When It Rains It Pours – New MS Courier Tablet!

Just when we are all rubbing our hands and running our minds on the possibilities of the upcoming Apple Tablet, Microsoft has to drop a bomb that blows all those thoughts into oblivion and brings everything into question about where we’re going next.

Watch the clip at Gizmodo before reading on.

After watching the video I just sat staring at my screen. And in the back of my mind a question started repeating – “This is from Microsoft?”

I was an early adopter of the MS Tablet concept. Actually, we had the privilege of getting Acer Prototypes for an early BETA a full year before they hit the shelves. While the Tablet was a great idea, it was never really picked up by developers and most software (good mainstream software) never fully embraced the Tablet gestures and possibilities.

The little that we do see in this video gives me a lot of hope that they may have actually nailed this one. I am so sick and tired of the Windows/Desktop metaphor of all current computers (including the Mac). This UI looks to mirror the way you would do these things in the real world on screen with a pen interface. And there’s a huge core focus on collaboration.

I really want to know if the pen is required, or if fingers will do? It looks like it has multi-touch. Over the years I twice had pen mishaps with my tablets where my only pen was destroyed by a careless slip of fingers, only to leave me with no way to use my Tablet. And one very new HP Tablet took six week to receive a replacement stylus. I wonder if this pen is electronic like the Tablet pens or simply pressure based (like the Cross PDA pens).

I can see teaching young students in a very short amount of time how to use this device. I can also see students opening pages in their Courier to their teacher so their work can not only be graded, but reviewed over the time they work on the assignment to see how they are progressing, and getting nudges in the right direction to complete their project successfully. Not to mention on the flip side “Johnny, I checked your Courier last night and I see nothing for your assignment that is due in two days.” Whoa, think about all the possibilities.

In class a teacher could have their Courier in hand up in front of the class and be flipping through the pages of their students while they work through solving a math problem or writing out an essay. To me, this brief look has teleported me forward about ten years into the realm of the Jetsons, something I’ve not experienced at all while dreaming of the Apple Tablet. I’ve been focused on the Apple Tablet as a eBook+ connectivity.

Hard to make any judgment calls on the success of this or the Apple Tablet at this pre-release late concept stage, but I just snatched up a few of my chips and moved them over to the MS square based on this peek at the Courier.

Another Prospective Eee-Book

While we all sit around and wait for the promised Apple Tablet (aka Ebook+) and the “Kindle Killers” just over the horizon, EeePC announced a two screen full color and connected E-Book in two flavors. A budget and premium model are in the plans. Here are two articles about the announcement with a graphic of a prototype that was shown (likely the premium model):

• Asus ‘Eee Reader’ to Join E-Reader Fray, says Report, PC World
• Asus Rethinks Laptop With Dual-Panel Portable at Cebit, PC World

One thing is certain (and this comes from an early adopter of the Kindle with a very large library), the Kindle is not the device for school kids and education. A school district is not going to adopt a single purpose device that costs $400/student to replace textbooks. Out here in California we are seeing our budgets waste away to nothing, and there’s no relief in sight. In my district we’ve cut over $20m in the past two years, and are due to cut another $20m+ this next July. There are not a lot of places to cut anymore without removing entire departments or programs.

The textbook market is a cash cow and a consumer of big chunks of the annual school budget. Districts already find it impossible to keep up with computer replacements, with many having inventories approaching 10 years old. The only places still getting new computers are labs, and these are usually funded out of non-general fund sources. It’s not a stretch to see districts leveraging the budgets allocated for textbooks to address these shortcomings. If you can replace expensive textbooks with ebooks capable of full color and animation AND Internet connectivity (either through wireless LAN or other) you have a killer device that can change the landscape of the classroom.

Out here in California there is a move to promote open source textbooks by the State. Here’s an artile from Ars Technica on open source textbooks and the challenges they face. Open source or not, e-books do have the potential to ditch those 50lb backpacks and bring fresh computing power to technology starved classrooms. This may finally be the one-to-one technology that sticks. My hope is that one day we can get out of the business of providing students desktop computers and they can bring their own e-books to school. We could provide loaners for those students meeting low income standards who would be exempt from purchasing their own. This would save the most money, but likely not be very popular with parents.

There’s got to be a better way. With budgets tightening I am already hearing rumblings from school administrators to extend the adoption cycle on textbooks to more than five years to cut costs. I can’t imagine the publishers are going to enthusiastically embrace an e-book model, just like the recording industry still battles MP3 players and online music companies. Somebody needs to step out and pilot this technology in a meaningful and measurable way. Until we can show that this will benefit students, not many districts are going to offer up precious budget dollars to test it out.

What saddens me is the lack of enthusiasm or even interest in these technologies by many school administrators. So off to a new school year the students go, weighted down with heavy backpacks and little technology integrated in their daily school lives.

You are the Controller – MS Natal

E3 is going on this week and we are bound to see some interesting announcements. This afternoon I stumbled on a post to Kotaku about the new MS Natal controller system (sans controllers). If this works as advertised, this will make the Nintendo Wii look like prehistoric technology. We’ll have to wait and see.

