Monthly Archives: January 2012

Evolution of Education

Today Apple announced a new way to learn and experience what we normally would through our daily educational lives.

As we all suspected, and Bloomberg predicted, Apples Education event focused on digital and interactive textbooks for the classroom. This wasn’t the only big announcement however, as Apple also re-introduced a “upgraded” iTunes U experience.

Lets begin with what was announced. iBooks2 (really version 2.0), iBooks Author and iTunes U. All of these applications focus on one primary category. Education. The benefit being that they have the perfect platform to do it on as well.

iBooks2
Taking student education to the next level, Apple is releasing today an update to iBooks with version 2.0. The primary add-on that we will see is a new category, textbooks. (As I write this I am trying to locate these textbooks, however I am in Canada and on the Canadian iTunes store so I may not be able to.) Alongside today’s update, Apple announced that a few major partners have signed up and are already working on digital publishing. Pearson, McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt were announced as having already developed textbooks or in development now.

So what will these textbooks bring. With the iPad students will be able to access an entire library of books specific to their educational needs. The books will be interactive which provides a higher level of focus and interest to those who normally would fall asleep. You will be able to manipulate 3D models with a flick of the finger, zoom in on parts of a DNA strange and analyze a digital bug by pressing down on individual parts of its body.

Interactivity is prime but that is not all that is being offered with these new digital textbooks. Students will also have the ability to search, take notes, highlight and store information inside each individual textbook. Students will be able to carry around their entire semesters curricular on something that weighs less then 2 pounds, leaving out the excuse that they had forgotten their textbook at home.

To top it all off, books will be priced at $14.99 or less (presumably US currency), and students will be able to keep the textbooks they have purchased with their AppleID. No need to attempt to collect books once the course is done.

Finally the biggest plus to a digital textbook, it will never be out of date. As versions increase and textbooks get updated, students and schoosl will be able to upgrade them directly on their iPads. No need to continually repurchase the same books a few years out and no more out-of-date curriculum’s. Apple did not indicated whether updates would be free or if upgrade costs would be associated.

iBooks Author
Digital textbooks are great, but how do we get them from the paper state to digital. I am going to assume that large publishing houses will have their own ways of doing it, but for the rest of us, there is iBooks Author.

Available today for free on the Mac App store, iBooks Author is the textbook publishing tool that will turn boring textbooks, into interactive and educational iPad digital’s. Using WYSIWYG and incorporating HTML5 and JavaScript, regular individuals like you and I will be able to create and publish textbooks for curriculum’s for our own students. This is a great way for those who teach but not at a institution to publish their work and help students.

The application itself looks like it belongs to the iWork suit as it looks and feels very much like Pages or Keynote. It will open Word documents and use styles to automatically create sections, headers and layouts. To create animations, you can utilize HTML5, JavaScript or if you already have a Keynote with what you want, drag and drop directly into the app.

They key here I think is its native look and simple feel. Most of us are accustomed to using Pages or Keynote already, so it should not be too difficult to adopt one more application. I am personally looking forward to taking it through its paces.

iTunes U
For those familiar with iTunes U you will disagree when I say that Apple is re-introducing it today. You are right … somewhat. iTunes U has been around for 5 years now and is utilized by professors and students around the world to publish, create, teach and learn full curriculum’s. Available until now for those looking at university level courses in physics, economics, astrology and a whole long list of other topics.

Today iTunes U comes to the iPad. As a stand alone app it will allow those interested in subscribing to courses or collections based on topic or course they want. Most courses will be offered for free as a subscription however, supplemental materials such as notes, apps or course materials will be available for purchase. When new materials do come in, users will be notified and items downloaded automatically.

As I mentioned, until today iTunes U focused on higher education. Today K to 12 schools and teachers will be able to sign up and publish their work. According to the keynote, this material will be offered for free.

Synopsis
Today the educational system has been given an opportunity to truly move forward and innovate. With iBooks2 and iTunes U students, teachers and professors alike have been given a way to educate and learn like never before. The big question now is whether these tools will be taken advantage of, outside of the United States.

