3 Major Problems With Apple’s Education Announcement

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You probably have already heard about the big announcements from Apple today and how they plan on changing the world of education as we know it.

While you won’t find a bigger fan of technology in education than me, as I read through all of the different news articles and blog posts about this announcement, something just didn’t sit right.

Here’s why…

Rant #1 – You Don’t Own Your Content

Most of the concerns I have with the announcements made today revolve around the iBooks Author app.

This fun-looking application is marketed as a way for educators to make their own engaging “textbooks” or course supplements that students can read. It is designed so that it is easy to add content, images, and videos.

As you can see in the screenshot below from iTunes, the content you create is designed to be made available on the iBookstore. You are encouraged to sell your book – but it can only be sold through the iBookstore – effectively meaning Apple would own your content.

That being said, you can also create a PDF version to give away as you see fit – though PDFs wouldn’t be as interactive and you wouldn’t be able to then import your book into any other platforms.

Note: When I originally published this post, I missed the part about creating a PDF version and ranted about how you wouldn’t be the true owner of your content as you can’t take it with you. As pointed out in the comments below, this is a good step in the right direction.

Rant #2 – You Can Do Better

There are plenty of other tools out there other than iBooks Author that will let you create content to share with students.

For example, blogs make it easy for teachers to upload images, videos, discussion starters, and other information for their students.

And with blogs, you can export your posts to other blogging platforms, create an e-book that can be read on tablets of all kinds, and much more.

Put a mobile-friendly theme on your blog and much of the benefits of having content in an iBook form can be achieved, keeping it all open and easy for every student to access from any tablet, mobile phone, or computer.

Rant #3 – Not A Game-Changer

Most disappointing of all, the announcements today by Apple do not result in any major way of changing the way we approach education. This isn’t really Apple’s fault, as nobody has yet to crack this one and do it well.

In Apple's "walled garden", the digital textbooks and teacher-created content is all only available in iTunes, which limits wide-spread access.

You still have “curriculum” being created in advance and given to teachers and students exactly like textbooks always have been. Now, those textbooks are just lighter, cheaper, and more fun to read (all of which are great things!).

Students are still thought of as “content consumers” in this scenario as opposed to active participants. The new iBook reader allows for easy highlighting and note-taking, which is useful, but there isn’t a way to discuss texts or collaborate with others. It is in these more interactive tasks that students construct their own knowledge and learn best – not through passively reading and playing with images.

What we still need to figure out is a way to manage the individual needs of students – a system that makes it possible to provide a truly differentiated curriculum that is accessible whenever needed. Combine this with an assessment process that continuously keeps teachers, students, and parents informed about strengths and weaknesses. This way, they can work together to make strategic choices about which learning experiences to work through next. If only all of this were easy to build!

No question we are in an exciting time in education as we learn what will work best for students. We’ve yet to understand what will be the true power of a device (an iDevice or otherwise) in the hands of every student at all times. But that day is coming.

And while this post is a bit harsh on Apple, definite props to them for taking the discussion to the next level!

What do you think?

This post was a rather quick mind-dump after absorbing all of the news and taking a look at the new toys. I would love to hear your opinions and even be proven wrong!

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Travelling Toy Bloggers – Coming to a School Near You!

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Note: This post was written by Sue Wyatt, who lives in Tasmania, Australia, and is the fearless leader of the Student Blogging Challenges.

In 2011, I went on a fantastic holiday (vacation) in Canada and U.S.A. for 11 weeks. I drove about 10.000 miles in an automatic car on the wrong side of the road without using a GPS or mobile phone. I visited about 25 different classes arranged by 12 teachers in my PLN.

I didn’t write a blog about my experiences though.

“What!”, you say, “Yet you are writing here about blogging?”

Mr. Davo Devil eating dessert!

Instead of me writing the blog, I had my travelling companion, Mr Davo Devil (#mrdavodevil) write about his adventures. Now, Mr Davo Devil is a soft toy from Tasmania. Naturally, by the name, you can tell he is a Tasmanian Devil.

He wanted students and teachers from around the world to participate in his travels, so after each post he would ask questions or have students create avatars etc. He also had a section where students could ask questions or try to answer those left by other students. A map of his journey was also included.

Since returning home (Mr Davo Devil hid in a classroom in Los Angeles), I have also created a blog for another soft toy called DUsquirrel. DU stands for down under and he will be touring Australia and New Zealand over 2012. His hashtag will be #dusquirrel.

If you are a teacher in Canada/USA and would like to have Davo visit you during 2012/2013, please fill in his booking sheet and we will try to get him to you on time. You may keep him for about a fortnight (two weeks) but he must be at his next stop by their date.

If you are a teacher in Australia/New Zealand and would like DUsquirrel to visit, please check the months he will be in your state and make a booking on his sheet.

I have also started searching the net to find other toys travelling their state, country or world. Check these out:

Tommy the travelling Teddy
Ed the bear
Eddie everywhere
Salt and Peppa
Magnie the whale
Rohi the kea

Do you know of any other travelling toys we could add to this list?

