Cooking Show Teaching with Jing

This has nothing to do with iPads, but it's a neat use of technology. This afternoon I will be talking to my class about copyright and Creative Commons. As part of the talk, I create two brief videos, one using copyrighted pictures and music and one using Creative Commons licensed pictures and music. It doesn't take long to create the videos--about 4-5 minutes each--but the process is a bit repetitive: download a picture, write a citation, add the picture to the movie, add a caption to the picture, and repeat. I like to create things in real time for my students to show them that I'm not secretly doing anything that they can't do. However, 10 minutes of repetitive stuff is too much. What I did is use Jiing to record my process of making the video. After they see one or two pictures added, I can fast forward through some of the repetitive stuff. It reminds me of cooking shows where they start chopping 20 pounds of potatoes but only do one potato and pull out the bowl of previously chopped potatoes. Then they put it in the oven for "two hours" and immediately pull out a finished one. This process allows me to quickly make two videos right before their eyes in a very short time and spend more time focusing on the real lesson, which includes copyright laws, benefits of Creative Commons, and how to find media they can use.

Note my Jing videos don't play on the iPad. I'll have to get the pro version of Jing so I can save them in a format that is not Flash.

David Marcovitz

Living with Imperfection

I am a perfectionist (which is really hard for someone as imperfect as I am). As I do more typing on my iPad, I find that the tradeoff between perfection and time is magnified. When I write, I try to take time and energy to get it just right. But typing is much harder on the iPad, and editing is even harder. That makes it hard to be a perfectionist unless you spend even more time on your writing. One goal of the iPad is to be more, not less, efficient so perfection has to be sacrificed.

Of course, an upside is that brevity can be a great virtue. I tend to ramble unnecessarily. I am less likely to do that on an iPad. That is also one of the virtues of Twiiter.

David Marcovitz

The Power of Ubiquity

One of the powerful things about the iPad (or iPod Touch or iPhone or other similar device) is ubiquity. For the iPad, that question relates to: can you get it to do what you want, and can you have it with you when you need it? Another question in the classroom is: can everyone have one? If it is there all the time, it can become a powerful tool. That's why the pencil is such a powerful technology; you can use it whenever and wherever you want, and it is portable enough that you can always have access to it. That is why I have always insisted on a pocket-sized calendar (whether paper or electronic), so I can put in my pocket and always have it.

I am not sure that the iPad wins the ubiquity battle. For me, it is too big too fit in my pocket. Not being one to carry a purse, that means I can't have it with me all the time (and if I did carry a purse, this device might weigh it down just a bit too much).

However, the more ubiquity the better. We can even sacrifice some functionality for ubiquity (that's why the pencil is impossible to give up). It might be that an iPhone (or iPod Touch) is a better device because of increased ubiquity.

The challenge is to figure out where you might take it that you wouldn't have taken other (possibly more powerful) devices before. Could you walk around the classroom taking notes on group discussions or individual work (some teachers have used handheld devices to do grading while walking around the classroom)? Can you take it to a conference session to take notes and/or interact with the other attendees (see, e.g., David Warlick's blog post about attending the ISTE conference)? Can you use it in creative ways on a nature walk or field trip? The more places you can take it, the more likely you are to use it and find creative and innovative uses for it.

David Marcovitz

The iPad for Academics

Alex Golub writes about the future of the iPad for higher education:

http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/views/2010/07/12/golub

Just checking in for now

iPad in Academia?

Here is great article that starts out to be about a study of the Kindle at Princeton, but, because it is in a Mac/Apple newsletter, it shifts to discuss the iPad in academia:

http://db.tidbits.com/article/11318

Is Droid Better?

Maybe we should have held off on iPads and waited for the Droid tablet (that is sure to come eventually). The new Droid App Builder (see this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/technology/12google.html?hpw) could make apps for Droid cell phones (and eventually other devices) really easy to create. The project was spearheaded by one of the first computer science professors I had in college, Hal Abelson. He is better known as one of the creators of the Logo language. I wonder how easy it will be for teachers to build educational Droid apps.

David Marcovitz

Flash Solution?

I have loaded Citrix on my iPad. I can now run all Office applications. The interface is a bit awkward because it doesn't use all the features of the iPad, but. It works pretty well. I have asked the Office of Technology Services to add a browser to Citrix in the hopes that that will allow me to go to Web sites that use Flash.

David Marcovitz

Library?

