digital nomad » education

iPad Alternatives

leogaggl — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:40:09 +0000

Due to the hype generated by the recent launch and my reservations on using the Apple Inc. iTunes I was doing some research into alternatives to the proprietary and completely locked iPad device (and the associated lock-down to Apple’s iTunes Store). Hopefully this list can be of use for other people as well.

I can see the form factor and the tablet style with a cut down (mainly web-browser based) Operating System as useful in a number of settings not least in educational institutions and libraries.

Here is the findings so far:

EDIT: I have re-published the list as a Google Spreadsheet to enable submission of new items. Please ENTER YOUR OWN if you found an item not on the list.

If you are purely looking for a tablet as an electronic reading device there is a good Wikipedia comparison chart to look at.

I will add further devices as I discover them. Please leave a comment if you find other tablets / devices that have similar features, but are more open and do not require iTunes lock-down.

iPad – Trojan Horse ?

leogaggl — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 22:04:49 +0000

The media hype generated by the launch of the Apple Inc. iPad has been seriously irritating me over the last weeks. Apart from the fact that I can not see anything revolutionary about either the hardware nor the software, I can see a number of highly problematic developments with the way Apple is trying to create a total vendor lock-in.

The evil is in the Store

However – the single biggest issue is not actually the device (iPad) itself, it is actually it’s lock to Apple’s iTunes Store. There will be no (at least for the ‘normal’ end-user) way to install software or load content onto the device other than going through iTunes. The device seems to have been deliberately crippled (not even a USB connection) of any way to get content on or off it other than Apple’s mandated iTunes. The resulting vendor lock-in from both the hardware (Apple only devices), Software (all Software that will install on the device will have to go through iTunes) as well as increasingly Content (purchased via iTunes Store) is a very worrying trend from my point of view.

Return of the dinosaurs ?

One possible reason for the hype generated for the iPad seems a vested interest on behalf of the media industry in the ability to lock down content and create a paid digital market for their content. It’s about creating a walled garden where previously was a free and open Internet. It seems that the old media conglomerates are looking towards iTunes as a possible extension (saviour) of their failing business models.

Television 2.0 – the new rise of new media consumerism ?

From initial reviews it seems that the iPad is primarily a media ‘consumption’ device rather than a focus of the creation (or at least co-creation) of content. It seems geared to create a new generation of ‘viewer’ beyond television. A good further explanation on why I consider this a step backwards can be found at this entry on the SpeEdChange Blog

No iTunes – no education ?

One of the most problematic areas for me is the use of the iPad as the primary computing device used in Education. There seem to be a number of educational institutions planning to replace printed lecture materials with iPads even before the release of the device. While I don’t see any issues with the replacement of printed material, the replacement with one single proprietary & closed system seems an extremely bad choice on a number of fronts.

Requires an AppleID for each student (a very problematic privacy issue)
Content only accessible to Apple Devices
Proprietary (non-standard) formats

There are plenty of approaches already in the public domain (from the use of Open eBook standards to complete Open Education Resources in a variety of formats) that can be accessed from an iPad as well as any other (tablet or other) device with a decent web-browser or similar retrieval mechanism (RSS, …).

As stated on the beginning of this blog entry I don’t have an issue with the iPad as a hardware device (and I haven’t actually used one yet – due to the fact they will not be available in Australia for a while). But from all the technical details available the combination of a locked device with a locked store and locked content seems a bad idea all around from my perspective.

Useful software for practical mobile learning

leogaggl — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:12:36 +0000

Since a fair bit of my time is spent working and researching in the field of Mobile Learning and there is not a lot of recent listings of Software useful in practical m-Learning implementations I have compiled the following list from my bookmarks and Software I commonly use for these purposes. This list tries to represent currently usable applications not applications in the development stage.

Rather than writing this in the form of a blog entry I decided to keep this as a live document within Google Apps that people can contribute to.

Please consider adding to this list if you find some useful mobile learning software missing. You can also subscribe to the changes to this list via RSS. You can also download this list as a PDF document.

Need for digital (media) literacy

leogaggl — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:02:05 +0000

I just recently stumbled across this link to the ‘Heartland Institute‘ via a reference in an American Newspaper site citing their sources for an article about the US Economic Stimulus package. I initially was hoping this might be a satiric site such as CNNN, but after taking a closer look and checking out some references it appears these people are actually serious (and worse still seem to have a lot of funds at their disposal to spread their dubious view). Reading this rubbish got me thinking about how many kids would actually think this could be an authoritative source for information.

Image by: Dr. Joolz (http://www.flickr.com/photos/drjoolz/)

I often see readers commenting on websites that are an obvious parody, taking the written word on these sites absolutely serious and literally. But the mentioned site above is written with the obvious intent to present the information as fact (no matter how ridiculous the claims are). I don’t actually want to get into the (mis-) information presented on this site, but more the danger posed by such sites if we don’t teach digital literacy to our kids at school from a young age. Skills such as checking the sources and motivations behind certain ‘news and information’ sites.

