Instructify

BY DAN FROELICH

About six months ago, I posted a note to my network asking people if the iPad was only a consumption device or if would ever been seen as a truly productive device for creation. I received a mixed response and just sat on the thought for a while. On my way home, I was listening to This Week in Tech, Episode 286 where Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, Larry Magid, and MG Siegler were discussing the merits of the iPad as a creation device. Feel free to listen or watch the podcast and make your own decision regarding this debate.

After reviewing the five iPad advertisements, I noticed an interesting trend. The earlier commercials have a 2:1 ratio of content consumption compared to content creation. As you move through the newer advertisements, the focus leans toward a 1:1 focus of consumption and creation. The final tally ended in a count of 22 applications targeting consumption and 13 aimed at creation. It sounds to me that Apple is attempting to capture the spirit of this device as a device primarily used for consumption. I scoured the internet for articles and research. One of the simplest graphics I found outlines the features of Apple’s three mobile platforms. Take a look and comment on it below.

Strengths

The iPad is a very stable device. Thanks to the closed operated system, the average consumer doesn’t notice any instability or crashes in iOS. As a reader and video player, the iPad provides an adequate amount of viewing space and backlight for low-light situations. Through the iTunes Store and App Store, users can access a plethora of games, publications, media, and organizational tools. With applications like Blackboard Mobile, FlipBoard, iBooks, and Amazon Kindle for iPad, teachers have an amazing array of  research content, multimedia, and instructional text available on a single device.

Limitations

The iPad has no means of exporting content to a USB drive, although applications like Dropbox attempt to offer a file system to transfer content. The closed operating system does create limitations to file-system structure for managing photos, media, and documents. The Safari browser for iPad notoriously denounces any support for Flash content which makes millions of websites impossible to render and use.

The App Store is also known as a limiting factor for advanced users. Without cracking the operating system, users can only access approved applications. The biggest barrier to content creation on the iPad focuses around the unexplained decisions that have limited users’ access to a variety of creation tools. Google Docs was one such feature. When it was originally released, the iPad’s browser didn’t support editing in Google Docs, but in recent months things have changed and users can now edit their documents (with limitations). Users will experience mixed results in support for certain content-management systems and even some online learning platforms due to features disabled in the mobile Safari browser.

Another major limitation to many K-12 users is a lack Adobe of Flash support. While Apple contends that this isn’t a major issue, I challenge you to go through many of the common instructional support websites designed for interactive learning and discover just how many sites are programed with Flash. One very popular K-2 website that is rendered useless is Starfall. If you have an iPad and attempt to visit www.starfall.com, you will get a message asking you to update your browser to support flash. This cannot be done, at all, period. Many textbook companies offer companion websites to extend learning online. Many of these are designed with Flash as the foundation for interactivity.

What now?

With more than 300,000 applications and 10 billion application downloads, Apple certainly has the numbers to keep going, but will their restrictive environment stifle creativity and lean more towards consumerism?  I hope not. Fortunately, Android OS 3.0, AKA Honeycomb, was officially announced last week.  Does this mean the iPad is doomed? Not hardly. But just as in the mobile phone market, competition will drive innovation. With two major platforms, users will have greater choice and see the possibilities of tablet devices. Ultimately, we will need to watch as the current generation of tablets evolve into iPad 2 and devices like the new Motorola Xoom. Either way, I can’t wait to see users pushing designers and developers to support our creativity as technology advances.

In the classroom

Educators across North Carolina are exploring the best fit scenarios for the iPad in the classroom. One of LEARN NC’s online instructors, Lucas Gillespie, offers some support for iPads and iPods in the classroom. If you conduct a Google search for “iPad in the classroom,” you’ll get a really rich listing of sites set up to support the iPad in education. One familiar name in handheld technology in education is Tony Vincent. Over the years, Tony has evolved his Learning in Hand site to meet the demands of today’s forward thinking educators and their use of technology in the classroom. Stop by and check out his Do’s and Don’ts.

Additional reading

Content Creation v.s. Content Consumption: The iPad Revolution

Entelligence: the iPad as a productivity tool

Reading as a Participation Sport

BY REBECCAH HAINES

Back when I was in elementary school, we thought it was pretty cool to have Oregon Trail on our school’s Apple IIes — the green text and graphics on a black screen were the height of technology. As primitive as that seems, imagine the sort of classroom technology that came before that — WAY before that – like in 1650, for example?  Well, at this graphic time line created by the New York Times, you can learn just that as you explore The Evolution of Classroom Technology.

If you’re a teacher who likes to use technology to enhance your lessons (and if you read this blog, I’m sure you are), you will find this time line an interesting retrospective. I was surprised by the longevity of the Scantron (1972), for example, and the fact that essentially we still use this system for our End of Grade testing.  Hmm… It could also be interesting to show your students how classroom technology has changed over the years. Maybe seeing that the pencil was once considered a great leap in technology for a student will quell the complaints about the school laptops booting up too slowly.

So, spend a little time over your the Christmas break thinking about how glad you are that you can ask for an iPad for your classroom rather than a Magic Lantern (1870s prototype slide projector), even if the Magic Lantern has a much cooler name.

The Evolution of Classroom Technology

Related stuff

Digital Is examines classroom technology

BY KEVIN HODGSON

Not all of history has to be ancient. Much of the technology that has become the center of how we communicate, game, and find information has developed over time, although it seems as if the advancements have accelerated in the field of technology. Vintage Technology is a site that seeks to showcase the evolution of devices in our lives through the archiving of old advertisements from the 1950s.

