There is no box

thinking out loud about technology, education and life

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K-12 Superintendent, reformed IT guy, educator, 1:1 evangelist, life long learner, father, husband, geek, ex self-propelled field artillery turret mechanic, GCT, CCTO, INFP

  • Apple Fan Boy – The Holy Wars Return

    Apparently to some Android fanboys on Google+ I came off sounding like an Apple fan in my last post about the Nexus 7 and the iPad mini. Well, I have been running iOS devices since the iPhone 3 days so yes, I’m a bit entrenched in the iOS ecosystem. (And yes, I shouldn’t let a few posts get to me, but it was write this reply or work on virtual desktops, so here we go).

    I have not spent all of my past waking moments in iOS. I did run a rooted Nook Tablet with Cyanogen for several months and found Android to be hacker friendly but not as good as iOS at the things that were important to me at the time. While the hardware and the OS have much improved, I still feel pretty much the same way.

    As I noted in my device comparison, I’m vested in the Air Video Server app for playing my media library. If the Air Video Server app was made available for Android tomorrow, I’d still prefer watching video on the mini due to the better screen brightness and the more comfortable feel of the device when held in landscape mode. While watching YouTube on the Nexus 7 and then going back to the mini, I find the video looks better to me on the iPad, even without the retina display. And let’s not forget about the magic that is AirPlay Mirroring.

    The bottom line for me is that the iPad mini runs the apps I want (and have accumulated over the years), lasts on standby for days and generally feels better in daily use. And yes, it has a hardware button that works. I can’t say that has been the case with the Nexus’ soft buttons all the time. I also much prefer the 4:3 form factor of the mini to the 16:9 wide format of the nexus.

    Is the iPad mini for everyone? With a $139 price premium over the Nexus 7, the answer is a solid no. However, were I buying a 7″ class tablet for my Mom (not that I would) and thinking about those family tech support calls, the iPad mini would be my choice hands down. If I had a teenager, I’d think long and hard about a Nexus 7, although a 4.3″ Android smart phone would probably be preferable. I’m also very interested in Android’s multi-user mode as I think this would be a great feature for a “living room” tablet but as yet, I’ve not seen a 10″ android tablet I really like (hardware wise).

    All of this reminds me of the Windows vs. Mac holy war from days gone by. Now it seems, Android and iOS are similarly positioned. Android tablets may have reached the “good enough”and cheap enough status levels needed to break out with wide spread user adoption but the iPad still is what a “tablet” is in most people’s minds. All others are compared to iPad and Apple does still make some of the best hardware around. Of course Apple blew their chance to dominate once before. Who knows, maybe they’ll do it again.

  • mini V Nexus. And The Winner Is?

    I’ve been alternating between the iPad mini and Nexus 7 tablet for over a month now and a clear winner has emerged. But first, a note about these two devices as applied to schools. That was the original genesis of my interest in both. Unfortunately, neither device meets the minimum requirements for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) testing. This takes both out of play for student use. Perhaps that might change in the future, but for now I don’t recommend purchasing large numbers of devices unless they can run the new state testing regime.

    As for teacher use, I came across on interesting discovery while testing iPads as Document Cameras the other day. Running an iPad3 as a doc camera using the rear facing camera works great. The image is clear and can be zoomed in without loss of quality. A critical feature when wanting to display text to a room full of 2nd graders. However, when I switched to the iPad Mini I found that zooming in on text produced pixelated and blurry images. Doing some research (ok, I googled “iPad mini camera”) I discovered that the camera on the mini isn’t so great. Since replacing $500 doc cams with iPads is a big selling point for me at the moment, the weak camera performance rules out the mini for teachers. The Nexus 7 with it’s lack of a rear facing camera doesn’t qualify for use as a doc cam at all and it’s lack of AirPlay Mirroring further limits it’s effectiveness as a teacher presentation tool in my opinion.

