Filed under: Education

Today's app is going to blow your mind. Back in 1986, artist Mike Wilks published a book called The Ultimate Alphabet, which featured 26 different paintings, each filled with items that corresponded to the letters of the alphabet; the letter A painting contains airplanes, ants, an apple tree, and so on. There are more than 7,777 words represented in the book, with lots more little secrets hidden in the paintings; there are letters encoded in Morse code or semaphore, obscure symbolism, and visual gags.

The book was part of a competition with a big cash prize, which was solved in 1988, when Wilks published The Annotated Ultimate Alphabet; it included descriptions and clues for each of the items hidden in the extremely detailed paintings. Now, a company named Toytek has begun to bring the book to the iPad, and it allows you to interactively explore some of Wilks' paintings and their extremely deep complexity.

As you can see above, it's wild; you tap on an item, enter the actual name, and then the book will tell you whether it's right or provide clues for the word you're looking for. The app is free to try, though it's prohibitively expensive if you want to purchase everything. You can buy the letters in bundles, and the full purchase price eventually comes out to around US $45 in total. That's pricey, although it's the same cost as the printed book, and you get the interactivity for free. Still, it's a great idea, and there is a free trial if you want to check it out.

This fall, the Duke University Global Health Institute in Durham, NC will embark on a pilot project using the iPad as a field research tool. Masters students enrolled in the Research Methods in Global Health Sciences II class will be broken up into groups of three, with each group being given a 3G-enabled iPad.

The course introduces students to a wide range of methodological techniques, including quantitative surveys research, interventions and evaluations along with qualitative techniques of ethnography, survey design and semi-structured interviews. Funding and assistance with the course will come from the Duke Center for Instructional Technology (CIT).

Educational tech consultant Mark Sperber, who will train students on the iPad and decide upon the selection of software, notes that the iPad will allow students to collect and analyze data while in the field, where it's most meaningful. The do-it-nowability of the iPad was written about by mobile research blogger Tim Macer.

Traditionally, field-collected research could not be analyzed until the researcher got to a computer off-site, but the use of iPads will allow data to be examined immediately. Having done my share of quantitative field research I feel that bringing immediacy to the field opens up possibilities that were never before imaginable. The primary goal, according to sociologist Jen'nan Ghazal Read who will be teaching the course, is to equip students with tools allowing them to make the most of their time in the field and master the complex methods on which they will base their research.

Apple has launched its annual Back to School program for the US, enticing buyers with a free 8GB iPod touch after a $199 online rebate (you can also apply the same rebate to larger-capacity iPods).

To qualify, you must purchase your new Mac and iPod touch at the same time either through the online Apple Education Store, an Apple Retail Store or authorized campus store. Within 90 days from the purchase, submit the $199 rebate form to get back the cost of the iPod touch. To find out if you're eligible as a buyer, check out Apple's requirements. In short -- if you're a student at a higher education institution, a faculty member at any school (K-12 and university) or a parent buying a machine for your college-bound grad, you're good to go.

Timothy M. Chester, the CIO of Pepperdine University, discussed the ongoing controversy of how higher education has and should deal with the encroachment of the iPad on campuses throughout the country. Using information gleaned from the Educause CIO listserv, he found two camps being formed, and a bit of misinformation.

The first camp's motto seems to take the position that if there is a new, potentially useful technology, it should be welcomed immediately. Seton Hill University announced that it will give an iPad to every full-time student in this fall, while George Fox University, a school that has been giving out computers to all incoming students for twenty years, is giving students a choice of either being handed an iPad or a Macbook.

Their position is that they aren't willing to say which is the better choice, and many students already come to school with a laptop. To a large extent this is a marketing gimmick. When was the last time you heard of Seton Hill or George Fox University? But on the other hand, I know from experience that IT departments function more cheaply, and most often more effectively if their mission is to not support every digital device in the known universe. Tech support staff that only need to support a small number of platforms need less training, and parts inventories can be drastically reduced. However, Chester writes that putting an iPad into every student's hands would cost Pepperdine around US$800,000 which he posited would be much better spent on hiring new faculty.

While the app store ecosystem for the iPhone, and now iPad, are filled with a host of useful apps to help students convert, translate and calculate figures and words, there may be times where an iPhone or iPad app just don't fit into your workflow. Back when Mac OS X Tiger was launched, which happened to be back when we all had to walk through 10 miles of snow to get to school, came the advent of Dashboard. In addition to the bundled widgets provided by Apple, one can access a robust library of widgets provided by third parties. Here are four useful Dashboard widgets for learning.