Using Safari, I went to the LND library to be sure I could access journal articles and I was unable to. I got to the page for requesting the journal of Ed psych but could not get any further. Any thoughts?

Also, I was delighted to see that an apple wireless keyboard a, which Ihave at home, could be used, but I haven't yet been able to get it to talk to the iPad. I've got some more thoughts to add as soon as I can use the real keyborad.

VoiceThread needs Flash

Another technology that is becoming popular, which requires Flash and won't work on the iPad, is VoiceThread. It seems that most of the Web 2.0 technologies I'm exploring with my students are not available for the iPad.

David Marcovitz

MoodleRooms

Discouraged by not being able to run the Prezi I have developed and used in my summer TE602 section, I decided to see what all the buzz about Moodle is. I clicked the "Take the Tour Button" and got a blank screen. When I did the same on my iMac, I saw a video — I suspect this is more of the Flash problem.

This is definitely a neat device but I'll need to explore more to see how it is better than an iMac for Ed purposes.

Flash Problems

So far, I have seen two big problems with the lack of Flash (I'm sure there are many more). Two outstanding Web 2.0 tools rely on Flash: Jing and Prezi. I have used Jing extensively (see the videos at http://www.loyola.edu/edudept/facstaff/marcovitz/ET605/, for example). These videos were created by Jing in SWF format. Jing does have an option to create video in other formats, but that costs money.

I have not used Prezi extensively, but Vic Delclos (also a new iPad recipient has), and Prezi relies completely on Flash. The fact that doesn't work on the iPad is a big disappointment to him.

David Marcovitz

E-Readers, Etextbooks, Econtent, Elearning

This article, E-Readers,
Etextbooks, Econtent, Elearning, from the Multimedia & Internet@Schools Magazine is very relevant to our work here. It is a bit overhyped, but it has a lot of good information.

"And how does the rock star of gadgets, the iPad, change things? The iPad fallout is just now arriving in classrooms near you. For starters, there’s an app that makes chemistry more student-accessible in 2 minutes than a century of instruction has ever done (see The Elements). And all those publishers aforementioned? They have big plans for the iPad. More on that soon."

David Marcovitz

No Flash

One of the well-publicized limitations of the iPad is that it does not support Adobe Flash. Many Web sites have adjusted and posted things in other formats. I believe there is a lot of educational material in Flash format. So far the one site I have hit where this is a problem is for getting secure account numbers with Discover card. I ran into this when trying to download the free Citrix client from the App store. Even though it was free, it wanted credit card information, and I didn't want to provide a regular credit card number. I'll have to write to Discover Card about that.

David's New iPad

I was away at the end of last week so I came in to my office today to catch up on some work. I didn't catch up on anything because a shiny new iPad was sitting on my desk. I turned it on, plugged it into my computer and started playing. I did two main things with it today: set up email and set up iTunes to subscribe to some podcasts.

I'm not writing this blog entry from the iPad because typing is still cumbersome for me on it, but I suspect it will get a bit easier.

Email seemed pretty straightforward, but it wasn't. When I configured it, it told me that it couldn't verify my account, but I moved on anyway. When I finished configuring it, I found my email waiting for me. The big problem with email is that it doesn't seem to show all my email. In fact, right now, it is only showing two messages, even though I have hundreds in my Inbox. It showed more at the beginning, but I moved some messages around in an effort to give me better access to old messages and now I see fewer messages. I think that as new messages come in, I will have access to them, but the settings only allow it to show the up to 200 messages. I was able to read some messages and type some new ones. I also updated my signature.

As for podcasts, I used iTunes on my computer to sign up for several podcasts (mostly stuff I listen to on NPR). When I synched, the podcasts were there waiting for me in the iPod button/application. Everything was pretty straightforward, except deleting a podcast once I listened to it. For that I found help from eyeguy at the Multi-touch fans site. I just had to swipe my finger on the right or left of the podcast, and a delete button appeared.

How will I use this for educational purposes? I don't yet know. I do know that it's a fun new toy and a great way to procrastinate from grading.

David Marcovitz

New iPads

This Summer, the Loyola University of Maryland School of Education received a small technology grant. A big part of the grant is for the purpose of exploring creating some online courses. Related to that, several participants received iPads. I hope that I will be able to convince the other participants to blog with me about our individual and collective iPad experiences. At the beginning, I expect that we will have some entries about using the iPad in general, and I hope that, as we grow, we will post ways that we find to use the iPad educationally.

David Marcovitz
Associate Professor
Loyola University of Maryland
School of Education