Shortly after I posted my last post i received a tweet from DK over at MediaSnackers recommending I check out the Dragon dictation app on the iPhone as another example of how changes are occurring in the way we interface with our mobile devices. No sooner had I begun to explore that than my friend Malcolm sent me a link to a new app launched by Google that will let you talk to your mobile phone as if you are asking a friend to do something for you (see video above). It’s called Voice Actions for Android, and provides a series of spoken commands that let you control your phone using your voice.

I guess the real message here is that either way, voice or gesture, we’re beginning to see real signs of alternative forms of human interface with technology becoming more mainstream, and, as with all the other things we’re considering, the question for educators is not “how can we integrate these into our classrooms?”, but “what can we learn from the way these things are adopted and used that might inform how and what we need to be teaching in the future?”

I’ve just been playing with the latest version of the HTC Android phone and thinking about how devices like this, (incl. the iPhone and iPad etc) are changing our ideas of how we might interface with such devices. The age of touch typing is certainly coming to an end it would seem – especially when I view the video above which provides an introduction to “Swype“, an application which, when installed, provides a radically different approach to text input on screen! Instead of having to touch each key in turn, Swype allows you to simply trace your finger across the keys.  A key advantage to Swype is that there is no need to be very accurate, enabling very rapid text entry.

In the illustration above, the word “quick” was generated from tracing the path shown above in a fraction of a second, by roughly aiming to pass through the letters of the word.

I’ll certainly be interested to see how accurately this works when the product is actually launched – and I’ll be interested to see how it is used by school-aged youngsters. Could this actually change the way we write?

Over the past week or so I’ve had the privilege of participating in a number of cluster meetings around the country – always so energizing to be among groups of teachers gathered to share their ideas, experiences and classroom successes!

For my part I’ve been sharing thoughts relating to possible futures we face, referencing the findings of the Horizon Report and CORE’s ten trends. Top of the list in these and other trends findings at the moment is the impact of mobile technologies on classroom teaching and learning.

Confirming the accuracy of these predictions, I keep coming across examples of where mobiles are already impacting on practice in the classroom. Just a few days after Apple released it’s iPad in NZ I was at the EastNet cluster where I met cluster coordinator, Belinda Johnston (pictured) who was recently returned from participating in the Apple Bus tour through schools in California. In her presentation to the group, Belinda explained how she’d embarked on the trip with the intention of focusing on the use of laptops in a 1-1 setting in classrooms. As a result of the tour, however, she has returned convinced about the future of mobile technologies! Belinda shared some compelling stories and illustrations from her trip to California to support her reasons for this change in direction, and is now the proud owner of an iPad, and is preparing the case for a suite of iPods in her school.

A couple of days later, just after I presented the ten trends at the Hamilton CORE breakfast,  I was in Te Aroha, visiting Stuart Armisted (pictured right) at Stanley Ave School. As a part of an extensive programme of school review and development at the school, Stuart and his staff have been exploring the potential uses of mobile phones – thanks to some generous support from Vodafone who have supplied a set of HTC Magic mobile phones running the Android operating system. Stuart is exploring the use of a range of Android Apps on the phones, and is also working closely with the developers of the school LMS, Ultranet, to enable teachers and students to interact directly via the mobile devices in the classroom.

We live in exciting times – and it’s very pleasing to see such examples of the adoption and use of new technologies that are based on sound pedagogical principals and the support of school curriculum – not simply as a result of “techno-lust”

The iPad is certainly attracting interest in the education scene, with lots of questions being asked about it’s use and value etc. Graham Brown-Martin shared the following post tonight on BECTA’s ICT research network list in response to a question about the pros and cons of buying iPads for use in school;

You may be interested in joining the Handheld Learning Community & Forum that has been online for over 5 years now and has a membership of more than 2,000 practitioners who have an active interest in using mobile computing technologies, including iPads, within their teaching practice:
http://www.handheldlearning.org

An article about the iPad in education that may be of interest:
http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/content/view/64/
Specifically this article makes the case that the desktop PC is dead and that laptops are “on death row”.