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2012 to be the year of student blogging!

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When Edublogs first launched back in 2005, the average classroom had one computer, and many didn’t have even one.

Certainly there were next to no 1-to-1 initiatives or tablets in schools – and mobile computer workstations were just starting to be used.

Getting to the point, the face of blogging in education is way different now then it was just a few years ago.

On Edublogs, the two most popular types of blogs have traditionally always been:

  1. Classroom – Teachers providing updates and resources for students and parents
  2. Professional – A place for educators to share ideas and collaborate with each other

But over the past couple of years, there has been a new kid in town. It’s gone from a few brave teachers here and there that have pioneered the way for others to becoming standard practice in many schools and programs.

It’s student blogging, and it is here to stay!

And we couldn’t be more excited about it. There has always been students using Edublogs in various ways, but now with more devices available and an increased focus in writing and technology use and various curricula, more and more students are finding themselves blogging in school – young and old and across all subjects.

As discussed in this Time Magazine article, research shows that there are more benefits to blogging then you might first think – including improving student self-esteem and confidence offline and outside the classroom.

What does all of this mean?

Well for starters, it means that we at Edublogs have to do an even better job of making it easy for educators to create and manage large numbers of student blogs. We have tons of great tools already in place, especially on our Edublogs Campus sites, but we definitely recognize there is room to improve.

Yesterday we announced a few new tools to help with teachers that need to moderate and approve all comments and posts on student blogs – and there’s a bunch more in the plans for 2012. We believe that the learning benefits of blogging with students is maximized when students have their own personal blogs that they can take ownership of. Our system is designed (and will continue to improve) to let that be a reality in a safe, engaging, and easy to manage way.

This also means that the online community of educators that are blogging with students is growing. Through twitter, blogs, and other means, we need to develop ways to better facilitate collaboration and connect teachers and students that share similar goals. We’ve seen some of this through blogging projects such as this and the twice-yearly Student Blogging Challenge, but putting systems in place that bring it to the masses would be truly powerful.

What do you think? Are you using blogs with your students?

What Edublogs features or community resources would you like to see?

Photo: Teacher With Students from BigStock

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Posting images to your blog from your mobile device

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Significant improvement in smartphone cameras combined with increased mobile device usage means we’re getting more people asking us for the fastest option for uploading their photos from their mobile devices to their blogs.

Here’s a few different ways you can do it!

Using a blogging app

There’s a wide range of blogging apps available for smartphones, iPads and android tablets.

They vary considerably in terms of ease of use and functionality.  You can read our review of iPad blogging apps here.

Personally I’ve found they can vary in terms of reliability – an app that works well previously can suddenly experience problems (but maybe it is me since I do have a lot of blogs connected to my apps?).

The best option for quick image upload is probably the WordPress app which you can download for free.

To be able to use any blogging app XML-RPC first needs to be enabled.

XML-RPC is automatically enabled on Edublogs.org blogs if you are using an Edublogs Pro blog or a blog which has had extra features enabled using an Edublogs Pro blog.

If you are using an Edublogs Campus (and most likely WordPress) blog you’ll need to enable XML-RPC within your blog dashboard in Settings > Writing.

You aren’t able to enable XML-RPC on free Edublogs.org blogs.

When adding your blog to any app you need to select the self-hosted WordPress blog option for your Edublogs or Campus blog.

Below’s a quick overview of the post interface to help you.

All you need to do is click on Add Image to insert an image into your post.

Using a mobile web browser

You can choose to write posts directly within your blog dashboard using your web browser on your iPad.

For the most part everything works pretty well except you need to be aware of the following:

  1. You can only write using the HTML editing mode as the visual editor isn’t supported by an iPad.
  2. You’ll need to use a browser like iCab mobile as most of the mobile browsers don’t support the upload of images.  Uploading images using the web browser on an Android isn’t possible.
You would use this type of option if students are sharing mobile devices and need an option that allows students to log into their own accounts.

However, there’s still a trick to inserting images using iCab mobile.

Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Click on the ‘Add Image’ icon
  2. Select and upload your image
  3. Click on Show next to the image you uploaded
  4. Copy the Link URL
  5. Click back in the web browser toolbar to return to your post
  6. Click on ‘img’ and paste your Link URL

Posting by email using Flickr

Posting by email to your blog using Flickr is a really cool and simple if you use Flickr.  This is a really handy option for when you’re out or if you have multiple students posting to a class blog.

All you need to do is first set up your Flickr account to upload by email to your blog.

It’s as simple as:

1.  Log into your Flickr Account.

2.  Go to Sharing and Extending tab under your Accounts.

3.  Click on More Sites and Select WordPress.

4.  Add your blog details and click Next.

5.  Click on Edit and then Select Blog Layout.
6. Choose which blog layout option you want to use.
6.  Go to Upload by email to your blog,  set up your blog and click Save.
7.  You’ll now see the email address you need to use to post to your blog.
8.  Add this email address to Contacts on your mobile device.
9.  Now all you need to do is go to Photos on your mobile device and select the photo you want to upload.
10.  Then just select Email  photo, add the Flickr email address, your subject line and your text then press Send.
  • Tip:  Only text written above the image in the email will be posted onto Flickr and your blog.
11.  Presto!  When you look at your blog you’ll now see your post.
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Top Browsers, Extensions, and Tips for Education – The Death of Internet Explorer?

