The new crib sheets

Want to know something cool? A small company in California is pushing the envelope of personal media technology. Known as pod2mob, the company's software is available in Beta as a download to Cingular and Sprint users who have media-capable phones.

The gist of the service is that once you subscribe, you can use your phone to hit the pod2mob site. Simply navigate to the podcast of your choice and listen to a stream (not a download) on your mobile phone.

Podcasters must sign up for the service and upload their podcasts to the site, so the selection of podcasts currently available is not as large as, say, that on iTunes. But if consumers can free themselves of the need for a separate device, a liberation process pod2mob calls "cutting the white cord," it's not hard to imagine a significant demand for content.

The software and service are still in Beta form, and not every carrier's network will operate with pod2mob. But as a harbinger of things to come, this may be a watershed event. After all, this converts even "dumb" phones into personal media devices, thereby enfranchising the tens of millions of mobile phone users who haven't climbed onto the iPod/mp3 player bus. This throws an exponential boost to the size of the market for media content, whether streamed or downloaded.

Apply this to George Washington High School in Anytown, USA. How many students have iPods is largely irrelevant because GW administrators have told the little darlings to park their pods in their lockers or have them confiscated (no jamming in Health class!). Most schools have similar rules governing cell phone usage during school hours. But with wireless Bluetooth headsets getting smaller and smaller, is it possible that the cherubim might slip one past Mrs. Smith for the Social Studies test? And could they not, then, invest an hour the night before to create an audio crib that they could play back during said test? It takes cheating out to the leading edge of technology!

The upsides are there, too, of course. Mrs. Smith can actually use podcasts as instructional media. She could assign students a project of conducting interviews of family members and friends as part of a civics unit, and the class would be almost universally able to access the material. Mrs. Smith could give an iPod or digital voice recorder to a group of students, who publish/podcast their project, and she could then assign the whole class to write a one-page summary or critique. Students will be able to access the podcast from anywhere (home computer, library, or cell phone). No more excuses about computer crashes and downtime on dial-up service!

The potential for ubiquity means that podcasting may be poised for an evolutionary leap forward ... again. In a year, podcasting went from irrelevant to irrepressible, leveraging the market of thirty-million-plus personal media devices (in the US alone). Assuming pod2mob's Beta goes well technically, and assuming other players enter the space, the potential consumer base for podcasts could easily leap by a factor of ten or more worldwide. There are more than one hundred million mobile phones in the US, and penetration between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five is somewhere in the neighborhood of 75%.

Streaming content (Verizon is doing video) to a mobile phone will change the way people use their devices, and could very quickly change the way consumers define content. A year ago, the biggest buzz about media was the debate over the "power" and resurgence of talk radio. In 2005, podcasting put the power of talk radio into the hands of the masses. Now virtually anyone can broadcast-- or narrowcast-- without needing to seek sponsors or compete for airtime.

Technology is not just changing the way we use content, it's creating whole new genres of content that never before existed. Almost anyone can podcast, and with this technology, now almost everyone can listen. Cool, huh?

How will it shake out? Comment this blog, and let's see where the conversation leads. For great news, views, and resources for educators, check out The Balance Sheet at http://balancesheet.swlearning.com Published by South-Western, a Thomson company.

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Talking books for early learners

Want to know something cool? After generations of "See and Say" auditory reinforcement of reading skills, today's toddlers have a plethora of new technology that makes reading a more interactive-- and some would say immersive-- activity. (See Newsweek's article in the issue dated August 29.)

Talking books, technology enrichment, and other (literally) bells and whistles are taking center stage as the consumer market gears up for the holiday season. But how many of these gizmos are actually helping kids read better, or earlier, or more successfully?

There are websites that "go beyond the book," posing questions about the content to help kids learn to immerse and absorb. There are interactive DVD companions to a printed book, integrating one of the all-time kid favorites (TV) with reading. There are well-known characters playing the role of "reading buddies," to reinforce the concept that reading is fun. And of course, there's the gee-whiz factor of various gadgets, designed to bring kids in with the promise of fun and payoff, such as stylus-based "smart books" like the LeapPad-- now with microphone!-- or touch-spot models (such as the Fisher-Price Power Touch Learning System). Handheld gadgets include the PDA-like Leapster or the Learning Screen Karaoke.

Are we blurring the lines between information ingestion methodologies? If so, maybe we have to wonder whether that's necessarily a good thing. After all, we all know kids who've had a book read to them so many times that they can recite it by rote, and while that may speak well of their memory skills, it doesn't mean much in terms of actual reading proficiency. Then again, language skills are interconnected, and if a child finds something compelling enough to memorize it and verbalize it, she's probably well on her way to literacy.

