I've used tablet computers for years, and I love tablets.
I would, if I could, dump the whole Interactive White Board thing and throw a Tablet PC down in the center of every four or five students. With this tool, running Windows7 and no other paid software at all, students could see and hear text, could watch videos, could listen to podcasts, and better still, they could create via keyboard (real or on-screen), via video camera, via microphone, via speech recognition, via handwriting, via drawing, and they could instantly share their creations with their classmates or the world.
So why does Apple's iPad leave me so disappointed? OK, not the iPad itself - Apple is entitled to sell anything it can for whatever price its acolytes will pay ("I’d wear their underwear if they made it."). Rather, it is the embrace of the iPad idea by anyone in the educational community which disappoints me, because this seems - to me - a massive step backwards.
Yes, we're moving back from Web 2.0 to Web 1.5, and Steve Jobs will only charge you $500 (or $1000) for that privilege.
When David Pogue tells you that "techies hate it" but "everyone else loves it" he is accurately reflecting those who surround him in The New York Times building, a group who, like Jobs, has always been a bit scared of Web 2.0... of everyone having equal status as creators and consumers, of open source software and free content. So when Pogue writes, "the iPad is not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it — books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on," he is expressing the fondest wish of The New York Times Company, which has never been very happy with the free-for-all that the internet has become.
"Not nearly as good for creating stuff ... infinitely more convenient for consuming it."
As Web 2.0 has developed there have been, essentially, two different sides of the equation, but the split looks confusing to us because of the frames with which we see our tech companies. On one side we have Apple, Amazon, Barnes&Noble - all of whom want to be "your content store." Remember that Apple "got rich" by figuring out a way to take a nascent music sharing culture and switch it over to a paid, proprietary format. Yes iTunes is cool, yes, it is pretty cheap, but Napster, of course, was a lot cheaper, and a lot more open. Apple got you to buy music for your iPod then, and now they'll get you to buy your newspaper for your iPad. The iPod allowed creative mixing, but the iPod was not a creation tool, it was a storefront in Apple's conception. The iPad is an extension of that theory, as is the Kindle, as is the Nook.
On the other side, a curious mix of companies and organizations, from Google to Microsoft to Adobe to open source collaborators. For these organizations the goal has been compatible and essentially open content which can be used on virtually any device. This side sells access, creativity, and creation, but has no particular interest in actually selling you content. Of course part of this world goes back to the beginnings of the PC when Apple decided to control all the parts in their machines and Microsoft decided to make an operating system which would work with just about anything you plugged into it.
I would, if I could, dump the whole Interactive White Board thing and throw a Tablet PC down in the center of every four or five students. With this tool, running Windows7 and no other paid software at all, students could see and hear text, could watch videos, could listen to podcasts, and better still, they could create via keyboard (real or on-screen), via video camera, via microphone, via speech recognition, via handwriting, via drawing, and they could instantly share their creations with their classmates or the world.
So why does Apple's iPad leave me so disappointed? OK, not the iPad itself - Apple is entitled to sell anything it can for whatever price its acolytes will pay ("I’d wear their underwear if they made it."). Rather, it is the embrace of the iPad idea by anyone in the educational community which disappoints me, because this seems - to me - a massive step backwards.
Yes, we're moving back from Web 2.0 to Web 1.5, and Steve Jobs will only charge you $500 (or $1000) for that privilege.
When David Pogue tells you that "techies hate it" but "everyone else loves it" he is accurately reflecting those who surround him in The New York Times building, a group who, like Jobs, has always been a bit scared of Web 2.0... of everyone having equal status as creators and consumers, of open source software and free content. So when Pogue writes, "the iPad is not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it — books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on," he is expressing the fondest wish of The New York Times Company, which has never been very happy with the free-for-all that the internet has become.
"Not nearly as good for creating stuff ... infinitely more convenient for consuming it."
As Web 2.0 has developed there have been, essentially, two different sides of the equation, but the split looks confusing to us because of the frames with which we see our tech companies. On one side we have Apple, Amazon, Barnes&Noble - all of whom want to be "your content store." Remember that Apple "got rich" by figuring out a way to take a nascent music sharing culture and switch it over to a paid, proprietary format. Yes iTunes is cool, yes, it is pretty cheap, but Napster, of course, was a lot cheaper, and a lot more open. Apple got you to buy music for your iPod then, and now they'll get you to buy your newspaper for your iPad. The iPod allowed creative mixing, but the iPod was not a creation tool, it was a storefront in Apple's conception. The iPad is an extension of that theory, as is the Kindle, as is the Nook.
On the other side, a curious mix of companies and organizations, from Google to Microsoft to Adobe to open source collaborators. For these organizations the goal has been compatible and essentially open content which can be used on virtually any device. This side sells access, creativity, and creation, but has no particular interest in actually selling you content. Of course part of this world goes back to the beginnings of the PC when Apple decided to control all the parts in their machines and Microsoft decided to make an operating system which would work with just about anything you plugged into it.
it's all consumption in Apple's iPad ad
But I'm not here to be anti-Apple. I love my MacBook Pro. I wouldn't have paid for it myself, I run Windows on it half the time, but except for those missing keys Steve Jobs tells me I don't need, its a great computer. I'm here, rather, to be against educators rushing to embrace a controlled consumption tool. I believe that education needs to be significantly about creation, and I believe that education is best served when knowledge flows freely - both with ease and at the lowest possible cost. So I do not want schools embracing a technology which limits creation, and I do not want to deliver our students as customers to Apple or Amazon. We've spent a century delivering them to textbook publishers, and it is time to stop.
But I'm not here to be anti-Apple. I love my MacBook Pro. I wouldn't have paid for it myself, I run Windows on it half the time, but except for those missing keys Steve Jobs tells me I don't need, its a great computer. I'm here, rather, to be against educators rushing to embrace a controlled consumption tool. I believe that education needs to be significantly about creation, and I believe that education is best served when knowledge flows freely - both with ease and at the lowest possible cost. So I do not want schools embracing a technology which limits creation, and I do not want to deliver our students as customers to Apple or Amazon. We've spent a century delivering them to textbook publishers, and it is time to stop.
should one company control access to your students?
With the iPad we are stepping back to an earlier web, a web centered on consumption, before we all created everything we wanted, however we wanted. Before we all began to meet over Skype video calls and G-mail video. Before we became more creators than consumers in our online day.
And I don't want to go back, not even half a step.
- Ira Socol
With the iPad we are stepping back to an earlier web, a web centered on consumption, before we all created everything we wanted, however we wanted. Before we all began to meet over Skype video calls and G-mail video. Before we became more creators than consumers in our online day.
And I don't want to go back, not even half a step.
- Ira Socol
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