There’s a community thread about the use of iPads in schools that practitioners are now contributing to:
http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,58/topic,1693.0

There is also a professional networking group on LinkedIn.com for those interested in using mobile technologies for learning:
http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=137892

If you Twitter there is a channel for Handheld Learning at:
http://twitter.com/hhl

Finally you may be interest in attending this years Handheld Learning Festival & Conference in London this October:
http://www.handheldlearning2010.com
The event is FREE to attend on the first day and delegates registering for the conference receive a FREE iPad.

Thanks to Graham for these links – I’m sure we’re going to see lots more research and papers on this topic in the near future!

POST SCRIPT (added 7.6.10)

Entry from Jakob Nielsen’sAlertbox, May 10, 2010: iPad Usability: First Findings From User Testing provides an interesting use case perspective on the iPad in education. The summary reads:

iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability, with frequent user errors due to accidental gestures. An overly strong print metaphor and weird interaction styles cause further usability problems.

I’m sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to London, and came across this great little app while surfing.

Called MightMeeting, it allows you to manage a library of PowerPoint presentations directly from your smartphone or tablet. You can share them via email, blog, Twitter, or Facebook. You can start or join web meetings directly from your laptop, iPhone, iPad, or an Android phone.

I’ve managed to create an account and upload a trial presentation. Was very intuitive and user friendly. The process of setting up a meeting is also straight forward – simply select the file you want, then invite the people you want to join you. Once the meeting is started you have control over the progression of the slides etc, and there is a convenient chat facility accessible via one of the tabs on screen. It’s in Beta form at the moment and free to try, but if it works the way it says it does this could be a very useful app for me!

We often hear about the ‘generation gap’ that occurs between teachers and students when it comes to technology use, but I’m often convinced that what we’re talking about is, in fact, a generation lap. They’re not just ahead of us in the way they use technology, they’ve lapped us and are working at a whole new level.

I thought of this when reading today a recent report from Project Tomorrow titled Creating our Future: Students Speak Up about their Vision for 21st Century Learning Project Tomorrow, (PDF) which outlines compelling evidence that students are using technology to take responsibility for their own learning, often times bypassing traditional educational settings.

The report is based on a  national survey of more than 368,000 K-12 students, parents, teachers and administrators, students who were invited to share their vision for 21st century learning that includes:

• Social-based learning – students want to leverage emerging communications and collaboration tools to create and personalize networks of experts to inform their education process.
• Un-tethered learning – students envision technology-enabled learning experiences that transcend the classroom walls and are not limited by resource constraints, traditional funding streams, geography, community assets or even teacher knowledge or skills.
• Digitally-rich learning – students see the use of relevancy-based digital tools, content and resources as a key to driving learning productivity, not just about engaging students in learning.

I noted that for the first time, the Speak Up survey included pre-service teachers. These students said learning the following would best prepare them to teach today’s students:

• learning how to use technology to differentiate instruction for students (75 percent),
• incorporating digital resources in a lesson (68 percent),
• locating and using electronic teaching aides (67 percent),
• creating and utilizing video or podcasts within a lesson (57 percent) and
• using electronic productivity tools (57 percent).

No surprises here, but the contrast between what these students see as valuable and necessary, and what they actually experience is highlighted in the report:

The number one skill aspiring teachers are being taught in their methods course is how to use word processing, spreadsheet and database tools. But when asked what would best prepare them to teach in a 21st century classroom, the college students suggested better training in current technology.

Now there’s an example of generation lap – how can these young teachers be expected to lead learning in the digital age if their preparation is limited to uses of technology that should be, frankly, assumed. This is a very ‘tool-based’ view of the technology, reminiscent of the last century. We ought to be using technology to facilitate learning environments where students have opportunities to learn collaboratively, with classmates or experts, anytime or anywhere using digitally-rich curriculum.

