disrupt learning!

Past, Present & Future of SmartPhones…in the Classroom?

karen mahon — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:39:01 +0000

Here’s a fun infographic for a Friday, originally posted on Edudemic.com. I’m fascinated by the surge in smart device use in classrooms, as you know, and for a few years I’ve been predicting (we’ll see how this works out for me) that smart phone use at school will surpass and eventually extinguish tablet use. I could be totally off base, but it just seems to me that with so many kids already having smart phones and with the price points being more affordable that it will eventually happen…especially in the developing global markets. So I’m curious to see which company will solve the interoperability problem across smartphone platforms…if someone can do it there’s big money to be made in the BYOD market, that’s for sure!

So take a look at this infographic and see if some of the future possibilities don’t blow your mind! Can you imagine some of those integrated solutions being used by students in the classroom?? Whoa!

Android dominated smart devices in Q1, says Canalys (reviews.cnet.com)

My First MOOC!

karen mahon — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:56:59 +0000

Seems like I’ve been having a lot of interesting firsts lately…my first EdCamp last week, my first zip lining a few weeks ago (it was fun!) and now my first MOOC. For those new to the term (which hopefully isn’t too many of you at this point!), MOOC is an acronym for the biggest and, arguably, most disruptive movement in education today: Massive Open Online Courses.

MOOCs, as they’re called, have become the big thing of late in higher education. Numerous colleges and universities are offering MOOCs, sometimes independently, and sometimes as parts of consortia, such as edX, which is based here in Boston. MOOCs do not offer college credit, typically, but most do offer some kind of certificate of completion for students who complete the course. Anyone may enroll in a MOOC and it’s not unusual to find tens of thousands of students from all around the world enrolled in a single course. The most common structure of a MOOC includes online video lectures, homework assignments, an online community to allow interaction and/or collaboration and some type of assessment.

The idea is that all of the materials are available online at all times so that students can access them any time, any place. It’s not fundamentally different from old school correspondence courses by mail (remember those?!? They date back to 1728!), radio- and television-based courses or the early internet-based courses. What make MOOCs hot, I think, is that prestigious universities, like Harvard, MIT and Stanford, are getting in the game and that current technologies allow for a better user experience than in the past. Students can now interact and collaborate with each other though a portal, it’s easy to create videos, slide decks and other products that can be uploaded to a course interface and the web sites are easy to use, which opens up the medium to a larger number of people. In fact, when you look at the enrollment of some courses, there are people in their 70s and 80s who are enrolled, presumably a population that is less tech-savvy than your average 20-something year old.

Okay, so that’s the background to the story. I’ve been reading about MOOCs for the past few months and I’ve been fascinated by the explosion in popularity. I like the idea that non-traditional students can easily take courses that they’re interested in. I like that it’s convenient and I like that people living in remote parts of the world can access courses that they might not otherwise. But I kind of felt like I needed to take a MOOC myself to see what the experience is like.

I signed up for a Stanford course. I’m not going to talk about the specifics of the course here, but the class is A Crash Course in Creativity. (You can click through to learn more about the course.) I’ll write another post about the course when it’s finished, in three more weeks. Mostly I want to write here about my experience so far with this type of course.

So, what do I think of this type of course so far? In short, I don’t like it. I’m as surprised as anyone to be saying this. But you know, finding out first hand what it was like was the purpose of this experiment, so I have to be honest. So I’ll give you my mini-review:

What I like:

I like the convenience of accessing the materials whenever I’d like and while I’m sitting on my couch.
I like that I don’t have to get in my car, drive, park and schlep to a lecture hall somewhere.
Using the interface for the course is intuitive and uploading homework materials is easy.

What I don’t like:

I really miss the meaningful interaction in real time. I am one of those people who annoys everyone else in a class because I sit right in the front and I ask a lot of questions. You know how there’s one in every class? Yeah, that’s me. But in the MOOC medium I can’t really do that. I can submit questions in the community forums, but the responses are delayed and, with 14,000 students enrolled in my class, it’s impossible for the instructor to answer all the questions.
The other part that has been bothering me is that the technical support isn’t good. I have a problem with my account that I’ve had since week 1. I’ve submitted several requests to technical support for help, but they haven’t responded and now the class is half over. Again, it’s probably an issue having to do with the 14,000 students and scaling the support.
There’s no feedback from the instructor on homework assignments. Because there’s no feedback, it’s hard for me to know how to improve my performance. There is feedback from peers, which may provide food for thought, but I want expert feedback.

