the best research in STEM education.

Research is a funny word. It obviously means different things to different people. Our interests likely guide our expectations. My interests lean more toward the demonstration of effective learning experiences and less toward what schools are buying. This bias aside, I do see some value in understanding the motives of schools and educators.

While the title of the report caught my attention, I am unwilling to spend $400 for the 75 page report. What bothers me most about the cost is a matter of contrast. Many complain about the costs of maintaining university library collections of scholarly journals. Note that all such journals are really there for public analysis assuming the public is willing to make the trip to the library. The cost of a marketing survey kind of puts things in perspective.

Loading

Disappearing blogs

The going to #ISTE2014 road trip has ended. There will be a return trip as well, but going home is less interesting.

My tech news of the day is the downsizing of the NY Times blog presence. Nearly half of existing blogs are to be cut or integrated.

This made me think about education blogs. To my knowledge there would be no way to get actual stats, but it does seem there is less activity. For example, consider what you have read recently from some you may have regarded as pioneers of educational blogs. Folks who will likely be in attendance at ISTE and who made their reputations by writing about the value of blogging either by blogging or even as book authors. I have these blogs in my RSS reader and they are mostly inactive.

What has happened? Is the format dead and folks have moved on to other formats? What formats? Have the original bloggers decided blogs are too much work or not lucrative enought now that they have an audience? Has the audience declined? Has 140 characters become the limit of our attentions spans?

Beats me.

Loading

Google IO 2014

#ISTE2014 road trip – day 3.

It was a long day in the car today. We drive over 600 miles and had to get through major congestion near Chattanooga. It happened to be the opening of Google IO and we have plenty of data left for the month. The keynote took about 2.5 hours an we then followed that up with the This Week in Google 2 hour analysis.

The IO event seemed very much like Apple’s WWDC. Unlike some years when new devices are announced, the focus was on software and what seemed like improved integration of existing services.

There was no specific mention of capabilities that would be of value to educators. This was a conference for developers so such potential for the classroom would not be featured.

Here is what I thought might be the potential take aways for education:

1) Improved casting capabilities with Chromecast should bring an inexpensive way to “cast” whatever can be viewed on a phone or tablet to a large television.

2) Google Play for Education offers an improved way to load resources to student devices.

3) Google drive will not allow editing of more file types in their native formats. You can edit a Microsoft file as a Microsoft file.

Loading

Consuming, producing but not interacting

Drive to #ISTE2014 – Day 2

One of the TWIT podcasts we listened to today considered the unintended and intended negative consequences of the big tech companies. 

Somewhere in the conversation, the recent challenges of metafilter came up. This site might be described as a group with a reputation for serious content. Representatives of the site noted a recent precipitous drop in hits that threatened ad revenue ans reached the conclusion that some change in the Google search algorithm was likely the cause. Somehow, they speculated that Google was interpreting their site as a link farm.

I wonder. If you examine Metafilter and listen to the video on the About page, you learn that the site started as a group blog. The group surfaced common interests and shared around these interests. An important component was the back and forth in the discussion following posts. This community mentality reminds me of old school BBSs. 

I think it is the discussion process that has become less popular. It is hard to say if it is a lack of interest or too much spam that has created this situation. Collectively, we are missing out on much of the learning potential.

Loading