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It appears we like to frame choices in terms in dichotomies, or more simply stated questions of “this OR that.” And certainly, as technologies first emerged from their relative birth places, it was easy to choose from one or the other.  For example, buyers could consider IBM or Hewlett-Packard, Dell or Gateway, Apple or Microsoft.  These giants of technology had a vision that end users would simply buy their platforms from soup to nuts, and never again would these end users so much as look sideways at competing technologies or brands.

But something funny happened on the way to this marketing fantasy, a dream that postulated once consumers at any level, including large enterprises, selected a certain path, they would stick to it forever.  Diversity and innovation came along, and combined with changing technologies and lower prices, they began to erode the idea that only a single platform would suffice.

Today we find many types and brands of technology having to “play nice” with each other rather than force consumers to make a choice.  You can write a Word® document on an Apple® machine, competing tablets can join the same networks, and you can even have different servers running your business.  Perhaps this is your situation?

Abtech realized many years ago that as technologies, brands, and platforms converged, there would be a market need for a single Point-of-Contact company to manage these varying needs.  We are truly a one-stop shop, and we are confident our skill sets encompass the entire spectrum of IT needs under your roof. 

IBM?  No problem.  HP?  No problem.  Cisco router?  No problem.  You no longer have to have different consultants to manage your IT requirements.  It really is possible to have one company do it, and that company is Abtech.  Let us come visit you and give you a free evaluation of what it’s going to cost to manage your IT needs.  You’ll be surprised at the savings, and you’ll be delighted with our service.

Chocolate is nice.  Vanilla is nice.  But Spumoni is the reality of today’s IT operations.

In my last blog entry I mentioned something to the effect of; let's wait and see how the tablet market plays out.

Oh silly me. Apparently not many people are waiting to see how it shakes out. They are jumping in to the deep end and hoping they know how to swim. In the Feb 28th edition of the San Diego Union there was a huge article on digital textbook initiatives around San Diego. San Diego County School District has made it known that they will purchase 20,000 ipads for the coming school year. We know that there are several thousand out there already in small pilot programs (some not so small as one Christian school purchased 1,700 just recently). The same pattern is happening across the world.

All of that is great for my Apple stock but, it is unclear today that Apple is the right choice for correct tablet for all of k-12. It might be for 9-12. Consider that you can get three 7” android based devices for the price of one ipad and kids in the k-8 have smaller hands and excellent eyesight. The latter being the essential ingredient for making 7” devices an integral part of education.

I consider myself the prototypical remote learner. I have taken two college classes and read numerous books since Apple announced itunesU which has been about three months. My personal technology stash is the ipad2, itouch2, a lenovo laptop tablet (which I don’t use as a tablet anymore because I lost the styles), a lenovo laptop proper and a desktop. I have an Android phone because Apple doesn’t support SWYPE. Oh, and on my home office desk I have an HP desktop and an HP laptop/workstation which is pretty high end and had some cool apps on it when I bought it fully furnished.

I use the ipad2 for work as a replacement for a laptop which took almost as much time to get used to as giving up red meat. But, both activities have been good for me. I use the pad for email and web and if I need something remotely, I just use a remote terminal session (itap in my case) and works perfectly for applications that run under the Microsoft oligarchy. I use a pretty sophisticated “notes” app which I use constantly. I have some home apps that work for me (like letting me record a program on directv that I forgot I wanted) and a password vault that secures all of my passwords. Oh, and facetime when I’m in a group and chatting with a relative. My grandkids prefer it over the itouch for games so it is pretty popular with them.

Otherwise, I spend 90% of my time on the itouch. I read constantly, take college courses constantly, listen to educational podcasts constantly and facetime every day with my dad. All on the itouch. It slips in my shirt pocket, I can set the font to whatever size I need for the time of day, I plug it into the audio system of my car (still the fm transmitter as my car isn’t new enough to have an ipod dock) and I literally wear the battery down every day because everything works just as well on the itouch as it does the ipad.

I applaud the schools for jumping in. I don’t even worry that they may or may not be making the right choice on platform because two years from now it will all be different (as it should be). The goal here is to get into play. Whether it is Apple of Android – just do it. Consider something like INTELLIGENT PAPERS which is a great app that turns digital textbooks into something that acts like paper. Take notes, highlight, do homework assignments outside the network (the only product that caches the content), and it supports the Flash content that is currently out there.

Oops, that’s right; Apple doesn’t support Flash and probably never will, though I have seen some Flash content working under the SKYFIRE browser. But, therein lays one of the choices you have to make when thinking of what tablet to choose. Apple doesn’t support Flash and a lot of current content (digital textbooks) have extended media in the form of Flash. This, along with the price, makes an Android decision pretty compelling. INTELLIGENT PAPERS works on both platforms and makes content delivery useful and levels the playing field because in most cases you can deliver the same content to both the Apple and the Android devices through your LMS (learning management system ie: Haiku).

I have visited many schools and watched kids in classes across the k-12 spectrum using both Apple and Android tablets. Regardless of the table choice the kids are more engaged, love the fact that they don’t have to lug 70 lbs of schoolbooks around if they are using INTELLIGENT PAPERS and fundamentally are learning more by accident rather than any preconceived evolutionary process of education.

Keep it going! More about the interaction of different educational conditions in the digital domain when I visit next.

I’ve noticed in some of the technology blogs recently that there are a lot of people who aren’t sure that the digital textbook initiative is going to succeed. Frankly, that is what the politicians in England thought about the small group of “rebels” in the Americas in 1775. There wasn’t enough backing by the general population to get behind any kind of revolt. What they failed to see was that the revolt was already well underway before anyone fired the first shot.

