Google, Apple and many of the other global technology companies have worked really had over the past few days to use their technology to help the people of Japan following the 8.9 magnitude Earthquake and resulting Tsunami.
This morning Google launched up-dated satellite imagery of the area after the Tsunami struck - the obvious damage and loss to the people and the landscape is unbelievable.
To view this high-resolution imagery, courtesy of Google partners (GeoEye), download this KML file and explore it in Google Earth. You can also explore the imagery with Google Maps, or have a look at this Picasa album of before-and-after shots.
“Word Lens can instantly translates printed words from one language to another using the video camera on your iPhone. No network delay, no roaming fees, and no reception problems.
Word Lens is a dictionary -- evolved. It looks up words for you, and shows them in context. You can use Word Lens on your vacations to translate restaurant menus, street signs, and other things that have clearly printed words.
Word Lens has its limits. Sometimes the translation will have mistakes, and may be hard to understand, but it usually gets the point across. If a translation fails, there is a way to manually look up words by typing them in”.
The problem is it’s not as free as it says it is. Anyone tried this and does it work? It’s a great idea – particularly because it doesn’t rely on data charges once it is downloaded.
Focus.com is a good website for visualizing data. I know
that most people know this already but I though their recent graphic titled, ‘Good
or Evil: Have We Shared Too Much With Facebook, Google, and Apple?’ was
interesting.
I think it might also be interesting graphic to use as a stimulus
for discussion when talking about issues such as privacy with children and
young people.
It is quite a long graphic! Just keep scrolling down the
screen!
This is a second of five posts where I will talk about some technologies that may change how we live, work and play. They are personal opinion and I could very well be wrong. I mention them sometimes in conference presentations and workshops and wanted to describe my thinking more in this series of short posts.
The second technology that I think will change how we live, work, play and learn is voice to text software for mobile devices. I first talked about this in my Learning and Teaching Scotland Literacy Co-coordinators keynote presentation in February 2010. Let me explain my thinking.
If we consider the history of human communication it probably evolved something like this:
We learned to communicate verbally
We developed written language
We developed electronic communication (with a keyboard)
We developed smaller more ubiquitous forms of electronic communication with mobile (keyboard input changed)
And now we are in a situation where mobile devices (computers) can be controlled by voice
Of course, technology manufacturers have been working on software that allows you to speak into a computer and then it turns your voice into text for years. I first started using it properly when I had my first Windows tablet PC back in 2005. I wrote a set of school reports by speaking into the software rather than typing them by hand. It took a long time because the software wasn’t particularly robust at the time – but in the end I eventually achieved my goal.
Speech to text software is not new to education it have been used in special educational needs for many years. The problem in the past with a lot of this software is that it is not always particularly reliable and it can also be very expensive. But like any technology it gets cheaper and more reliable over time.
Now, here is the interesting thing. Android powered mobile phones have voice to text recognition software already built in – this was first live demoed with the Nexus One mobile phone handset. Have a look at the video showing voice input for Android in action below:
Also, Android Powered Mobile phones outsold the iPhone OS in the US during the first quarter of 2010. One of the reasons for this is probably because Android phones are cheaper and they compare very well to the iPhone in terms of performance and functionality.
I am quite sure that we will see a wide new range of Android mobile phones available for Christmas 2010 and all of them will have the built in voice input to text recognition.
So what does this mean? Well, I’m not sure. But I know that very soon whether it is an android powered phone, an iPhone or a Windows phone most smart phones will have the capacity to translate the spoken word to text with a high degree of accuracy (in fact they can already do this).
If we accept that most mobile devices will be smart phones in the not to distant future and we also accept that most young people in Europe, North America, Australia, parts of Asia and a lots of other places in the world have mobile phones. Then we must also accept that it won’t be long until young people realize that they only have to speak into their devices to get them to write for them.
What’s my point – well if you’re a teacher and you currently struggle to get the children in your care to write with a pen or a pencil. Then it is going to be even harder post Christmas 2010 when lots more children have devices like I have described above and will be even less motivated to write with a pen or a pencil.
Technology like 'voice input' adds to the debate of why we get children to write with a pen or pencil in the first place. One of the reasons that we do in the United Kingdom, whether we like it or not, is because that is how we test children at the end of high school. They sit down and do written exams – but why else do we teach the process of writing with a pen or pencil and is this still as important as it once was?
