Tablets are not laptops...

Tablet Technologies and Stages of Adoption

Just had a question from a teacher asking which was the best keyboard to use with a tablet. That started me thinking about the stages of adoption that I had read about in the research literature for other digital educational technologies. The first stage of adoption–and the one that many people never get past–is the stage where the new technology is substituted for a preceding one. This is seen often when Interactive White Boards are dropped into classrooms. The IWB becomes in essence, a substitute for the chalkboard and the overhead projector. Without conscious effort and in many cases, specific training, many people remain at the stage 1, substitution level and continue using a very expensive chalkboard.

It occurred to me when the teacher asked about keyboards, that she wanted her new tablet to become a laptop substitute rather than to think about the tablet as an entirely different tool for performing different types of tasks.

I thought about how my use of the tablet has evolved over the past two or so years. I use my iPad a lot and there are some areas of overlap. I did for example, use it with a bluetooth keyboard to produce a presentation for a seminar I was in. This was a conscious decision on my part. I set out to research, create, and present this presentation completely from the tablet and the exercise was successful. It did however make me think that while the tablet worked fine in this instance, it wasn't the best tool for this particular task.

My teacher's question made me think carefully about the idea that a tablet is not a smartphone, it's not a laptop, it's not a desktop... it's a tablet. There are things that it does better than other devices in certain circumstances and there are some tasks for which it's just not well-suited. 

It is time to take my tablet use to the next stage of adoption.

Research Tools in Google Docs

Research Tools extend Google Docs capabilities

Research tool - Link to Google Docs support page

The Research tool makes it easy to add information from the web to your documents. To access the tool:

• Select the Research option from the Tools menu.
• Use the keyboard shortcut (Cmd + Opt + R on Mac, Ctrl + Alt + R on PC).
• Right-click on a specific word and select Research.

The Research tool will appear along the right-hand side of your document. You can start a search by typing into the search bar. You can narrow your search to specific types of results (e.g. images, quotations) by using the drop-down menu in the search bar.

Researching different types of information relevant to your document

When conducting a search, the Research tool will show you different types of results — web results, images, quotations, maps, reviews, and more.
Use the back arrow to the left of the search bar to return to the previous page of your search results and the forward arrow to move forward in your search results.
Follow the instructions below to explore search results relevant to your document.

Web results

Under the web results category, you’ll find a number of websites related to your search. If you select one of these results, you’ll see several options:

• Select Preview to see a preview of the website. Click on the site link at the top of the preview pane to open this page in a separate window, or select Close at the bottom of the pane to close the preview.
• Select Insert link to add a link to the website into the body of your document.
• Select Cite to create a footnote citation of this web result within the body of your document.

Images

Images will appear in the general search, as well as an image search. Narrow your search results to only images by selecting “Images” from the drop-down menu in the search bar.

Quotations

Narrow your search results to only quotations by selecting “Quotes” from the drop-down menu in the search bar. Once you have selected the quotation you’d like to use in your document, click Insert to add it to your document with a footnote citation.

Places

When conducting a search in the Research tool for a geographic location, your search results may include a map. You can edit this map by selecting Edit and then zooming in/out or dragging the map. Once you have the exact map image you’d like to include in your document, click Insert. You can also drag and drop the map image into your document.

Cellphones/Smartphones in the Classroom

From Mind/Shift

Interesting article about exploring the possibilities once we reject the mindset that makes us want to ban everything that students find useful...

May 10, 2012 | 1:23 PM | By Tina Barseghian

How Teachers Make Cell Phones Work in the Classroom

"When we talk about using cell phones in class, we’re not just talking about using cell phones in class. 

The idea of mobile learning touches on just about every subject that any technology addresses: social media, digital citizenship, content-knowledge versus skill-building, Internet filtering and safety laws, teaching techniques, bring-your-own-device policies, school budgets. 

At its core, the issues associated with mobile learning get to the very fundamentals of what happens in class everyday. At their best, cell phones and mobile devices seamlessly facilitate what students and teachers already do in thriving, inspiring classrooms. Students communicate and collaborate with each other and the teacher. They apply facts and information they’ve found to formulate or back up their ideas. They create projects to deepen their understanding, association with, and presentation of ideas." (read the entire article)

Storify story embedded...

Storify in a blog post...

Just playing around with some of the( features of Storify. I'm not too familiar with using it so I wanted to try out some of the things it can do... (when do you thinks Storify will pick up on the fact that Flash has died and gone to proprietary software heaven?)

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From Forbes Magazine - some insights about online education

Sometimes it's useful to examine something from a slightly different perspective. Joshua Gans does just this when he examines what works and what doesn't when his 11 year old son signs up for an online class in Game Theory from Stanford.

Probably the best insight is that it's most likely not a good idea to take the traditional college lecture course (complete with PowerPoints) and drop it directly online. The online environment allows the educator to do some things that can't even be contemplated in the lecture hall.

The rapid proliferation of online instruction will most likely, not live up to the promise of education for everyone, anywhere, anytime unless educators begin to structure their courses to take advantage of the opportunities provided by this medium.

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Joshua Gans, Contributor

I write about economics and parenting with a touch of technology.

5/07/2012 @ 9:00AM 

What My 11 Year Old's Stanford Course Taught Me About Online Education

My 11 year old son just took a course at Stanford. That has a nice ring to it but it is actually meaningless because these days anyone can take a course at Stanford. You don’t even have to pay. All you need is access to a computer and a reasonable Internet connection. So what we can say is my 11 year old son just watched a bunch of videos on the Internet.

That doesn’t make for an interesting post except that this ‘bunch of videos’ is currently being heralded as the future of higher education. In the New YorkTimes, David Brooks saw courses like the one my son took as a tsunami about to hit campuses all over the world. And he isn’t alone. Harvard’s Clay Christensen sees it as a transformative technology that will change education forever. And along with Stanford many other institutions, most notably Harvard and MIT, are leaping into the online mix. This is attracting attention and investment dollars. It has people nervous and excited. So I wondered, what happens when someone who has grown up online encountered one of these new ventures?
(read the complete article)

Word Cloud CV...

My CV as a word cloud? 

It saves some time and forces some interaction with the concepts rather than reading another dry vitæ...

see my word cloud cv