I just read this post on TechCrunch contending that Ning is terminating its free product. I know that Ning has been popular within the educational community – it was powerful and it was free (Ning In Education). Anyone know if those who have taken this route are now out of luck?
It has just announced that it is killing off its free product, forcing existing free networks to either make the change to premium accounts or migrate their networks elsewhere.
Here is an analysis of the future of the ebook market in education from Warton Business School / China.
The National Association of College Stores estimates that less than 3% of textbook sales today are digital versions …
My reading is that the wildcard in attempting to make predictions is whether new providers (e.g, Amazon, Apple) decide to move into the textbook (and I would suggest learning media) market.
Digital media opens up new possibilities (integration of multimedia), but is presently limited in other ways (ease of highlighting and annotation).
Gadget Lab relays a comment from Eric Schmidt of Google claiming that an android tablet will soon be available to compete with the iPad. I think this is great. I am convinced after spending a few hours that there are opportunities in this “space” and the quality of all boats (or tablets) will likely rise with some competition.
I hope the emphasis is on improving the media production capabilities of the device rather than offering another ebook reader/web browser. Not sure I see this in the Gadget Lab description. It almost looks like the defining device is the Kindle and not the iPad. However, it seems unlikely to me that Google would think Amazon and the Kindle are the competition.
My interpretation of the criticism of the iPad is that there is a great deal of focus on its closed nature. I am not sure I see this yet.
Think of the iPad as a car that does not allow you to tinker under the hood and can only be fixed or improved if you take it back to the dealer who sold it to you. No personal tinkering, no third party mechanics. In reality, my car is pretty much like that – I don’t understand it well enough to make any modifications and while I could allow any mechanic to work on it the warranty would make this a stupid decision. I am limited to certain types of fuel, no E-85, no diesel. How inflexible!
So, did I purchase the iPad or the car so I could mess with the innards? Am I enraged because the car does not allow diesel? Not really. The purchases have delivered as advertised. I was interested in whether or not I would have a quality experience in getting where I wanted to go and was able to get there. In the case of the iPad, I was also interested in what I would be able to do when I arrived. With the exception of flash which does result in an occasional limitation, I worry about my freedom and success in doing what I want to do. Now that I find I can work on Google docs, I will wait until a device is able to compete with the iPad within its specific niche before I start searching for ways in which I am being limited. The day may come and you are free to wait if you want.
I have always argued there are limitations to open source. My core argument tends to rest on what I tend to think of as reality – people need to make a living and quality work takes time. The anti-argument that always occurs to me is what I describe as a “hobby”. Clearly, some who make their livings doing one thing or made their livings doing one thing have hobbies involving accomplishments that are spectacular.
So, the question then is whether there are a reasonable number of hobbyists willing to contribute in areas that need to be addressed. Are there hobbyists willing to generate quality learning materials.
The Kahn Academy, pretty much the hobby of Salman Kahn, may represent the ultimate example. This resource provides a tremendous collection of video tutorials on academic subjects (mostly math) and not even ads to cover server costs.
So, one of the concerns about the iPad as an education tool is that it is mostly a consumption rather than a generation tool. Some truth to this position, but it does depend on what you expect. I can’t find a way to generate new docs in Google docs, but it worked fine adding a new post here.
The on-screen works pretty well – clearly an improvement over any hand-held I have used.