I’m a pretty motivated learner. I took the course because I was interested not only in taking a MOOC, but in the subject itself. I’ve always been a good student and a hard worker. So for someone like me, at this point in my life and career, a MOOC is probably okay because you get out of it what you put into it. But I’m not so sure that MOOCs would have worked for me in my undergraduate degree. I’m pretty skeptical that so much self-directed learning would have worked for me. The experience feels pretty disconnected to me and I think that is mostly because of the low rate of meaningful responses required of me. I’ve taken programmed learning courses online (in which there is no human interaction to speak of) in which I’ve felt much more connected to the material and the main difference that I can identify is the frequency of relevant responding. Where I end up on this is that while MOOCs may be disruptive, I don’t think they will replace more traditional higher education courses. I think they really need to evolve before they will become a true substitute.

I’m really interested in hearing what you guys have experienced with MOOCs so far. Have you taken one? Have you taught one? What do you think? Huge numbers of students are enrolling, but a large proportion of them don’t finish the courses. What do you think?

EdX MOOCs are not very welcomed at San Jose State (examiner.com)
MOOCs and Beyond (distance-educator.com)
‘The MOOC Moment’: New Compilation of Articles Available (insidehighered.com)
The Pedagogy of MOOCs (edtechfrontier.com)
What are MOOCs, and how can you benefit from them? (wamda.com)
Essay suggests that MOOCs are losing their original worthy goals (insidehighered.com)

My First EdCamp in Boston!

karen mahon — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:33:03 +0000

This past Saturday I attended EdCamp Boston. It was the first edcamp for me and I’ll confess, I was skeptical. I’ve been to other teacher-centric events before and they’ve often felt like what I always imagined cheerleader camp would feel like: lots of “rah rah,” but not much substance. I’d heard a lot of hype about how great edcamps are, so I was anxious to see for myself.

I got to the event in Cambridge and my concerns weren’t immediately assuaged. There were lots of handwritten signs hanging on the walls. There was a big play on the “May the 4th be with you” that seemed a little too clever, if you know what I mean. What was I in for?

I went to my first session, led by an extremely exuberant guy talking about game-based learning. He was excited; the teachers in the room were excited. Was it a little corny? Yes. But I started to feel myself getting excited about their excitement. These teachers were super excited about using games to teach! They were there to swap tips and ideas with each other on how to improve what they were doing using games with their students. And they were there on a Saturday to do it!

Hmmm, I thought as I left the first session, this is turning out to be interesting.

I’ll just tell you about one other session I attended, because it took the cake. It was a session that focused on the 1:1 implementation going on in the Burlington (MA) school district. Burlington isn’t too far from where I live and they have been in the spotlight for a while as one of the first (they might have been the first) high school to implement a 1:1 iPad program. They are now expanding to middle school and upper elementary with the iPads. So the folks from Burlington, including Dan Callahan, brought a group of 5th graders to edcamp to share their experiences using iPads this year.

Well. I almost don’t know what to say about this experience. Those kids were incredible. They each got up and showed a project they completed on the iPad. No nerves, just pride, as they shared with us, the adults. We had lots of questions for them about how they’d created their projects. Their answers typically had 6 or 8 steps referring to 4 or 5 apps. They were blasé about it. As if it was nothing. Some of the apps I hadn’t heard of. Others I’ve tried to use with varying degrees of success. (I told a friend later that I’d like to have one of those kids come over one day to help me get better with iMovie!)

As I sat listening to the grownups ask questions and the kids explain what they had done, I found that I had a huge grin on my face. The grownups weren’t being polite or placating those kids with their questions. We really didn’t know the answers. And the kids were really trying to help us understand. It was awesome. And moreover, it was real.

I don’t have anything really profound to say about that day. But being there and experiencing that session with those kids and teachers just reminded me of why I’m in education in the first place. Yeah, that’s what it’s about. Those kids. Ahhhh.

Okay, back to work.

Oh, but before I go…on June 1 there is a special EdCamp in Burlington, MA, called EdCampxEDU. It’s the first edcamp organized entirely by students. I just registered. Meet me there?

If you haven’t attended an EdCamp yet, you might want to check out the schedule to find one in your area: http://edcamp.wikispaces.com. EdCamps are now being held throughout the US and in many international locations as well. You might not have an experience like mine. But then again, you just might.