    So, bottom line, both the iPad mini and the nexus 7 aren’t a good fit for schools. But when it comes to personal use, it’s another story.

    In my month of daily use,  a clear winner has emerged for me personally. While the Nexus 7 is an excellent tablet and it’s the only android tablet I’m recommending to my budget conscious friends, my media lives in the apple echo system. As such, I’ve worked out a system for media access that works great for me. I use a product called Air Video Server to play all the DivX files I’ve accumulated over the years (you do remember DivX, don’t you? It was great for compressing all those DVDs). While I’m slowly converting to H.264, Air Video on the iPad Mini streams non-H.264 content to an iOS device like a champ. Paired with AirPlay Mirroring to the AppleTV on the big screen and I have a complete media streaming service that works across all of the iOS devices in the house. iPhones (3GS to 4S) and iPads (iPad2, iPad3 & iPad Mini). If only Apple would release Apps for AppleTV, I could cut out the middle man and stream direct from the Air Video Server to the AppleTV.

    Now, before you lambast me with comments, yes, I am aware of alternative, non-apple solutions to my particular media problem. I’ve tried most of them at one point in time or another. XBMC, MythTV, Windows Media Center, Plex, etc… None has worked as seamlessly and effortlessly as Air Video Server. To the point that my Wife and my 7 year old can both now access our media library on their own iOS devices. Not that we spend every waking hour watching Thailand vacation videos or Notting Hill. But we could, if we wanted to. And quite easily too.

    But I’d be pretty shallow if my main reason for liking a device was how easily it can access media from a home server. I also find the reading and web surfing experience on the mini more user friendly. The mini is more responsive than the nexus in everyday use. Despite the goodness of Project Butter, there are still times I find myself waiting for the Nexus to respond to a touch command. I’m also severely bugged by the “soft” home button. Maybe I’m so used to the iOS devices and their physical home button that I’m programed for that experience now but for whatever reason, it really annoys me. I find I actually like the mini’s wider screen for reading on the web, although I do end up holding it in landscape view more often then portrait because of the width. I hold the Nexus in portrait mode more often than not. Mainly because the primary app I use on it, Flipboard, doesn’t give me the option to go into landscape mode (UPDATE – the latest version of Flipboard on the Nexus 7 does provide for landscape view, however I’m finding the narrow screen doesn’t lend itself to this view as well as it does on the wider iPad mini). Strange as it seems, I miss the “freedom” of iOS when using the Nexus 7. Also, the mini feels ligher. That might change when I put a case on it though. I do like the rubber non-slip back of the Nexus 7. I’ve been running the mini naked but it really does need some protection if it’s going to survive long term.

    To sum up, I don’t see either device being the perfect 1:1 solution for schools. Sometimes price isn’t everything. If Apple revs the camera in the next version, then maybe the mini will be a good fit for teachers. I think they’d appreciate hefting the lighter weight around all day. As for the Nexus, without a rear facing camera and AirPlay support, I just don’t see it as a teacher tablet device. Even in a Google Apps environment, which I haven’t really talked about, neither device really makes sense for edTech (yet). For personal use, the iPad mini is the clear winner for me. It’s light, responsive (my previous experience with performance issues was probably related to trying to install a dozen apps right out of the box) and it works in my media environment. The killer app for me is AirPlay Mirroring. When Android might support AirPlay natively, I don’t know but I hope they look to do it at some point. Even Plex, the awesome media server app, is baking in AirPlay support. It really is stupid simply and very powerful.

    Based on my environment, the iPad mini is the little tablet for me. Android just isn’t there for me yet (or maybe I’m so deep into iOS, I can’t see a way out). Wether or not I actually need a little tablet when I have an iPhone (two actually since my 3GS returned from the dead) and an iPad is a discussion for another day.

