Posts made by Derek Chirnside

I didn't use an iPad to enter into this discussion. I do my e-mail at a desk (on my desktop) or my laptop (in a cafe or somewhere with wireless) or a network computer (if I happen to be near) But I went to get an iPad to see what all the fuss was about.
Twice. And I followed up on other xpads via the blogs.
We should be thinking not "How can I do the same old stuff" but "What new stuff?" - or "old stuff MUCH BETTER".
My two dabbles:
  • once I have described elsewhere
    "My evidence for this includes this scene: people in groups, tables, paper, one iPad per group to surf, task, gather information when needed to assist the task at hand. Great - my first expereince of an iPad. Not the context for serious database surfing, formal assignment writing, online quizzes etc. Not the right tool for this. And I did note that I learned all I needed in 40 seconds to use the iPad.
    Yes a lapotp will do all this, but the portablity of the iPad and it's unobtrusiveness and it's coolness was great. A remarkable support for this sort of work. I actually liked the outputs in paper rather than yet another lousy powerpoint.
    Are they learning better because of it? Jury is out. I think maybe."
    http://scope.bccampus.ca/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=16148
  • and once at a conference when friend had an iPad. We were doing a debate (Technology vs humanity - which wins?? by the way). He had compiled his notes on it. Didn't need much tweaking.
    Did the last of the notes under the table during the debate. Portable. The keyboard IS OK for this level of input. No-one will want to use CS5, Indesign, write thesis on them.
    In the moving, sitting, grouping the iPad was very portable.
OK, anecdotes over.
  • The iPad is really really cool in their portable, kinesthetic, tactile, simple aspects. (Buy the way, I think the next xPad clones will be good too)
  • The xpads will be good for the different things we can do, not the same old things.
  • Lots of apps are just simple web page functionality additions, and are nothing special, but they are nice.
  • Other apps are just so nice and unique and best suited to touch screen. Little music-y things for example.
In reality, I think this is doomed to succeed for reasons of coolness alone. Even with no flash.
Here's what I think you guys could do. I have great plans for your life.
Some sort of action-resesearch coalition. Be a bit intentional about this. I say 'you' because I think it is unlikely I will have any shot at this. This is a suggestion of a long term intentional coalition on this subject.
THE SCOPE xPad RESEARCH AND APPLICATION PROJECT 2010-2011
  • Get Sylvia to ask the admins to install Forum NG here at Scope. This give a HUGE benefit. First: Drafts. You can write and save a draft. (How cool is that!!!!!!!) And: subscription at the thread level.
    This gives a decent tool for community. [I can expand on this is you like :-) ]
    I'm not sure that the way the forums are set up in standard Moodle with no subscription at the thread level will work for real big projects.
    http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=2927
  • Now, having doubled the niceness of your Moodle @ SCOpE experieince . . . . .
  • Using the word PILOT and SYNERGY and 'MAKE OUR SCHOOL A MARKET LEADER' get some special funding to buy some iPads (or xPads) for your classes. Do a project.
  • Then set up some small action resesarch projects with your classes, basing your community of support here at ScOPE. Describe these plans (for feedback before the event) and then report on these (after the event)
  • Host little meetups once every so many weeks (I'd suggest 2-3) to capture ideas and discuss. [A thought that occurs to me is this: do webheads do this already?]
  • Along the way share your ideas on good apps etc. Get some decent protocools going: one thread per app maybe. One thread per project. Several nicely specified forms.
  • Think of these ideas: case study, intervention, story . . .
  • On a volenteer basis, each week produce a small summary of the events, plans and projects underway that gets posted. Save cluttering up inboxes with 37 posts a week. Except the threads you are deeply engaged with. Subsxcribe to them. [Hmm. Sylvia do this maybe if there are no volenteers?]
  • Write papers, have fun, push back the frontiers of ignorance.
If you mac-users or maybe better expressed as potential xpad users are really serious, this workshop question needs a long term community framework container/structure to really work with this questions are xPads any good? (probably yes) or how to use xPads? (Hard). In this workshop we are really just like theoreticians sitting around pondering with a few people reporting back having stroked the wonderful screens. I also think forget the sad sad apple vs Flash for now, or at least leave it to others.
BLOGS - I think saw you say that the other day Sarah.

