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A brief historyWe haven't seen a significant change in how we interact with computers since the keyboard and mouse (a late 1960's invention). We can point to tablet PCs as the early innovators, but ultimately that isn't true: They did feature pointing devices and a flat screen, but the operating system and user interface was pretty much the same interface that was designed for a keyboard and mouse. There was little or no attempt to rethink how something would work without a physical keyboard. Like many things Apple, the iPhone/iPad is not as revolutionary as profoundly evolutionary. With the iPad developers now have a successful model for how a touch interface can work on a tablet. This is good for everyone. |
I was fortunate enough be given an iPad through work. It was easy to justify based on what I do for a living. The reality was that I was prepared to buy one for myself, so I am sitting on the money to do just that at a later date. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you my initial observations...
The iPad represents the shift from computer platform to computing appliance. There are many examples of this now, but the iPad represents the most blatant.
The Tivo is a computing appliance in that it runs an operating system, has a processor, RAM and storage, and a modest amount of third-party support. However, unlike a personal computer, it is a "closed" environment that not just anyone can write for.
Video game systems, to some extent, represent the same idea. It is possible to hack these to run third-party applications, but it's really not the intended use. It seems to me that the iPad represents a further shift in this idea, whether someone agrees with it or not.
Flash is the most
hotly contested. It is a disservice to not support embedded flash applications
in the browser. There are legitimate technical reasons to exclude flash, but at
the end of the day I would have included Flash application support in the browser,
but not necessarily for stand-alone apps. As for flash as a video player - I
think that bird has flown. The HTML video tag has too many benefits to not
adopt it. The "which format" issue will sort itself out - I root for
the open source alternatives - but the pragmatist in me says that h264 will win
- hardware acceleration, better tools, more content.
Battery life can be a deciding factor for many who consider buying a tablet. I am watching my battery go down on my MacBook right now, but on the iPad the battery life is so phenomenal that I don't even think to check it.
Music apps such as
Megasynth, Bebot work fantastically. Megasynth has made the leap from novelty
to near-killer app. Where will it go once MIDI support is enabled, who knows? I
can't wait to see what kinds of graphic applications show up on the device!
It will take about a year before the other manufacturers begin to ship truly competitive products to the iPad. HP's purchases of Palm and WebOS hold some promise.
Most of the tablets
out now are using hardware that is not nearly as power-efficient as the iPad. These toy tablets are little more than netbooks in a different form
factor. Price will affect rate of adoption. As with netbooks, there is
definitely a price/performance tipping point. The $150 netbooks aren't selling
because they are too underpowered for what people want them for. A $200 tablet
versus a $350 tablet may be a world of difference. Apple figured this out.
Have you evaluated the iPad? Have you fallen under its spell? What is your perspective on this frenzy? Chime in in the comments section below or on the AV-1 Forum.
This report was reposted with permission from the blog hal meeks made it up.
by Hal Meeks |
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This June in Las
Vegas, EduComm brings together top
thought leaders, innovators, and speakers to present, discuss, and navigate the
unprecedented challenges and opportunities shaping the future of higher
education.
Here is AV-1's short-list of recommended activities and sessions while you are there. (If you had been planning to attend only InfoComm while in Vegas, think again!)
Classroom
Tour of University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Guide: Joe Schuch Senior Associate for New Learning Environments, Thorburn Associates.
EduComm and InfoComm attendees are invited to visit some of UNLV's most advanced learning space including the J-School's newly completed Greenspun Hall (at right). Visiting other institutions provides the opportunity for colleagues to generate ideas and discuss challenges to planning and support of learning space at their institutions. Don't miss this opportunity!
Special thanks to Darrell Lutey, Assistant Director of UNLV Instructional Technology Services for arranging the visit.
Space is limited. The visit is open to attendees of EduComm and InfoComm. Click here to join us!
Street
Fighting Higher Education-Get Ready to Rumble
Speaker: Sanjoy Mahajan Associate Director of MIT's Teaching and Learning Laboratory.
