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Apple's vision of the future, from 1987. They got the iPad part down pretty good, except they completely missed Angry Birds. Makes you wonder what people are envisioning for 2035. More awesome, Coming soon to a life near you!

It doesn't look like this works with MT. It only gives you the option of setting up a wordpress site or a blogger site. I thought I might be able to trick it use blogs@psu as a wordpress site, but no luck. I haven't had the chance to try it with a wordpress blog yet. The demo movies look like there is tons of great functionality here, but the interface is a bit complicated.

So I've finally got around to testing this. Every time I tried to add a wordpress blog hosted at dream host it crashed even though the wordpress app worked. Maybe it can't deal with me having multiple blogs.

Sam Sennott created an app that helps some autistic and non-verbal people communicate using the touch screen and a series of pictures. He happens to be a PhD student at Penn State in the Special Education program.

This is another market the iPad is disrupting. The previous devices to address this were incredibly expensive and bulky.

I thought you'd be interested in this. I'd like to bring Sam down here for a demo and discussion about his app. I think it would be a very interesting discussion - and a truly excellent use of a mobile touchscreen device.

Could be an interesting option for enabling AirPlay on classroom machines.  Lots to figure out, but a starting point.

Resource from Vanderbilt for getting an iOS app in the App Store.

Great article on Learning Analytics. I respectfully disagree with Gardner Campbell's quote, but I do see where he's coming from and that is something that universities need to be careful of.

I hope that lifelong access becomes the new norm. I keep hearing publishing companies talking about online textbooks with access that would be limited to a set period (a semester or six months). That's fine if you're taking a single course that you don't really care about - but I don't want students to feel that way about their learning. Courses build upon each other. Good reference materials should serve a purpose for years, not months.

I returned many of mine, but kept the foundation books that I'd need for other courses - calculus, mechanics, chemistry, etc... Many of them were used for more than one course (e.g. Math 140 and 141). I'd hate to have to buy the same book twice and then not have it afterward for other courses.

I think that's typically what these students do in the focus group, but it was all about 'having the option' to keep the book at the end of the course. Might be some sort of perception of options thing going on here. The other popular comment was "I look at computer screens all day, I definitely don't want to look at a computer screen to read fine print another 1-2 hours a day". A couple students really bashed their profs about the quality of PDFs they are putting online, meaning that profs are STILL photocopying PDFs from journals, that cut words from a column and are angled funny in the PDF. Claimed these were unreadable online and they had to print them out to 'guess' at some of the words and fill them in by hand.

Interesting suite of tools to consider exploring.

"After carefully considering all of these, other online sources found by searching for terms such as 'tablet PC' and 'lecture recording' and presentations by others at the Teaching and Learning Symposium at Penn State I decided to purchase a powerful Lenovo Tablet PC with Windows 7, Microsoft One Note, and Camtasia Studio 7.0. I plan on taking my .docx lectures into One Note, opening the page in One Note during class, and recording the screen with Camtasia studio as I go through the lecture, writing on the tablet PC with the stylus pen as I speak to students about each topic. Then I can save my screen capture and edit it into nice 10-15 minute segments in Camtasia Studio and post them online for student review."

We're talking a lot about the "make it easy for faculty" part in the lecture capture working group. Something the research seems to indicate is that pre-recorded lectures (for example, a faculty member sitting in front of a camera and mic, recording without any students 'late night' style) are more effective than a faculty member simply recording a lecture in front of x number of students. It's much easier to hit the 'play' button and do your normal lecture in class vs. taking the time to pre-record. Hopefully we can find a happy medium. I recently spent a lot of time with Khan Academy, both looking for statistical help for myself and asking faculty about it. A group of about 40 STEM faculty took a look at it upon our request and came back not impressed. A couple said they might use it for supplemental instruction...I'm somewhat baffled why more faculty wouldn't want to use this to supplement their course.

I know what you mean Bart. I've found that to be the case with podcasting - a recording made for an external audience is more engaging because the person is talking to you. It has a very different feel than a recording of a meeting, presentation, or training session where the presenter is primarily addressing a local audience.

Send them a book and for 1 dollar (per 100 pages) they will convert it to an OCRed PDF for you. 

I'd like to try this. What book shall we send?

Imagine sending in your personal handwritten notebook. As for a "real" book to send, I have no idea. I do have a copy of "Perfect Phrases For Documenting Employee Performance Problems" lying around. What about content for the next go of ci597 on disruptive tech?

I don't care if you agree with the science, this represents the first real interactive text designed for iOS that I have seen.  I can't even imagine how much this thing cost to make, but it looks really stunning.  But at 4.99 it seems like a mind bending opportunity to learn about interaction design.