For the time being I am going to make the assumption that until more publishers come on board and begin offering their course materials and books through the iBooks store, we will not see a huge shift from paper to digital. That said, we have to tools, we have the motivation all we need now is people to make the push.

Perhaps it is time for individuals like you and I, those who push and adopt technology and innovation, to take seats of power around the world.

Apologies for the lack of photo’s and for the errors you may come across. This post will be edited when time permits and republished with more content.

Managing Your Inbox

Our daily lives involve a few regular activities. When we are awake, we do things that we give little thought to. These activities help us through the day and normally are essential to getting us to accomplish as much as possible. Among these activities is our email.

Email in essence is not an activity but I believe a extension of our communications form. Businesses use email to communicate almost everything. Members of a team or department will use email to request assistance, send important information or updates and to keep track of activities. (Email is also used as a way to prove certain things.) That said, many of our inboxes are bloated to the point where it becomes difficult to find what we wanted to save.

Email should not be by any means a source or cause of stress. Yet I find that it is exactly that for many individuals. Why is that? It’s simple, we mismanage our inboxes.

Now, there have been numerous articles around the web that explain what are the ten top ways to managing your email, or seven power tips to a better inbox. In many cases the recommendations are sound however they are more often then not targeted towards business individuals. That said, how does a regular person manage their inbox?

In essence there is no right or wrong way to manage your inbox and your emails. It all comes down to personal preference and use. Many of us today use a smartphone. Linked to that smartphone we have usually more then one email. Inevitably this means we get flooded with a variety of different emails. From personal to promotional and business. Separating these emails all depends on what type of smartphone you carry. Take me as our example. I have two “personal” emails and my work email attached to my iPhone 4. With the iPhone, I can view all my inboxes in a consolidated view or view each individual inbox on its own. Giving me the ability to view a select set or everything in a few quick steps.

That is all great when it comes to viewing, but it still does not address managing your emails. There is one rule which I recommend everyone to follow. Not ten or seven or five. Just one. Using the four “D’s” of decision making. (In depth review of this model can be viewed on Microsoft.com) Now to be crystal clear, not all of the “D’s” apply to everyone, and it is geared towards business more then personal. That said, it has some valid points. What are these four “D’s”?

  1. delete it
  2. do it
  3. delegate it
  4. defer it

Lets take a quick review of each.

delete it
I know only a handful of people who will actually do this without cringing as they hit that little button on their keyboard. Deleting emails is difficult for many people simply because they don’t know when they will need it next. Most of the emails we get are either spam, promotions, quick updates or requests or something that actually interests us. If you’ve viewed an email and you no longer see a need for it, delete it. It will help keep your inbox clean and it will be easier to find the things that are actually important to you.

do it
When it comes to personal emails, many of us most likely have signed up for newsletters or updates from our favourite websites, clothing stores or any number of different places online. In any given day we are normally flooded with such emails. When these emails come in the best way of tackling them is to skim them. See if something catches your eye and if it does, determine quickly how long will it take you to review or read what it is that interests you. If you will spend no more then four or five minutes, go on and do it. If you are going to need more time then that, flag it some way and get to it later. (Flagging Tip: keep the email as unread. This will help catch your eye the next time you go through your inbox.)

delegate it
This really applies to business individuals or those working with multiple individuals. If a “do it” email comes in, and you are unable to fulfill the request, pass it on to the individual or individuals who’s assistance you require. The longer the email sites in your inbox, the longer it will come back with the results you or the original requestor needs. Delegating takes moments and will yield in most cases quicker responses.

defer it
When you are strapped for time it is best to not try and read everything that comes in. Instead postpone reading or taking action on an email until more time is available. The act of deferring an email can involve a third party application such as Instapaper or filling the email into a separate folder specifically created to store those emails that you need to look at but can’t. Another tool of deferring would be to flag the email. Gmail has “stars” that you can flag an email with. Outlook and Mail for Mac OSX have different coloured flags. The act of deferring however also implies that you will go back and review those emails when you have more time.

