Living in the 4th Screen

• The price. Apple exceeded my expectations on what I thought the tablet would cost.
• The long battery life. Who knows how long it will actually be, but 10 hours is nice.
• The size and weight. Thin and light.
• Email. I liked the way it displayed on the device.
• The calendar also looked nice.
• The price for AT&T's 3G connection. $30/month for unlimited use is reasonable. Maybe it will drive down other wireless companies prices.
• The dock with a keyboard. I used to own a Slate Tablet PC. Sometimes you want a keyboard.
• The case that folds into a wedge. Clever and useful. See below.

• The tablet is screaming to be written on using a stylus. Look at the picture above. I envision one of these on every student's desk using a stylus to write down notes and draw diagrams. The stylus is about writing in ink not about converting it to text. Those who are new to tablet PC's think handwriting to text conversion is what you get a tablet for. No. You use a tablet to quickly write down notes or jot an email in your own handwriting and leave it like that. Use One Note or Evernote to search your handwritten notes.
• No flash. How stupid did it look when Steve Jobs was showing the NY Times page at one point and there was a little blue cube showing that the flash animation was not visible. Apple, either work out your differences with Adobe or develop you own product to make the flash animations work. This is already frustrating on my iPhone.
• No SD card reader or a USB port. I thought either one of these would have been useful.
• No multi-tasking. A device this size with a decent processor and 10 hours of battery life should allow for multi-tasking.
• The need to tether it to a laptop to sync or backup. We need to move away from this model. Can't we have full over the air synching and backup.

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Update: Found the Today Show video of an interview with Dan Wooley and his wife.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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The Parents' Choice Foundation is the nation's oldest nonprofit guide for children's media and toys. They recently added a new category for their Parents' Choice Awards Program - mobile applications marketed to children. This is the first new category addition in over a decade.

“This is not about whether or not kids should have the smartest phone in the world. Cell phones have revolutionized game play, information gathering and dissemination and socializing. Parents’ Choice is interested in the content of mobile applications marketed to children, and how can we help guide parents to the best apps for fun-filled learning on the go,” said Claire S. Green, President of Parents’ Choice Foundation.

The Parents’ Choice Award program is now accepting applications for the Mobile Applications category until February 15, 2010. The winners will be announced on April 15, 2010. Categories include: 

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If I was still a Technology Coordinator, a position I held for 6 years in one district, I would be looking into the iPod Touch very seriously. The iPod Touch is Apple's versatile little handheld computer that packs a punch. If you are unfamiliar with the iPod Touch, think of it as an iPhone without the calling capabilities. The device has Bluetooth and WIFI connectivity on-board. It can run basically all the apps that are available in the App Store on iTunes. A week does not go by that I do not read a story about some school district that is doing something very unique or cool using these devices. At times I feel I could devote this entire blog to just educational uses of the iPod Touch and never run out of things to write about. 

Why do I like the iPod Touch for schools? First the device is cheaper than netbooks, and a cost effective option for budget conscience schools. It can fit in your pocket. It has pretty good battery life. The Safari browser works very well for surfing the web. The Voice Memo app allows you to record and post podcasts very quickly. There are so many cheap and or free apps available for the iPod Touch when compared to a netbook.The device does not have a camera so it removes the concern that schools have with students misusing cell phone cameras and the like, on unsuspecting staff or students. It can be used to play videos and podcasts.

Are there tasks and skills that you cannot do on the iPod Touch that you can do on a netbook? Yes. Absolutely. An equally comparative question to ask is - Are there things you can do very simply and easily on the iPod Touch that you can't do on a netbook? Yes. Absolutely. The decision comes down to what are your goals and the answers to questions like:

What do you want your students to know and be able to do by the time they graduate?

What are your learning outcomes?

What budget constaints do you have?

What will the students actually do with the devices during the school day?

When I was the technology coordinator for a school district I standardized the tablet pc we used. This way I was able to train all the staff on the same machine and the early adopters were able to train fellow colleagues as well. Having the same machine provided tremendous advantages in many ways. It was the same way when I issued every student in my Honors Algebra II course a TI-89 graphing calculator back in the 90's. Since all the students had the same device it allowed us to explore concepts we never would have without the devices. I could assign different homework assignments knowing they all had a graphing calculator. Similar things could be done if every student was issued an iPod Touch. The possibilities are endless. 

