What We've Been Up To...

When Google Wave shut down earlier this year, I spent some time combing through a lot of our oldest waves deciding what, if anything, was necessary to pull out and save. Looking back at where this journey started in 2009 and where we are now, just one single word sums it all up; wow. In that light, I want to take just a few minutes today and share just what we have been up to this summer with improvements to the core experience of Operation LAPIS.

1. KEY-TEXTs gain audio:

One of the great affordances of moving to a completely digital format over the traditional print book is the ability to add audio and video. The KEY-TEXTs serve as important opportunities to work on reading skills and to learn more about the topics inside of the role-playing immersions. Each one now has an accompanying audio file embedded right into the text to allow the learner to hear the words as they read them.

Here’s one of my favorites: link to KEY-TEXT 4.3

2. VERBA and NAV get overhauled:

Thanks to some unbelievable power packed into Google Fusion Tables, both the VERBA and NAV sections of the CODEX were rebuilt from the ground up, allowing for more information to be packed into the databases. We’ve spent a great deal of time correlating all of the vocabulary entries throughout the immersions, ensuring that each word is glossed three times before that scaffolding is taken away. The dynamic tables generated for each CODEX entry is sortable so that the student can change the view to something that works best for them.

Sorted by part of speech

The NAV sections gained a dynamic map that increases in points of interest as the operatives make their way through the narrative. Points are color-coded based on their status and also provide information such as visuals and links to additional resources.

3. Gear overhauled as scaffolding for composition:

As I’ve mentioned in earlier entries, gear has a whole new look and function within Operation LAPIS. Now the students will have additional Latin composition scaffolding when telling the story of their Recentiī inside of the narrative. Read more about the gear here and here.

4. ATTUNEMENT exercises re-imagined:

Thanks in large part to the unbelievable work of Mark Pearsall this summer, we’re really excited for what these exercises have become. Instead of feeling “tacked on”, or just something extra, beginning with the very first episode, these revised ATTUNEMENT exercises are an integral part to the immersions and scaffolding student composition. Here is just a small sample of one of these new exercises.

5. Edmodo is now the default for communication and collaboration:

Edmodo is quickly becoming a major player in the education scene and it is easy to understand why. Their interface, which takes a page from popular social networking sites, is intuitive for teachers and students alike. They are committed to keeping their platform free to use and have started to build a curated app store which operates within their platform. We’re happy to have Edmodo as the suggested platform of choice for instructors utilizing Operation LAPIS in the fall because it’ll provide a better experience than anything we could have built on our own. Plus, by partnering with Edmodo, we’ve been able to spend more time on the materials themselves, rather than worrying about the delivery.

Edmodo is intuitive and feature-packed

6. There’s an app for that...

Speaking of Edmodo’s App store, perhaps the biggest improvement to the overall usability of Operation LAPIS comes in the form of an app about to go live in Edmodo’s App store. This app, which contains all of the immersion episodes for Operation LAPIS, will provide an incredibly easy to use interface for instructors. This will allow them to publish effortlessly new immersions for their operatives to explore. Anyone who has used LAPIS in the past year will immediately appreciate the point-and-click interface as opposed to manually cutting and pasting text and attaching links and pictures from a Google doc. The app will also launch inside of Edmodo’s iPad app as well.

As you can see, it has been a busy (and productive) summer. There are a countless number of other enhancement, tweaks, and overall improvements that continue to make Operation LAPIS something all of us are immensely proud of. Given what has changed since August 2011, I can’t wait to see what August 2013 brings.

New look

One of the benefits of being married to a graphics designer: free design support!

I like the new clean look of the banner. The brushed metal corresponds nicely to the mostly Apple spread in front of me (and the preferred platform for most of my work.)

I really don't want to keep writing about the iPad, but the more that I use this thing in everyday situations, the more convinced I become of where it'll ultimately fall in the larger population, especially in education. I have been reading over the past week, as more people start receiving their 'iPad camera connection kit', the interesting support that the USB adapter has. So far, among the camera support as it was designed for, the Apple usb keyboard is supported as well as many USB audio devices. I wonder how long before printer support is enabled?

While it is billed as a content consumption device, this thing is proving more and more capable as a content creation device as well. If I'm right, it's little siblings (the iphone and iPod touch) are those ones that were truly designed to be the content consumption on the go. The iPad is something much more.

iBooks, readability and education

Starting last night and finishing during my free periods today, I decided to test run the readability of an entire book on the iPad in the iBooks app, Apple's ebook store. I downloaded The Time Machine to be my test subject since it was free and it is has been on my very long list of things that I just had never got around to reading.

