Should you give in and buy an iPad?

iPads are the big thing right now, and I don't have a problem with people buying them. They're great devices, with long battery life, a bunch of apps, and they're lightweight and easy to carry around. There's currently no device on the market that can match them. So if you are (like me) one of the seemingly few Americans out there who doesn't already have one, you may be looking (like me) at the fact that it's three months until Christmas and considering purchasing one of these FAIRLY inexpensive devices as a Christmas present to yourself.

But you might want to hold on for a while. Two things are about to change.

First, Amazon is releasing an Android-based tablet sometime in the next eight weeks. Rumors are that the device is going to be about half the price of an iPad, which is great, but it also is going to be a fairly locked-down device, so that users will not be able to go out to the general Android marketplace to download apps but will instead be forced to use the Amazon marketplace. In addition, the Amazon tablet will be smaller and less powerful than the iPad. Still, it might be worth waiting for the debut of this before grabbing an iPad.

The other development you might want to wait for is the public release of Windows 8. Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall, and the new Windows operating system will be designed for touch/tablet use. The video below is one of several on the Internet that show off the new device. My only concern about the new OS is will hardware manufacturers be able to create a device that is powerful enough to run it but cheap enough to be a competitor to the iPad? Cheap PC-based netbooks and devices like the Dell Inspiron Duo have left much to be desired in the giddyup department. I've spent time with those devices and found myself saying things to people like, "Okay, watch this. This program is really cool...It's awesome...it'll load in just a couple of seconds...you're going to love it...I promise...any second now..." Meanwhile, I watch people with iPads and they hit the power button and they're off to the races.

Based on the video below, though, which isn't a Microsoft created video so it isn't a fairy tale device from Never Neverland, I'm impressed with the possibilities.

That, combined with the upcoming Amazon device, have convinced ME, anyway, to wait a while before jumping on the iPad bandwagon.

(I can't see the video.)

Is technology worth the expense?

I actually wrote the blog post below for my work blog, but after reading it there I thought it just as appropriate for THIS blog, so I'm including it in its entirety here as well. --bryan
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Here's a link to an article that you perhaps wouldn't expect to see on the front page of a technology department's blog. But please keep in mind that I'm an educator first and a technology-advocate second, and what I will always want is what is best for students, not what is best for technology.

The article, from the New York Times' September 3 edition, focuses on an Arizona school that has pumped more than 30 million dollars into the technology of the school district, turning the district's classrooms into models of "Next Generation" learning. Every classroom has projectors, interactive whiteboards, document cameras, student input devices, and ample computers for students so that students can learn at their own pace using software not unlike the Compass Odyssey, MAP, and Fast ForWord products used in this school district.

It sounds like a technology director's dream, and it certainly fits the idea of the "Future Classroom" that I've been a proponent of for years.

But here's the problem: This school district is not--as you might expect--leaping past all other schools in Arizona with this innovative approach. In fact, since the program began, the district has actually fallen BEHIND most other schools in the state, with their scores remaining stagnant while other districts are rising. Many proponents of increased technology in the classroom argue that state tests are measuring traditional 20th Century skills and are not able to measure the increased "Next Generation" learning that is taking place in these classrooms. These people may, indeed, have a point, but it is impossible to argue that--"Next Generation" learning or not--these students are not performing as well as their peers in reading and math.

According to the article, one of the reasons for this change may be budget cuts in other areas. In order to afford the gigantic technology bill, the district had to lay off teachers and staff and make other cuts. The increased classroom sizes may contribute to the poor performance of the students.

As I said above, this makes for a strange blog post for a technology website, but I wanted to remind teachers that--no matter what technology is in their classrooms--it's YOU the teacher who is going to really make a difference in whether or not your students learn. The technology is a tool designed to help you help your students. It will never replace good teaching, only supplement it.

Click here to read the article.

The Future of Technology

When it comes to future trends in technology, I have more than once been wrong. Very wrong. As a result, I've learned to never trust my own instinct when I hear about how technology is going to be in the future. I apparently can't see that far ahead.

I remember the first time I ever made such a mistake. It was in the fall of 1984, and I was taking a semester long computer programming course at my high school. Even way back then computers were something that interested me very much (Computers and the piano. I think anything that allowed my nervous fingers to move and create things.). During the last three weeks of the course, though, we moved away from computer programming, and I remember my instructor saying to us, "For the rest of the class we're going to work--not on computer programming--but on something called 'computer applications.' You see," he went on, "in the future, most people are NOT going to write their own programs. Other people will write the programs for them, and they'll just USE those programs written by someone else."

I didn't get it. Why would a person let someone else write a program for them? What was the fun in that? I understood it even less when we started working on a word processing program a few moments after that. I HATED the word processing program. I had been trained to type on a typewriter. I couldn't handle the idea that I didn't need to listen for the DING anymore to return the carriage to the left of the paper. I was sure I'd never get used to a word processing program, and even more sure that I wouldn't use a bunch of programs written by other people.

Utter nonsense, of course. I'm writing this blog entry on a word processing program of sorts, and I got used to the idea of not hitting the "Return" key long ago. And I haven't written a computer program since I left that class in 1984. The closest I've ever come to writing in computer code is writing in HTML and javascript on web pages. In 1984, though, I just couldn't see the future.

The same thing happened about 10 years ago when I read in a news magazine that the next big thing in computing was going to be Internet-based programs. "Cloud" programs they were called, because the software wasn't something you could physically touch or hold, wasn't on a CD or a floppy disk. Instead, consumers would pay a monthly or yearly fee to use this Internet-based service.

What a load of baloney, I remember thinking. Why would someone pay an ongoing fee to rent a program that runs over the Internet--which, mind you, was a pretty unreliable beast back in the year 2000--when they could purchase software on a CD and install it on their computers themselves? When you bought software you actually GOT something. When you purchased a cloud license you got...what? Nothing you could hold. It would NEVER catch on.

I know better now. At home, my email is entirely web based (Gmail), and I do my taxes and banking using online tools. At work, nearly every major system is now a cloud-based system, including our district email, student information system, and (coming in the next couple of weeks) our financial management / human resources system.

So don't ever ask me about the future trends of technology. I have no idea. I've learned to just trust the people who seem to know. 1 to 1 student computing using students' own devices that they bring to school? If you say so. Tablet PC's that are powerful and under $200 in price? You must know something I don't!