Toymakers know that parents, doting dupes that we may be, will spare no expense when we think we're doing something "good" for our kids, something that will make them "smarter." Hundreds of millions of discretionary dollars are spent every year buying toys, books, and software that will "help your child succeed," or "unlock their potential," or "reinforce learning."

Tutoring and test preparation services are experiencing unprecedented growth, and as schools move toward more "high-stakes testing" and federally-mandated performance measurement and accountability, moms and dads are looking for any and every way to help their kids excel academically.

Are these early-learning products really doing the job? Or are parents being preyed upon by industries who sell minimally-effective products and services that do more to ameliorate parental guilt than they do to advance reading skills?

The truth is probably in the gray zone. Chances are, lots of these products will do exactly what they claim, simply by getting a child's attention ... at least until the novelty wears off. And it's likely that different kids will derive varying degrees of benefit from them, based on aptitudes, attitudes, and affinities. If your kids can't get enough of a certain red fuzzy monster, then there's at least a chance that if Elmo tells them to read, they'll make the effort. That doesn't necessarily make Muppets key to your child's success, but as a parent, you'd probably take whatever you can get. Likewise, teachers are always looking for ways to motivate kids to do more reading, and to read more immersively. In the early years, many teachers feel it's as important to instill a love of reading as it is to hone actual skills. If Johnny loves to read, he'll read; and as he does more of it, he'll get better at doing it.

Still, we have to wonder whether all of these techno-wonders may leave kids flat at the end of the day. Will a child read a plain-old book once they've tasted the thrills of a talking plush figure? Will interactive books make Dick and Jane look lame in comparison? Or are these things the shape of the future-- will "plain old print" go the way of the slate and bookstrap, to make room for multimedia experiences that blend type with touch and sound? Maybe what we're seeing is the beginning of the next era, when books talk and ask questions and move pictures on a screen, rather than painting on the mental canvas. Maybe our kids need to learn to read, but they also need to learn to absorb multimedia input. Maybe what we're talking about isn't really a new way to read; maybe it's a new way to learn.

Cool, huh?

How will it shake out? Comment this blog, and let's see where the conversation leads. For great news, views, and resources for educators, check out The Balance Sheet at http://balancesheet.swlearning.com Published by South-Western, a Thomson company.

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Students like free stuff!

Major breaking news: College students like free music. This garners headlines from the Associated Press on August 21, 2005. They should have devoted their resources to the profile of a pair of wonderful twin girls--young ladies-- turning 13 today, but instead, their editors blasted the wires with an in-depth piece about collegiate administrators who are "shocked, shocked" that the little darlings are still opting to risk the wrath of the major music labels by illegally "sharing" files. (Which, by the way, is a mighty low-key crime. How about "stealing?")

To the point: many colleges are footing the bills for student access to subscription-based music-- legal music-- that the poor lambs can't transfer to their iPods. Therefore, they find it in themselves to "share" their music through the various peer-to-peer vehicles available. Student largesse, though, raises goosebumps on institutional hackles, since the United States Supreme Court ruled that facilitating, encouraging, or enabling this type of generosity could make the owners of the networks-- the schools-- liable.

Let's set the tone properly: free can be good. Free is hard to pass up. Free is tempting, and given the miniscule odds of being sued for sharing, it doesn't take an economics degree to see where the problem lies.

It's very easy to see why the students feel as though the zero-downside risk is well worth the reward. Even if one happens to subscribe to the theory that the rapacious capitalist swine ought to choke on the petard they've sown with overpriced music and restrictive rights-management software, you can see how the schools might worry. After all, who is more likely to be sued by those piggish mercenaries: a nineteen-year-old kid with an iPod and two weeks of dirty laundry to his name, or an ivy-covered megaversity?

Meanwhile, distribution channels wrestle with various business models which allow varying degrees of access and portability. Last week, Reuters reported that Yahoo's music service would extend their original introductory subscription rate of $4.99 per month (with a year up front; $6.99 monthly) for unlimited access to more than a million songs and the ability to transfer to portable devices as well as sharing via Yahoo Messenger, their popular instant messaging software.

Is it time for the content industries to rethink their business models? Is there a way for music companies to ensure fair recompense without pitting themselves against their own customers? Is sponsorship-- advertising-- the solution? How would students feel if they could listen all they want, anywhere they want, but the first five seconds of every cut on their mp3 player hawked skateboards and textbooks? What about beer? Cigarettes? If the institutions are providing Internet access to their students, are they responsible for the behaviors of those students on the network? Are the schools responsible for third-party content accessed by students via the network? To whom are the access providers responsible?