For the most part, despite the nice look of the double facing page view while in landscape mode, I think that I prefer reading in portrait mode with just one page visible at a time. I read in my living room while in my awesome Ikea chair, in bed with both my side lamp on and off, and in the teacher's lounge while under the bright fluorescent lights. In all those different lighting conditions I did not find myself feeling any noticeable difference while working through the novel. The text at the stock setting was very easy to read, even without my glasses on. When I use my laptop in bed, I find it hard to read text from websites, docs or just about anything without them. With the iPad, I had absolutely no issues reading, just like I would a normal boo without my glasses/contacts.

At the end of all my reading sessions, I didn't seem to experience any eye fatigue or headaches even though this is very much a computer-like screen. As far as that argument for the eink on the Kindle, for me anyway, the screen on the iPad seems to be just fine.

As I showed off the iPad today to some colleagues, the initial reaction to the iBooks app was almost universal: image giving a student an iPad loaded with their course books for the year. Between the rich color, ease of access, long battery life, built in dictionary, and numerous other things, I don't blame them for their bit of drool just thinking the possibilities. If Apple works on making a lower cost version of the iPad for edu use and the textbook industry finds some common sense to charge less for a digital version, rather than the print, some amazing things could happen in the edu arena.

Couple quick access to all their books with the built in web and collaborative tools and suddenly things get mighty interesting in the classroom. We aren't there yet, and you would need universal access to wifi throughout the school to really make it work, but we're getting there.

Some data to digest

At the risk of making this blog morph into something that its not (an iPad blog), this entry will have nothing to do with the iPad (or will it?).

Over the past week as a way of experimenting with Google Forms and to satisfy my curiosity about my student's technology habits, I created a very simple survey for them to complete as part of their homework assignment.  Because the assignment sheets, materials, and anything else they would need are already accessible online through the course website, asking them to click on an extra link was not at all Herculean in its magnitude.  Also, the prevailing argument across the faculty and administration here is that student's don't have as reliable access to the internet as we think (or want) them to.  I wanted to put that argument to rest.

The Questions:
The original catalyst for this was to find a quick and easy way to gather a class email list without collecting note cards with information written on them, typing in the addresses, etc.  Once I had set up that portion, I said "Why not expand it a little more and learn a small bit about what they have and what they use?".  So I did just that.  I asked them about the various pieces of technology in their household, the web services that they use, and what platform (Mac, Windows, other) they are most comfortable with.  The coup de grace question was direct data mining about whether or not it makes sense for us to push harder for a wireless network on campus.  Just so you know, we're one of the top schools in the region, piles of awards, and our overall technology access and integration is horrible.  There is no official method for faculty to use their own devices on the network, never mind students using their own netbooks, laptops, etc.

Responses:
One-hundred percent of my students responded to the survey before the next class meeting (it was, after all, assigned as part of their homework.)  Yes, 100%.  No excuses - I showed them where the survey was located, how short it was and they did it.  In my larger classes (26 and 30 respectively), I haven't had 100% compliance on anything all year.  That intrigued me right then and there.

From there, the responses (I felt) were fairly typical and predictable.  80-85% of all the students have their own personal email address, nearly 95% of all my students have facebook/myspace/other social networking accounts, a relatively small percentage (under 20) use AIM/Google Talk/Skype, and all other web services are overall very low.

90% of all respondents said that they had internet access- although a handful of those that said they didn't, responded that they had a wireless network.  I think the terminology is what confused them.  Given the compliance of the survey, and the time stamps on responses that were no, I'm inclined to believe that the actual number is closer to 100% for internet access at home.  Far more students have video game systems than laptops: again, not at all surprising.

Lastly, and this surprised me given the prevalence of the iPod-Apple-ecosystem... Preference of using Mac OS X was in the single digits. Over 90% use Windows in their homes.

The Wireless Response
Over 50% in every single class responded that if the school were to establish an open wireless network for students to access that they would bring a netbook or a laptop to school and use the device in their classes.  I had a hunch that the number would be statistically significant, I didn't know that it would eclipse a majority.

