THE IMPACT OF TABLET COMPUTERS IN EDUCATION
Do the iPad, PlayBook and other tablet computers have the potential to play an important role in education? That is the topic of April’s Educational Technology Debate at edutechdebate.org. Some of the issues discussed include cost-effectiveness, incompatible teaching styles, connectivity challenges and the lack of culturally-specific learning materials.
One sample comment talks about the support required for technology in education:
You could be living in a very remote area, drop a working car into my community but without a road or a highway, I won’t get very far. I still need fuel, roads and a map to make the journey from one community to the next. Maybe Cisco, the World Bank and Google will join forces to help build out global network high-ways in areas that have little or no reliable power or internet access. Then we’ll see the potential impact a lot sooner. That’s one possible future.
http://edutechdebate.org
VIDEO IN EDUCATION: BEYOND LECTURE CAPTURE
The uses of video for education are many and varied. While video lectures are available from many of the world’s top scholars, “lecture capture” is just one limited way video is being used for education. Other approaches include Khan Academy lessons, which are created expressly for video and supported by a robust website, video-based assignments, videoconferencing and video streaming.
For a thoughtful discussion of the rapidly evolving use of video in education, see Paul Stacey’s “Musings on the edtech frontier” blog post:
http://edtechfrontier.com/2011/04/01/video-edu
SKYPE FOR EDUCATORS
“Skype in the Classroom” is a free community that helps teachers use Skype’s voice-over-Internet service to help their students learn. This new web space enables teachers to connect with each other, find partner classes and share ideas. As of 2010, Skype had 663 million registered users worldwide who use the software application to communicate by voice and video over the Internet at no cost. Microsoft’s recent purchase of Skype – paying $8.5 billion for a service which has yet to turn a profit – has captured worldwide attention.
http://education.skype.com
EVALUATING OPEN SOURCE ALTERNATIVES TO MICROSOFT OFFICE
Openoffice.org and LibreOffice are two open source alternatives to the Microsoft Office suite of business productivity applications. An article in InfoWorld provides a thoughtful evaluation of the two open source competitors.
http://tinyurl.com/OpenOfficeDilemma