What seems clear to me is that never before in the history of communication during the last 100 years has it been even more important than ever to make sure children have a real grasp of the spoken language. This is one of the reasons why I am delighted that our radical new curriculum in Scotland includes the spoken word as a type of ‘text’. Thank goodness it does as it is the only way, that I can think of, to really future proof language.
As with all of the posts in this series, I could be wrong about the above. I don’t know what the answer is and I don't think we can stop or should even want to stop this evolution in technology. But I do think we should, as educators, be thinking about how technology such as voice to text smart phones may impact on teaching and learning (in both a positive and negative way).
I think this will be a significant paradigm shift in the way children engage with text and we are within 12 months of the tipping point for secondary / high school students and maybe 24 – 36 months away from the tipping point for elementary / primary school children. Teachers and leaders in schools need to be ready embrace change and not
be reactive to it or fight it (you will loose). Soon most children will have one of
these devices and we can't stop it. Things are about to move very quickly, are you, your school and your authority ready?
Great to see the famous Mark Pentleton up
on the stage at the Apple Solution experts stand. I listened to Mark
enthusiastically talk about iTunes and podcasting. He should know how powerful
these tools are for learning as I believe that his own Radio Lingua podcasts
have now had over 60 million downloads!
It was just a shame that BETT 2010 wasn’t at the
start of February as we might have been able to see one of the new devices that
will being launched next week… allegedly….!
I’ve written before about the potential of the iPhone and other mobile devices in schools and learning. With the amount of Apps in the Apple Apps Store growing quickly by the days – it is sometimes difficult to catch up with which Apps are useful for education.
I recently came across this comprehensive list of useful educational iPhone and iPod Touch APPs on the ICT@C online blog.
Every student that goes in to the University gets given either an iPhone or an iPod Touch. This is bought for them from the University. The difference is that if you opt for an iPhone the individual student has to enter into an 18 month contract with the mobile phone operator (in the US this is AT&T). There have been nearly 2000 devices distributed to students of which 68% are iPhone and 32% are iPod Touches.
The university then provides resources for its students via an interactive website that it optimized for the iPhone /iPod Touch. Lecturers and university professors also suggest and develop Apps that the students might want to download to help them with their learning. The results were quite staggering in terms of how much the students believed that the devices improved their learning and gave them confidence in class.
One of the big questions from the audience was on cost and how ever did the Abilene University afford such an initiative. It seems that the university made three very clever but significant cost savings in order to fund the initiative.
1. Cut back on open access computer suites
One of the things that the University did was cut back on the open access computer facilities that were available to students. Particularly the facilities that were available in dorm rooms (halls of residence).
After research they found that these facilities were not being used as much as they were in the past because 98% of students going to the university brought with them their own laptop. They also found that the biggest usage of the open access areas in the student accommodation was between 11pm – 3am when students were playing first person shooter games with each other!
By cutting back on and not refreshing these underused facilities they saved thousands.
2. Cut back on traditional telephone
Another significant saving was with telephone bills. As most university professors and a large proportion of students were now using the iPhone and as calls from one iPhone to another (in the States anyway) are free they effectively created a free telephone service across the campus. They also saved by not refreshing the telephone infrastructure within the University. Why would they bother – everyone has a mobile and there is a Skype App.
3. Photocopying
If everything available electronically as pdfs or as podcasts, savings on photocopying were significant.
iPhone Vs iPod Touch
One really interesting part of the study was how it seemed that the iPhone was the more successful device with the students.
This was possibility down to a number of reasons:
Anytime, any place connectivity (and learning)
Students felt more ownership over their phones (even though they were given them, they were still paying for them on the contract)
Phones were nearly always brought to class and charged up where as the iPod touch was left at home more or not brought fully charged (students seemed to embrace the social connectivity of the phones more – eg: they needed their phones to stay connected to each other)
Although it wasn’t mentioned I’m guessing that the phone also has a camera which can be used as powerful tool for learning.
Is the project iPhone / iPod Specific?