  • The Future of EdTech Is Free (Mostly)

    Without knowing it, I spent the last nine years preparing my previous district for the future. It was all very much by accident. We decided to embrace thin clients early on. The driver was primarily cost and had no real connection to instruction. We just wanted more computers in more classrooms. As a result of running thin clients and quadrupling our student computer count district wide, we started down a path that would position us to move to 1:1 computing when the opportunity presented itself.

    We moved from client/server applications to web based hosted solutions to improve performance. To provide students the opportunity to use tools we would not otherwise have been able to afford we moved them to open source apps like OpenOffice and the odd sounding but very good Adobe replacements; Scribus, Inkscape and The Gimp. Teachers resisted but students didn’t miss a beat. When we realized even free apps required installation, management and support, we pivoted to free cloud based solutions like Google Apps, Aviary and Animoto. On the server side, we traded paid services for free when we setup an open source Moodle Learning Management server and hosted our District web site on our own WordPress server. We used free virtualization tools from VMWare to consolidate Servers and reduce our expensive server hardware footprint.

    When the rise of multimedia in the classroom clashed with thin client performance we pivoted again to netbooks running the open source Ubermix (http://ubermix.org) from Jim Klein at Saugus Union School District and desktop labs running the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP). We were able to seamlessly switch operating systems because we had embraced the cloud early on. Only the teachers really noticed, but again, the students kept right on moving forward with us.

    We did struggle with teacher adoption of technology until we realized we were asking teachers to use outdated tools (Office 2003 anyone?) on old, slow computers running outdated Operating Systems (Windows XP). We experimented with teachers running Ubermix but ended up going a different route when the iPad appeared on the scene. We counted up our teachers, did the math and made the decision to lease everyone a new iPad and MacBook. We finally decided to build up to date teacher technology into the cost of educating 21st Century Students. Just like everyone else, we had no money but what money we did have we deliberately chose to start spending as close to the classroom as possible.

    In doing so we made some non-traditional decisions along the way. We did not buy expensive web filtering software (Open Source software does meet CIPA compliance, didn’t you know?) or email filtering (Google Apps includes it for free). We didn’t buy enterprise class network hardware from the number one manufacturer. Instead we bought branch office grade from the number three and got free next day hardware replacement and software updates for life. We did not buy into the network security FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) being bantered about by the sales reps. We were a school district, not a bank. Instead of buying expensive annual support contracts for devices that were locked away in closets, we bought teachers the best hardware available to help make their jobs easier.

    We installed mounted LCD projectors in every classroom to provide digital presentation capabilities for all teachers. We increased our bandwidth to the Internet significantly and paid the additional cost. After all, the web made free possible. Cloud Services, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and 1:1 student computing all had significant bandwidth and wireless access requirements and we were ready for the opportunities when they arrived because we invested in bandwidth early. We replaced wireless networks three times, finally settling on a solution that was robust, inexpensive and so easy to manage a teacher could do it and did (much like Google Apps, our Open Source Web Filter and the Ubermix netbooks).

    Once teachers were mobile, running on modern hardware, able to project the web to the class and had access to web 2.0 tools, instruction started to change and collaboration along with it. Teachers could take their technology with them to collaboration meetings. They could sit with their laptops working on data, reviewing student work and accessing subject area content in real time. We opened up access to tools like Dropbox for file storage, YouTube for hosting video and Google Apps for collaboration workflows. We sent staff to conferences and they started bringing back resources, experimenting with ideas and sharing with their colleagues in the district. Our teachers started to become active learners. In short, we invested dollars in empowering teachers with modern technology and they started driving the instructional revolution in their classrooms. All it took was a shift in how we looked at technology.

    We shifted from a server room and computer lab paradigm to a mobile, classroom and student centered paradigm. We realized we could do a lot with free and open source but only if Teachers and Students had access to modern computers with reliable wireless network access and fast Internet. Most importantly, we locked in a hardware refresh cycle to ensure that teachers would always have a common and up-to-date platform from which to deliver instruction and collaborate with one another. And that is the first step to unlocking the future.