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Perhaps I am a bit obsessive when it comes to web browsers?

And I’m sure it’s directly related to running four different web browsers daily on my computer for work.

But it constantly reminds me how which web browser you use directly impacts your internet user experience.

Here’s our review on what educators need to know about the top web browsers.

And our challenge to you is to trial some of these web browsers for 2 weeks to work out which browser is the best for you!

The top five most used web browsers in 2011 were:

  1. Internet Explorer
  2. Firefox
  3. Chrome
  4. Safari
  5. Opera

Key browser facts to be aware of are:

  • Internet Explorer continues to dominate the web browser market because it comes with the Windows operating system and many users aren’t aware that there are alternative web browser they can use.
  • Internet Explorer’s dominance is decreasing because tech savvy users find the alternative web browsers are faster at loading sites and have less issues than Internet Explorer.
  • Firefox and Chrome are the most commonly used web browsers by tech savvy users.
  • Educational institutions often only allow one web browser to be installed on their computers due to the reluctance to provide support for alternative web browsers.  This attitude is slowly changing as awareness of the benefits of alternative web browsers increases.
  • Some educational institutions continue to use outdated versions of Internet Explorer (IE 6 and 7) which greatly impact user experience (negatively).
  • You can run more than one web browser on your computer at the same time without causing any issues.
  • You should always check your website or blog in Internet Explorer, preferably IE 8, because this is the browser most likely used by people visiting your site.  You can find that a website looks fine in other web browsers but look differently or loads poorly in Internet Explorer.
  • You can check whether you’re using the latest version of a web browser by checking the version number, usually located under Help > About in your web browser, with the information on Browse Happy.

Popular Browser add-ons used in education

Regardless of which web browser you choose, all modern browsers support a large number of freely available add-ons (extensions) that give it new functionality while improving your experience.

These can be searched for and installed from:

Popular add-ons used in education include:

  • Apture - highlight any phrase on a page to search and explore more information without leaving the web page
  • Awesome Screenshot - for quick screenshots
  • Diigo Toolbar - to easily annotate, screenshot and bookmark links to Diigo.  Great for reference and resource sharing.
  • Delicious Bookmark - to easy bookmark links to Delicious and access Delicious bookmarks
  • Evernote - for saving things you see on the web to your Evernote account
  • Read it Later - To quickly save pages to read later.
  • Shareaholic - easily share interesting links via social networks, blogs, IM
  • Springpad - Quickly save ideas and information you want to remember
  • TweetDeck (Chrome) – for monitoring Facebook and Twitter
  • Xmarks Sync - Keeps bookmarks, passwords and open tabs synced across computers and browsers
  • Zemanta - improves your blogging dashboard by recommending images, links, articles and tags while you write.
  • Zotero - helps you collect, manage and cite your research sources

Top Browser trends in Education

The top browsers used by visitors to all 1 million+ of the blogs on edublogs.org provides a good indication of changing browser habits in education and schools.

The sudden drop in Internet Explorer usage in July is directly related to the school holidays in the Northern Hemisphere where educators and their students are able to use the web browser of their choice on their home computers as opposed to what they have to use on their school computers.


When compared with data from StatsCounter you’ll notice Internet Explorer usage in education is lower than data collected for all Internet users while Safari is higher reflecting the higher percentage of Mac use in schools.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share

Overview of the Top Web Browsers

Internet Explorer

Microsoft Internet Explorer might be the most widely used web browser but it isn’t the best web browser.  It tends to be slower loading and more prone to being unresponsive than some of the alternative web browsers.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox is one of the best web browsers and includes an extensive feature set.  It’s interface is fairly similar to Internet Explorer making the change over from  Internet Explorer easy for the new user.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the web browser developed by Google.  It has rapidly grown in popularity this year and recently become the second most widely used web browser (based on StatCounter stats).

It has a minimalistic user interface that is different from other modern web browsers.  However, once you get use to the differences you’ll soon appreciate how fast, simple and stable Chrome is to use.  It also include features that aren’t part of other web browsers such as:

  • Incognito mode – handy for opening different accounts for an online tool using the same web browser (great for testing student and teacher accounts) or when you want to browse in private without it being recorded in your histories.
  • Google Sync – allows you to sync your bookmarks, settings, theme, and so on between different computers running Chrome.

Apple Safari

Safari  is Apple’s web browser.

While it is most commonly used on Macbooks, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch; you can install it on a PC.

Opera

Opera uses a very minimalistic user interface similar to Chrome.

Final Thoughts

Are we missing any tips and advice you would give on web browsers?  Do you have any favorite add-ons to add to our list?

Please leave a comment to let us know!

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