New complaint about the iPad

Five years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. A giant screen with one button, the iPad represented possibly the purest distillation of Jobs’ tech dreams. Yet at the time it was met with derision. “I got about 800 messages in the last 24 hours,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “Most of them are complaining…. It knocks you back a bit.” iPad haters' initial complaints Cult of Mac, Jan 27, 2015

In August last year Gartner forecast that Chromebook sales would reach 5.2 million units in 2014, a 79 percent increase from 2013, and that by 2017 sales would grow to 14.4 million units. (Source: ZDnet)

Wow, five years already. My iPad is a constant companion. Was there really a time when I didn't own one?

Great-grandson Miles, age 4, teaching Great-grandfather Barney, age 80, how to use the iPad Barney had just recently bought and couldn't quite figure out. -  Memorial Day weekend 2010.

According to Cult of Mac, the biggest complaints about the first iPads were:

• iPad is for old people
• iPad is for consuming, not producing
• iPad lacked multitasking
• No Flash (mediaplayer) on iPad
• No camera on iPad
• The iPad's name sounds like a feminine hygiene product

Most of the problems have proven not to be problems at all - only changes in how we use a computing device. (And a Rorschach test on how we define literacy.) Teachers and kids, especially at the elementary level, love these devices. School 1:1 programs use them. God knows there are enough apps out there that are at least labeled educational.

Yet despite the popularity of the iPad in schools, Chromebooks seem to be making huge inroads. It may well be that because there is one complaint not mentioned above that still persists about the iPad: it is a SOB to manage in an institutional environment that likes control- at least in comparison to the Chromebook. Yes, there are Configurator, Casper, and AirWatch and other MDM tools available. But there is nothing that matches the ease of having user settings created and stored in the cloud and then activated on login as with the Chromebook.

My prediction is that the Chromebook (or tablets running a manageable ChromeOS) will win the battle for educators' hearts and minds despite the iPad being the better machine for helping make transliterate, creative kids. 

We in education just don't much care for things we can't control easily.

Sigh.

The pleasure of anticipation

Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

I am at my happiest when looking forward to something. The planning, especially, gives me joy. As 2015 gets rolling, here are some things I am lucky enough to be looking forward to...

Adventures

• Trip to Borneo for the EARCOS conference in March. The chance to do a two day hike of Mt. Kinabalu.
• Trip to Columbia for a librarian's conference in Cartegena. Definite four day hike to Ciudad Perdida in May.
• Week-long canoe trip to Quetico Park in Canada with grandson Paul in July. 
• Trip to Washington DC with Paul and Miles in July (the annual summer trip with the grandsons).

House move

We are hoping to sell our house and buy one in the Twin Cities. First time in 14 years I've moved and I have never lived in a real city. It's work, but also exciting.

Book

My new book comes out, I believe in April. Great fun to mail copies to friends and relatives. And to have the project DONE! How many months before the drive to start a new one???

Referendum and work-related projects

The possibility of passing a $2.5 per annum technology referendum is pretty good for next month. I am thinking 1:1 projects, tech integration specialists/librarians in all buildings, learning management systems that allow personalization, a great collection of digital resources... A chance to make a real difference in the education of over 9000 kids. Even if the vote goes against us, there are plenty of neat things we can do with the tech we have to move the district forward.

More family

And I am in happy anticipation of greeting a new granddaughter next month!

All these great things coming up make me a pretty happy guy.

So here is my question for educators: How many things are coming up in your school or classroom that your students will anticipate? A field trip? An author visit? A special project? The latest order of new library books for ready for checkout? Time in the Makerspace? A school dance? A basketball game?

Or just the next day without school? Or summer break? 

And even worse, what might your kids be dreading (the antithesis of anticipating)? Standardized testing? Report cards? That unit on the Romantic poets?

I don't know that it is a teacher's job to make kids happy. But it sure doesn't hurt to think about it. 

BFTP: Technicians - the unsung heroes

We have a "tech" meeting in our district every other Friday morning for 60-90 minutes. Both building and district level technicians attend. The agenda is usually a combination of updates, problems encountered, solutions found, short training sessions, and healthy doses of complaining about any number of things - teachers, librarians, administrators, technologies, policies, online testing problems, and, of course, district technology leadership - that would be me. Overall the meetings are productive, since among all the jobs in  schools, our technicians have one of the toughest, and these joint problem-solving and venting sessions are needed.

Under-staffed, under-informed, and under-appreciated, these men and women are the unsung heroes of making technology "work" in schools. But you see very little written about them in educational technology publications. I extended my appreciation to one tech in an old column called The DJ Factor and wrote a short piece in SLJ about keeping one's technicians happy. But unless I am just looking in the wrong places, technicians are ignored in ed tech publications.

Technicians have always been, I believe, one group of workers who are in a perpetual and steep learning curve - or need to be. (Those who are reluctant learners tend to use phrases like "It can't be done" when they really mean "I don't know how.) The shifting ground of technology impacts techs very suddenly and often without much warning. They are too often impacted by decisions in which they had no input.

While we've not talked directly about it, I am guessing our savvy techs are wondering more than a little what the long-term impact of shifting to GoogleApps for Education and Chromebooks will have on their jobs. GoogleApps is just the latest manifestation of the shift from desktop to cloud computing. While it will be some years coming, I envision that the major technology tool for both staff and students will be a personal laptop/netbook/slate/phone that holds a Chrome-like OS/web browser. These will be easily re-imaged, interchangeable, and, hopefully, maintenance-free. Fewer (or no) computer labs to keep running. Outsourced printer maintenance. LEDs decreasing projector upkeep. Wireless networks ending running Ethernet cables to new locations.

Might the building technician become the next lonely Maytag repairman???

Today, however, our techs are very busy people and an interesting discussion in several meetings haunts me:  How one should go about setting job priorities? Whose job do you do first? Some nominees:

• the person who signs your timesheet/does your evaluation
• the person who is always in your face
• the person who brings you doughnuts of appreciation
• the administrator of the building
• the teacher in front of a class depending on the technology
• the student needing to complete an assignment
• first come/first served (chronological)
• quick easy-to-solve problems first; big time consuming ones later

And I suppose you could ask the same question about the person who gets put on the bottom of the work order pile:

• the never-satisfied
• the hopelessly unskilled/uninformed
• the abrasive

How about it? How should technicians prioritize their tasks? Oh, and be a lot more specific than "doing what has the biggest impact on students." I am guessing everyone will argue that what they do has an impact, either direct or indirect.

 Original post January 10, 2010