Technology has changed the way we use content. We look at media assets differently than ever before; we acquire, manage, and use content in ways that confound traditional accountanting models. Academe has for generations maintained an arm's length of ivy between itself and the filthy lucre of the common world, but technology, as it is wont to do, erased the space between orbits. Worlds now collide, and the future belongs to the visionaries who will construct a new one from the debris.

Cool, huh?

How will it shake out? Comment this blog, and let's see where the conversation leads.

For great news, views, and resources for educators, check out The Balance Sheet at http://balancesheet.swlearning.com Published by South-Western, a Thomson company.

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Laptop High and the "Death" of the Textbook

An Associated Press article (www.ap.org) of August 18 features an initiative at Empire High School in Vail, Arizona. The school has eschewed printed textbooks in favor of issuing a laptop to each student, with e-books of various "normal" textbooks, augmented by the integration of Web-based and other digital content.

Students, of course, think this is the cat's meow. Teachers, at least the ones quoted in the article, are generally positive. And since the program is new, there's little in the way of empirical data to flesh out the practical implications.

The concept isn't completely new. More and more districts are integrating digitally-delivered content, and the computers-to-students ratio is narrowing quickly. At last June's annual National Education Computing Conference (NECC), there were countles exhibits, sessions, and ad-hoc discussions about attaining the magical "1:1" that would unfetter schools from their paper demons, and unleash the power of technology.

The concept is grand. The execution, however, though becoming more accessible, may well have a steep learning curve. That's not a reason to veer away, but teachers, parents, and administrators-- as well as students-- will need to define realistic goals and expectations for such programs. As an industry, we must constantly ask ourselves whether we're adopting the new in favor of the old, rather than adopting the better in favor of the outdated.

Personal computing opens myriad doors for students. Publishers and other technology companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in technology-driven teaching tools, homework systems that grade student work and manage assignments, learning management systems, interactive content, dynamic multimedia content, e-books, websites, games, crossword puzzles, online quizzing, prescriptive learning, and countless other endeavors.

Does this mean publishers want to make the textbook go away? Well, yes and no. One school of thought says that paper is an ancient media, whose days have come and gone, while others believe that until there is literally no technology gap, we can't move anything out of print. The "right" answer, likely, will be a gradual migration of some materials from print to digital delivery, which could reduce the size and/or scale of textbooks, and perhaps dilute their primacy at the center of the educational wheel, without losing what is, frankly, a relatively inexpensive, highly accessible, readily available medium.

As student access to delivery hardware continues to grow, whether in the form of laptops or cell phones or PDAs and handheld computers or tablet PCs, publishers need to look for the and avail themselves of the possibilities inherent in those technologies to ADD VALUE TO the content. In other words, a static page of text represented on a laptop screen adds no more value to the content than its' ink-on-paper cousin. But adding in-context hyperlinks to additional materials, animated graphics, audio, a click-in-place glossary of vocabulary, and so on would literally bring the text-based content to life.

Developing and producing these features in tandem with a text can be expensive and significantly more demanding in terms of time to market. And though the content actually has MORE value, paradoxically, the market demands that digital content be offered at a lower price, because "you don't have the expense of the ink and paper."

The fact is that the costs of printing, paper, and binding-- the manufacturing costs of goods sold-- account for only a fraction of the total investment to bring a textbook family to market. So while there may be a significant reduction in per-unit manufacturing cost, there is an increase in development and production costs that could result in a much higher total per-unit investment.

The financial challenges will work themselves out; the consumer-driven free market usually manages to overcome these things eventually. But the larger questions remain: where is the balance between cost and return? How much value can we add to the materials we produce today, and how will teachers and students access (realize) that additional value? Where do we stop? Does every piece of art, every photo, need to become a multimedia showcase? Does every reference to anything need to be hyperlinked to a Google search? Does every key term need an mp3 pronunciation demonstration and a pop-up definition? How should these items be delivered? In their context, within an e-book? Or in a digital supplement, that can exist as a companion to the text? Does every homework assignment need to derive from a classroom management system with automated grading, personalized prescriptive feedback, and real-time online tutoring resources for the student? Can students text-message a live homework helpline for help from their cell phone? Will teachers subscribe to any number of specialized e-mail list services, newsgroups, RSS feeds, web seminars, classroom management systems, and chat sessions?

The question is no longer simply "what can we do?" The real challenge has become the identification of what we can do well, practically, and deliver to the most students, for the greatest benefit. The quest is to find out how to make the most of the various technologies available, even as we push to make more and more new technology available tomorrow. We are presented this challenge, along with the opportunity to guide education through a major evolutionary threshold.

Cool, huh?