Also, huge shout out to Dan Callahan and his crew who organized EdCamp Boston. Dan is also one of the founding members of the EdCamp Foundation, that started this whole thing. You can follow Dan on twitter @dancallahan.

EDcamp experience (educatorsforabetterbuffalo.wordpress.com)
My First Edcamp Experience (teachthrutech.com)
EdCampMetroDC (lgb06.wordpress.com)

Parents’ thoughts on K12 Mobile Learning!

karen mahon — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:07:09 +0000

We know that smart devices and mobile learning are HOT in K12 right now. And here’s what parents have to say (we think they like it!)

Creativity and Basic Skills in Education

karen mahon — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:40:50 +0000

Creativity is a complex subject. To say the least. It’s also a topic that creates a great deal of conflict. I’ve been thinking about creativity for a long time as it applies to learning and education. I’m not really sure that we all would agree on what creativity is, but everyone seems to agree that it’s good. I always find that fascinating. So I did some poking around to see what some definitions of creativity are, as a starting point. Here’s a sampling of what I found.

Wikipedia: “Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby something new is created which has some kind of subjective value (such as a joke, a literary work, a painting or musical composition, a solution, an invention etc.). It is also the qualitative impetus behind any given act of creation, and it is generally perceived to be associated with intelligence and cognition.”

Merriam-Webster: “Ability to produce something new through imaginative skill, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form. The term generally refers to a richness of ideas and originality of thinking.”

Runco & Jaeger (2012) from the Torrance Center for Creativity at the University of Georgia instruct us thus: “The standard definition is bipartite: Creativity requires both originality and effectiveness. Are two criteria really necessary? Originality is undoubtedly required. It is often labeled novelty, but whatever the label, if something is not unusual, novel, or unique, it is commonplace, mundane, or conventional. It is not original, and therefore not creative. Originality is vital for creativity but is not sufficient. Ideas and products that are merely original might very well be useless. They may be unique or uncommon for good reason! Originality can be found in the word salad of a psychotic and can be produced by monkeys on word processors. A truly random process will often generate something that is merely original. So again, originality is not alone sufficient for creativity. Original things must be effective to be creative” (p. 92).

To summarize, creativity appears to be the making of something new that has some kind of effectiveness or value. There is room for you and I to define the requirements for the novelty…perhaps I make something that is new for me, or new for you, or new for the world. And effectiveness, too, would appear to be subjective. It is common for creative works such as music and art to be valued differently by the listener or viewer, respectively, novel or not. So, in other words, creativity is totally and completely subjective!

What about creativity in education? I often hear educators and education pundits advising that one of the main goals of education is to produce creative children. I don’t disagree. But some suggest that we focus too much on skills and not enough on creativity. A few years ago I was at the BETT Conference in London. (To my knowledge, BETT is the largest ed tech trade show in the world. For those of you who have been to ISTE in the U.S., BETT is at least three times bigger.) Well, we had local teachers working on our booth presenting lessons using the IWB and associated technology. At that time, the UK educators were very excited about the companies at the show that were selling digital content focusing on creativity. I remember one teacher, in particular, who I spoke with about these programs. I tried to engage her about the relationship between basic skills and creativity. I’ll never forget that on the subject of basic skills she said to me, “Well, they’re quite boring, aren’t they?”

I was shocked. For me, establishing basic skills is the foundational work required to get to the creativity part. I suppose anything can be boring if it’s taught in a boring way. But how can we expect children to be creative, in any subject, if they are not competent in the basic skills of that subject? Even Jackson Pollack had training in painting. He didn’t just suddenly start throwing paint on canvas!

So today I happened to catch an interview of Gary Marcus on Studio 360, a show on my local NPR station (WBUR). He was talking about creativity and the interviewer said to him (I’m paraphrasing): The common wisdom is that young children are very creative and then the creativity gets whipped out of them as they grow up. Do you agree with that? Marcus’ position, essentially, was that young children are more in exploratory and are not yet inhibited, so they try a bunch of different things. But that it is through attaining skills as they are educated that they are able to bring anything to fruition. I really liked that…thinking of skills as being critical to creativity, not some kind of hinderance.

I also found this on a fellow blogger, Denise Eide’s site, “Basic reading, vocabulary, and writing skills are the tools which unlock creativity. Taught well, these skills are not boring but high energy explorations that inspire.”

Well, how about that?

