iPad Accessibility Opportunities

There are a range of accessibility options built in, these include VoiceOver, Zoom, White on Black, Mono Audio, Speak Auto-text and Triple-click Home. Not had a chance to see what all these do but will do in due course.

The first advantage that comes to mind is that you can operate this device with one finger, there's no mouse, shift key etc. I suppose you could operate a laptop with one finger but it would be much more difficult.
One would imagine the intellectual capacity required to use this device would be less than that for operating a laptop given you simply touch what you want to make “go”, it's intuitive.

One of the main challenges I foresee is that the device is not tactile, i.e. how would a sight impaired person know if they were pressing the right spot on the screen? I suppose it may be possible to overlay some form of tactile material to help overcome this problem. Perhaps an area to research?

I'm sure there will be apps developed that are related to accessibility.
I have been using an app called Pressreader, you can view practically any newspaper from around the world and it has an amazingly good voice synthesizer built in so you can sit back and listen to the news being read out. I've also tried a US only app called Dictation from Dragon, voice to text, this also works really well.

Apple has built in a number of tools to help site impaired people and I would be really interested to see research or feedback from somebody in this group that has used the iPad. How do they get past the fact there's no tactile feedback and only a flat screen?
No doubt research into the opportunities of this device to help people with disabilities will come up with many different uses, after all there are many different disabilities with different assistive requirements.

iPad Review

So I've had the iPad for a few days and I think I get it and I also have experienced its limitations.

First the iPad does nothing that a laptop can't do but it's the form factor that makes it work. The touch screen interface is just natural and intuitive, so for things that are already set up like apps it's quicker to just touch the app to go to it than use a mouse and keyboard, browsing web sites works well with the touch interface. If you've used an iPhone you probably already know this.

It's small enough to take on holiday or for work trips for email. You could watch a movie in a cramped airline seats I imagine where a laptop is often just too big with it's keyboard and screen. The form factor means you can have a coffee while browsing the news or website with one free hand, not easily achievable with a laptop.

The weight of this device though is too heavy to hold unassisted, ebook readers are better suited to holding as a book and for an insomnia inflicted person like myself the bright screen is a no no before going to bed. Some more comments about this issue here - http://www.ipadlearninglab.com/2010/05/ipad-as-sleep-disrupter.html

It's quick, if I want to quickly look something up on the web I have it had my fingertips in seconds, my trusty laptop with a solid state hard disk still take 10-30 seconds before I can start typing.

You cannot touch type on an iPad, I tried but failed with quickly strained wrists. The problem is you cannot rest your fingers on the keyboard so your hands have to hover a few millimetres above the screen which leads to fatigue very quickly. If I were to go on a business trip with this I would absolutely take a keyboard.

I did type this on the iPad, with two fingers, but actually in the end emailed the posting to my laptop because it was just easier to type on, spell check and post.

The educational affordances of this device are plain to see, the ability to carry many books with full interactivity is a great educational bonus and unlike ebooks on other cheaper devices ebooks on the iPad are in full colour and can include full multimedia. There are apps coming out for our ePortfolio system and our LMS, of course students could use a cheap netbook for these purposes. Without testing I'm guessing that the graphic capabilities of this device probably exceed those of a cheap netbook.

It's a great device to share and display media. I left it on the coffee table at a party we had and people picked it up to look at photos and handed it around, finally all my digital pics can be shared in a natural way rather than handing a laptop around or standing in front of a desktop computer. The intuitive interface means even my parents could browse the photos.

So I think in summary the iPad is an excellent media consumption device, the apps are great and surfing the web and replying to short emails on the run is easy but without a keyboard you can't do too much typing without fatigue. I guess if you normally only type with two fingers then perhaps you won't notice this?

Do we need computer labs on campus?

With netbooks being readily available at very affordable prices even here in Australia do Universities need to continue to provide on campus computer facilities?

One of the cheapest netbooks in Australia the ASUS EEE PC 900 8.9" LCD 20GB Linux costs $385, little more than a few text books. Now while this may not be a powerful computer it will certainly allow a student to edit an assignment and use the internet for research. Most if not all Universities in Australia now how good wireless coverage, my iphone is always on a WiFi connection pretty much wherever I go at the University of Sydney.