Steve's comment: "It'll simplify a lot of tasks you never had to do before"

If by Blog you mean some sort of public/semi-public reflective journal to capture reflections and thoughts (and allow feedback in the form of comments) then in some courses I can not imagine life without them. Blogging pracice is now well understood enough to get a class up to speed in 2 weeks with the basic idea - then the rest of the time to use these habits. In most cases I prefer closed blogs (ie open only to members of an LMS) (with maybe the chance to make them public) (This is in contrast to some of my buddies). It makes a difference whether the course is #2 or more in a qual, or a Capstone course or an Introducton course.
Blogs for me in some courses help simplify and deepen reflection processes and the scaffolding needed to support reflection. Just a tool. How many times have I got in the past a log or a journal or a reflection written retrospectively the night before an assignment is due? To late for interaction or feedback Blogs are owned in a different way to a forum.

You can of course use a forum. But there are clunky features alongside most forums like no tagging and no categories. You can do reflection in other ways. But I like blogs. I think this is probably the only time I have possibly held a dfferent view to you Sarah. cool

But would I want to use an iPad to write blogposts seriously? Or grade them? Hmm. Probably only if I was on holiday at the beach and only just for a short time. I'd leave the heavy duty input and thought to a laptop.

YOUR SECOND COMMENT: "My nagging question with the ipad -- does the lack of a separate keyboard keep its long term value for teaching and learning at bay?"
Of course the answer at the moment is yes. But with qualification.
Like saying "This little programmable calculator cannot manage C# like on a proper computer, so don't use it" In it's context a little programmable calc is wonderful.
So to with an iPad. No flash support etc etc and all.

My evidence for this includes this scene: people in groups, tables, paper, one iPad per group to surf, task, gather information when needed to assist the task at hand. Great - my first expereince of an iPad. Not the context for serious database surfing, formal assignment writing, online quizzes etc. Not the right tool for this. And I did note that I learned all I needed in 40 seconds to use the iPad.
Yes a lapotp will do all this, but the portablity of the iPad and it's unobtrusiveness and it's coolness was great. A remarkable support for this sort of work. I actually liked the outputs in paper rather than yet another lousy powerpoint.

Are they learning better because of it? Jury is out. I think maybe.

Do I think this is value for $$ and the best tool for this, and worth all the surrounding angst, a good direction for classes to go in or institutional investment? The Jury is still out. What I see is a lot of people talking about iPads the way Tigger talks about tiggers. "The wonderful thing about tiggers is that tiggers are wonderful things" (I hope the quote is accurate)

Wrong place to post this probably.


Nick, this has lured me into posting, lots here I'd like to tease out, just one little comment before I get to my most important and most hated job of the week.

Equally the term 'authentic learning' is also problematic, to me at least. When is learning 'un-authentic' for example? Is learning only something that happens in the workplace and to be regarded in some special way? If the workplace changes, closes or the work moves out of town is learning still authentic? Well if it reflects actual practice maybe but that assumes a great deal about 'practice' , the situated/diversity of practices across time and cultures and life-long contexts etc etc etc. When everything is changing perhaps authenticity is something only you can decide - maybe there is no apprenticeship or its an imagined community. Nor is it to be always defined by others.

My kids have to cope with unauthentic learning every day. Sometimes (less often than my kids) I have to. Several signs of we are in an unauthentic learning situation for a few brief moment or longer:
  • (Trainer/expert) Looking at the gadget - "Oh, I don't know what is going on. It worked last night when I tried it"
  • (Trainer/expert) "No, can't talk about this it's off topic"
  • (Participant) "Is this in the test?"
  • (Teacher in NZ doing NCEA) "Sorry, you failed. You got all the "excellence" points, but you only got four of the required five "Pass" points"
But it is not a factor of change, community, practice etc.
My own defintion: "The conditions, subject and context of learning are as close to the conditions, subject and context of the subject as possible" - and this is decided by community, participants and boss . .
It also has to do with assessment. Authentic learning involves assessment that is real. Not "Learn base guitar to play" and assess on paper.

