The Educational Engineer

Where is the quality in education apps #ipadchat #edapps #mlearning

As I review apps on my iPad, I see a lot of different takes on a variety of content topics. Some have a quizzing style. Others are interactive. However, the one constant I keep seeing is that they are focused on on specific part of content. Recently, I have been focusing on elementary science for an upcoming classroom experience. I was looking for apps that could be used for more than two minutes. I think I found a couple out of the twenty-five that I downloaded. It was really frustrating to see great ideas in presentation of material to be so limited to a minute spectrum of what could be learn with the app. I like to focus on creating content with a mobile device and not to only consume information. With math, the apps usually cover addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division all in one, with ways to increase in difficulty. I know that science is kind of in the background compared to getting math and reading.

Back to the classroom experience. To cover the topics in 3rd science, I ended up installing fifteen apps to twenty apps on twenty iPads. At somewhere between $2 to $3 per device, it gets a little pricy. We need to be creating apps that cover a larger segment of course content to make using these mobile devices affordable for schools. For this one experience, I think I spent around $250- $300 including a few free apps. This is only on twenty devices. Imagine if you had three classes of 27 students with multiple subjects on devices. The numbers start to get big very fast. Outside of starting to create standard based apps that allow students to interact with materials, I do not see this improving anytime so.

BYOD thoughts on developing a baseline for technology

It sounds like their baseline is anything I have wifi. I brought this up in #byotchat. Anything that can connect to a wifi network, includes Palm, Pocket PCs, and other devices a parent could buy online for $20. Those devices will connect to a network, but will not allow access to many of the web 2.0 sites out there. There needs to be a stronger component for all devices to have. One would be the devices could not be older than three years old. These ideas need to be explored.

Where Chromebooks should go #edtech

If Samsung could make a Chromebook like the Transformer, that would be killer. It would suite both worlds. Being able to take the tablet and do some of the things that the iPAD can do, combined with being able to go back the their desk and dock their screen. The question is how stocked are they with app that could be used outside of Google Docs. Google Docs is nice when you can access their whole array of apps, but in a school environment where apps some or most apps are not allow it may limit the usefulness of the device. Here we only access to Docs, Sites, Groups through our University account. Would schools have access to anymore than those sites? Outside of that, you are really putting a lot of pressure on outside site that may or may be secure and that have the support to stay up.

I have been kicking around the idea of getting Chromebooks to replace our older checkout laptops. We are getting way to many of the students who are not bringing their laptops to class because they are too heavy. Chromebooks will get them by in class but would allow students to install software needed for class. Thus, they would bring their own laptops to class.

Worried about the updating future of ipads #ipadchat #ipaded #mlearning

The other night, my wife wanting me to try to update her iPod touch 2g. It is currently running 4.2 iOS. I connected it to iTune and clicked on the update button. I received a message that the device could not be updated.  It was really fustrating because the ipod touch was starting to act clucky and would intermittingly lock up. Usually a sync to the computer would free it up for a while, but not it is starting to really slow down. There apps that need to be updated with a fix, however the update to fix the app was inside the iOS 5 update. With this in mind, it looks like Apple is going with a 2 generation cycle of iOS support for devices. I can understand that for a consumer grade device, which the ipad is. For schools that live on a much longer cycle for device, I am not sure how this will work. Our iPADs have started to show physical wear and how that plays with students that are arn't as careful with the devices. Can School afford to buy new devices every two to three years? That is the real question.

Thoughts on ibooks and being disappointed #edtech #ipadchat

It seems that there are a lot of schools that have not upgraded to Lion and ibook Author requires Lion to run. Most schools have not moved to Lion due to security issues, as well as others. This sounds more like for those who want to play, you need to upgrade. If Apple really wanted to run off Publicshers, they would open up the software for PCs and Macs runing Snow Leopard.  It seems like they only went far enough to be on an even playing field with Publishers.

I was hoping for more interactivity and a few other ideas that would really push the envelope of what a new  textbook should. The direction Apple choose is similar to where Publishers were already going. There need to be more than interactivity with a few video interspersed. The new textbook need to be its own dedicated app that can link to other apps and submit assignment through the app to the instructor. The new textbook needs to combine the text, other apps, and, homework. Almost like an offline LMS. 

Mobile Concerns for the future

Be careful with leasing tablets. It looks like Apple may be on a two version support cycle. So when an iPAD3 is released, the subsequent iOS releases will be very slow on the original iPAD. By the time you pay off the lease, you may end up with devices that do not work. Keep this in mind when leasing a tablet devices.

I like the BYOD model, but wonder if there are enough sites that work on all platforms. This may lead to more time trying to teach how to use the technology on each type of device and less on the actual lesson. Findng sites that are strictly HTML5 are becoming more available for all platforms. There has been an influx lately of sites that have an app for one OS and use the actual site for the other os. 

iOS reloading problem

For those who are interested, I ran into a situation that when one of our iPADs that was being used in a class. It is currently running iOS 4.3.5. It had a firmware error and I had to take it to the Apple Store to get it fixed. They fixed the iPAD. Since the current OS is 5.0, I could not get it back to the original OS that I needed. Some of the apps we are using are version specific and will not connect to each other. I tried backrev the iPAD with out luck, however I did learn that holding the alt key on a mac or ctrl on the PC will let you install ispw file on an iPAD. I am going to lock at trying to create backups that way. 

in-app purchases for Ed apps. What the Hell? Really?

It is rediculous that developers of apps that are placed in the Education part of iTunes .  There is not a volume license solution to get around this type of purchase.  There are several app that I would like to use but the limits place on the lite side of the apps prohibit me from getting the doing what we need to do.  Hey Devs, I want to give you large amounts of money to use your app, but I can't.  If you are in education and want to use apps that require in-app purchase, please contact the developer of the app and ask for a full version to be released.  I do not want to write bad reviees of apps due to in-app purchase features.   However, if you have this feature in your app, remove it.  Please. YOUR APP IS USELESS TO EDUCATION IF I CAN NOT GET ACCES TO THE WHOLE APP.

Why I do not subscribe to top 10 app lists

I see all these tweets about top 10 lists of apps for a particular topic and say may you missed out on this app or another.  I tried to make a page on the best apps for a particular topic. I could not keep the lists to 5 or 10, so I stopped.  Look at note taking apps, I use atleast five apps to take notes depending on what kind of notes I am taking.  Each apps has something special about it that I use for a particular type of notes. I know these top 10 lists are suppose to get people started using a device, but the real function of starter apps should be teach users the basic funtions of the iPAD.  For the function of notetaking, I could recommend between 15-20 apps bepending on what types of notes you are taking and how you intend to get them off of the dvice.   A few of these list look as if the people publishing them either copied them from the app store or have not actually used them on an iPAD.   It directs new users in the wrong direction.  I would really like there to be a defined set of apps to say here start with these, or for this task use this one, but there isn't.  Apps by nature are very fluid. The goal of apps are to become better and add more features.  Therefore, it is hard to say one is better than another one, because the next day another could have a better feature added.

iPAD Tech Survey