Louise Duncan has a post on her blog Personalising Learning with the iPod Touch that provides links to a host of things you can do with the iPod Touch. Give it a look.

LearningA-Z, the company that created Reading A-Z and Raz-kids, recently uploaded 111 leveled readers in the iTunes App store (Click Here for iTunes link). K-6 students can now practice reading at their ability level using their iPod Touches! Many of the readers are free.

If you are in a decision making position about what devices to purchase for your district I think you should give the iPod Touch a serious look.

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The NY Times is reporting that Raytheon has developed software that could be used by soldiers in the field with an iPhone. The software is called One Force Tracker and can be used by the police, fireman, and emergency medical technicians. The software works like other crowdsourcing websites or apps which:

...has volunteers use cellphones to report real-time traffic flow, could be adapted to turn each soldier into a reporting unit, delivering real-time data about position and status.

Military units in the field could use the software to track the positions of other units. It would work in the same way Google Maps does with points of interest. Each point of interest could be a sniper or an enemy hideout.

Field information would be transmitted to a central computer that would crunch the data, update it and push it back out to the soldiers. “This is hypothetical, but if there is a building with known terrorist activities, it could automatically be pushed to the phone when the soldiers get near that area,” said Mr. Smart.

Live information could also be used to reduce tactical errors and friendly fire incidents. “If there was another platoon that was supposed to arrive, and they were delayed or ahead of schedule, you could adapt your plan,” said Mr. Smart. “If one of the units you are counting on is redirected, you know that in real time.”

The software could work with a new iPhone right out of the box but most likely the phones will be altered in some ways to make them battle tested. The article states that Raytheon is working on other iPhone Apps

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Click here to see a list of apps to use on your iPhone/iPod Touch created by Cheryl Davis and Acalanes Union High School District. The list of apps is broken down by curriculum areas. The list is comprehensive and provides an iTunes link to each application. There are currently 172 apps listed.

via I Education Apps Review

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Kerri Lee Beasley has listed 50 Educational apps to use on the iPhone or iPod Touch on her Tip of the Iceberg blog. Most of the apps listed are free. These apps would work in a school setting or for your own children at home while using your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Kerri teaches at the United World College of South East Asia located in Singapore.

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Curtin University of Technology has created a mobile website to allow students access to information, support services, and campus wide facilities. It is believed to be the first of its kind in Australia.

Below are two quotes from a news release posted on the school's website:

Curtin students will now be able to access information about transport services, financial support, housing and places to eat, on their mobile phones.

‘We also know that 99 per cent of our students have mobile phones and that 75 per cent of those phones are web-enabled, so this sort of website is going to reach the vast majority of our students.’

How about mobile websites for high schools here in the US? Interesting statistics in the quote above - 75% saturation rate for web-enabled phones amongst their student body (Consistent with what I posted here). What percentage of students in your high school have web-enabled phones? How fast will that market grow in the next few years? Will your campus be prepared for the onslaught of web-enabled phones that I believe is coming to all high schools? 

As prices for both phones and service contracts decline in the next few years, because of competition, will I believe, lead to a surge in web-enabled smartphones amongst high school students. These phones can access the internet without ever touching the school network. How will your Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) address these types of issues? I believe school networks could become irrelevant. Students and teachers will not need to use the school network to access information. They will simply bypass it. That is why I quoted the following in this post:

The article references a report titled "Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children's Learning". The report recommends that school administrators begin to ease restrictions on the use of cell phones in school. Basically the report validated the approach we had decided upon.

As school budgets become increasingly tighter, how will school administrators answer parent's and board member's questions regarding the use of mobile phones on campus as a way to reduce IT costs? What do you say to the parent who asks why they should spend $150 on a TI-89 graphing calculator when their child's smartphone, that they already purchased, has a graphing calculator app on it that is superior to the calculator? These types of questions loom on the horizon as sure as Mariano Rivera will close out the 9th inning of a baseball game. As administrators, I believe we need to start preparing for these scenario's today.

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