While some of these sites (such as the example above) are very secretive about their donors and sources of revenue it should be fairly obvious by trying to do a quick online check what their particular objective is. In the particular example used above the published donations from the Tobacco industry and obvious links to the Oil industry both in the people employed by the organisation as well as direct contributions should give a very clear indication.

Sources to check the facts:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ipcc.ch/)
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (http://unfccc.int/)
Union of Concerned Scientists (http://www.ucsusa.org/)

Sources to check the background

PRWATCH (http://www.prwatch.org/)
Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org/)
Media Transparency (http://www.mediatransparency.org/)

Now I am certainly not advocating to take the information from the sites above as automatically correct. Sites such as these might have their own motivations and can also skew their information to suit their own objectives. My point is more making the next generation aware of the need to check and balance their information sources and in the end use their own brain to weigh up the different sources in terms of their validity.

However seeing the browsing habits of my own children and their friends I fear that this particular skill-set has not been given a lot of attention in schools so far. I very much hope this is going to change with age and I will try my best to make them aware of the need to check.

m-learn: Mobile evidence gathering using GoogleDocs

leogaggl — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:22:46 +0000

This one nearly escaped my attention yesterday. Google has just announced the ability to edit Google Docs on your mobile device via their Google Mobile Blog.

Just point your mobile browser to m.google.com/docs and start editing.

Along with the use of 2D barcodes this will open a few interesting m-learning possiblities for educators that would previously have required custom coding to achieve. I can see this being very useful in situations where you have students being in the field and allowing them to enter data gathered using a standard mobile phone. The barcodes could point students to the location of the spreadsheet (avoiding the need to type the information)

The screenshot below shows a spreadsheet that I just made up for demonstration purposes.

Google Spreadsheet

Google Spreadsheet - add record

The data gathered can easily be used embedded into LMS course pages for review in the classroom. The (quite capable) graphing tools in Google Spreadsheets can be used to visualise the results gathered. For some of our clients that use Moodle and GoogleApps for Education this is a very interesting combination as would allow for the authenticated entering of mobile data into the LMS.

It would be interesting to look at how you could easily geo-tag the information gathered for mapping purposes. But that’s probably a topic for another post.

Working with Second Life in an educational sense

leogaggl — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:33:23 +0000

With the help of SL resident Moggs Oceanlane I was able to get our first Sloodle implementation off the ground. Being a bit new on the SL concepts (Moodle as such is my daily life) I found the technical process quite easy, but was struggling with SL terminology a little.

Sloodle Screenshot

Looking forward to getting some hands-on experience of the use of SL in an educational setting. I can see the practical applications – looking for some pilot projects to put them into ‘reality’ once we have got all the technical side tested thoroughly.

Open Source web conferencing tool

leogaggl — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:35:30 +0000

Came accross this project recently. Seems like an excellent tool for web meetings. Certainly something that we will give some more attention to as it seems to have some good integration with various products we are using such as Moodle and SugarCRM.

DimDim Logo

Open Educational Resources (OER)

leogaggl — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:39:46 +0000

One of the few new (for myself in my working life at least) bits of information I have picked up on here at ICL is Open Educational Resources (OER). That’s probably because it is outside of my usual area of expertise (which is more the technical implementation of e-Learning), but I found the concept never the less interesting and very similar to the Open Source Software concept which I have been working with for quite a while.

From what I have been picking up at the conference here (and a few
quick searches) there are quite a few projects and UNESCO seems to be particularily active in this arena. One problem that I can see is the fragmentation of this concept and a lack of any delivery standards. But as with all innovations that are in the Early Adopter stage there will have to be a process of consolidation once the dust has settled. From the prospective of a user and potential contributor (as well as for myself in integrating this with various LMS solutions) this obviously creates the problem of which one of the available projects to choose at this stage.

Major projects:

OE Commons -
Connexions – Stanford University (this was the one presented at ICL)
Open Course Ware – MIT
Open Society Institute – Soros Foundation
Open World Learning Institute – Minnesota

If I have missed anything obvious please let me know. I think these projects deserve some support.

Resources:

Stephen Downes – Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources

As per usual I would be interested in finding out which educators in Australia use and feedback from practical use of these resources.

Seeing a students life from the other side again ….

leogaggl — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:28:13 +0000

Since my working world is centered a little more on educational topics at the moment (while attending ICL) I came across this Youtube Video which I think is a very good visual example of what’s commonly referred to as Education 2.0.

Personally I hope that I actually comprehend this and a good part of my working life is spend improving this situation. The fact that I am sitting in a ‘lecture’ myself and watching a Youtube video should hopefully illustrate that I am can (despite my actual age) understand the students perspective quite well. ;-