Tag: 1:1

iPad Production

I have owned my own iPad now for a few days. Cindy uses her iPad a great deal and I spent time working on her machine, but the experience is a little different when you develop your own collection of apps.

This is definitely a great media consumption device. The experience of browsing, viewing images, reading and responding to email is as good as and probably better than a laptop.

What others want to know is how effectively can you produce content on the device. I think the answer depends on the task and the app. I have no concern with entering text from the on-screen keyboard. I would not want to enter thousands of words or write for hours, but the speed and accuracy are very acceptable. I have used Office2 HD to connect to Google docs. I had some initial concerns that were legit, but a software fix appears to have corrected the initial problems I was having. I must admit that I would be a little nervous working on a long document – it does not seem that this app automatically saves work in progress and this bothers me a bit because weird things seem to happen when I wonder around the a device and do not concentrate on a task for an extended period of time.

It also seems that must work in HTML mode rather than what some of my apps call visual (wysiwyg). I don’t know if this is the result of some technical limitation. The app I am using to generate this post for my wordpress blog is a good example. It appears I would have to code for external links. The capacity of apps to select and then apply a tag or function to the selected text must be a challenge to integrate when creating apps.

I think one of the general problems with apps at this point is that there is no manual and it is not obvious how things work. It turns out the word press app offers a way to generate the code for a link, but you trigger the window to enter the link name and URL by entering http: Does this seem intuitive?

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Interpreting “Outliers”

Cindy and I have taken a couple of long trips in the car lately and I have used the time to listen to Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers. It is the kind of book that is interesting and invites interpretation and speculation.

The book consists of a series of stories that demonstrate that the reason individuals who we regard as extremely successful are so good at what they do is because circumstances have allowed them the opportunity to spend great amounts of time (10000 hours) on something. It is this combination of circumstance and time spent that greatly changes the odds of success.

The identification of what factors represent “circumstances” is what makes this book s0  fascinating. Circumstances range from birthdate in the example of successful Canadian hockey players to access to interactive coding opportunities when such opportunities were extremely rare (Bill Gates) to culture differences in how numbers are represented in language and the assumption that success requires personal commitment to lengthy periods of meaningful work (Asian success in mathematics).

One of the final chapters (chapter 7) considers the success of KIPP (Knowledge is Power). The analysis explains a major source of SES differences in academic performance as learning outside of the school day (summer and outside of school). In a way, KIPP intends to compensate for this difference by extending the school day, week, and year.

As a technology advocate, my tendency is to attempt to understand some of these factors within the environment I understand. Perhaps technology offers opportunities to extend the day, week, and year. This would require that ALL students have access outside of school and have the opportunity to use this access in meaningful ways. This reminds of the concern regarding high bandwidth access from home. 1:1 initiatives would be a start, but the most important applications would allow students to take the computers home and also keep them throughout the summer. Having a computer would be of limited value without Internet access. City wide wifi might be a solution in some situations. Finally, there is the problem of how access would be used. The KIPP expectations require intense activity (the descriptions from the book focus on math). I have less to say about the curriculum and I am not ruling out direct instruction, but I do note that the advantage of growing up in a family of means is not so much about formal instruction as it is about information rich activities (e.g., travel) and related discussion. Perhaps a place to begin would be to encourage a continued virtual connection to the school as a learning community through participatory web activities. Would a student with Internet access be able to find some interesting participatory activities during the month of July?

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Getting Close

I recently purchased a Blackberry Curve because I do not live in a region of the country allowing me to make use of an iPhone. I have owned smart phones before, but the newer devices offer a range of additional services and one can really get some work done. A combination of the keyboard of the Curve and the more authentic browsing experience of the iPhone would offer a great combination. Perhaps such a device is on the way.

As I gain experience with the capabilities of these tools I continue to discover new possibilities. Sometimes the best approach is just to explore. Today I found a new task I can accomplish with my Curve. I record my large class presentations for student access. I typically accomplish this task by bringing my laptop to class and using Audacity. On several occasions I have arrived at class without my laptop. Usually there is a student in the class who also records my presentations and a simple appeal results in a file showing up as an email attachment. Today, I found myself in class without my notebook, but I happened to remember that the Curve has a voice note recorder. I have never used this feature and was not certain that the storage capacity would hold 50 minutes of audio, but I gave it a try. The results were more than adequate.

The Curve stores audio in an .amr format. You do learn new things exploring. It turns out AMR stands for adaptive multi-rate and is a codex suited to voice. I discovered that Quicktime will play amr files and Quicktime Pro allows amr files to be saved out in other formats. When I searched the web to discover what amr files are I also discovered that there are several free programs that can be used to convert amr files.

We may be getting close to inexpensive devices that perform nearly all of the functions we expect of our traditional “computers” and perhaps some new ones that are useful in very mobile devices. These devices will be affordable. Now, if we could find an alternative to the monthly fees that accompany no limit “smart phones”.

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Sorting Out the Agendas

I have been interested in the $100 laptop since I first learned about the project in 2005. When the opportunity to purchase an XO (the name for the first version to ship) as part of a buy one / give one plan became available we made the commitment (Our XO ).

Of late, the grand plan seems to be growing confused. The price point has changed at least temporarily – the $100 laptop is now $200. Perhaps this is inflation, but it is more likely the inability to operate on the needed scale. I understand the buy one/ give one plan was an effort to increase the number of machines to be produced even if all of the machines did not go their target audience. The scale issue comes up in some other ways. Clearly, there is no longer a single plan and there may now be several vendors interested in offering a low price, educationally focused machine (Intel dispute with OLPD – New York Times; Intel quits one laptop per child). There is also the dispute regarding the operating system – UNIX vs/and Windows (Negroponte at CES is positive about eventual connection with Windows). It is even unclear if the OLPC agenda is now focused exclusively on other countries or has been modified to allow some U.S. schools to participate (Birmingham in deal to bring XO to students. (eSchool News)). This last issue is strange – if U.S. sales are to be part of the model, limiting access in any way seems a very bad idea. As a developer, I find it difficult to spend too much time with the machine exploring possibilities without the opportunity to field test ideas (meaning machines available in local schools). I can see no U.S. sales. I can see open U.S. sales. I don’t get a few projects here or there when the original model asked for buy in to support projects elsewhere.

I think competition is great. I think exploring competing educational models is great. I hope other agendas (power/visibility/control, profit, platform exclusivity) do not dilute and confuse the original goal. Let’s get some machines in the field and let other issues work themselves out based on what students are able to accomplish.

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Researchers claim Maine’s 1:1 initiative improves achievement

Researchers have released a report evaluating student achievement as a consequence of a 1:1 laptop initiative. The researchers claim quite significant improvements in writing proficiency. At this point I have only had an opportunity to read the executive summary so I may have more to say after I have read the methodology.Maine Laptop Research.

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