We are doing such a disservice to the students in equiping them with 21st century skills for use beyond their high school years.  Even now, in April, I'm still struggling against the accepted culture of technology use and integration in my day to day teaching.  However, this small sample of around a hundred students is indicating to me that they have the desire to use more and to make their lives as students more simple.  The other side of this argument is that if more students are using their own devices during the day time, it'll free up more of the school's computers for students who may not have as reliable access off campus.

Now the hard part is fighting the uphill battle with those in charge of  IT to figure out ways to get access to these students.  If the faculty can't have a wireless network (especially those who float), it is tough to see the student's gaining access any time soon.

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the iPad

Well, I lasted an entire week.  An entire week of reading blogs, forums, reviews and other comments and I caved. I got up this morning and drove down to Best Buy to pick up a 32gb version. (I actually tried to get one last night, but the Apple Store only had the 64gb versions in stock.)
 
What changed your mind, Kevin?  I thought you said that you needed to have the VGA out capabilities n order to justify spending the money?

Yes, yes I did say that. Multiple times. In many different places. So what changed? 

When it boils down to it, I decided that missing out on experimenting with this device was not worth waiting for a single feature that I deemed necessary. Yes, the video out is a really big deal to me and I'm voicing my opinion on it in a few different venues along with 3rd party developers. The bottom line is that this device is incredible on so many different levels. Using it for today convinced me of that even more than I already was previously. 

Most of the positive reviews are spot on, as are the ones with some of the negative complaints. Like vie said before, the flash, camera and USB complaints are all non starters. I'm also becoming increasingly convinced that a traditional file system isn't needed, though there needs to be a better system for document management - Goodreader is certainly on the right track, especially for a 99 cent app.
I'll be sure to write more in the coming days about individual features, but this thing is good. Real good.

And the typing? It is wonderful, in fact this whole blog post was written while lying in bed with my iPad on my lap.  

My Letter to Steve Jobs

My wife said, after witnessing my glum expression while walking out of the mall, "Why don't you write to Steve Jobs?".

Ok.  Sure, why not.  Here's the email that I sent this afternoon to Steve himself.

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I want to first congratulate you on, by all indications, a very successful launch of the iPad.  At my local Apple Store (Farmington, CT), the staff were all very enthusiastic, organized, and helpful.

I do, however, want to comment on the 'deal breaker' for me when it came to purchasing an iPad.  I had every intention of walking out of the store today with one and it broke my heart to walk away empty handed.  But, after talking with the Geniuses about the video-out capabilities through the VGA-adapter, I just could not justify purchasing the iPad at this time since I intended it to be used in my classroom as a replacement for a laptop.

Limiting the video-out to just Keynote and Video files severely cripples the functionality of the iPad in the education arena.  As a Latin teacher in a public high school, I use my laptop to project .pdfs of text onto the whiteboard for markup and diagramming, to project websites and other types of media, and to edit collaborative works together.  With Keynote as the only way to project anything other than video, the iPad (much to my great dismay) just has no place in my classroom.

I hope that at some point more things can be opened up to video-out, including Safari, Pages, and iBooks (or at least the preview app for pdfs).  Until this happens, a rather significant use of the iPad is going to go untapped.

Best wishes,

Will I get a response? Probably not, but a fanboy can dream, right? :) 

An Apple Fanboy's (and Educator's) Thoughts on the iPad

After turning over in my mind one-hundred times strong whether or not to jump on the iPad ship, I resolved myself to the fact that there are few guaranteed things in this word; death, taxes and if there's a new Apple product, I'll buy it.  And so unknown to my wife (who really is a sport with all my tech-insanity) we went to the Apple Store at Westfarms under false pretenses of just 'seeing the new iPads in person'.  If ever there was a time to use my well practiced evil-overlord laughter, this would be one of them.

The store was packed and they had roughly twenty units on display for people to play around with.  It only took about five minutes of patient waiting to get my hands on the real deal and bask its warm glowing warmth.  The iPad itself is very solidly constructed, perfectly balanced, and seemingly very durable.  The screen panel looks and responds just like an iPhone.  The accelometer responds a lot better than the iPhone (in my opinion), but Christine was having a hard time getting the iPad to be 'right side up' for her.  I have no idea what was going on there for her.  The weight of the iPad is a bit heavier than most would be looking for in a pure eBook reader, I think.  However, compared to my Macbook Air or most netbooks, it'll feel light and nimble.