Of particular interest to me was the way the report differentiated between the responses of school administrators and leaders, and classroom teachers. From the evidence provided it would appear that it is the administrators and leaders who are more optimistic in recognising the value of technologies for learning, as illustrated in the following graph which looks specifically at respondents view about perceived benefits of using mobile devices for instruction:

This graph shows clearly that teachers are less likely to see  benefit than principals and school administrators (of course, one has to be mindful of the significant difference in the numbers surveyed in each group). Still, as another part of the report states, “students value the fact they can use their mobile device to look up information on the Internet, access their online textbook or collaborate with classmates, yet teachers are concerned that students will surf  the Internet, text or play games.”

The significant question this raises is captured in the final challenge at the end of the report:

As we continue our local and national discussions about creating learning environments that will engage students and enhance student achievement, perhaps we should begin to ask: are our schools and districts  ready to accommodate the desires that this next generation of teachers have for truly 21st century, technology­‐enabled and empowered classrooms?

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

My colleague Malcolm Moss in the UK sent me a link this morning to an fascinating concept video on the future of digital magazines. As we become increasingly familiar with the functionality of the touch-screen on the iPhone and familiar with devices like the Kindle, this video provides some interesting perspectives on where the development of where the whole concept of layout and design might head with these devices in the future.

The basic concept being explored is how we can take the established behaviours exhibited by those who simply pick up a magazine to browse and cater for them in an e-book world. The illustrations of how this thinking is evolving and what the solutions in the future are well worth viewing in this video clip.

The 2009 Horizon Report (NZ and Australian edition) was released today at the National Broadband Network Symposium at Griffith University.

Again this year I’ve had the privilege of contributing to the development of this report – and again, I feel the value for me has been in the rigor of the thinking and exchanges that took place in deciding what things should be included and what should be left out (and why etc).

This year’s report has the usual list of technologies to watch out for, and the possible impact on education – plus it has some interesting sections on future trends and critical challenges.

The technologies to watch as decided by this year’s panel of contributors are:

One year or less to adoption

• Mobile internet devices
• private clouds

Two to three years

• Open content
• Virtual, augmented and alternate realities

Four to five years

• Location-based learning
• Smart objects and devices

This year’s report provides some excellent background on each of these technologies, and has a list of examples (with links) for you to go and explore further if there are things there you’re not familiar with, or if you simply want to learn more.

The rigor of the debate about what to include and what to leave out inevitably led to a lot of discussion around the complexity of inter-related issues and concerns that come to play with the adoption of technology and trying to anticipate its impact on learning. In this year’s report I’m particularly interested in the summary of the ‘critical challenges’ that emerged from the group’s work – as I believe these are (or should be) of more interest to the future planners in our education system, school leaders etc, than simply trying to second-guess what technologies will emerge.

Here are the challenges that are identified:

1. Practices for evaluating student work will evolve in response to the changing nature of learning and student preferences for receiving feedback.
2. Ageing learning environments do not easily allow for embracing the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), or enable the sorts of learning support systems being promoted by modern theorists.
3. There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy.
4. There is a growing recognition that new technologies must be adopted and used as an everyday part of classroom activities, but effecting this change is difficult.

These issues are expanded on in brief in the report – and are worth exploring further in staffrooms and professional development meetings as we prepare to enter the second decade of the 21st century!

Download PDF of the report here

I was alerted to this article in this morning’s NZHerald by Toni Twiss (via Twitter) who is quoted in it. Toni has a passion for using mobile technologies for learning, and has done some excellent research in this area.

The article describes two “m-learning” programmes at Orakei Primary School in Auckland, one called Mobile Maori Learning that provides podcast lessons for playback via mobile phone, and the other called Mobile Learning for Boys that includes an online digital reading clinic to focus on improving reading comprehension, spelling and writing skills of students.

It’s encouraging to see these sorts of initiatives developing in our schools, with the exploratory use of emerging technologies to address authentic learning needs.