Runco, M.A. & Jaeger, G.J. (2012). The standard definition of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 24(1), 92-96.

7 Qualities Of Highly Creative People (businessinsider.com)
TOP20 to Boost Your Creativity (worldofinnovations.net)

Teachers Love Technology!

karen mahon — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:41:08 +0000

I really enjoyed this graphic, which originally appeared on OnlineUniversities.com, so wanted to share it with you all here. We’re making huge progress with technology in the classroom. Isn’t it awesome?

Competency-Based Education and Me.

karen mahon — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:34:54 +0000

This image originally appeared on the Mommy Diaries. Click the image to visit the site.

I’m kind of liking this competency-based education thing.

I think I’ve been behind the curve on this, because it’s only really come to my attention recently. And when I did a little more reading for this post, I could see that it’s been around for a little while now. It looks like it started primarily in higher education and has been making its way into K12.

So the first question is, what is a competency? On the CompetencyWorks website it’s defined this way: A competency is a statement of the knowledge, skills and/or behaviors students must master in a specific content or performance area. They explicitly explain the expectation for what a learner should be able to know and do. A competency statement represents essential, enduring, transferable concepts that are at the upper end of knowledge taxonomies such as Webb’s strategic thinking or Blooms’ analyze, evaluate and create.

I like it so far. Now, what is competency-based education? Again, here’s what CompetencyWorks has to say:

In 2011, 100 innovators in competency education came together for the first time. At that meeting, participants fine-tuned a working definition of high quality competency education:

Students advance upon mastery.
Competencies include explicit, measurable, transferable learning objectives that empower students.
Assessment is meaningful and a positive learning experience for students.
Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs.
Learning outcomes emphasize competencies that include application and creation of knowledge, along with the development of important skills and dispositions.

To me it sounds a lot like what we espouse in mastery-based learning, but hey, I’m open to calling it something different if that makes it more acceptable to the masses. And competency-based education seems to be catching on. In fact, just last month the U.S. Department of Education made this suggestion to institutes of higher education: Financial aid may be awarded based on students’ mastery of “competencies” rather than their accumulation of credits. That would really mean a fundamental shift in how universities run, wouldn’t it?

Already, right here in my own backyard, Southern New Hampshire University is the first university to decouple student work from the credit hour. Instead, “students make progress toward an associate degree by demonstrating mastery of 120 competencies. Competencies are phrased as “can do” statements, such as “can use logic, reasoning, and analysis to address a business problem” or “can analyze works of art in terms of their historical and cultural contexts.” I find that absolutely fascinating. And as a side note, it turns out that the kind of program that SNHU is administering is also less expensive. In this generation of skyrocketing college costs, that should be of great interest to all of us.

I want to be part of this movement. It’s exciting. I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to do, because individualizing instruction never is. But I’m on board with figuring out how to adapt what the higher ed institutions are doing for K12. So sign me up. I’m ready. Who’s with me?

College for America: A Milestone for Competency-Based Higher Ed (sys-con.com)
Finally, A Competency-Based College Gets Approved (techcrunch.com)
Competency-Based Education Advances With U.S. Approval of Program (chronicle.com)
Competency-based education heats up with new entrants (insidehighered.com)
Competency-based education continues spread (insidehighered.com)
Feds give nudge to competency-based education: Beyond the Credit Hour (computinged.wordpress.com)

The Standards and creativity - compatible

karen mahon — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:35:18 +0000

Reblogged from Granted, and...:

Why do people insist on viewing the Standards as inconsistent with teacher creativity and choice? I am baffled by such uncreative thinking. That's like saying the architect cannot be creative because every house has to meet building code. Indeed, the whole point of mandating standards as opposed to curriculum is to free people up to create innovative curriculum that addresses the standards.

Android Tablet Use in U.S. Schools: A Response

karen mahon — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 23:12:35 +0000

Hey guys, last week I wrote an update about Android tablet use in US schools. Our friend and colleague, Jarrett Volzer, from TabPilot, wrote a very thoughtful and…ahem…LONG…comment on that page. I think Jarrett raises some great points and wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to read it, so am posting it here for all. Thanks, Jarrett!

Karen, as the developer of the TabPilot Tablet Manager system that you reviewed here. I read this entry with great interest and have been giving it some thought over the past few days. Of course, we’re pleased to see more and more capable Android hardware that can compete with the iPad, as the early attempts were just not even in the same ballpark. But what I’ve been thinking about the most is your analysis on the educational apps themselves.

