Education and Technology

As my online friends know I switched to an iPhone for my personal use back in July 2009. I have enjoyed it very much since then except for AT&T’s poor overall 3G coverage. I have a Blackberry 8330 Curve as my work smartphone and I do enjoy using it for the Exchange Server email and the faster typing. The other day I decided to test an application install using the Blackberry App World and the iPhone App Store.

Before I get started I want to poll everyone to see what smartphone they are using.

I did the test in my dining room, next to a large Window hoping to give both units good coverage. I knew what was going to happen before testing, but I wanted to verify my knowledge with a hard test. I picked the Weather Channel Application as my app of choice for this test because I wasn’t using it on either phone. I actually use Accuweather on the iPhone for its ease of use over the Weather Channel app. I did the install on one device at a time and installed it twice on the iPhone using WiFi once and 3G the next time. The Curve 8330 doesn’t do WiFi and it doesn’t have 3G so I know there is some Oranges to Bananas comparisons here. Knowing this, I didn’t expect the Blackberry to beat the install time for the iPhone, but I also understood the results I did get for reasons I will explain later.

The iPhone loaded the App Store in just over 5 seconds, found the app in search in the time it took me to type “weath” and  the install took just under 30 seconds. I then started the app, let it GPS me and I was up and running the Weather Channel in less than a minute.

Now it was the Blackberry’s turn. Open the App World…….Open the App World…..Open the App World…. Well it took 3 minutes for the App World to open. The next thing was getting the Weather Channel downloaded….DL….DL….DL, which took 1 minute 22 seconds including the accepting of the http connections. I then launched the application and GPS’d myself. Total time to a running app on  the 8330 Curve? 4 minutes and 53 seconds for me to get the weather on the Blackberry.

Now, as I said above the Curve doesn’t do 3G or WiFi so I should expect it to take 2 minutes total time based on speed of service, not the almost 5 minutes it took to install the application. So lets look closer at why it took so long for my Blackberry to download and install the same application. I knew this answer before I started and I’ll let you in on it, the carrier for the Blackberry for some reason has a dead zone around my neighborhood. Anything except the signal for email I have to go outside and walk 100 feet from the buildings to get a clear connection. I have great reception on the iPhone no matter where I am at in this area so I knew it would install in a heartbeat via 3G and the WiFi was a no brainer.

Let us conclude with this gem that I have always lived by because of the math background I have. You can massage tests and data to be whatever you want them to be by how you read the numbers and administer the test. I could just as well have done this test at another neutral location and gotten closer results, or I know of a location that I can go to that the iPhone will be a complete epic fail and not install the app at all because once I get to the front door of this location I lose service on the iPhone, but not on the Blackberry.

Moral to the story? Never believe everything you read unless you have read a lot of different opinions from a lot of different sources that have not worked together to get their results. Mileage will vary depending on the end user. Both the Blackberry and the iPhone have positives and negatives. Whether you like one over the other is more a personal choice or a business one based on your needs.

I like both, my iPhone is great for a lot of thing, my blackberry is great for a lot of things. Which do I like better? Let me ask this, can we marry them both into one smartphone?

Internet, App Store, App World

A post from the past for your enjoyment from the original Edutechation. I have placed updates in the post highlighted to show the progression I have had since I started writing this blog. Happy Holidays!

Will Richardson had an interesting topic for his blog the other day and it caught my eye as some of the idea’s that I’m trying to get started at my elementary school. The five topics that Will asks about are:

1. Wikipedia–as in teaching kids about the collaborative construction of knowledge.
2. Cell phones–as in teaching how to use them effectively as tools for “just in time learning.”
3. MySpace–as in teaching the safe and effective use of the Internet to build networks and publish content.
4. Martinlutherking.org–as in teaching the skills necessary for navigating a world where editing occurs post publication.
5. Google–as in teaching the skills to find the information we want.

What other “basics” would you add?

Source: Weblogg-ed » What’s in Your Curriculum?

Now lets take these 5 items as I see them in our school district. These are in no particular order other than what I considered most important when I read them.

First of all MySpace is blocked by the firewall websense filters as I believe it should be, but there is no reason to not teach Internet safety. I believe you can create a teaching situation that is behind the firewalls that you create a social networking site for the kids that teaches how to interact, publish and be safe at the same time. As I have grew these years I think that we should unblock these sites, but on a specific block of static IP addresses in certain classes on specific computers. What this does is allow a class to be taught about social media, but monitored by a teacher.

Secondly, I see Google as a great source of information. We have already used it to research a 5th grade project called Heritage Day. The students Googled their family names, got relative background and coat of arms, came up with some background from their parents and put it all together on poster boards for an evening program for their parents. Teaching about Google as a media, new library source is the way to give children the step up into technology that they need. Google has grown immensely in the past few years with Doc’s, gmail and cloud computing that it should not be ignored in the classroom setting.

Thirdly, I feel that cell phones have no place in the learning environment. With the latest technology kids have learned how to take pictures of answers, sent them to friends, text answers back and forth so well that it makes for too much of a temptation to cheat. “Just in Time Learning” is “Just in Time Temptation to Cheat”. While I still believe in the cheating part, with the invention of the iPhone and the advances in good use of smart phones I believe we need to start teaching this technology.

Fourth on this for me is Martinlutherking.org. This site rewrites history in an extremist view, and that this site even tries to influence our kids should be an example for us to teach that these views are the extreme minority of society. I can’t stress enough that after looking at this site any reasonable adult will see the hateful nature of the site and why we need to teach our kids why it is wrong to feel that way. Tolerance is very important is our society, this lesson can be learned from this extreme example, but should be taught with care.

Lastly, Wikipedia and wiki’s as a whole are going to be one of the greatest tools in learning that has come to the front in technology. Wiki’s can be used by a class to create a complete lesson on any topic with everyone contributing what they have found in the course of studying. Wiki’s and blogs are where teaching can make great strides in a very short period of time. Wiki’s are a great use or repository of knowledge if they are used responsibly and are edited for fact. They need to be taught because they are great sources of material from everyone working together to add knowledge to the whole.

I believe that as technology changes and times change we all need to reevaluate our positions on things. I have, and found that I needed to move forward with the technology.

Social Media, Wiki, Social Change, Personal Development

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