Tablets, Moodle, and Teachers

Welcome to this morning’s Daily Research Update. Today’s themes are tablets, Moodle, and teachers. If you want more context for this research, take a look at our Education and Technology Trends for 2010. You may also be interested in our Weekly Research Index, or you can follow our live, daily research on our Current News page.

(Click here to see a simple listing of today’s suggested reading)

What is Marc Andreessen’s advice for print media publishers? “Burn The Boats.” He is referring to print media and their need to embrace the Web completely. “His point is that if traditional media companies don’t burn their own boats, somebody else will.” And, not everyone is upset about the eventual de-prioritizing of print. Computer programmer and book designer Craig Mod describes his perspective thusly. “Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused. Good riddance.”

As someone who long reaped a paycheck from the sale of books, Mr. Mod isn’t looking at the transition with any form of glee. Instead, he argues that it doesn’t really matter which vessel we choose to read on, since the content will always be king. He writes, “For too long, the act of printing something in and of itself has been placed on too high a pedestal. The true value of an object lies in what it says, not its mere existence.”

One of the things Mod talks about in his article is the fact that the form of the content needs to map well to technology. This article argues that textbooks fit that requirement and will proliferate.

If this is, indeed, the future of textbook publishing, a key question remains unanswered: Is it economically sustainable? Almost every industry–from travel agencies to newspapers–that has moved to a digital model has seen its profits decimated and some existing participants bankrupted. Textbook “publishers are aware that their current model is doomed,” says Peter S. Fader, co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI). Adds WIMI co-director Eric Bradlow: “It’s not just that the bound-dead-tree is a dead model. [It’s that publishers] will have less monopoly power.” Assuming the cost of production goes down, “market forces suggest prices would come down” as well.

Naturally, a primary reason e-books and e-textbooks are growing in popularity is that the technology supporting them is evolving rapidly as well. Along those lines, take note that the iPad will hit the U.S. on April 3. If that’s not enough for you, maybe more pictures of Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’ will elevate your pulse a bit. The important thing to realize is that e-readers and tablets have significant traction in the market. In fact, Gartner is predicting that global sales of tablets will be 10.5 million in 2010.

The continuing shift from desktop to mobile PCs is driving units, and Gartner says that mobile PCs will account for 90 per cent of the growth in the PC market over the next three years. Last year, mobile PCs had a 55 per cent slice of the PC shipment pie, and by 2012, Gartner forecasts that mobile PCs will account for nearly 70 per cent of units. With Apple’s iPad and other tablet computers on the horizon, Gartner is guesstimating that as many as 10.5 million traditional tablet PCs (basically, laptops with swivel screens) and next-generation tablets (like the iPad) could ship this year.

With regard to educational technology, Donald Clark has an interesting take on Moodle and what happens when an open source LMS becomes customized and pulled into many different market niches and product design alternatives.

It’s really just a standard collection of learning management tools with no real pedagogic innovation or intent. There’s nothing in Moodle that wasn’t, or isn’t, in other LMSs or VLEs. The current foray into social networking et al, recasting the system into a souped up Web 2.0 tool, is, in my view, totally misguided. It’s taking Moodle into the realms of highly evolved, but endangered species. Educationalists love to talk about learner-centric, constructivist models of learning but usually default back into a didactic, lecture-driven, ‘I teach-you learn’, behaviour. Stray too far from the current model and any LMS will collapse into a soup of collaborative connectivity. The knives are out, I sense a fork.

Finally, The New York Times ran an intriguing article on building better teachers over the weekend. As we try to reform teaching, one of the problems is understanding what, precisely, makes a good teacher.

But what makes a good teacher? There have been many quests for the one essential trait, and they have all come up empty-handed. Among the factors that do not predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try. When Bill Gates announced recently that his foundation was investing millions in a project to improve teaching quality in the United States, he added a rueful caveat. “Unfortunately, it seems the field doesn’t have a clear view of what characterizes good teaching,” Gates said. “I’m personally very curious.”

Suggested Reading

Andreessen’s Advice To Old Media: “Burn The Boats”

Former Book Designer Says Good Riddance to Print | Bits Blog | NYTimes.com

iPad to hit the U.S. on April 3 | Apple – CNET News

Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’: exclusive pictures and details (update: video!) | Engadget

Gartner says world will buy 10.5m tablets in 2010 | The Register

Sony Reader, You Are So Dead | Kindle | Gizmodo

Electronic Textbooks? You Bet | Forbes.com

Google Acquires DocVerse | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

Donald Clark Plan B: Moodle: e-learning’s Frankenstein

Assessment in a Web 2.0 Environment « Gardner Writes

Building a Better Teacher | NYTimes.com