Apple, through the Apple II, served as the gateway to computing for me; my third grade classroom had two Apple IIs neatly tucked away in metallic lock cases. With them, I was exposed to word processing, printing and, most importantly, Carmen Sandiego.

Education is deeply ingrained in the Apple ethos. During his keynote at Macworld 1997 -- where he made his return -- Steve Jobs, in a not so understated way, said that "Apple is the largest education company in the world" and that this provided the company "an incredible foundation...and legacy to build off of." This legacy lives on, as Apple, through its retail stores, offers a variety of mediums to teach kids about and expose them to computing and content creation.

Last week, Apple opened up spring registration for field trips to its retail stores. Breaking with the tradition that students are to bring apples to their teachers, Apple provides a way for teachers to their students to the Apple...store, that is. During these field trips, K-12 students can create a variety of digital masterpieces: a photo album using iPhoto, an edited video using iMovie, or a song in GarageBand, among them. When complete, students can showcase their creations with others in the store. Now that's a class act.

[hat tip to The Loop]

The suburban Philadelphia school being investigated for spying on students using MacBook laptops will lose the ability to turn on the built-in cameras remotely when they update their security software.

Absolute Software, new owners of the LANrev remote administration suite (formerly owned and developed by Pole Position GmbH), say they are going to remove the webcam remote activation feature from the software this week.

In a note to customers today, the company said:

"We know that webcam pictures are an ineffective tool in tracking down the location of a stolen computer. Taking pictures of lawful computer users without their permission, and without law enforcement involvement, is contrary to Absolute's policies and is inconsistent with our existing, more effective product offering."

"Based on recent events, we have received many inquiries about TheftTrack from customers who are concerned and who want to ensure their organizations are not involved in a similar incident."

As a result, the webcam feature is being removed in all updated versions of the software as of tomorrow. Current customers still have the feature, but they are being advised by the company to get the latest update.

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that two I.T. employees of the Lower Merion School District have been placed on leave while an investigation continues.

The incident received national attention when the parents of a Harriton High School sophomore filed a federal lawsuit on February 16, alleging that school officials were activating the iSight cameras built into MacBook computers while students were using the computers at home.

The school has said the cameras were only turned on to locate stolen laptops, but several students said they saw the green camera light come on several times on computers that had not been reported stolen.

Federal Agents are also investigating, and have asked the school for all records relating to the incident.

The school says it has stopped using the software for accessing the webcams remotely. Over the last two years, the district has provided MacBooks to all 2,300 high school students.

A few colleges offer a laptop to incoming freshmen (paid for out of their tuition, of course), but Oregon's George Fox University is, so far as we know, the first college to give students the choice between a MacBook or an iPad. According to Macsimum News, George Fox University's chief information officer, Greg Smith, said, "The issue for us is the changing landscape of educational computing and the value dilution of a laptop for a traditional undergraduate." Smith says offering the iPad as an alternative to the MacBook is well-suited to students who already have a laptop of their own, or students who think the iPad will be a better fit for them than a full-sized MacBook.

Smith is aware that the iPad has potential issues associated with it, and he wonders if the iPad will be able to fully meet students' educational needs. According to Smith, "These are the kinds of questions we really won't know the answer to until we get started." The university hasn't supplied any information on which models of iPad they intend to offer to incoming students, but I'm willing to bet that the 3G-enabled models probably won't be offered.

It will be interesting to see how George Fox University's experiment plays out over the next year. Personally, something like an iPad would have been a fantastic tool for me during my undergrad studies, especially compared to the ancient, leaden brick of a PowerBook G3 I was toting all over campus. Whether students will choose to sacrifice the higher performance and flexibility of a MacBook over the ease of use and portability of the iPad is, as Smith says, something that remains to be seen.

We've talked to a lot of people at Macworld already, but Dr. Ge Wang is one of my favorites -- he's the co-founder of Smule, creators of popular apps for the iPhone that combine music and social experiences in a very interesting way. Wang's day job is an associate professorship at Stanford, and you can tell when listening to him talk about these apps that he's very passionate about using interesting platforms like the iPhone (and soon, as we discuss, the iPad) to help people from all walks of life make and share their own songs and musical experiences.

I can't say I've been a fan of all of Smule's apps (as we say in the video, I still don't really understand the full appeal of Sonic Lighter), but I can't argue that Dr. Wang has some really intriguing ideas about how to use this platform. And Smule's ongoing popularity can't be debated, either. Watch the interview after the link below to see if you might just be a fan of one of the more impressive iPhone app developers.

Being a user of MacSpeech Dictate, a program that allows me to speak to my Mac and wind up with nicely formatted text, I was very happy to learn of today's release of Macspeech Scribe (US $149), which turns recorded audio into Rich Text Format files easily readable by TexttEdit or any word processor. Tom Vain from MacSpeech walked me through the program and it's really quite impressive.

