iPad Fever: Part 2 - The Apple Way is not the right way for learning

This is the second part of a two-part post.

In the first I talk about why the iPad is the most exciting thing in Learning & Development since forever.

This one's about the potential dangers of using an Apple tablet for educational purposes. (And how it's probably not that bad after all.)

Part 2
The iPad will change everything, if only indirectly. There are some worrying features that Learning Professionals need to watch out for.

As you can see, I'm excited about the potential for tablet PCs. But not necessarily about the Apple iPad. The lack of proper Flash support is a symptom of the Apple Problem. They're just not team players. (If you're not a geeky person, Flash is the technology used in a lot of games and animations on the web - as well as most of the annoying adverts. . .)

Learning is messier than some care to admit
Education and training is a messy business. A good learning experience will draw on as wide a set of materials and sources as possible. The Apple Way is not exactly conducive to the if-it-works-it-must-be-good approach:

"Jim Groom, an instructional technologist at the University of Mary Washington, expressed weariness with all the hype around the Apple announcement. He said he is concerned about Apple's policies of requiring all applications to be approved by the company before being allowed in its store, just as it does with the iPhone. And he said that Apple's strategy is to make the Web more commercial, rather than an open frontier. "It offers a real threat to the Web," he said."

Steve Jobs has said that Apple is a company that "stands at the intersection of Technology and the Liberal Arts." But it's more accurate to say that Apple stand at the intersection of Technology and the art of entertainment.

Educational TV
Education and news are about as different from entertainment as pop music is, say, from documentaries. Apple are genius at pop music. Click here, sync there, and as long as you're prepared to pay the price for being locked into their crazily-dependent-on-DRM system, then everything's great.

I wouldn't go as far as MacWorld and say that Apple are plotting to help newspapers renounce free, but I'm not alone in worrying about Apple's intentions. We just don't know what their plans are (though, apparently, "Steve believes in old media and wants them to do well'') and that makes things difficult to plan around. Education, like news, needs free.

If you want to get a flavour of how important 'free' is to education, you only have to look at the crazily complicated copyright world of documentaries.

"Documentaries in particular are property of a special kind. The copyright and contract claims that burden these compilations of creativity are impossibly complex. The reason is not hard to see. A part of it is the ordinary complexity of copyright in any film. A film is made up of many different creative elements--music, plot, characters, images, and so on. Once the film is made, any effort at remaking it--moving it to DVD, for example--could require clearing permissions for each of these original elements. But documentaries add another layer of complexity to this already healthy thicket, as they typically also include quotations, in the sense of film clips. So just as a book about Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Jonathan Alter might have quotes from famous people talking about its subject, a film about civil rights produced in the 1960s would include quotations--clips from news stations--from famous people of the time talking about the issue of the day."

Education News
One of the things about news is that news about news is also news. If a big news service breaks a story and gets it wrong (or right) the other news services don't need to seek permission to call them out on that or quote them. Why would they? That would be insane.

Education's the same. If something happens and other people can learn from it, it's fair game. There are, undoubtedly, exceptions to this. But the principles are the same; we shouldn't need to wait until Newton is in the public domain to teach physics.

Who else but Apple?
I'm still glad it's Apple are doing this. They're the only ones with enough control over everything to make a product that we need, as opposed to something we think we want. We can already see that this will be different to the, erm, Newton. Stephen Fry explains the impact of the iPad best:

"I know there will be many who have already taken one look and pronounced it to be nothing but a large iPhone and something of a disappointment. I have heard these voices before. In June 2007 when the iPhone was launched I collected a long list of “not impressed”, “meh”, “big deal”, “style over substance”, “it’s all hype”, “my HTC TyTN can do more”, “what a disappointment”, “majorly underwhelmed” and similar reactions. They can hug to themselves the excuse that the first release of iPhone was 2G, closed to developers and without GPS, cut and paste and many other features that have since been incorporated. Neither they, nor I, nor anyone, predicted the “game-changing” effect the phone would so rapidly have as it evolved into a 3G, third-party app rich, compass and GPS enabled market leader. Even if it had proved a commercial and business disaster instead of an astounding success, iPhone would remain the most significant release of its generation because of its effect on the smartphone habitat. Does anybody seriously believe that Android, Nokia, Samsung, Palm, BlackBerry and a dozen others would since have produced the product line they have without the 100,000 volt taser shot up the jacksie that the iPhone delivered to the entire market?"