While it’s great to see so many app vendors finally releasing Android versions of their apps simultaneously or just slightly after the iOS versions, there is definitely still a gap that we had hoped would be more tightly closed by now. And as far as weeding through the junky little apps to find good ones, that’s still tough. But then it hit me: finding educational apps from the standpoint of “instruction” is only ONE of the reasons schools look at tablets. When we consider the other areas, the Android-to-iOS gap is much smaller and sometimes even flip-flopped, and given the price savings of going the Android route, it now makes sense why we’re seeing Android interest levels grow. Of course, we’d also like to think that having a management system like TabPilot to lock down Android devices in a way that’s simply impossible with iOS will help this along too!

Your analysis might help explain why we’re seeing far more interest in Android at the higher grades than the lower ones. So you’ve definitely shed some light on one of the trends we’re seeing. My guess is that lower grades are the ones that focus and benefit more from actually “instructional” apps, whereas the upper grades use them for a wider variety of reasons, from productivity to research. Here are some reasons I’ve thought of based on the past few months in the field. They are not in any particular order, but you’ll see that many (especially #1 and #2 apply more to the upper grades):

1. Internet Research: This may be the #1 factor at middle and high school levels. With so many more resources on the web, from the school’s subscription databases to NASA videos to Khan Academy, having an Internet-accessible device is more important than ever. And there’s nothing OS-specific about these resources…only a browser is needed. I’m guessing that this is 80% of the reason our customers went with tablets…the least expensive way to get students online.

2. Productivity: Most of this is still word processing and perhaps presentation software. Yeah, it sounds old-school and not “cutting-edge creative”, but let’s face it, at higher grades students still do a lot of writing! You don’t need dozens of apps for this, just a good basic office suite, and the free Kingsoft Office for Android fits the bill for MS-Office compatible Word and PowerPoint Documents. Google Docs is another great free way to go. Both of these are free, cross-platform, and offer cloud-based storage.

3. Testing: This is a new driving force of tablet sales. Schools are moving to online testing like Common Core Assessment and realizing they need a ton of new devices to support this. They don’t have enough computers in the labs nor do they have the funds or space for more computers and the testing is expected to begin 2014. Tablets are less expensive and easy to store. But with the iPad, the price ends up higher than that of PC (especially by the time you add the case and extras). Android tablets offer a lower cost alternative. Most 10” tablets meet the required specs published by groups like PARCC & Smarter Balanced.

4. Keyboards: most Android tablets feature a USB port, allowing for the connection of a very inexpensive (i.e. $15) full-sized keyboard. This allows for online keyboarding lessons. Also it’s expected that a physical keyboard will be one of PARCC’s requirements for online testing. Buying Bluetooth keyboards for every student iPad device is simply not practical.

5. LMS Access: Some schools are moving more and more curriculum to an online learning management system such as Schoology and Edmodo. All that’s required on the device side is a compatible app, and the most popular LMSs like the ones I named here have both Android and iOS apps.

6. Student Response Systems: Free systems like Socrative bring student response capabilities (i.e. “clickers”) to mobile devices in true cross-platform fashion.

7. Online textbooks: When Apple’s attempt to dominate the electronic textbook industry with iBooks ran into so much trouble, publishers have looked elsewhere, and creating platform-agnostic content as PDF, ePub, HTML5 or other formats is on the rise.

8. Teacher Presentation: Splashtop Whiteboard allows a teacher to control their computer and annotate on the screen, just as if they were on an interactive whiteboard, but with the ability to move freely around the room or hand the device to a student to allow them to work a problem. If students have devices then a fantastic app like Display Note is worth considering. It allows teachers to take existing desktop content and publish it to student devices for annotation, note taking, or problem solving, and then display work from any student device back to the rest of the class. Both of these great apps are available for Android.

So once we step away from apps that actually teach a particular subject matter, there are many types of tools that are cross-platform, taking the advantage away from the high-priced iOS-specific solutions.

Jarrett Volzer is the President of TabPilot Tablet Manager. You can contact Jarrett through the TabPilot website by clicking here.