    My previous district is two years into a three year plan to go 1:1 District wide. They deployed iPads to 9th through 11th graders this year. I’d like to say we had a crystal ball handy when we made the decisions that we did but the reality is we were just trying to provide the best services possible with (almost) no money. Web 2.0, free and open source software, cloud services and shifting the technology focus to opening up access to the web and empowering individual teachers and students is the future. It can be a mostly free future if you spend wisely and embrace it.

    This is the way of Small School Big Tech.

  • iPad mini – Star Teck Tech At A Premium Price

    A few Sundays ago I just happened to be within a stones throw of an Apple Store. Long story short, I walked in, hailed down a blue shirt and bought a black 64GB Wifi iPad Mini. On opening weekend, it was all that was left. I paid $529 for it. I immediately took it home, unboxed it, picked it up and thought to myself, “Where’s the rest of this thing?”

    In case you haven’t held one by now, the iPad mini is super thin and feather light. As in, when I hold it I have to periodically remind myself that I am actually holding something in my hand. It is the mythical data pad from Star Trek TNG that promises to help extricate its users from any and all impossible situations.

    For a week, I put aside my faithful iPad 2 and used the mini pretty much exclusively doing all the things I do with an iPad; watch netflix, check email, use twitter, remote into an occasional windows server, look things up on the internet and read. All in all I found the iPad mini to be on par with the iPad 2 in daily use with a few annoyances:

    • During the first few hours of use, the system would often become unresponsive to touch. I think it was having a tough time downloading and installing all of my purchased apps.
    • Trying to tap on URLs and things on the edges of the screen sometimes took multiple tries. Everything is smaller on the mini.
    • It’s light so holding it in one hand was easy but I found myseld holding it in landscape mode over portrait because it’s just a bit too wide in portrait for comfort.
    • No retina display, which didn’t bother me since I use an iPad2 mostly, until I decided to compare it to my 4S screen and then it started bothering me.
    • During some game play I noticed a bit of lag in the transitions. Specifically playing Fruit Ninja HD.

    And some highlights:

    • It’s light. So light it feels like a toy. But it is easy to hold one-handed for prolonged movie watching or reading.
    • I had much better wifi reception compared to the iPad2.
    • Every app I tried looked great and just worked.
    • After the initial responsiveness issues, it seemed fairly snappy.

    Primarily I bought the iPad mini to see if it would be suitable for use in the classroom. I quickly decided that for only $70 more, an iPad2 makes more sense. Size and weight are not issues with iPads in classrooms. Usability, accessibility, durability, deployment and ongoing management are. For the bigger screen (easier to share, show and create content), bigger virtual keyboard and (in my opinion) more durable device makes $70 insignificant. If the mini had been in the Nexus 7 price range, I may be singing a different tune but alas it is not. Apple still has momentum and ecosystem going for it in Education but the $329 price opens the door for android tablets which only continue to improve. Open systems will always win our over closed ones.

    In the end, I decided that $529 for a non retina, A5 based mini, 64GB and all, was just ridiculous. I ended up returning it after 10 days. Did you know apple has a 14 day no questions asked, no fee return policy? Crazy! I’ve decided to wait for a mini with a Retina display before handing over my own money for one. I feel like with iPad2 hardware, Apple is selling an old product that will be obsolete in six months. Yes, it’s the lowest entry point for an iPad, and it is definitely an iPad experience, but it’s last years experience which will be out of date in only a few months.

    I still have a work iPad mini that I am using. Mostly to show people why an iPad2 or iPad (4th generation) is really the way to go for the classroom for now. And I’m also using the Nexus 7 quite a bit more now. The 4.2 update with multiple user sign on has potential, especially in a shared cart based deployment. Apple may have brought us future tech from one of my favorite universes but it missed the boat on pricing and educationally, I think the larger screen works better in the classroom. Now if only they’d make a full-sized iPad that looked and felt like the mini. I guess I just have to wait a few months for the iPad (5th generation, or will it be The Next Generation?) to come out and really obsolete my 3rd generation iPad. Got to love planned obsolescence.