I've gone much more linky in today's post than usual. If you're going to click through to any of the links above, I suggest the Stephen Fry* review, as he seems to be the only person to have actually played with a real iPad and makes a good comparison with an alternate version of the Emperor's New Clothes and the lack of confidence trick.

More on the iPad - technopron and gadget-freakery
Here's a round-up of the best posts on the iPad from today for those as excited as me:

• I'm slightly unfair to Apple in the above. Some of the reasons that Apple limits users to what they can do on the iPad and iPhone are technical.
• The interface uses very 'earthy' metaphors that behave like real-life counterparts and, generally, gets a big thumbs up for its intuitiveness all supported by 'amazing' animations.
• Like many, Huffington Post's 13 Things you Need to Know about the iPad highlights the orifice of iTunes and its lack of Flash support may be designed to remove the clutter of advertising - though it's 'just silly'.
• The comment thread at Boing Boing are mostly smart. Like some of the commenters, I'm optimistic about the jailbreaking opportunities for personal use. But I doubt this will help most non-independent learners.
• Engadget has a hands-on. Crucial for me, the e-book bit is aces.
• Linux and the Chrome operating system will fight back. The specialist devices like GPS and eBook readers are toast.
• Winners and Losers: media companies, education and developers vs netbooks, eReaders and carriers.
• It's probably wiser to wait for iPad 2.0. But we all know that most people won't.
• Nerds only: the success of the iPad depends on memory management.
• Tenuous link: the iPad is so exciting because it's so rational and boring?

Updates 29/01/10:
More reactions and thoughts:

• Apple iPad disappoints eLearning Industry. The eLearning industry is disappointed that the iPad isn't designed to do what they're already doing. Does anybody know how the iPad will deal with things like Second Life?
• Quietly, Apple get rid of computer UI cruft. No, I didn't know what 'cruft' was either. This is really interesting if you're interested in User Interfaces and Human Computer Interactions. Recommended.
• Wired on 10 Things Missing from the iPad. Apart from the suspiciously round number of missing things, this is good and an expert techie's view.
• Indie Game developers think it's going to be big. "The Wii of general computing."
• Why the iPad is crap futurism. "All the problems of TV with none of the benefits." Again, another post missing the bits outside the box (ie 'us') but interesting, nonetheless.
• The Apple iPad is just ahead of its time. Interestingly, they see it as a 'replacement for paper'.

Videos
You'll have to learn a lot of weird little gestures:


Though some of the gestures seem very familiar:

The iPad - watch more funny videos

And it's not the smallest Mac out there:


But, at least it fits in a manila envelope:


*And also because I am sworn to love, honour and obey Saint Sir Steven because he's lovely. You have to be British to understand this, but I wish he'd get over his squeamishness and have a baby with Kathy Burke already.

iPad Fever: Part 1 - chunky and clunky are just two of the good things about the iPad

This is a two-part post.

One that's mostly about Learning & Development (though, as usual I jump around the shop using words like education and training and whatever else I'm thinking of.)

And another about the dangers of relying on Apple for all our innovation (with a smattering of technopron linkage for geeks - don't worry, I've marked the gadget-freakery clearly and you're free to ignore it. In fact, you probably should.)

Part 1
The iPad is just a chunky big iPhone with a clunky keyboard. And that's exactly why it's going to have a massive effect on training, education and eLearning.