Using recorded audio from just about any source, including an iPhone, Scribe transforms a wide variety of audio file types into text, but oddly enough it won't work with .mp3 files. This isn't a major problem since you can convert them to .aac files in iTunes, but not inviting .mp3 files to the party seems like a major oversight.

After playing a few minutes of audio into Scribe, you train a small portion of the transcription by correcting mistakes in a few paragraphs. This trains the program to recognize the voice. Scribe can handle six unique voice profiles. Once done, Scribe takes in the audio at about twice the speed of speech and delivers your text file in a raw format, but with no punctuation. If you included words like 'comma' and 'period,' they'll be turned into actual punctuation. Using the Nuance engine, it's remarkably good. I've found MacSpeech Dictate to be around 95%, and MacSpeech Scribe should be just as good since it's using the same engine.

I can see this being incredibly valuable for students who want to record lectures, and have a printed copy. But there are many other uses. I did my share of ethnographic research which entailed many hours of recorded interviews and transcribing the data. This was both tedious and mind-numbing. MacSpeech Scribe does the grunt work, since fixing punctuation is a snap when compared to transcribing dozens of hours of speech. I would have killed for something like this in grad school.

Earlier this month we took you down memory lane for a 1987 video that Apple produced about a futuristic product called the Knowledge Navigator.

It was a super smart, full featured tablet with internet connectivity, video conferencing, datebook and browser. It also contained a nifty personable digital assistant.

Ten years later, Apple was still selling the idea of an enhanced tablet. One of our readers sent us this YouTube video of a concept that Apple sent around to educators. It had a lot of the same great technology, like video conferencing and browsing, but the video shows a variety of form factors, including a desktop unit, a tablet, and a small hand held device.

It's pretty clear Apple has done a lot of thinking about what a tablet should do. Who knows if any of these concepts will get into tomorrow's announcement, but the technology is pretty much here to make the dreams into some kind of software/hardware reality.

Will an Apple tablet change the world? Stay tuned.

Thanks to Fred for the Apple nostalgia!

We haven't heard this first hand, but we've heard it multiple times second and third hand from completely independent sources. Senior Apple execs and friends of Jobs are telling people that he's about as excited about the upcoming Apple Tablet as he's ever been. Coming from the man who has created so much, that's saying something.

This got me thinking. More "important" than the iPhone? Why "most important" and not "most innovative"? Maybe Steve wants to do more than reinvigorate the publishing industry? I dug back through some stories where I could surmise what Steve Jobs viewed as "important" – and for a guy with such strong feelings about so much, one thing stuck out: his passion about the importance of education reform. Could it be possible that Steve sees education as the primary function of the tablet? Does Jobs see a tablet in the hands of every school child in America?

In 1995, giving a speech to the Smithsonian, Jobs said:

I think the school situation has a parallel here when it comes to technology. It is so much more hopeful to think that technology can solve the problems that are more human and more organizational and more political in nature, and it ain't so. We need to attack these things at the root, which is people and how much freedom we give people, the competition that will attract the best people. Unfortunately, there are side effects, like pushing out a lot of 46-year-old teachers who lost their spirit fifteen years ago and shouldn't be teaching anymore. I feel very strongly about this. I wish it was as simple as giving it over to the computer.

Twelve years later, Steve Jobs gave a speech at an education reform conference in Austin, Texas. At the conference, Jobs reiterated that no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public schools until principals could fire bad teachers. However, at the same conference he reportedly told the audience that he envisioned schools in the future replacing textbooks with a free, online information source that is constantly updated by experts.

"I think we'd have far more current material available to our students and we'd be freeing up a tremendous amount of funds that we could buy delivery vehicles with -- computers, faster Internet, things like that," he said. "And I also think we'd get some of the best minds in the country contributing."

Maybe Steve sees the tablet as a dynamic textbook that will allow schools to free up those funds? Or, at least these textbook publishers hope so. Who knows, maybe iTunes U was just the start?

This is, of course, nothing more than conjecture – an educated guess, if you'll pardon the expression.

Just a quick note that the online Apple Store has quietly dropped their white MacBook from $949 to $899 for students, teachers, and faculty members. Some buyers are even seeing pricing as low as $728, according to Engadget.

The white polycarbonate MacBook specs remain at 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 memory, 250GB hard drive, SuperDrive, and the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card.

Other Macs and accessories seem to have retained their previous student pricing. It's only $50, but if you're an education customer in need of a cheap Mac this is a nice post-holiday gift from Apple.