Dr. Mahajan's insights into intuitive problem solving and the unintended effects of higher education's accepted methodologies are transforming our understanding of how excellence is achieved, and how too often, academic success is eroded and undermined by precisely those things we thought were improving it. See also http://mit.edu/sanjoy/www/
Down
the Rabbit Hole: Using Alternate Reality Games for Education and Training
Speakers: Sarah "Intellagirl" Smith-Robbins Director of Emerging Technologies at Indiana University, Kelley School of Business; David Eisert Manager of Emerging Technologies at Purdue University.
Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) present a new form of immersive experiential learning. Regardless of the topic being taught, participants in ARGs engage in an active, creative way with the game's mechanics while also exploring collaboration mechanics, technology, and the attraction of a compelling story.
Speakers: Ashley F. Burt Interim Director of Information Technology at Auburn University; Michael J. Chavers Information Technology Specialist IV Auburn University.
How are tablet computers used by students at Auburn University's College of Veterinary Medicine? Items to be covered include how the program developed; vision for how students can use these devices to enhance learning; how the college supported students; feedback on success; and plans for the future.
Annual Higher Ed Technology Update with David Pogue
David Pogue is the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times. Each week, he contributes a print column, an online column, an online video and a popular daily blog, "Pogue's Posts."
The
New Helpdesk: Resolving Any Issue, Anywhere, at Anytime
Panel: Apurva Mehta Director of IT, UMass; Jonathan Brennan Director of Information Technology Services, Sage Colleges; Richard Crim CIO and Information Technology Strategist, Lord Fairfax Community College (LFCC).
Senior IT leaders will detail the success of delivering IT support services 24-hours per day to users in distributed locations, as well as the qualitative benefits of leveraging remote support technology. They'll share lessons learned and provide anecdotal advice on maintaining an effective campus IT department under tight budgetary constraints.
In
the Hotseat: Connecting with Students Through Backchannel Banter
Speaker: Kyle Bowen Director of informatics at Purdue University, where he is responsible for providing Web design and application development support for the university community; Hans Peter Aagard Senior Educational Technologist at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing at Purdue University.
Hotseat, a new mobile Web application developed at Purdue University, enables students to engage in micro-discussion style collaboration both inside and outside the classroom from an iPhone, mobile device, participate via Twitter, or within a custom Facebook application, thereby transforming the traditional passive student experience through integration with popular Web 2.0 Web sites.
Your Digital Personality: The Real You in Your Online Class
Speaker: Todd Conaway Instructional Designer at Yavapai College in Arizona.
Participants will receive resources and examples of online instructors integrating their personality into their courses using web 2.0 products. Discuss the driving need for more than text-based learning.
Extending
Beyond the Classroom with Collaborative Spaces
Speaker: Amy L. Haston Learning Spaces Analyst at Purdue University.
Learn the steps Purdue University has taken to create their current collaborative spaces, which were driven primarily by key faculty and their pedagogy. How did Purdue's Information Technology staff responded to the students' needs? How did Purdue use a student centric model to design collaborative spaces to engender collaborative work outside of the classroom, allowing students to better prepare for the world they will enter?
Lessons
Learned from Classroom Services AV Training Modules
Speakers: Amanda Mast Assistant AV Systems Engineer at University of Notre Dame; Jason Railton Assistant Manager, Technology Enhanced Learning Spaces University of Notre Dame.
The University of Notre Dame classroom support model was originally based on full time staff responding immediately to faculty calls for assistance from our classrooms. This model worked well in the 1990's when technology classrooms were few in number. As the number of technology classrooms has expanded it became clear that the original support model would not scale well. This presentation describes how we developed a training program to equip student employees to respond to most calls for assistance.
The
DO's and Don'ts of implementing Smart Classrooms
Speaker: Ken Woo Dir. of IT & Facilities at Northwestern University School of Continuing Studies.
This session will explain how Nortwestern incorporated the best of what others were doing in order to make our smart classrooms better. You will leave with the building blocks to distinguish between a "need" and a "wish" for a Smart Classroom. Some lessons learned will also be discussed and what we saw as what works and what doesn't.
How
Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education
Speaker: Curtis Bonk Professor at Indiana University and author of The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education.