  • Computer Technology for Teaching & Learning – Help!

    This upcoming Tuesday I start teaching a college course entitled “Computer Technology for Teaching/Learning I”.

    I have been given a Syllabus outlining the objectives and the person that taught it last has shared his google site with me. Both are fairly open and I could take the class many different directions. My question is, what essential technology skills do new teachers need their first year to succeed in this ever changing landscape? I’m thinking document formatting in word and making a powerpoint aren’t going to cut it anymore.

    Your comments and suggestions welcome.

    Thanks

  • VDI: These Aren’t The Desktops You Are Looking For

    One of my presentations at CETPA last week was “1,000 Desktop View” and it was all about how I’ve inherited a 1000 VDI desktop environment running VMWare View. At some point I may write a longer post on the topic but for now here are my slides from the presentation and if you’re a school looking for a way to save money on technology, don’t go VDI in the classroom. Buy your teachers laptops. They’ll thank you for it and you’ll all be a lot happier in the long run.

  • Continuum: Putting The SciFi Back Into SyFy

    I just finished watching the first season of Continuum and man, do I miss good SciFi. Set aside the fact that the basic plot for the show revolves around time travel (paradoxes be damned!) and I’m reminded of how good science fiction can be at exploring the social issues of the day.

    Continuum is a canadian produced and aired show (they have those?). No I don’t live in Canada so don’t ask how I actually watched it. The important thing is that I did. And also that SyFy (just typing that name is lame) is picking up Season 2 of Continuum next year. So I would expect to see Season 1 on there sometime soon. Awesomeness. I don’t normally write about my TV/Movie addiction, if I did I’d be writing 24×7 and wouldn’t be able to watch as many shows but the visual effects and future world of 2077 are movie grade and all the usual suspects from the old SciFi channel shows are there (hope to see more in season 2). It’s Good as in serious scifi, not the cheeky stuff the SciFi channel was moving towards when it changed it’s name to SyFy (but I’m not bitter or anything). It makes me miss Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles all over again. Rachel Nichols‘ Kiera Cameron is both Terminator and Connor in this modern time travel story arc.

    I’m writing this because I don’t want Continuum to go the way of Firefly. Firefly was another awesome science fiction show making relevant commentary on our modern world today. The difference was that I found Firefly on Netflix after it had been cancelled. Let’s not let Continuum become the next Firefly. SyFy is picking it up so SciFi fans, let’s all watch and support it. We can stand seeing the SyFy bug on our TV for an hour a week, can’t we?

    And if you turn your head sideways and squint real hard, it might just look like SciFi again.

  • Citizen Schwab

    This weekend, I’ve been recovering from last week’s CETPA annual conference in Monterey. I made it through my four presentations on Wednesday and managed to spend a good amount of time perusing the vendor floor Thursday. What struck me most was the ever so subtle shift of perspective happening in the community. BYOD and 1:1 is just around the corner. People know it and they also know we can’t manage IT the same way we’ve managed our environments in the past. I heard more talk of opening up access and enabling users than ever before. It’s exciting to see my once far out there perspective starting to become mainstream. (I talk about it more in this week’s rebootED episode)

    Sometime during the week I got hands on with the 10″ Acer Windows 8 tablet. All I can say is, “Wow!”. That thing was fast, responsive and nice looking. The device wars are certainly starting to heat up with Windows 8 tablets finally becoming available soon, the $249 ARM based chromebooks arriving along with the rumored iPad mini announcement Tuesday. together with old faithful, ubermix netbooks, it all makes choosing the right classroom device all the more challenging.