The University of Virginia is set to to close most of its student computer labs by 2011 to save money but their chief information officer Mick McPherson says a U.Va report showed that 99 percent of students brought their own laptop to school. - (Ars Technica, 27 March 2009) For those students that can't afford a laptop perhaps Universities could have an equity program or allow laptops to be borrowed like books, a similar scheme is already in existence at Victoria University in Melbourne.

Disadvantages of not having computer labs?
Social interaction, many students learn from each other leaning over to the person next to them to ask for help but then maybe we're not talking about doing away with the computer rooms but redesigning them to be more social spaces with printing facilities, coffee machines, comfortable seating where students can bring their laptop and interact with each other in a comfortable space?

YouTube EDU

Discovered today that YouTube has a new section call YouTube EDU devoted to entirely to
educational video's from the likes of MIT, Standford University, Harvard, UCLS and the University of New South Wales here in Sydney. This has the potential to be a great resource for both students and academics alike.

Right on the front page were posted some really interesting topical videos that your students might actually be interested in watching while learning. The University of Minnesota has a video looking at the science behind the popular recent movie Watchmen, I actually ended up watching the whole thing because it was so well presented.

There is a search box on the page enabling the searching of videos in the edu section only, so you don't have to sift through the dancing cats and singing dogs.

During my quick ten minute review of the site I found many useful videos that I will undoubtedly use so go check it out.

Alternative Chat Applications

Currently looking at alternatives to the WebCT chat tool since it decided to stop working and the usual time for these things to get fixed can be measured in months rather than weeks :-(
I'm looking at chat options that must be very simple to use and have password protection.

Currently looking at the following:

Chatz - http://www.chatzy.com/
This service can be used free with an inoffensive advertisement at the top.
I like this service because you can password protect the room, good for private classroom chats.
The interface could be a little clearer, perhaps too many options but a worthwhile temporary replacement for WebCT chat. It has no whiteboard tool though, does anyone use that function?
If you pay for the service, just $9 you get 500KB of chat, no adverts, save your rooms and your chats are logged. Since this is a text only service 500KB is actually a lot of chat.

Tinychat - http://tinychat.com/
A friend on twitter suggested this service, it's really simple and works well.
Interface is as simple as you can get and you can get your posts to the chat room onto twitter I believe, not tried this feature yet. My only problem with this tool is that there is no password protection so you could run a class and have strangers turn up but there is no directory of chat rooms so I guess somebody would have to work out the URL to get into your room. Once you all leave the room it is deleted, there is no archiving of the chat.

drop.io - http://drop.io/
Another twitter recommendation, this tool is very good although not as simple as Tinychat.
This tool enables password protection and full collaboration tools such as sharing images, edit documents together etc. I'm not interested in any of the advanced collaboration tools but the basic chat seems fine.
You can watch a short demo video of the system here - http://drop.io/file/streaming

Do you have any recommendations of web based chat services?

eLearning Experience

Having been involved with elearning now for 10+ years I think I might have something to offer the to the elearning community.

A quick run-down of my experience

• Been involved with the selection, rollout and management of every version of WebCT, versions 1 - 8 and soon to be Blackboard 9.
• Ten years of training staff in using WebCT and curriculum design.
• Experience with many LMS including Moodle, Blackboard and Sakai.
  
• A member of the Australia Council on Open, Distance and eLearning.
• Currently Operations Manager for the University of Sydney eLearning unit.
• Assessed, implemented and used many elearning technologies such as Lectopia, Wimba voice tools, Respondus, Questionmark Perception, various Wiki tools, etc.
• Lecturer in information technology
• Online teacher
• Online student

So I guess you can see that I have a wide range of experience with technologies related to learning and always interested to meet others with similar interests.

Welcome

Well finally I get a blog and a twitter account all in the same month.
Since my job focuses on elearning and emerging technologies that can facilitate learning I thought it might be useful to share my knowledge, links, experience etc with you.
I'll try and focus on the Australian scene but since elearning offers the ability to largely ignore physical distance my postings will cover any elearning technology with a relevance to the Australian scene.

For regular news updates follow my twitter account - http://twitter.com/elearningupdate


Thanks for stopping by

Colin Lowe