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BY JASON DON FORSYTHE

We’ve touched on several video-capture tools and web-based file-conversion tools. Sometimes, though, you just can’t wait for Zamzar to get around to converting your file. Or maybe the video you need to work with is a local file and your online video capture tool won’t work on a local file. In cases like this you need a local solution installed on your computer, and Any Video Converter Freeware is an excellent choice for the job.

A completely free application, AVCF can convert most of the industry-standard file formats and output just as many (although you can’t input .swf files — it only outputs them). AVCF includes some editing functionality like cropping videos and arranging video clips to make movies (think iMovie without all the Apple aesthetics).

Speaking of Apple, those of you who don’t like iMovie and want to try something else, there is a mac version of AVCF.

Any Video Converter Freeware

Related stuff:

Zamzar: The easy file converter with an exotic name

Video DownloadHelper helpfully helps you download helpful videos. Helpfully.

BY BILL FERRIS

Samsung will give away 50 SAMCAM 860 document cameras to teachers as part of its Active Learning Grant Program. Award decisions will be based on need, so make sure to spell that out in your application, which by the way, is due by June 1.

FYI, the cameras are valued at around 800 bucks, so they’re probably pretty snazzy. Getting $800 worth of equipment for free would feel pretty snazzy, too, so send in those applications soon.

Samsung Active Learning grant

BY BILL FERRIS

AnyBizSoft has made version 2.5.3 of their PDF to Word program free — a wise move, considering the presence of free alternatives like pdftoword.com. If you need to convert lots of PDFs into Word docs, this downloadable program is a great choice. It’s fast, and the results are reasonably similar to the original PDF.

If you haven’t tried to convert PDFs to DOC format before, something almost always gets lost in the translation. To put AnyBizSoft’s converter through its paces, I ran a semi-complex LEARN NC flyer through the converter. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

One of the oldest classroom management tricks in the book is to use a timer to keep your students on schedule. Just finished a math lesson? Let them know they have two minutes to get ready for science. Big test today? They have 45 minutes to finish it. A timer sets clear expectations while keeping class running on time.

Online Stopwatch is the latest free online timer application I’ve found. Obviously it lets you set the timer, which then counts down to zero. However, it has several more features as well. (more…)

BY BILL FERRIS

It’s that time of year again when lazy bloggers rehash old material under the guise of “Best of” lists rather than come up with new stuff. Instructify is no exception.

Below are the top 10 Instructify posts of 2009. The rankings were determined via a combination of Google Analytics, retweets, and the capricious and arbitrary whims of the editor.

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BY BILL FERRIS

As school budgets dwindle and schools focus on high-stakes testing in core subjects, some schools see art programs as the go-to budgets to slash. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools and projects out there for art teachers that don’t cost a dime. The following are five of Instructify’s favorite free tools for art teachers.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Picking a good color scheme is, for me, like calculus — an ordered, complex set of laws that I’ll never, ever understand. Thankfully I can use cheats like referring to the color wheel, or this slick online Color Scheme Designer. Just move your cursor around the color wheel to find your central hue, choose between mono, complement, triad, tetrad, analogic or accented analogic, whatever those mean, and CSD will present you a selection of colors that will look great on our class blog, bulletin boards, art projects, school newspapers, activity T-shirts, or even your daily wardrobe (if you’re like me, you’ll need a lot of schemes based on khaki).

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BY BILL FERRIS

I must have wasted at least an hour of my life typing email signatures and other oft-repeated text (an hour seems like a lot of time when you know it was spent typing, “Sincerely, Bill Ferris” over and over). Signatures, addresses, and standard responses to frequently asked questions eat up a lot of time over the long haul. Take those precious minutes back with Texter.

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BY BILL FERRIS

“Back in my day we didn’t have those fancy calculators,” my dad used to say. “We had to use slide rules.” Which was his way of telling me he wouldn’t be much help with my math homework.

Sure, your math students are probably addicted to their TI-85s, smart phone apps, or online tools like Calc5, but sometimes it’s good to experiment with the tools of days gone by. Now you can make your own circular slide rule by following these directions from the physics department at the University of Montana.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Students have gotten used to doing things electronically. Your classroom doesn’t have to be an exception thanks to LectureTools, a learning management thingy from the University of Michigan.

Developers designed LectureTools with huge, impersonal college lecture courses in mind. However, there’s a lot here that K-12 teachers can use, too (though some of them would probably be best suited for 1:1 laptop environments). (more…)

BY REBECCAH HAINES

Have you ever wanted to make your own animated movie? The script, the soundtrack, the camera angles – if it were all up to you, you’d do an awesome job — probably better than Steven Spielberg, right? Well, move over Steve-o because with Xtranormal’s Text-to-movie website, you can create your own animated flick. Okay, so with the free version of Text-to-movie, your animated features probably won’t win an Oscar, but that doesn’t mean this product isn’t useful in the classroom. With a few simple steps, you or your students can create a movie. (more…)

Venerable note-taking app Evernote has rolled out a few new features that ought to help you and your students. You can now send Twitter messages directly into your Evernote account, use Evernote on your iPhone, or find tips on how you can use Evernote on their tips blog. You can also read the general Evernote blog for updates as they happen. All that is in addition to existing features like saving snippets websites you visit and recognizing text in pictures. -BILL FERRIS

Ron’s Evernote Tips Blog

Evernote Blog

Related stuff:

Evernote: never forget anything ever again. Ever.

Post-its for the Web: MyStickies

Kwiry – Remember to Remember Not to Forget This