Despite the iPad's popularity—Apple has sold nearly 15 million of them and just came out with the iPad2; and there are dozens of competitors, like the Samsung Galaxy—early studies indicate that these finger-based tablets are passive devices that have limited use in higher education. They are great for viewing media and allow students to share readings. But professors cannot use them to mark up material on the fly and show changes to students in response to their questions, a type of interactivity that has been a major thrust in pedagogy.
Despite the iPad's popularity-Apple has sold nearly 15 million of them and just came out with the iPad2; and there are dozens of competitors, like the Samsung Galaxy-early studies indicate that these finger-based tablets are passive devices that have limited use in higher education. They are great for viewing media and allow students to share readings. But professors cannot use them to mark up material on the fly and show changes to students in response to their questions, a type of interactivity that has been a major thrust in pedagogy.
I think Stuart Selber would disagree with many of the limitations pointed out in this article. Most of the criticisms can be easily overcome with an app or accessory such as a stylus, bluetooth keyboard, or an app like iAnnotate. The people who were interviewed may have lacked the support of a good technologist.
At Penn State University, Director of Education Technology Services Allan Gyorke said the former student staple is now rarely spotted in dorm rooms.
"The desktop PC is dead," Gyorke said, estimating that 95 percent of students now bring a laptop or tablet media device to campus instead of using a traditional PC in their dorm room.
Those newer devices, he said, are easier to store and easier to set up.
Over the DESKTOP PC. Laptops are alive and well. I also said that desktops will continue to have uses for the near future such as rendering animation or processing video, but in that sense they will be treated more like servers (specialized higher-performance needs). That part didn't make it into the article though.
Some great features coming out in iOS 5. All of the ones in this video make sense: wireless syncing, improved push notifications and a notification center, etc...
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!
Today Diigo released a Chrome Style browser for iPad. Hmm. I like Diigo, I like Chrome, I like the iPad. This may be good.
Of course I also like martinis, roller coasters, and fire. But I'd never combine the 3. Or maybe I would . . .
Blogsy is a tool designed specifically to take full advantage of the iPad’s unique touch functionality. Adding your photos and videos is as easy as dragging them from the media sidebar and dropping them into your blog post.
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.
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.