Many next-big-things introduced in recent years have failed to live up to that potential. In his recent book The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education, Curtis Bonk argues that what has been missing is convergence. Bonk outlines 10 technology trends that, when combined in whole or in part, can transform learning.
Network
Refresh: Elevating Higher Educational Facilities into the 21st Century
Speakers: Tripti Sinha Director of Networking and Telecommunications, Office of Information Technology at University of Maryland, College Park; Tom Vogler Assistant VP of Finance and Administration, Office of Information Technology at the University of Maryland.
This session will highlight the best practices and processes for higher educational facilities to meet state mandates and enhance overall communication, research, and educational resources throughout the university.
Speaker: Phil Ice Director of Course Design Research and Development at American Public University.
This session will help institutional decision makers understand how to effectively capture and utilize knowledge and data from across the enterprise to drive programmatic growth. Topics covered will include using data to enhance pedagogical effectiveness, implementation of new technologies, reporting to accreditation agencies and maximizing return on investment.
Panel
Discussion: Disruptive Technology in Education
Panelists: Joe Schuch Senior Associate for New Learning Environments at Thorburn Associates; Sarah Robbins Director of Emerging Technologies at Kelley Executive Partners; Phil Ice Director of Course Design, Research and Development at American Public University.
In education, are there any technologies that are not disruptive, really? With the arrival of each "great new thing" how can one know which to keep and which to toss? As leaders in our communities, how can we move our organizations and cultures from reactive to proactive?
Join us for an engaging discussion of disruptive technologies in the classroom and higher education.
Meanwhile, I have budget proposals (and their obligatory revisions) to attend to.
In years past, we
have often been the beneficiary of end-of-year spending dollars doled out from
our parental unit engaged in the organizational equivalent of checking between
the sofa cushions for spare change.
No such luck this year (and things are looking fairly doleful next year as well).
With the execution (in a good way, sorta) of my fiscal homework and the safe return of our sunburned students (bleary-eyed and somewhat wiser to the ways of tequila) I spied my window of opportunity to cash in some accumulated vacation-time and pull a "Don Draper" and disappear for two weeks.
Continue reading "The Art of Tipping: The True Cost of Poor Service " »
Let's get right to it: most designs for classroom technology are based on a 20-year old paradigm of furniture, cables and pipes (and lots of equipment). While continuing to replicate these dinosaurs may serve to ensure job security (for now), this model requires heavy infrastructure that adds cost and locks the room into a rigid floor plan that does not support progressive teaching and learning practice.
Years ago, when the UNC faculty became interested in achieving greater flexibility (oh, how I despise that word) in the classroom, we came to understand that furniture should not be bolted down. It should be easy (or at least possible) to reconfigure the classroom floor plan to meet evolving requirements of teaching and learning.
We worked with our
interior designer in Facilities and our KI furniture representative to identify modular
student furniture that could be rearranged with greater ease. After deploying
various configurations of lightweight chair-desks and modular tables and
chairs, we felt we had met the challenge. We gave ourselves a good pat on the
back and took a coffee break.
Then came the phone call. It went something like this:
Professor: "I cannot move the podium."
Schuch: "Of course not! Our quality control measures include a thorough check of the anchor bolts during final inspection. No need to thank us!"
Professor: "Perhaps you missed my point."
Schuch: "No need to apologize. If I were in your position, I would want to make sure that everything was perfect in my new classroom, as well!"
Professor: "Of course I do expect everything to be perfect, and that is why I am calling. You see, I would like to be able to move the podium. So, could you un-bolt it from the floor, perhaps?"
Schuch: (After a long pause.) "...Am I being punked?"
Continue reading "An Open Proposal for Innovation, Part Three: The No-Go Podium " »
Come April, we like to pause a moment to reflect merrily upon all the hi-jinx and lallygagging that carried us through the long, cold winter doldrums. Ah, the leaky basements! Oh, the delayed supply shipments! Jeepers, those goofy budget cuts keep cracking us up!
We turned to our resident comedian, Dave Althoff, Jr. (the guy with the funny titles in his emails) and asked him to come up with questions that would make us laugh, learn and understand the stereotypes of us AV types. (For those of you who don't fit the stereotype, consider this an adventure in tolerance, or better yet, just play along.)