As I said when we started, there is really only 1 method I believe most of us should stick to in order to start managing our inboxes. There are numerous other tips that can be recommended, but I will leave those for another post. Start by getting familiar with the four “D’s” and comfortable with using it. Once you have, then we can move on together to decluttering your inboxes.

Conquering CES News

The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is upon us. For those of us fortunate enough to be on the show floor in Las Vegas, it must be a thrilling and exciting time. Christmas all over again, and we just had it too! There is a larger population though, who are unable to make it to the showroom floor and have to rely on news feeds from places like Engaget, MacWorld and TechCrunch. There are several other sources we can also follow, however the frequency of posts and updates during CES I found are the best among these three. Let me also note that many times the information is duplicated.

With such great sources there is an influx of information that comes in. This is no surprise as each writer wants to report on the tech before the next guy. That’s great, however, how do you manage all this information? Today I will run through two tools which I use to collect, store, and read articles and run through some basic rules I use to stay sane during the next few days.

The Tools

Depending upon what RSS reader you use, will depend on the functionality, look and available tools it has. To keep things simple, I have opted to stay with Google Reader. It’s simple, elegant, I can sync it across multiple devices and most importantly, I can log into it using any computer and internet connection. With every program or app (depending on how you view things) there are some limitations. With Google Reader the main limitation that has me a bit frustrated is the lack of social sharing. Instead of being able to click on a Twitter button which would allow me to share a post or article from within Google Reader, you have to open the main article page and then share from within the post. This is annoying but it keeps to the overall elegance of Reader.

So you have a way to collect all the news but you have little time throughout the day to read the articles. You have two options here. Most people will leave Reader and review the news at the end of the day. However, what if you don’t like to collect but rather have the ability to sort? Well, there’s a tool for that. You can either use Google Readers Staring system, or you can save the articles to a Instapaper account. The beauty of Instapaper is that it is an online tool which allows you to store articles for reading at a later time. Accounts are free but the applications for your iOS devices are not. It’s a fair trade off in my opinion. There are a few ways to save articles. There is a bookmark bar “button” which will allow you to save the article anywhere from the web to your account, email long links using the user specific generated email or directly from within Google Reader.
All of this information can be located under the “Extras” tab when you are on your personal Instapaper homepage. When you first save articles in your account, they will all show up on the homepage. From here you have the ability to share, edit, move and delete. Within the share feature, you can link to your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinboard and Evernote accounts to further sort or share with your friends. Once you’ve gotten familiar and comfortable with the UI and you’ve collect a few articles which you would like to keep for long period of time, you can also look into creating folders. I’ve opted to collect items which I would like to reference at a later date or I just found so interesting, I most likely will read them again. You can setup these folders which ever way you would like, to do what ever you need. Some examples: collect articles for your blog or research paper, collect articles that inspire you, collect articles of receipts, how to’s and walkthroughs. The possibilities are really endless. I had discovered this folder option when I was sorting my articles on my iPad through the Instapaper app.

Tips on Staying Sane

So you have the tools now for some rules. With such trade shows like CES and the Detroit Auto Show running in parallel, it can be overwhelming to keep up with everything. I have a few simple rules I use before I drop something into my Instapaper account and to keep me sane.

    1. Focus on a limited amount of stuff.
    2. Keep to the brands you know and or want to know more about.
    3. Save only those articles you will read.
    4. Limit your “hands on” articles. They can be lengthy.
    5. Know when you’ve hit your limit for the day and forget about the rest.

There is nothing wrong with trying to read everything, but you will run out of time. It is virtually impossible in my experience to read each and every articles that is written during CES. For those who manage it though, power to you. There are as I mentioned a lot of repeats or add-ons. Add-ons are articles which expand on a previously written article or are updated to include additional information which was not available during the initial posting. Using my five rules, it is easier to manage and then get through those articles which truly interest you. Whether it be all about phones or tablets, products from Samsung or Acer, narrowing your reading list for the end of the day will help you get through CES, and have the energy for the next day.