One other question from the audience was about platform and if the project completely relied on the iPhone / iPod touch. Although there were a number of university lectures (and students) who were developing Apps specifically for the Apple platform. The main resources produced by the university were all web based but optimized for the iPhone. This meant regardless of the device students could access the material in different ways.
It also means that if a more appropriate device comes along the University can easily migrate their content.
Overall a very interesting study that I would like to replicate in a school. You can find out more about what the university have done over on their website.
When I am out talking to teachers and school leaders I often describe Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in two ways:
1.Sheep Dip CPD this is more traditional CPD when a large group of people gather together to hear from an expert on a topic. When they leave we assume that they are all experts in the topic because we have immersed then in it for the length of CPD session.
2. Drip Feed CPD this is more about learning at any time and in any place. It empowers professionals to find the answers to questions on a need to know basis. Importantly, drip feed CPD is continuous and is on-going though a personal learning network. This means that you find out answers to questions that you didn’t even know you need the answers too!
iTunesU is a good example of one type of Drip Feed CPD. You can subscribe to a topic or course that you are interested in on iTunesU and if a new episode is up-loaded by the provider it will automatically download to your computer the next time that your fire up iTunes.
At Learning and Teaching Scotland we have made all of our on-line video content available via iTunesU and you can to subscribe to different courses. If you’re a Scottish Teacher its worth keeping an eye on this service as we will soon be up-loading exemplification of good practice for A Curriculum for Excellence and we will also be adding more Games Based Learning examples.
Anyway, when I was at the FOTE Conference last Friday I listened to an interesting presentation from Peter Robinson of Oxford University. He was talking about Oxford Universities new materials that are now available on iTunesU.
The Oxford University iTunesU Channel containes a huge amount of information and educational content that can be downloaded, listened to and watched for free. But what impressed me about their model was that academics still owned the content but they chose to donate it to the learners and make it accessible via iTunesU.
This idea instantly struck me as a model that would be appropriate to repeat for examination courses in schools.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t make the Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) Conference in Liverpool this weekend.
But, I was able to follow what was going on using Twitter. The hash tag for the conference was #ADEcon09 and by putting this into a website called TwazzUp you can get a real feel for what was being discussed, the richness of conversation, photographs and links mentioned.
TwazzUp (even though I hate the name) is currently my Twitter hash tag conference aggregator of choice.
I think it turns all the 'tweets' into a really good on-line handout.
Which free on-line service do you use to aggregate your tweets?
To be honest I was a little bit disappointed with the Apple announcements on the 9th September. I wasn’t expecting to see the Apple Tablet but I was expecting the new iPod Touch to have a camera. Gizmodo offers some suggestions for this – what do you think?
So, in case you have been sleeping under a rock for the last few days. Here is a bit of an overview of the new features of the nano
Video: the new iPod nano now has a built-in video camera that lets you record video and to share it with people though iTunes to the internet via a number of social networking platforms including YouTube and Facebook. One disadvantage for schools is that the new nano does not take stills. I think this is a bit of a shame?
Pedometer: the new iPod nano now doubles as a Pedometer. It uses the built-in accelerometer to keep track of your steps and help you meet your fitness goals. The built in software allows you to create a daily step goal or you can set it to ‘Always On’ so it counts all the steps you take, all the time. This could be great for health and wellbeing and collecting real data in schools.
Voice notes: the new iPod nano has a built-in microphone that lets you capture an audio recording. Think about the possibilities for recording thoughts, learning, achievements or even a traditional classroom lecture
FM Radio: the new iPod nano includes an FM radio.
There are still a lot of people asking ‘why would Apple put an FM tuner into an iPod?’ After all they could have done this years ago – but have always refused to? The answer it appears comes from iTunes-Tagging. As well as being able to live pause a radio stream you can also tag tracks that you are listening to on the radio by hitting the center button.
Why is this important? Well, if the radio station supports tagging, the information about the song will be saved and you can see the list of songs that you have tagged on iTunes. Guess what! There is then also an option to buy these songs! Very clever Apple.
For me one of the most powerful things about the new nano is that after Christmas 2009 there will literally be 1000’s of these little devices in school classrooms. How can we support teachers, give them ideas and encourage them to use the technology that will soon be in the pockets of a lots of children?
Anyone got plans to use the new iPod Nano with a class?
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