The final exam

The inaugural Project Management "Teaching with the iPad" has now come to an end.  I'm sorry for the lack of posts lately but I've been spending a lot of time grading and preparing some reports for the research portion of this class.  All but of few of the students have returned their iPads (yea, there were some students we had to wrestle them away from) and we are in the process of conducting focus groups with the students and writing up our findings.  We completed our 3rd survey last week and decided to launch a 4th and final survey in a couple weeks.  That survey will be kind of a post-mortem after the students have had a chance to readjust to being without the iPads. 

I should have some of the results ready next week, so please check back then.  The one thing I wanted to comment on was the final exam.  My final has always been taken using laptops or desktop computers when I'm teaching in one of the computer lab rooms.  It is an essay-type exam and typically results in 3-5 pages of typed material.  I was not teaching in a computer lab this semester so I told the students they could use laptops or their iPads.  Of the 40 students in my class, 39 used laptops and 1 used an iPad.  When I asked them why, there were 2 primary reasons.  First, the students said they didn't mind taking notes during class using the iPads but they were concerned they couldn't type fast enough and would make too many errors if they used the iPad.  Second, some students (even the ones who used external keyboards) said they were a little concerned about 'Saving' the file since there isn't an option to save your work.  A couple students also mentioned that the folder structure makes it sometimes difficult to find files.  Another student said it was too difficult to incorporate a drawing into a text program (none of them purchased the Apple wordprocesser App).  The bottom line was that they wanted to minimize risk and therefore decided to go with what they knew best.

No laps for warm laptops; skin damage is possible

So the next time I get a 'raised eyebrow' look when I note that the iPad doesn't heat up (as opposed to my laptop which absolutely cooks my thighs), I'm going to cheerfully refer the skeptics to this link http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101004/ap_on_he_me/us_med_laptop_toasted_skin

How an entire afternoon could have been saved if I just would have thought to use my iPad first!

This is a comment I received from a student.

As you know, it's big consulting interview week. So, on Monday I ventured out to get the book, "Case in Point" which [student N] has been using and he said he got it at Barnes and Noble. I looked in our ND bookstore, Barnes AND Borders, wasted about 3 hours of my life driving around and getting side tracked at the various bookstores only to come back with nothing. (Of course every other management major scooped them up weeks ago...) and then...3 days later on a Thursday night and hours before my 2nd round with [big consulting firm], it hit me! Eureka! The iPad! I quickly downloaded the ebook within seconds and am accessing it through Kindle. Why didn't I think of it sooner...as the idea becomes more common, ebooks and ereaders will save the world so much time, energy, and hassle!

Student comment

"As much as I struggle with the iPad sometimes, it has opened me up to a whole new way of doing things that I never would have even considered unless I was in your class. I really would be interested in seeing how it can be used in a class a year from now after more companies have developed applications and the textbook companies work out the little kinks. If it can do this much within a year of its launch, I can't even imagine what it will be doing then."

The iPad is intended to replace the laptop or iPhone. I think not.

I find it interesting that I often get asked, "so will the iPad replace laptops?"  I'm not really sure why some people think that the iPad was designed to replace laptops, or smart phones for that matter.  I personally don't think optimal performance can be achieved in a single device (let's call it a form-factor) for the vast array of computing functions we as a society need.  While I was driving home last night I was thinking about multi-functional devices and how in most cases a set of single-function devices almost always outperforms the multi-function device that is intended to replace it.  In most cases, something has to suffer in order to provide the additional functionality.  Sure, a riding lawn mower can mow the lawn and an attachment can be added to plow snow in the winter, but there are disadvantages to this multi-functional device as well such as size, cost, and mobility.  Any good carpenter will tell you that a single function device (what they call 'the right tool for the right job') is infinitely better than devices that try to do too much.  All this brings me back to the iPad.  Do we really want it to have the ability to make cell phone calls?  I can tell you that I definitely do not.  It adds unneccessary complexity and my smartphone is the correct form-factor for making calls.  Do I want the iPad to replace my laptop (even though it is a PC), no I don't.  The file structure, computing power, storage, screen size, etc. are the correct form-factor for doing research and writing papers and many other tasks that make up a big chunk of my life.  Do I think the iPad is convenient, fast, useful, highly-mobile, and incredibly efficient?  Absolutely!  Therefore, I ultimately think I'm going to be a three-form-factor person and I'm pretty comfortable with that. 