Still Alive

Yes, this blog is still alive. I single handedly support both this blog and the PacRimX blog. Over the past two months we’ve had a HUGE number of things going on that have drained my time away from these two blogs.

With the school year coming to a close, I will actually get some time to catch up and bring these blogs up to current. I have a ton of updates and pictures from our Kyoto Spring Break Exchange to post to the PacRimX blog. We’ve had to completely reschedule our summer school for February due to travel restrictions for students in Japan travelling to the US due to the swine flu pandemic.

Too many things to list here have fully occupied my time of late. But never fear, over the next few weeks these pages will be updated and back on track. Lots of exciting things are planned for this next school year, with the possibility of some cool things this summer now that the Kyoto summer school is off. So check back soon and you’ll see a whole bunch of updates, and a return to a regular posting of info to these sites.

A New Kid on the Block?

Looks like there’s some buzz over this new virtual world platform. It has all the prerequisites; 3D, spatial sound, application integration, and network aware/friendly. This is the holy grail of virtual worlds, a behind the firewall and public facing platform that can be used for business and education purposes. I know virtually nothing about this platform, as I just stumbled on it. But I am putting this link up to their site for those interested in doing some research.

Rezoning of Second Life?

It would appear that things are changing at Linden Lab lately. There’s a new post up on the “official” blog about upcoming changes:

Upcoming Changes for Adult Content

It looks like maybe the right people have been making noise about the prevalent adult content on the main grid of Second Life. I’ve always complained about it and promoted a zoning of the Main Grid to resolve the issues of conflicts in land use. I’ve had the experience numerous times in the past with educators fleeing the grid after only a short visit due to some casual encounter with one of the flamboyant “adult” citizens. One teacher who was taking a look said inside of 30 minutes of arriving with a new avatar on Second Life she was aggressively propositioned. Not to mention all the teachers that were scared away by the adult video stores, escort services, and other adult establishments that seem to be sprinkled liberally across the Main Grid of Second Life.

While this adult business helped to establish Second Life as a virtual world platform, it is now apparently inhibiting growth in more mainstream uses of Second Life; including the two big ones of big business and education. There have been some whispers of a move to merge the Teen and Adult Grids, but this can only happen if there are measures in place to keep the underage residents away from the hard core adult content.

The blog entry mentions that a new continent will be created where purely adult content can be relocated. This will likely end up being of the XXX variety. That’s where the devil is in the details. What is adult, and what should be moved to this new area in Second Life. How will the established neighborhoods be affected by losing the community that has formed, and what will move into the suddenly open real estate in some of the more desirable areas of the main grid? This blog entry at the Second Life site invites residents to engage in this discussion in the coming weeks to help them to decide what they will do with this reorganization.

There are already a lot of people threatening to leave Second Life and go find the next big thing because of this new restructuring. While it’s sad that these residents feel this way, maybe for the growth of the platform that’s not such a bad idea. Speaking from a purely educational standpoint, having the ability to have students visit the International Space Museum, the Splo, and a few dozen other sites of educational value holds great promise for those who use Second Life for education. There’s only so much to see on the Teen Grid, and the population there is dwindling all the time. Most all of the students I encounter say they have Main Grid accounts and they much prefer the environment of the Main Grid over the Teen Grid. How much of that attraction if to the forbidden zones rather than mainstream use?

This is a risky endeavor for Linden Lab. They’ve built their platform on those people who like to bend the rules, stretch the limits, and experience life in all its glory, if only virtually. The same frictions that exist between the Education community and the Second Life Community Convention (that’s a whole other issue this year) are going to exist on the Main Grid if it’s suddenly invaded by Teens and mainstream users. I suspect that those bitter with the changes may resort to griefing in retaliation for this restructuring. In the end it will be anyone’s guess as to what will become of Second Life. Not many can successfully navigate a move like this and come out of the other side with a more successful model.

 

Sixth Sense for Students?

I’ve always wanted to go to Ted Talks in Pacific Grove. Some of the most amazing things are debuted at this conference. This year is no exception.

Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry unveiled some game-changing wearable technology this year at Ted:

Sixth Sense Unveiling

This is like Surface on any surface (the Jeff Han multitouch). My mind is still spinning after watching this video. With economies of scale this technology could simply be built into a phone or a mini-wearable Bluetooth device that talks to your smartphone at a few hundred dollar price point.

This is just out of the lab, I can already imagine a few dozen amazing applications of this technology, and that’s only in ten minutes since watching this video for the first time. We’re going to need some shades, the future’s looking so bright.

iPhone Kindle?

Huge news today, Amazon is giving away a free Kindle reader for the iPhone. Here are two links to articles about this new offering:

Amazon.com offers free Kindle eBook reader for the iPhone

Kindle iPhone app is “huge” says analyst

This really has the potential to boost both sales at the Kindle store and to drive more publishers to put their books up at Amazon. My wife has really wanted to read ebooks on her iPhone, but most offerings now rely on services like Feedbooks for content. This news was welcomed and unexpected.