That's why I like plenty of unadorned, unfettered internet access in class (when I say of course, I do have keyboard free times when we use chalk and paper): live and work with net, learn and do stuff in class with net. Warts and all. = Authentic. Give me a nice tablet, 1 between 3 students, (preferebly the Dell streak) and I'd love it. They'd help me figure out how to use it. Getting tired of places that block Youtube, H.264 non playing and PC's that all face the front.

OHHHH. Back to writing my client invoices.

Why HTML5 is not the whole answer yet.

"HTML5—Sounds Great, but there’s a Big Catch From http://www.onlinevideo.net/2010/09/html5-what-you-need-to-know/

At its highest level, HTML5 sounds great. Simpler is always better, and if you don’t need a plug-in to play a video file, that’s one less item for potential viewers to download. The problem is that—at least today—only around 50 percent of available browsers support HTML5, and more importantly, the W3C hasn’t specified one codec that must play in all browsers.

For example, suppose you bought Apple’s argument that HTML5 was better, dropped your current plug-in-based technology, and produced your website in an HTML5-compatible format that played on the iPad. To accomplish this, you’d have to encode your video in H.264 format, which is the only format that plays on the iPad.

Sounds good, until you realize that less than ten percent of those browsing to your website from their computers can play the file, since only Apple Safari and Google Chrome – both around 5 percent market penetration – can play HTML5 video in H.264 format. Those visiting your site via Mozilla Firefox could not play the video, since Firefox can’t play H.264-encoded video. This is particularly significant since Firefox – at 23 percent market share – is by far the most popular HTML5-compatible browser.

To play in Firefox, and the Opera browser, you’d have to encode your video into the Ogg Theora format, which is much lower quality than H.264 and isn’t supported in any of the more popular encoding programs like Adobe Media Encoder, Apple Compressor, Sorenson Squeeze, or Telestream Episode. This means that you’ll likely have to use a command line encoding tool to achieve the best results.

Once you produce in H.264 and Ogg format, you still only have—at most—40 percent or so of potential viewers that can play your files. To satisfy the rest, you still have to make your video available using your plug-in based technology, which is typically Flash using the VP6 codec. Operationally, code on your web page would query the browser as to its capabilities—if it was HTML5 compatible, it would send the video encoded in the proper format, if not, it would revert to the plug-in.

Google’s WebM technology, which is currently supported in Opera and will be supported in upcoming versions of the Firefox and Chrome browsers, does little to break the logjam, since Apple won’t support it, and Internet Explorer 9 will only support it if already installed on the system. Of course, until WebM support becomes pervasive, you’ll still have to encode in H.264 for Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 9; Ogg for older versions of Firefox and Opera; WebM for newer versions of Firefox, Opera and Chrome; and potentially VP6 for Flash (or Windows Media for Silverlight).

By this point, you have to be asking yourself if the extra work is really worth it. This turns out to be a very good question."

This is a bit beyond me at the moment.

Why doesn't Firefox play H.264? Are people at these web video standard deciding conferences stupid?

OK, Paul, got it.

WHY APPLE HATES FLASH

In summary:

In short, Steve Jobs claims Flash drains the battery of mobile devices; it’s not very good for multi-touch operation; and its performance, reliability and security are all shoddy. It’s also a proprietary system, and while Jobs admits that their mobile OS is also proprietary, he claims that web standards should be open, like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.

Most importantly Apple doesn’t want “a third party layer of software [to] come between the platform and the developer.” Finally, Jobs concludes, Flash is a relic. “Flash was created during the PC era –- for PCs and mice,” he says, “but the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards –- all areas where Flash falls short.”

From http://mashable.com/2010/04/29/steve-jobs-flash-is-no-longer-necessary/ which includes the whole letter from Steve Jobs.

One thing it seems we need to understand (among others) is H.264, the role of flash video, clist to the metal and overheads.

Tx