Be Careful of What You Wish For

For years, many in the EdTech community have been wishing for the day when students would come to school with a digital device that would serve as textbook, notebook, research tool, and homework folder all rolled up into one small, lightweight package. With Apple's recent eTextbook announcement along with (surprise, surprise) President Obama's call for students in the United States to use digital textbooks in the next five years you would think the day of jubilee has come. However, instead of shouts of joy, I seem to be seeing complaints about this move to the digital student. The funny thing is many of the arguments are the ones I used to hear from teachers who did not want to embrace technology at all.

The complaints I am hearing are the likes of the Adobe PDF format is too hard to work with or iPads and the necessary accessories will cost too much. One argument I can agree with partially is do we really need textbooks at all? It seems to me the attitude is that unless every student can take part in the new educational digital revolution then forget it, we won't play. What are people thinking? Steve Jobs was going to leave an iPad to every student in his will? This is the type of thinking that hampers education to begin with. Why don't we outlaw new safety features on cars until every car has them instead of seeing them on luxury cars first? Because we know these features will eventually come down to the masses as standard features eventually if they work. We should not act surprised about this digital education revolution either. If you read Steve Jobs' biography you got a clear warning that education was one of the next things Jobs wanted to reinvent. Actually, Jobs has been talking about this for many years but the pieces have now come into place.

Okay, we know there are not that many interactive textbooks, iPads in the hands of students, teachers trained to take advantage of these advances, and school districts that have the infrastructure to handle the rush of mobile devices. Well new content will start flowing with iBook Author. Also, there will be other products that will do the same thing for other platforms by the end of the year. As far as getting iPads into the hands of students, I am willing to predict that the iPad 3 will be the top of the line device but Apple will still sell iPad 2's at a cheaper cost. Apple is still selling iPhone 3GS's and iPhone 4's and they are plenty serviceable. Google and the Android supporters will not go sit in the corner and sulk? They should have something out before the end of the year if they wish to compete with Apple. Remember too that five years in the tech world can see many changes. Teachers have been warned for years this day would come so if they are not ready, it is probably their fault and they better start cramming. The new digital tools will change the way teaching in the classroom is carried out. 20th Century practices will not work in 21st Century tools. Likewise, districts should have seen this coming too. Some have taken steps to welcome the new technologies but I am sure the recent announcements also caught many unprepared. Do we really need to continue investing in interactive whiteboards?

There it is, the time is at hand to put up or shut up. When I was stationed in West Germany during my Army days, the idea of a divided Germany was a given fact even though West German propaganda talked about reunification. When I left West Germany in 1988, everyone (including myself) thought the East-West border would continue to divide Germany for many years to come. However, within two years the Berlin Wall was down and Germany was reunified surprising many people (again including myself) that it actually happened. Well the wall between old and new, analog and digital, paper and eReader has been torn down. It is now time for us to quickly gather our wits and forge the new future we have dreamed about but did not expect to happen.

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The First Ghost of Steve Jobs

Like Matthew Sobol, the protagonist in Daniel Suarez's book Daemon, Steve Jobs has come back from the dead to attempt to redefine society. Those who read Jobs' biography know the two areas Steve Jobs wanted to change was television and school textbooks. Well like how the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future changed Ebenezer Scrooge, the first Ghost of Steve Jobs wants to change a stodgy and stuck-in-the-past education with the release of iBooks 2, iBook Author, and the iTunes U app. Whether Jobs' specter will make a positive change remains to be seen.

The most intriguing of Apple's recent releases is iBook Author. This is a free application for Macs which allows anyone to create a multimedia rich book. The primary target is teachers who wish to create their own textbooks that would help their students. Now all those teachers I know who do not like to share their curriculum unless someone pays for it have an outlet to share their great secrets to turn students into super learners at up to $15 a pop. However, I can't wait to see teachers who have embraced the flipped style classroom and teachers who have their students create a book as a review project start having their work popup in the iBooks store. This is a great creative outlet for both teachers and students alike looking for ways to share or celebrate learning. This could be a money maker for schools because students can contribute to a virtual yearbook that actually relives memories and they don't have to work with yearbook publishers. I would like students to become editors of a class companion or textbook and produce updates to a review book during the school year. The only downfall is it currently works with the iPad but I am sure that will change and other other programs will come along that will cover Kindle and other eReaders.

Tech News Today said Apple's education announcement could eliminate schools. While this was an attention getting headline for the show, the iTunes U app could have an impact on schools. I have often told teachers that iTunes U was one of the best kept secrets of education. Where else can one see lectures from universities around the world with the prestige of Harvard, Stanford, and Duke. It now looks like Apple wants iTunes U to become a place where students can retrieve course materials such as syllabi, lectures, and other course materials. While this is an interesting first step to make class materials easier to get on an iOS device, the lack of interactivity will not see iTunes U replacing classroom management systems such as Blackboard, Edmodo, or Schoology.