The Cat’s got Kindle 2’s Tongue

I am a Kindle owner. As a matter of fact, I got my Kindle in the first few days of orders upon release. I never go anywhere without it, and as an educator, I look forward to the day when the Kindle or some other eBook is capable of delivering a rich textbook experience to students. Imagine compressing 50lbs of books in a backpack into a 10 oz device that also has Internet access.

Well, the Kindle 2 burst onto the Internet a few weeks back. The device is as thin as a Star Trek tablet. Its sleek design makes the Kindle 1 look like 1970’s family wagon. I am still partial to the Kindle 1 though because of the SD card and removable battery. I had a mishap today that put just enough pressure on the screen to crack the underlying layers of glass. The Kindle was DOA when I tried to power it up (a black flashing fractal pattern is all I got). I was given the option of buying a refurbished Kindle for $180 or buy a new Kindle 2 at full price when I called Amazon to report my Kindle’s demise. I stuck with the refirb due to price and openness of the design.

The one thing that the Kindle 2 has that really drew my attention is the text to speech feature. I have had voice synthesis software on my computers for over ten years now. Occasionally, when reading large volumes of pages on the Internet, I will kick on my Text-aloud program and let it do the driving. The AT&T voices (an add-on) come pretty close to natural human speech. I have not heard the text to voice on the Kindle 2, but if it is even remotely close to my computer’s it would almost be worth the price of admission.

Well, scratch that thought. News leaked out last week that Amazon has bowed to the demands of the publishers and is modifying the feature so that authors/publishers can control if their eBook can be read by the Kindle 2. I’m sure there are many legal arguments as to why text to speech is a bad idea; why this robs the publishers of audiobook sales, and why if a Kindle 2 is reading books out loud that more than one person may be able to enjoy the book. Not that the very same thing doesn’t happen when you read a passage out of a book to your spouse, or when you read a bedtime story to your children.

Being one that is eagerly awaiting the education Kindle, I fear that this feature that could have opened doors to printed books for blind readers is now going to become a pawn in the eBook price wars. Why would we want to make a book more accessible? Why would we want an English learner to have the ability to have words read to them out of a book? Why on Earth would we want to rob the poor publishing companies of their potential profits from audiobooks? I was a charter subscriber to Audible.com, so I am no stranger to audiobooks.

I literally have hundreds of audiobooks in my library. One of my most recent favorites is the 25^th anniversary edition of Ender’s Game. I was at a writer’s workshop with Orson Scott Card in San Diego this past summer. When asked how he felt about audiobooks, Card replied that he thought they delivered the truest telling of the author’s story. When the book is “performed” by a good narrator, or in the case of the 25^th anniversary edition of Ender’s Game, a cast of voice actors, the book comes to life. The pace, the language, the tapestry of voices all enhances the experience of the book. Somehow I don’t think he would have the same comments on a Kindle 2 reading of an eBook.

The text to voice feature on the Kindle 2 is a convenience feature, it’s an accessibility feature (finally), and it’s a form of consumption. In no way does it even approach a professionally rendered performance of a book by a skilled voice actor/narrator. How sad that Amazon caved to the demands of the publishers. In my opinion, this move does not bode well for the future of this vital feature when applied to textbooks. This is simply a move by the publishers to milk more money from their books when audibly read by anyone or anything, and it is a demonstration of the greed of this industry. I wonder what’s next? Maybe a fee for each student in a classroom that listens to a story being read by a teacher?

The recent game Spore, by Electronic Arts, was flamed on Amazon.com for the inclusion of highly restrictive DRM on the game disk. People flooded Amazon.com posting low ratings of the game and leaving nasty comments. This action was heard and EA quickly modified their DRM policy on the game. Maybe the Kindle community can come together and protest any book that does not have the text to voice feature enabled. Play the ratings game and vote with your purchases and maybe there’s still hope that this feature can be returned to a fully functional state.

Upcoming NASA MMO

Looks like NASA is moving forward with an exploration MMO. Big Download has an article up on with details and screenshots from the Unreal engine being used to drive this MMO:

First look at NASA’s Unreal Engine 3 based MMO

Named “Astronaut Moon, Mars and Beyond“, the MMO is being developed with a low cost graphics engine that will make it accessible to a larger audience. From the article”

“Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond will be a ‘first-person-exploration’ game that will also include traditional role-playing game (RPG) elements for both single-player and team-based space exploration, but with a realistic twist. Everything in the game will be crafted based on real NASA technology, as well as on prototypes from esteemed academic institutions for the next generation of robotics, spacecraft, spacesuits and space habitation”

“This game is going to be a fresh look at the future circa about 2035,” said Heneghan. “This is a huge opportunity for us as a development team to leverage the work of brilliant NASA scientists who are creating the technology, systems and procedures of tomorrow and really pump up the cool factor so that game players can experience something that hasn’t been possible before.”

This project is following on the success of the Army’s “America’s Army” game. This next fall will see the release of the first module for this MMO. Things are looking up for educational MMO’s and the mainstreaming of this technology for educational use. Check the full article for a lot of screenshots and additional details on this NASA project.