The screen itself is very rich, very vibrant, and overall a real joy to look at.  Images from the Photos app are stunning and media looks great on it, at least the items on the demo unit for you to see.  Items encoded specifically for the enhanced resolution should be a joy to watch on trips, in bed, on the couch, or anywhere for that matter.  The revamped iTunes for the iPad is a really nice interface and Apple continues to set the bar for a media player well above what anyone else has in the pipes.

Web browsing with Safari is everything that is good about the iPhone in a much larger format.  I absolutely love it.  As more and more sites switch from the power hungry, poor performing, Flash in favor of HTML5, the web experience will continue to get better.  I'm sorry for all the naysayers, the no-Flash thing is a complete non-starter in terms of complaints.  It'd kill the performance, kill the battery life, and expose the OS to more malicious items.  Safari on the iPad is faster and more responsive than its counterpart on the iPhone (although, I have a 3G, not a 3GS).  As a device for browsing the web, reading blogs, visiting forums and everything else, the iPad will quickly find its place in a lot of living rooms.

The iBooks app is simple, powerful, and intuitive.  Books look great on the iPad, especially in landscape mode (side-by-side pages).  You have quite a few options with the fonts (6 different ones, I think) and sizes.  I know the Kindle is hyped by the e-ink, but since my eyes are as adjusted to reading text on the screen, I saw no issues with reading on the iPad.  I'd have to really sit down and read a full length novel to really gauge how it would be, but flipping through some pages of the latest Steve King novel felt natural.  There are plenty of converters available on the web to convert pdfs to the epub format for import into iBooks, so places like Project Gutenberg will become a treasure trove for the public domain works.

The iWorks apps are a real shining point for the launch.  Pages, Numbers and Keynote are almost as fully functional as their OS X counterparts.  In terms of content creation (in apposition to the consumption side), this might be one of the most under talked about aspects of the iPad.  Even with just the on screen keyboard, typing in Pages felt entirely natural.  In fact, inserting images, shapes and tables is easy to do and with the touch screen, makes it cake to reposition on the screen.  I was very impressed with the job they did with the initial release of the iWork suite.  For students, this could be a very strong selling point.

Alright, so now we come to the part of the review where Kevin's hopes and dreams are dashed by the limited functionality of the iPad.  Since my intentions for the iPad are not so much personal use (although it would see a lot of use in that arena) but instead as a replacement device for my laptop in the classroom, I had some very specific questions about how the VGA-out adapter works with the iPad.  All the literature on the official site talks about the video out with Keynote, but nothing more.  I would need the iPad to do three things in addition to Keynote in order for it to truly serve the role that I would like it to serve.  It would need to do video out on Pages, iBooks (or the PDF Previewer), and Safari.  In my classroom I use my laptop (with the limited tech that we do have at our school) for projection of Latin text on the whiteboard to mark up and diagram.  Now, ideally I'd love to see tablet-like drawing right on the screen for this purpose (whiteboard markers are expensive!) but I knew going in that wouldn't be likely at the launch.  However, after talking with the quote "geekiest" member of the Apple staff at Westfarms (their terms, not mine), I found out that the iPad does none of these things.  It won't push video out for any of the apps above, it won't even push video out for the media (photos, movies, etc).  (Edit: The Genius was wrong about movies, it'll push those to a tv set, but only in 480p) As of right now, it only pushes video out for Keynote presentations.

Deal breaker.

In the end it wasn't the lack of Flash, or USB, or a front-facing camera for conferencing, or a full fledged OS X that did me in.  It was something that seems (to me anyways) a no-brainer if Apple really wanted to see these fall into the hands of educators.  To handicap the video-out capabilities of a device as revolutionary and amazing as this one let me down substantially.  The Apple store employees couldn't believe that single reason was why I wouldn't be walking out of the store with an iPad in tote.

And some of you make wild claims that I'd buy a bag of turd if Steve told me to ;)

Will I have an iPad at some point? Absolutely.  Will it be sooner rather than later? Most likely.  Is this the future of personal computing? Absolutely.  They need to clean up some quirks (I assume iPad OS 4.0, rather than iPhone OS 3.2 will do a lot of great things) and drop the price about 100 bucks to make it mass market. For most people in the world, the traditional desktop interface as we know it is finally on the way out.  Will there be individuals that need that type of machine? Sure, about one computer per household will still need to look like computers as we know them today.  Everything else?  Less is more.