Some of his questions are funny (at least we thought so), some more serious (Joe did get a little misty) but all are meant in good humor. Please take a few minutes to complete our special, super-secret double-detention AV-1 April Fools Day survey.
On Monday, we posed six questions to the AV-1 community about the value of professional development. This is my analysis of your responses. Please let us know what you think.
First, we fall into a pretty tight band with regard to how many Professional Development (PD) opportunities we get per year. 73% of respondents are able to arrange up to six opportunities, and not a single respondent indicated getting over 10 opportunities. Six of us responded that they get no PD.
We would love to hear more from those of you who get no PD... is that by choice or for some other reason?
Continue reading "Professional Development Survey Results" »
Our recent pre-InfoComm survey told us that 63% of AV-1 readers attend InfoComm for educational (Professional Development) purposes. This got our readers, and us at AV-1 HQ, asking more and more questions about professional development.
The questions came more quickly than we could answer...
Is InfoComm the best place to engage in Professional Development?
Are there other great ways to continue to learn??
Are technology directors and managers getting all the Professional Development they feel is required???
How come we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway????
We knew the only way to get the low-down was to go back to you, knowledgeable readers, and ask a few more questions. Please take a minute to fill out the survey and let us know what/if you are doing for professional development. As always, the results will be posted by next Monday.
Scott Tiner
Bates College
The Consortium for College and University Media Centers (CCUMC) and AV-1 invite you to submit a proposal for a presentation at the 2010 CCUMC Annual Conference (deadline for submissions: April 2) in Buffalo, New York, October 6 - 10. This year's theme is Leadership in Media & Academic Technology.
The CCUMC 2010 Annual Conference will be hosted by the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY). The CCUMC Annual Conference is the premier annual event for the sharing of knowledge and wisdom about media and academic technology in higher education institutions throughout North America.
CCUMC's 2010 conference promises to be the best yet, with a fun, exciting, and informative mix of 24 scheduled concurrent sessions, six interest groups, and daily keynotes and general sessions. This year's conference will include a special campus tour of University at Buffalo facilities highlighting media, academic technology, and learning spaces, as well as an outing to Niagara Falls for a tour and dinner.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Mark McCallister
CCUMC President-Elect
University of Florida
I’m writing to share an observation: the people around us -- our customers, reports, coworkers and bosses -- pay attention. Especially in the workplace, those around us tune in not just to the things we say and do, but also to our motives (whether stated or implied) behind our actions. They want to know that we can be trusted and that they can trust us with their best interests.
Even up here in staid northern New England, the average Joe and Josephine have their personal antennae up almost all the time.
My ER doctor-friend, for example, was closing on the purchase of 100-acres atop a hillside in Vermont when rumor had it his commute to the hospital (two hours by car) was to be by helicopter. Without a word, the town council placed a no-helipad restriction on his deed (so for kicks I occasionally threaten to put a windsock up there while he’s away on vacation). There had been no plan for a propeller-commute, and, had either party taken the time to build trust, the town council could have avoided embarrassing themselves.
Speaking of antennae, one night in our small town, a patrol car pulled me over for a burned out tail light. The next morning all the police scanner owners in my shop ribbed about my reckless driving, but I digress.
I wonder, are many managers are aware of this? After all, people tend to hide their feelings pretty well. It may be that in many cases management is so overwhelmed with handling the big issues that they forget the importance of building their credibility and trustworthiness among their subordinates.
Invariably, those managers (well, I suppose we have all committed this offense) try using their positional power as a shortcut to some quick win, and what happens?
The same managers are struck suddenly by their subordinates’ apparent resistance to change. Workers who previously merited high praise now are regarded as stubborn and lazy. Frustration sets in. Pretty soon, the supervisor concludes that the staff aren’t listening, can’t learn, or worse, they have innate incapacity to self-actualize (see Maslov’s Pyramid).
Truth is, when people are behind you all the way, they will walk on hot coals to get the job done, whatever it takes. But when we have no trust for those in command, and no confidence in the mission, we drag our feet.
Here's my one-line bio.
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