If you aren’t deeply involved in the technology it is easy to miss the fact that THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN. And there is little than anyone can do to impede it. I have visited many school districts in the past few months and I have seen that it isn’t a matter of “if” we are going to do this; it is a matter of “tell me what to do and I will do it”. Many school districts are using existing technology funds to buy tablets and they don’t even have a curriculum to execute. They just don’t want to be standing on the dock watching the cruise ship depart without them. A tether of any sort is better than none.

School administrators often ask, “which tablet is the right one for my school?”. There is some edginess to the question of Betamax vs VHS and trying to make sure they make an intelligent decision but, I don’t even know if you can make that kind of decision today. Tablets are in the infancy of their development cycle. One way to measure the marketing cycle of a product is to reference bananas (daryl, you have clearly gone bananas).

Think of the life cycle of a banana:

• Green banana:            not ripe but still useful in a few recipes
• Yellow banana:           ripe and ready to go – everyone is eating them
• Spotted banana:         some people like them but, definitely heading to the end
• Brown banana:            at the end of the lifecycle

There is probably another category but, ewwww.

Tablets are only approaching the green banana phase. They are cool and they are all trying to climb up the elephants leg (Apple) and take him on but, they have a long way to go. The elephant has its own challenges of being big and bulky and only comes in gray, so there certainly are challenges with it as well. But, remember, tablets haven’t even been around for much more than a year and they are all struggling with size, features, price points and delivery in mass quantities.

It's early, let’s watch the banana get ripe and when it is mostly yellow we should start thinking the market is ripening as well and it will be time to make some definitive decisions on which technology will rule. While that goes on – keep buying whatever looks like it will do the job and make it work. I don't think you can make a wrong choice.

daryl

@k16goesdigital

Ok, that is a weird title. I will be the first to agree to that. It turns out that it was a pretty good movie. I remember thinking this is Clint Eastwood and Barbarella versus Ming the Magnificent. It could happen.

Tying two dissimilar things together and deriving some meaning was what I was shooting for. And the real question is, what does the study of American colonization from 1750 to 1776 have to do with digital textbooks? I study that line of history as a past-time and I work in an environment where digital textbooks are becoming a reality. What they have in common is the term REVOLUTION.  Where much of the computer industry has been an evolution over the past twenty five years, even the price of a TB of space going from $1.3M in 1994 to $76 in 2011 can only be classified as the evolution of disk technology.

So, what is a revolution in the technology world?

My Sears Electronic Slide Rule sits at home on a shelf right next to my Post Slide Rule. This was a situation where the world of electronics literally put a company out of business. Ross Shafer has written a compelling book, aptly named "Are You Relevant" where he explores how companies of all sizes have gone completely out of business (ie: blockbuster) because they lost their relevance. The same thing happened to Post. One day they were there thinking a $395 calculator would never replace a $30 slide rule, and what seemed like the next day they were wandering the streets - unemployed. Wondering how a calculator could sell for $30.

Digital textbooks are experiencing this same timeline. Standard publishers are scrambling to remain relevant in the new digital world. It is estimated today that 40,000 k-12 students in CA are utilizing tablets. That number will grow to 100x in twenty four months. Four million kids reading books and doing homework on tablets instead of writing love letters in the margins of their school books.

More to come as this is a revolution in education and like most revolutions, once it starts, it is impossible to stop (and there might be some bloodshed along the way).

daryl

@k16goesdigital

There is no doubt, as tablet adoption rates continue to skyrocket, that these devices will soon find their way into our children’s classrooms, if not there already.  This had been predicted for several years as the internet grew and school districts invested in the infrastructure to bring it to their classrooms.

But huge advances in Wi-Fi technology (no more wires, Ma!), combined with our hunger for tablet computers such as the Viewsonic Viewpad™, the Lenovo Ideapad™, and Apple’s iPad™,  have made it possible for the educational system to begin replacing traditional textbooks with applications published by the very same companies who were previously providing content via books.

Consider the following: 

• In less than two years, mobile devices will represent the majority of online activity
• 62% of K-12 students prefer mobile devices over laptops
• High school students spend 80 minutes per day using “apps”- in other words, they are using internet information to actually do something versus merely consuming the internet
• High school students spend 4.6 hours per day on social media

This has a tremendous impact on today’s youth, and for all generations to come.  It is entirely possible, and quite likely, that within five years we will see the absorption of the tablet as a standard classroom tool, much like paper, pencils, and a protractor.  Backpacks weighing ten pounds or more will disappear, replaced by smarter, lighter, and hardier computers that students will have at all times.  If you want to be surprised, do an online search for backpack injuries to students and you’ll know what we mean.

Let’s face it: our children are already carrying technology everywhere they go.  Witness teenagers anywhere, and you will find a Smartphone firmly planted in their hands (and it is probably a better device than their own parents are carrying!)  This comfort with technology, and their quickness to embrace and understand it, makes tablets in the classroom a natural extension of the use of technology in education.  At the risk of sounding cliché, it is indeed a “no-brainer” to enable schools so every child can have a tablet, and instruction can thus be elevated to better reflect our changing society’s use of technology.  The sooner we understand this, and the sooner we act, the better our children will be able to compete in a world that is quickly shrinking and where global competition is more intense than ever.

Abtech’s Education Service offering can help guide you through this historic transition from a blackboard-based educational system to a technology-based environment where our children will succeed.  Check out our webpage for more information:  www.abtechsystems.com/abtech-education.

Time to usher in The Future.

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