Please comment this blog, and add your thoughts to a discussion on the topic. Is Vail, Arizona, doing the right thing? Too much? Not enough? Are we to tied down with ink on paper? To quick to leap to the "next big thing?" What makes sense; what doesn't?

For great news, views, and resources for educators, check out The Balance Sheet at http://balancesheet.swlearning.com Published by South-Western, a Thomson company.

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Want to know something cool?

If Isaac Newton had kept his mouth shut, nobody would have known that he chopped down that cherry tree. In fact, nobody was in the forest when the tree fell, so it barely made a sound.

Most kids of Newton’s day would have scarfed the cherries, hacked the tree into kindling, and sold it for the local witch trials. But not little Isaac. He just wanted his kite back, because it had his house key tied to it, and he needed to get in and finish inventing the electric cotton gin (a risky proposition in the era of prohibition, even if it was a boon to Peruvian quinine farmers).


Lucky for us, Newton was inspired when the tree fell. In fact, as any fourth-grader will tell you, Newton “invented” gravity, and gave rise to timeless theories like South Beach, Atkins, and Weight Watchers.

What if Newton had been more inclined to the biosciences? Would he have codified the ripening cycle of tree-borne fruit; bred a new genus of apple or fruit worm? If he’d been susceptible to more abstruse thoughts at the time, would he have wondered why that particular apple chose that particular moment to fall on his particular head? If he’d been raised a certain way, he would have wondered what he’d ever done to deserve being bonked on the crown in the first place.

Where others saw fruit, or fate, or fortune, Newton saw force. Voila: gravity! His mind noticed, questioned, and reasoned the motion of the apple, the might which overcame adhesion, which converted potential energy to kinetic.

Surprisingly, it took humankind tens of thousands of years to examine and explain one of the fundamental elements of our very existence. Sure, there had been transient theories before Newton’s time, ranging from the theological to the comical. Before we could grasp the groundwork of gravity, our species had first to navigate the prerequisite waypoints that led to Newton’s apple. Geometry, logic, and basic biology had to set the stage for the advent of physics; and the circumstantial forces required to put Newton’s brain in the right place and time are mind-boggling.

“Surely,” you venture, “if it hadn’t been Newton, it would have been someone else.” And that’s probably so; the quest for understanding is hard-wired in the human brain. Inevitable as it may have been, though, consider the improbability of Newtonian physics.
First, you needed a tree. We also needed the man himself to be there. Think of it: he could have taken the bus that day and might never have met his Tree Of Destiny. He might have had a heartier breakfast, and felt in fine fettle, and thus not sought respite beneath her branches. Had he been ten minutes ahead of schedule, he’d have passed the tree in blissful ignorance and missed the event entirely. Construction traffic on the Cambridge Causeway might have changed the course of humanity in the universe.

At the instant of epiphany, it could just as easily have been the vicar or the baker or the barber passing by; recipes for penitence, pie, or fruit-scented conditioner could have been born that fateful day. Newton could have been in foul temper, moved to simply curse his luck and chunk his apple toward the nearest window or mangy dog.

More significantly, what of Newton’s education? What if he were a stranger to the scientific method? If he’d never tasted Euclid or Kepler or Ayn Rand? Would his mind have been open to nature’s demonstration? He might have been inclined to examine probability rather than gravity. What if he’d forsaken his training in favor of macramé and moved to Scottsdale?
Happily, Sir Isaac was in the right place, at the right time, in the right frame of mind. He had the right skills, the requisite knowledge, and the native curiosity to ask the right questions. Everything aligned—call it fortune, or fate, or providence divine—and the world was forever changed.

Often we think we’re doing one thing, when in fact we’re doing another. There will be seminal days in our future when other Newtons will wander past their own providential apple trees, and pause to examine their surroundings, and question their understanding. It is then that our own labors bear fruit, for only when the lessons are applied can the blossom of knowledge bear the fruit of wisdom.

We may be those Newtons. Or we may plant the tree, or the tree that sprouts the apple that bears the seed that germinates the tree. We may teach the next Newton her letters or his manners. We may never know him, but might instead teach his teachers or tutor her friends, who will invite her on a walk one day that takes a turn beneath an apple tree.

We may teach Business or Accounting or Personal Finance to our students. More importantly, we teach them how to think. We teach facts and theories, along with methods and habits. It’s important to know what a balance sheet is, or who invented gravity … but it’s just as important to know how to collect and tabulate and assess information. Someone has to teach them how to ask why.

Thus when the apple bestows its’ fateful kiss, our students, or their students, or their students’ children, are ready. We are, all of us, facilitators of whatever discovery comes next.

Cool, huh?

For great news, views, and resources for educators, check out
The Balance Sheet at
http://balancesheet.swlearning.com
Published by South-Western, a Thomson company.

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