    But to the main purpose of this post. This year I ran for an open Director at Large position on the CETPA board. No, I did not lose a bet with Vollmert, although he did volunteer to be my campaign manager which surely has a punchline waiting for it somewhere. At first I thought that running would be an opportunity to push outside my comfort zone and try something new (I would also like to help guide CETPA through this changing time and perhaps bring a different perspective to the board from the big District/County Office perspective that appears to dominate at present, but that’s another post). I sent out emails to my friends and associates letting them know about the election and asking them to vote for someone (not necessarily me). I attended the after session receptions that I traditionally haven’t for one reason or other. Along the way I ran into old friends and made new ones and talked to more people than I probably would have had I not been a candidate on the ballot. There were a total of five other experienced technology folks on the ballot. All of them I thought better known and better plugged in than I.

     

    The funny thing is that in the end, I came in second. Second isn’t first, but for me it might as well have been. I honestly had zero expectation of winning (thanks again to all those who took the time to vote for me though). I knew my friends and many of my Colleagues would support me but to everyone else (the vast majority), I’m just one of those “out there” guys from the small district who points out the obvious (by applying common sense) on our organization’s listserv now and again. So second place is pretty awesome to me. Should a position on the board open again, I may or may not apply. It will depend on where I am in my career I suppose. Things are changing so fast. One thing I do know though is that if I do decide to throw my hat into the ring again, next time I’ll have buttons (you taking notes Mike?).

  • I Just Submitted Two Sessions For The Annual CUE Conference

    Over the last few years I have presented at pretty much every regional CUE conference in central California; from the SV, CC, CV and Fall CUE events to the CUE Rockstar Teacher Tech Camp, I’ve lead sessions on saving IT costs, how to start a podcast and using Google Apps in the classroom to name just a few. Up until this year however, I had never considered submitting a session for the Annual CUE conference in Palm Springs (the so called “mothership”). Well, for whatever reason I decided to submit two at the last minute. Of course I forgot to save the outlines before submitting, but they go something like this:

    The Future of EdTech is Free is an idea that flows from an article I submitted to the November/December issue of the ACSA Leadership Magazine. This presentation will take a hard look at where districts spend their limited technology dollars today and how they might utilize cloud solutions and free and open source alternatives to direct dollars away from the server room and into the classroom. Schools are going to have to get more technology into classrooms to support common core instruction. The idea that dedicated funds are coming to help with this is wishful thinking. Taking a different approach to IT is something districts can start doing now to prepare for the coming common core.

    In Chromebooks, Netbooks and iPads, Oh My! my thought is to address the different options school districts have when looking at student technology. The days of the fixed computer labs are numbered but with so many alternatives out there, how is a district to know which is the right device for them? I’m hoping to be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the top three devices as well as how each might fit into a classroom environment. Moving from traditional windows labs to non-windows mobile devices requires compromise on how schools are used to doing computing. It is important that the decision makers understand these issues before they commit to one platform or the other (or all of the above).

    I know there is always fierce competition for session slots but I think both of these sessions relate well to this year’s theme of “CUE To The Core” and offer important information that district leaders need to hear. Now I wait and see if either (dare I think both?) session is chosen. I don’t have time to lose sleep over it though. I’ve got to prepare myself for four presentations at the CETPA annual conference in a week and then for two more sessions at the Fall CUE conference the week after that.

    Why do I present? The same reason I podcast and blog. Because I have experiences to share and if other people happen to find it helpful, awesome.

  • #GTAMTV

    As I watch my friends and colleagues share out their Google Teacher Academy application submissions, I’m reminded of my first and second applications to the GTA. Both times I didn’t put much effort into my Video and both times I didn’t make the cut. On the third try I focused almost entirely on my video and by some miracle squeaked in.

    Being a member of the Google Certified Teacher family has been one of the great experiences of my education career. I wish everyone the best of luck and encourage those who don’t happen to make it this time, to keep trying. As I tell my daughter when she makes one of those faces at the Piano, practice, practice, practice. That’s how you get better. And if at first you don’t succeed…