As I read the way the article was reported, however, I couldn’t help feel that there’s still an over-emphasis on the technology, and not enough on the pedagogical rationale for using it (which I’m sure is there!). The impression can easily emerge that the secret is in the use of the technology, not in the careful structuring and pedagogical intent of the activity that it is being used for.

In my role I see lots of technologies being used in all sorts of creative and inventive ways to support teaching and learning in classrooms – some of which is contributing in genuinely new and creative opportunities for learning, and some which is simply substituting new technology with old (eg some instances of interactive whiteboards replacing OHPs). The difference is not the technology – but the pedagogical intent.

I frequently hear that use of technology supports personalised learning (as quoted in this article) – a view that I have lots of agreement with, but only as a potential use, not inherent in the technology itself. It’s not that the use of technology such as cell phones is only now enabling personalised approaches to learning, that’s always been the case – I recall the ultimate personalised learning approach when I was at school – those boxed up SRA kits. The key to success is not in the technology, but in the learning design – as it is with any other form of classroom programme or activity.

The Herald article, with its emphasis on the technology (presumably because that’s what will attract our attention?) undersells what I’m sure is a great deal of thought and effort that has gone into the learning design of these applications.

We need to encourage the media to provide this emphasis, or at the very least, ensure that this emphasis is given in our reports to our own communities and made explicit when we are working with students.

“Technology in and of itself cannot make school practice innovative, and will not produce educational change, but technology, in the hands of pedagogically skilled educators it can enable innovative practice and facilitate educational change.”

I spent time yesterday afternoon speaking with teachers who are a members of the Te Hikoi Hau ICT PD cluster in Christchurch, and referred again to the slide above which I’ve used in several presentations over recent years. It emphasises the general trend that can be seen when you look at what is common about the sorts of technologies that are being appropriated in education – with the move from analogue to digital to connected to ubiquity – the concept of “any time, any place, any device”.

The concept of each student having their own device has appealed to me for some time now, although early attempts at a 1-1 programme haven’t fully delivered on the promise. Seems to me that we’re seeing now a convergence in developments in the “cloud“, improvements in the capability of wireless, and the availability of low-cost netbooks and other web-enabled mobile devices – all working together to provide the essential elements for making a 1-1 programme more likely to succeed.

A key thing in the take up here is the cost of the devices. Traditional laptops have been prohibitively expensive for the individual student, but the emerging breed of netbooks is changing that. An article I read last night demonstrates this – titled Apple loses students to netbooks and Windows it is a report of a small survey conducted recently by consumer-electronics e-commerce website Retrevo. The survey reveals that student choice of netbook/laptop in the US as they prepare to return to school this year will be largely based on cost. With netbooks costing less than $US200 and an Apple laptop closer to $US1000 there’s no contest.

In the article Apple’s Tim Cook is quoted as saying “When I look at what is being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens… not something that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly. It’s not a space as it exists today that we’re interested in.” While he may have a point in technical terms, I believe he’s missing the point about what is driving this – that is, the ability to use the device anywhere, at any time. And with the increasing number of web services becoming available there’s no shortage of applications to access once you’re connected which means the size of storage etc in the device itself isn’t as much an issue.

The issue of cost is also raising it’s head in one of the US’s longest running 1-1 laptop programmes. A recent article titled Maine Laptop Expansion Moves Forward reports on the impact of the economic crisis on the state of Maine’s ongoing programme of providing each student with a MacBook. In response to the economic challenges presented by the state program, Sharon Betts, the educational technology coordinator for the Maine School Administrative District #52, along with several other ed-tech coordinators from schools across the state, has created a grassroots consortium to identify cost-effective alternatives to the state-led laptop program. The group has decided to go with a more affordable alternative: 10-inch ASUS netbooks that support either a Windows or Linux operating system.

So – it looks like in the drive towards ubiquity, cost will be the significant factor affecting choice of device. It’s certainly difficult to argue from a total cost of ownership point of view.