Like other Apple products, the introduction of iBooks 2, iBook Author, and the iTunes U app are not something never before seen products but are meant to make creating mobile online class content easier to do providing you are on the Apple ecosystem. However, you can bet others will be coming out with similar tools to support Android, ePub (Apple claims to support this but iBooks Author is hazy on this), and Kindle (is it real Android?). Hopefully, like Scrooge's transformation, this offering from Steve Jobs' ghost will transform schools to be more welcoming to mobile devices in the present and future than they have in the past.

Photo credit: everwonderpowdersplunder

Nook App Love

I guess I cannot let an announcement about the Barnes & Noble Nook eReaders go by without saying something. No, I am not getting another Nook or at least not anytime soon. For many the Nook Color and new Nook Tablet can be considered the "Poor Man's or Woman's Tablet" because they are cheaper ($199 and $249 respectively) than any other Android Tablet. I am not going to discuss the Kindle Fire yet because it just came out and time will tell if it can hold its own against the Nooks. Also, there are not that many apps for the Kindle Fire yet. The iPad is in a class all by itself.

Earlier today I was going through the apps available for my wife's Nook Color just to see how things have grown. You still won't get as many apps as you would from the Android Market Place or Amazon App Store but the selection has grown. There were some apps I saw that impressed me as well. These are apps that could serve a teacher looking to break free from the front of the class. I have mentioned some of these apps in other blog posts but they are worth mentioning again because being available for the Nook Color and Tablet surprised me. 

• Evernote: The app I probably use most of the time outside of social networking. I am always jotting down notes and sometimes inserting pictures. This can be from articles I see online to things I may want to purchase later, to capturing thoughts rattling around my head. The thing that makes Evernote stand out is it syncs to all other versions of Evernote. Given Evernote's philosophy I should not be surprised it is on the Nooks.
• Splashtop: This was a real shocker. It never occurred to me to use a Nook Color to wirelessly mirror what was on a computer. The screen size of the Nooks may make controlling a computer on the devices a challenge but it should work.
• Quickoffice Pro: For those who need to draft a document, start or edit a PowerPoint, or crunch a few numbers this is your app. It has been available for Nook for awhile but as I am using other tablets the importance of this app on Nook is significant. The ability to connect to cloud storage such as Dropbox or Google Docs is a huge advantage.
• Dropbox: Another app that surprised me but it should not. When I draft a document on a tablet then cloud storage is a must. Dropbox makes the storage and, more importantly, the sharing of files very easy. I would hate to think about how to get a document from the Nook to other computers without it.
• Skitch: This app allows you to annotate pictures and screen shots. I am not sure how this would work on a Nook but if it does then it should be a useful app.
• Drop2sync: This app allows you to sync different types of files to your Nook. Works with Dropbox and Box.net.

There are other apps that I may not have mentioned that could help teachers break the chains that bind them to the front of their classrooms. Also, I would like to see Edmodo port an App for the Nook. At least one does not have to look on with envy at another teacher with a more expensive tablet computer to get the some functionality.

A Mobile Life For Me

This year I have been using tablets in and out of my classroom for a variety of tasks and I have loved the experience. I have been switching between my Acer Iconia A500 Android tablet and the Apple iPad 2 received for winning the TIP's award. Saving time when it comes to grade reporting has to be the biggest reason for using a tablet alone. I loaded Splashtop on both tablets I use along with my laptop. A few taps on the screen I have my laptop's screen on my tablet screen. This allows me to enter grades in both Edmodo and our Power School gradebook as I check student work during class, a huge timesaver. Also, I can pull up the e-book we use for learning Scratch programming and can go over questions students have which is also nice. Needless to say, I plan on making more use of using tablets in my classes and other teaching duties. It is the mobile life for me!

Here are a few applications I use with either my Acer tablet, iPad, or even my iPhone 4S and how I use them:

• Read school email but not reply (it is forwarded to a Gmail account I created when I was a tech coach).
• Take attendance through Splashtop.
• Show a presentation using either Quick Office, Keynote, or Splashtop and either an HDMI cable, VGA adapter, or WiFi connection.
• Communicate with students and other teachers via Edmodo. While the Android and iPhone apps are nice the iPad app is the full Internet version. I wish the Tablet app would do this too.
• Write reports, memos, or other documents with Quick Office. Just don't expect forms to come out the same way.
• Shoot and edit videos with iMovie or Slice.
• Blog and share pictures with my students, parents, or teachers using Blogger or the Squarespace apps for iOS and Android (glad this one is available).
• Take notes in meetings with Evernote.
• Run a quiz or do exit tickets with Socrative.
• Surf the Internet for lesson ideas although it is limited due to access restrictions.
• Read and share ebooks.
• Share videos downloaded from YouTube or Streamline.
• Grade student work with Edmodo and/or Splashtop.
• Confer with other Education Professionals with Twitter, Google+, and/Edmodo.
• Quickly divide the class into teams with Team Picker (iOS) or Random Student (Android).

There are probably many more things but I just can't think of them right now but feel free to leave a comment to share how you use your phone or tablet in your classroom.