Ok, so here's the 'however'. However, even though I'm happy with 3 form-factors, what I see emerging is that my primary computing device (ex: PC or Mac) becomes in a sense my central computer - almost akin to the mainframe of old. This central computer allows my other form-factors to interact seamlessly with it. In addition to the central computer, I will also use 'cloud computing' in the form of storage and processing power through such services as Dropbox, Evernote, Quicken.com, and lots of other Software as a Service (Saas) applications, depending upon the function I need at that very moment. The interesting piece of this is that there would be overlapping features and functions between form-factors but it would be context specific, location specific, form-factor specific, and function specific and ease of use, usefulness, and convenience are likely to drive the decision on which device is used.

Samples of 1 ...and other rantings

Let me preface this by saying I realize I'm a culprit as well...but that's not going to stop me from getting this off my chest.  I completely understand why this happens, but as a researcher I think it is imperative to note that we should not base our long-term strategies on samples of one.  To clarify, we often hear that media reports should be 'fair and balanced.'  My experience with this iPad experiment has actually proven to me that what they call 'balance' is not an accurate portrayal of societal beliefs nor a proper indicator of trends.  Instead, what I see is that balance has come to mean that we find extreme viewpoints on each end of the spectrum and suggest that we have a balanced report of the phenomenon. 

This bothers me only because I frequently receive comments from my blog readers, from publishers, and from other faculty, who latch on to a specific (often extreme) quote from a student, take that as 'fact' if it supports their a priori belief, and use that as justification for excluding all opposing viewpoints. For example, a student at Reed College in a recent NPR report noted that the iPad was horrible for email.  I know in my class of 40 (admittedly a small sample) that the vast majority of students have specifically commented that email is one of the top rated functions (btw, I happen to agree that typing on the iPad is not optimal but now that I'm using a tyPad (and no, they are not paying me to endorse them) the iPad is my email device of choice).  So inevitably I get an email from someone that says something to the effect that students 'hate' using iPads - which simply isn't representative of what I'm seeing on the whole.  The opposite is true as well and equally as surprising.  When a positive report is picked up by the media, I end up getting lots of faculty and administrators asking me why we don't "require" our students to purchase iPads. 

My short answer to all of this is simply: "we are still experimenting."  I don't think the software (Apps) are where they need to be and I don't think the publishers have figured out the right model of delivery and ownership yet.  Does this mean we should stop trying?  No way!  Does this mean 'an eReader for every student'?  Not yet.  But just because a publisher takes away the rights to an eBook after 6 months doesn't mean we should abondon everything we are doing and stick to textbooks (I get this comment at least a few times a week).  Let's listen to the 'crowd' and focus less on the extremes and see where this all heads.  To successfully accomplish this, we need to continue to run pilots across a wide variety of classes and student populations and let the vendors continue to innovate...and let the chips fall where they may.  And by the way, kudos to Reed College!...and how the heck did you get Apple to give you the iPads???  

Apps and 1st-releases

I have a theory that Apple either doesn't require approval of updates to existing Apps or that the process is much quicker than an initial approval of a new app. I say that because I have seen many 1st-release apps that are incredibly raw and/or feature light. Case in point is VitalSource Bookshelf which was just recently released. The reader for the iPad is actually quite pleasant and easy to work with but it is almost totally lacking in features. It allows zooming and has a table of contents, but I'm pretty sure that's it. After using several other Apps for reading, it is becoming apparent that it must be difficult to incorporate features like highlighting, annotating (incl writing in the margins), and searching. I am not sure of the reason but I speculate it relates to digital rights, multiple publisher formats, and probably some technical issues. So I'm guessing that VitalSource will follow up rather quickly with an improved app, but I can unequivocally state after working with 40 student experimenters for the past 4 weeks that 'ereaders' without features are simply not terribly useful as a studying device. I can say that downloading the ebook and having it resident on the iPad instead of having to be connected to wifi is wonderful (VitalSource offers this), but it would be great if we could get closer to an App that does most of these things (mentioned above) as a minimum. In the past 4 weeks the App developers have made a lot of progress...but there is still a little way to go.