by Rick Parris
The Apple Tablet Promise
We’ve been saying for nearly a year that an iPhone-like tablet would be a killer piece of eLearning hardware. On Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 we’ll get a chance to see what Apple has in store for us. The blogosphere has been electrically charged for months in anticipation, but now were days away. It is Christmas eve for the Apple faithful. We’ll be able to unwrap the present soon. But before we do, I’d like to offer a few ideas about what we hope we’ll see from an eLearning perspective. If, for a few moments I was in Steve Jobs seat, what would I want to see in that new product? What would I throw a tantrum over if it was missing from the feature set? Let’s see….
One Reader to Rule Them All
It needs to have a reader app that will change the paradigm. I’m certain that the device will be connected to the now famous App Store which means there’ll probably be a Kindle app for it as well as several other eBook readers and that’s all fine. But what I’m talking about is an app that kicks it up a notch. The new tablet won’t just be capable of replicating black and white books. The tablet is capable of reproducing every color printed document ever. Magazines, brochures, textbooks, travel guides, how-to series. Did you ever think about purchasing a book on photography with a Kindle? And these won’t need to be static text and images. These could have animation and interaction and video. What sort of reader app will that produce? Will apple have that available from the get-go or will that be up to an entrepreneurial spirit to develop? Will we move toward a standard or will a thousand flowers bloom?
And while we’re talking about readers. The whole matter of DRM and books is a problem isn’t it? I buy a book in the analog world and I can lend that book to my father. While he’s got it I can’t read it (but I’ve already read it anyway). With Kindle’s DRM, I buy a book and I can only read it on my authorized device. Now, I’m not going to want to be without my authorized device for even a couple of days… so is all of this the end of book lending? What about the idea of book clubs? I think this needs to be sorted out but it won’t be sorted out by booksellers unless the book buying public (and that includes students) makes a fuss about it.
Anyway, on with my list.
Keynote on Steroids
A tablet with a multitouch display seems to me like the perfect presentation device. I’m talking for authoring and for presenting. A multitouch interface for selecting, cropping and scaling images seems like it would be incredibly intuitive. When presenting, being able to swipe to the next screen would be a natural. The only question is how to connect to the projecting device. At CES this year, Intel showed off a new technology that would help… wireless display or WiDi. If a tablet based presenter could pace the auditorium swiping from screen to screen and have the projector connected wirelessly, that would be a slick trick. If a teacher was able to do the same from anywhere in the class… that would be useful. And speaking of classroom uses wouldn’t be nice if a teacher could set up…
Learning Environment Networks
Who needs a projector if all the students have their own tablet and the teacher can take control of all those screens at one time? Sort of like what’s available in a meeting service like Elluminate or Webex… but built into the OS. This would allow teachers to run a synchronous learning environment from anywhere on the planet to any student on the planet. It would lessen our dependency on brick and mortar schools. This would make a tablet an incredibly powerful teaching device and foster more technology facilitated teaching as opposed to eLearning where, often, students and teachers never interact except through email. And if you’ve got teachers anywhere the tablet will need…
A User Facing Camera
Smile, you’re in a teleconference. The tablet is the perfect device to elevate iChat AV and/or Skype to a truly useful telecommunication device. Dick Tracy’s video wrist phone was too small. A full screen computer is too big. This would be just right. A video conferencing pad could replace a phone if the connection was right. Which of course leads us to…
Not AT&T
If this tablet is stuck using the AT&T network it’s sunk. And don’t blame the Verizon ads for this mindset. Verizon is just, rightly, pointing out the flawed logic of launching the coolest handset on the planet with a network that has major holes in its coverage. Now, that said, if you live in a place that is covered (as I do in, of all places, Warrenton, VA) your 3G experience is pretty fantastic. But the tablet will have larger ambitions and will need at leas the option of a more robust network. I hope Apple’s plan is to offer it on at least a couple of options.
And Finally
I hope it has a great drawing and handwriting recognition capability. I want this device to be a tool that will allow students to create, to write, to invent like nothing has ever before. It should replace the drafting table and the keyboard at the bare minimum. It should make a big dent in paper demand. I mean, if you’re going to dish out $1000.00 for a thing the size of a pad of writing or drawing paper, it should replace that pad at the very least.
So that’s our hopes for the upcoming, rumored, mythical, unicorn-like Apple tablet. We’re less than a week away from seeing what Mr. Jobs and crew have in mind. I suspect you have some ideas of things you’d like to see. If so leave them in the comments below.
