It seems no matter where I travel I notice two things that blow my mind … the first is that every single house has a play set in the backyard that no one is ever playing on. The second is that no matter where I fire up my laptop I see at least a half dozen or so wireless signals. You’d think at some point we’d all figure out it is cool to let the neighbors play together.
Simple
If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn't a price worth paying to have a computer that isn't frightening anymore.
via speirs.org
In my mind, Fraser Speirs nails it. At the end of the day all the people outside of tech that I've talked to claim to want an iPad. Why? Pure simplicity.
Old School TV
I know you remember this — and if you don’t you really probably should. I discovered this on hulu, but decided to embed it from YouTube so my friends in Canada can see this classic Sesame Street clip. It just flat out made me smile. Not even sure if there is Sesame Street in Canada?
Office on iPad?
I know this seems like a really stupid question, but does anyone think Microsoft would ever make iPad apps of the individual Office tools? At first I thought there’d be no way — Microsoft has a competing mobile OS, why would they want to enable that? Then I remembered they also have a competing desktop OS and they deliver to that. With Apple releasing iWork apps for $10.00 each for the iPad I wonder if Microsoft will be inspired to create somewhat lighter weight versions of Word, PPT, and Excel? Perhaps one of the motivations Apple had for doing the iPad versions of iWork was to press Microsoft into playing?
The really funny thing for me is that I don’t care. I stopped using Office for anything of any sort a long time ago. If you send me a Word doc it is instantly converted to a Google Doc — and I know that’ll continue to work on the iPad. I just wonder if Microsoft will be willing to let money just sit out there in the cloud? Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.
Adding it Up
Gadgets potentially replaced by iPad:
- Digital Picture Frame: $150.00
- iPod Touch: $200.00
- Portable Movie Player: $100.00
- Kindle DX: $490.00
- MacBook: $1,000.00 (assuming a home computer)
That’s almost $2,000.00 worth of stuff that could be replaced — essentially 4 iPads, one for every member of my family. I struggled with throwing the MacBook in that list as it is a full fledged computer, but I was thinking about who in my house would be happy with a MacBook and the only one two I came up with are my 8 year old daughter and 3 year old son. Watching the way each of them use Macs leads me to believe that either would be very satisfied with an iPad (until they hit a site that required Flash). Even without the MacBook, the fact of the matter is that this thing may end being seen everywhere at only $500.00.
Consumers
I just thought I’d take a minute to remind everyone that Apple is a consumer electronics company. They, unlike lots, do really good things for education (see the ADE initiative, iTunes U, Apple Learning Interchange, and others) but first and foremost they are selling products to people. Lots of us in the higher ed space are looking at the iPad lamenting the stuff that didn’t make it … but at the end of the day it is a really nice product in the consumer space that will evolve.
It might be a hit at my house and if it is, it will cost us a heck of a lot less than a laptop for each of the kids. The only thing that would keep it from being something I’d heavily promote is that at the moment it lacks any sort of real digital content creation tools — and that may be one of its biggest short comings out of the box. We know from our own surveys and national data that kids are creating lots of shareable digital media. How does the iPad fit into that World? I am hoping Apple will do the same thing with some of the iLife apps as it has with iWork — port them to iPad. Imagine an iPad with iMovie or Garageband on it … it would be an amazing UI opportunity. The current inability to do native (read as the Apple way) content creation on the iPad is an oversight.
Having iWork on the device makes it something I can easily take on trips and potentially present from … I say “potentially” because most of my Keynote stacks are heavily laden with digital video. I am guessing Keynote on the iPad can manage all that stuff. That integration alone makes it a great business tool for me. I use Safari, Keynote, Gmail, and Google Docs for more than 90% of my work so the iPad fits my profile. Looking at it, the horizon is unlimited because of the App Store. How long will it be until people start building apps that really take advantage of the form factor and meet business needs?
I am guessing that the iPad will fit into most peoples’ lives. Will everyone in my house have an iPad? I am guessing that is what Apple is hoping for … I didn’t see anything that said the iPad can have multiple accounts running on it. From what I can see is that the iPad and its owner have a 1:1 relationship. A Macbook can be shared, while it looks like the iPhone in that it is a single user device.
No matter, we’ll be testing it. I feel like there are enough interesting aspects of this thing that we need to understand it and its potential relationship to teaching and learning.
Thought on History … and Repeating Itself
From McLuhan (The Medium is the Massage, 128) … “The main cause for disappointment in and for criticism of television is the failure on the part of its critics view it as a totally new technology which demands different sensory responses. These critics insist on regarding television as merely a degraded form of print technology.”
consider that in the context of where we are now and do a little editing …
“The main cause for disappointment in and for criticism of is the failure on the part of its critics view it as a totally new technology which demands different sensory responses. These critics insist on regarding as merely a degraded form of [television].”
Do you find this as out of control as I do?
Educating for the Future, Not the Past | DMLcentral
he point of this historical perspective is to remind us that the last decade has seen transformations of a kind notable even from the long perspective of the record of human history. Our Information Age has been the most extensive and rapid in human history, structurally altering traditional economic and political arrangements on a global level and, at the same time, restructuring communication, interaction, publication, and authorship in all currently available media. Is it any wonder that many of us are wondering what will happen next—or asking how best to prepare ourselves for what comes next?
via dmlcentral.net
I haven't been posting here much as I have been spending my time over at the course site for the class Scott McDonald and I are teaching, but this is right in our collective wheelhouse that I really wanted to share it.