People are banging on about how it's just a big iPhone and how it's merely good and how Steve Jobs' presentation lacked the wow factor of previous Apple launches. And It doesn't have proper Flash support or support multi-tasking. (According to Hitler, anyway - Warning: NSFW YouTube linkbait video)

Google Wave is not as good as email at email
Remember Google Wave? Blah blah it's hard to use blah blah it's just like email blah blah. And all before anybody had actually used it. The thing about Google Wave is that it's all true, it is absolutely rubbish - if you use it as email.

But that's not what it's for. As Max Klein points out, what it's for is massive fights, mulitple conversations and not losing important documents in the clutter of your inbox:

"It was not always like this. There was a time just a few months ago when I did not have google wave. I think of that time with horror - because that epoch was marked with conflicts, total chaos, money was being lost every day, fights were happening between me and my collaborators. Google Wave came in, and within a couple of weeks, a heavenly peace had descended on my business."

I know this is a learning blog, but you will never convince me that structured massive fights aren't a positive learning environment. Especially when mixed with periods of heavenly peace.

Untethered but not life-changing?
Roughly speaking, the iPad reactions fall into two camps. There's the yay-sayers like Steve Woodruff on how the iPad marks a turning point for increasingly untethered doctors:

"First of all, the pace at which doctors are using smartphones as part of their practice (and especially iPhone/iPod Touch) is accelerating dramatically, as is uptake/usage of the applications. Younger doctors especially will not want to practice untethered medicine.

Second, we are now at a place where the convergence of form factor, power, connectivity, affordability, and functionality argue for widespread adoption. An iPhone screen is pretty small. A laptop is inconvenient. An iPad which can be used for data lookup, data entry, point-of-need multimedia education and reference, and access to electronic health records – what’s not to like?"

And there's the meh-sayers like Learning Solutions Magazine saying that it's more of the same:

"Although there were no life-changing features in the iPad . . . because of the bigger display, it is potentially a better platform for mobile learning than the iPhone or the iPod Touch, although the iPad (like the iPod and iPhone) does not support Flash.

. . . e-Learning creators can use the Developers Kit to whip up well-designed, interactive content, including educational games and simulations, that take advantage of the larger screen real estate, the multi-touch display, and the accelerometer in all models. The 3G models will also be capable of supporting location-based learning. Given a connection to the Internet via WiFi or 3G, social networking from the iPad should be a breeze. This is all good for asynchronous e-Learning.

Synchronous e-Learning on the iPad as shown today presents some problems. . ."

I don't need the second opinion
I have to say, I'm with the doctors on this one. The iPad will change things. And I think it's in Synchronous eLearning that things will change. Here's two reasons why:

1. It's not really got a proper keyboard.
This is probably a good thing. Anything that helps people break their writing habit and draw diagrams and mindmaps and back of the napkin stories in their learning and collaborating is a good thing. Relax, there is a keyboard for all you text-heads, this just balances things out a little.

2. It's just a big iPhone.
This is the killer app. You can't sit round an iPhone. The screen's too small. More importantly, you can't sit round a laptop either. There's only one mouse to fight over. It's always someone's laptop to sit round. But the iPad can sit on a table in front of people who can all lean forward and make marks on the screen. If there's anything that will cure us of Picard's Syndrome, it is this.

We understand Synchronous eLearning now to mean an instructor and learners doing their thing at the same time. It's classroom learning in a funky new classroom. But it's learners who'll be able to synchronise with an iPad.

It's natural for all the reviews and Learning Solutions magazines to focus on the technical specification. And this explains why some people felt Steve Jobs' presentation fell a little flat - no exciting new tech. But they're analysing the iPad in terms of its parts, not its components.

The most exciting new component is us.

(I think this will be huge. As I Tweeted - and was ReTweeted - yesterday:

It's cheap and it's got good text-entry UI. It's sit-roundable. That's the last barriers to Mobile Learning down. #TKO

What do you think? Have I fallen for the hype and entered Steve Jobs reality-distortion field?


Image of iPad-discussing dolls is from Kathy Sierra with the following caption:
"Ridiculous #19 -- the power of perception. Not that it will matter when the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field engulfs us all. A week from now we will ALL be asking, "Why would a feminine product want to name itself after a computer?"