Buy experiences

Johnson's Rule of Savings: The person in the nursing home with the best stories, not the most money, wins.

When we participants in a recent workshopwere asked to place ourselves into groups that represented how we felt about money, I was a bit torn. Our choices were Saver, Spender, Avoider, and Monk. The first two categories are self-explanatory and the Avoider perhaps should be called the Procrastinator. But the Monk, as I understood it, believes thinking about money is somewhat irrelevant. I was the only person in that group.

I don't much like thinking about money. It's boring. I can't tell you how much my networth is or my annual salary (very accurately anyway). Long ago I set it up so I automatically max out my 403B contributions and I don't see what goes into my state retirement fund. I make my mortgage and no-interest car loan payments every month. I always pay the balance of my credit card. I like money for what it will buy, not as a means of keeping score or rating one' success in life. I just want enough money to buy everything I want - and pray my needs and wants remain fairly humble. When I croak, my plan is to neither be a burden nor a jackpot to my family.

Cartoon source

Research (and personal experience) shows that spending on experiences rather than things makes a person happier. I spend money on travel, on books, on technology toys - and on my grandchildren. Increasingly, I try to find ways to purchase experiences (or future experiences) for them as well: vacations, summer camps, swimming pool memberships, college costs, theater performances, etc. As precocious 11-year-old grandson Paul wrote recently: "Thanks for the toys, books, and food, but especially for the quality family time." He gets it.

A question that has been at the back of my mind is "When we buy computers are we buying things or are we buying experiences?" While they are virtual experiences to be sure, the ability to create, to inhabit a virtual world, and to communicate all are more about having an experience than having a device. Pretty good rationalization, huh?

But I'll make dang sure the virtual experiences don't ever replace the physcial ones.

Daemon and Project Glass

I love it when science fiction becomes reality - sometimes, anyway. Especially when that speculative gizmo may just make everyone be a bit better behaved.

One of the most clever conceits of Daniel Suarez's books, Daemon and Freedom(TM) is the goggles that let the characters peer into D-space, a virtual reality interface*. As I picture these devices, they look a lot like Google's Project Glass:

While the Project Glass video emphasizes navigation and direct communication, Suarez has a far more intriguing use for his glasses. In D-space, a "rating" appears over the heads of those with whom the wearer is interacting. This rating, from one to five stars, is that individual's reputation and the number of interactions on which it is based. After any transaction, each person has the ability to "rate" the other based on integrity, honesty, etc. It's the personal equivalent of TripAdvior, Angie's List, Rate My Teachers. or a seller's rating on eBay.

We should all be increasingly mindful of our digital reputations. Those with whom we interact have increasingly powerful ways of communicating to others whether they'd do business with us again. And this will be a life-long understanding our students will need to internalize as well. 

Fair warining: next time you see me wearing a pair of glasses and staring over your head, I might just be checking out your credit rating, last workplace performance evaluation, or titles of the last three books read. Watch it!

Might technology make us all more ethical?

* Yes, I know the Terminator had this display nearly 20 years ago. But remember, he was from the future.

Image source 

Why iPads? II

In response to my post, Why iPads?, Miguel left a commentary with questions, including:

... don't you ever concern yourself with the expenditure of precious funding, money being spent on iPads when an inexpensive netbook will do the job? And, what percentage of those who invest in these device initiatives actually spend time planning them out?

 Another point to ponder is the lack of professional learning that accompanies implementation of iPads...simply, the "there's an app for that" strikes at the heart of what educational/instructional technologists do, making the products created with an iPad the equivalent of low-hanging fruit. The iPad becomes the easy tool to use and students/teachers/staff never learn how to do much more than that.

... I suppose education will always gravitate to the most expensive, easiest to use technology available, creating scarcity of funding. After all, we could buy Apple //e computers and achieve much of what passes for basic computing skills with those obsolete computers...and save money.

... BTW, this comment was written on my iPad as I sit at a university waiting for UIL Competition to end. I wouldn't have brought my laptop, and the netbook adapter would have been too much. The iPad...well, book-consumption, media-viewing, creativity device. haha (Jacquie Henry's comments are very good on her blog along these lines as well.)

Miguel, you answered your own questions in your final paragraph regarding why students should have iPads rather than netbooks.

Your comments brought a couple things to mind:

1. Cost of netbooks vs iPads. The iPad 2 is now selling for $400. Yes, you can find netbooks for less - but not a lot less and the cheap ones are very low powered. You get a lot better device for an extra $50. And compared to laptops, iPads are a steal.
2. Say what you want about "proprietary" applications and Apple uber-control over what runs on the devices, the damn things just work. I don't think I've had to trouble shoot my iPad (and I have the first model). Ever found a netbook that you can say that about? I don't have enough experience with Android or Windows tablets to know if low support also applies to them, but somehow I doubt it.
3. Probably the biggest reason for iPads, ironically, is what I initially saw as their biggest drawback: these are great devices for consuming content. If I have a netbook, I also need an e-book reader if I am going to read for sustained periods of time. Magazines and textbooks are better displayed. And what I once saw as a content display device, has turned out to be a pretty darned good content creation device as well - shooting and editing movies and photographs, creating Web2.0 content, and making music. I don't like typing on my iPad, but then I'm not 12 years old either. I bet I'd get really good at it if that's all I used. 
4. When it comes to boot-time, battery life, and, I'm guessing, durability, iPads have it all over netbooks. Even Chromebooks are slow at 8 seconds compared to the "instant on" of the iPad.

Miguel, don't confuse cost with value.  

The major objections many educators have (especially old school IT directors) is the lack of "control" one has of these devices. These need to be user-managed, not school-managed tools. This is a radical mindshift for most of us. 

But we'll get over it.

As I mentioned in my first post, I also worry that iPads are not being deployed with an overall educational strategy. But let's be real - what technology has been?