Tablets buying guide (reviews.cnet.com)
Rising Android Tablet Sales Causing Worry for Digital Publishers (goodereader.com)
Android tablet review (jandyswansea.wordpress.com)
Gartner Predicts Tablets Will Outsell PCs Within Four Years (dailytech.com)
iPad’s Mini’s price makes it just a small threat to Android tablets (reviews.cnet.com)

Android Tablet Use in U.S. Schools: An Update

karen mahon — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 22:07:18 +0000

About six months ago I wrote about Android tablets, here, wondering if they would be the next big thing in education. And given what’s been happening in the market since then, I thought it would be a good time to write an update of what I’ve been seeing and reading.

First, an overview of the tablet sales. According to IDC (2013), tablet sales worldwide outpaced predictions with 52.5 million units sold in Q4 of 2012. That’s a lot of tablets, with the Q4 tablet market growing 75.3% year-on-year and up 74.3% from the previous quarter’s totals of 30.1 million units sold. IDC attributed this to lower average selling prices (ASPs), a wide range of new product offerings, and increased holiday spending all acting as catalysts to push the already climbing tablet market to record levels.

In Q4 of 2012, Apple continued to lead the tablet market with its sales of iPads and iPad Minis totally 22.9 million units, a 48.1% increase in year-on-year. Not too surprising. But here’s the really interesting number: Samsung, the number 2 vendor, sold nearly 8 million combined Android and Windows tablets, a 263% year-on-year growth. ASUS, with its well-known Nexus branded Android tablet, enjoyed a 402% year-on-year growth during the same period.

So we know that the growth of tablet sales is huge. And we can see that the overall sales growth of Android tablets is far outpacing the growth of Apple tablets, though the absolute number of Apple tablets sold is still quite a bit higher.

But what about in education? Well, the market is still pretty fragmented. There are a number of tablet providers targeting education. There’s LearnPad, Kuno, TabPilot, Kineo, Intel Studybook, XO-4 from OLPC, MEEP, Tabeo, ChildPad, Kurio, Lexibook, Nabi and Vinci, to name a few. And most of you have probably heard about the new Amplify tablet just released by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and headed up by former NYC Schools chief, Joel Klein.

All of these tablets are trying to differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded hardware space. I haven’t reviewed them all and quite honestly, I can’t tell you what the differences are among them. So how will these companies differentiate themselves in the market? I really can’t say. It will be very interesting to watch. It may well end up being a price race to the bottom.

So far, at least, we’re not seeing a big rush for schools to buy Android tablets. Why is that, given the price differential vs. Apple? My guess is that it is due to two big reasons:

1. Nobody ever got fired for buying Apple. I think I’ve told you all before that back when I worked in the interactive whiteboard (IWB) business we used to say this about Smart Technologies products. And Apple is the tablet corollary. Apple is a well-known, premium brand. Just like in the case of Smart, many schools would rather buy fewer units of a trusted brand, premium product, than numerous units of an unknown brand.

2. Android apps for education still aren’t cutting it. Having looked at hundreds of app for both iOS and Android as part of my day job over at Balefire Labs, I can say that the percentage of crap educational apps for Android is higher than that of iOS. Don’t get me wrong, the percentage of crap is high for both operating systems. But about 20% of the ed apps we’ve reviewed for iOS are decent; Android is nowhere near that. And even then, the better Android apps that we see tend to be made by developers who are making cross-platform apps; that is, apps that run on both iOS and Android.

So that wraps up my perspective on where we are with Android devices and apps in education right now. I still think that Android tablets pose a major threat to Apple in the education space. But I think the jury is still out on the timeline for that. Truthfully, it’s happening more slowly than I expected.

Please chime in with your opinions on this, particularly if you are an Android tablet user and can give some pointers to others in education who might be shopping! Do you think we’ll see more schools shifting to Android tablets? When? And why do you think that will happen?

The five best android tablets (eschoolnews.com)
Tablets buying guide (reviews.cnet.com)
Best Android tablets (April 2013 edition) (zdnet.com)
iPad’s Mini’s price makes it just a small threat to Android tablets (reviews.cnet.com)
Android tablets projected to outsell iPad for first time in 2013 (bgr.com)

disrupt learning!

Past, Present & Future of SmartPhones…in the Classroom?

Related articles

My First MOOC!

Related articles

My First EdCamp in Boston!

Related articles

Parents’ thoughts on K12 Mobile Learning!

Creativity and Basic Skills in Education

Related articles

Teachers Love Technology!

Competency-Based Education and Me.

Related articles

The Standards and creativity - compatible

Android Tablet Use in U.S. Schools: A Response

Related articles

Android Tablet Use in U.S. Schools: An Update

Related articles