Two interesting items in my feeds overnight
You did what?
Reading through my Twitter feed I see a post linking to The day I removed an Interactive Whiteboard for the first time and my first thought was ‘You did what?’
Reading through the blog post we get to the juicy content;
…In the Junior school (Prep – Grade 2) they are a hit. Teachers in these grades spend a lot more time modeling things to a whole class. Students in those class groups are thrilled when they get the chance to come up and manipulate something on the screen and the teacher taps into this engagement to help make their point. During Literacy and Numeracy times, small groups of students work together on a game or puzzle of some sort on the big screen which still genuinely thrills their socks off.
In the Senior school (grades 3 – 6) its a different story. This year we have been able to flood the Senior School with iPads and Macbooks. Devices in the students hands when they need them has been absolutely pedagogy changing. Finally we are fully moving away from teacher at the front of the room. Students have access to everything in the palm of their hands and this has been reflected in how their learning is being structured. …
– The day I removed an Interactive Whiteboard for the first time (2011-Nov-11) [Removing the 'e' from 'e-learning']
And suddenly this all makes sense, and having seen this effect in our science labs I should have seen this earlier – the tablets are making a killing in this space.
MICROSOFT SURFACE
I have been thinking about the visualization uses of Surface since the Lonely Planet demonstrations back in 2009. With the release of the Windows 8 Developer Preview last year my first thoughts were that ‘this would be a great tablet OS‘ and I have been discussing the ‘what if Windows 8 is the iOS competitor with an Enterprise backend‘ when we are investigating new technologies and forecasting the next 5 year.
Overnight we had Microsoft’s mystery event in Los Angeles Live is the launch of Microsoft Surface.
Surface for Windows 8 Pro is comparable to Ultrabook PCs
* Surface Features and options [PDF]
I cannot see any mention of the Smart Glass interface in the release notes, but you would assume that this is built in to immediately appeal to the X Box gaming audience.
Toys?
This now also begs the question; can I have my NCIS Ops room now?
0 Responses to “To tablet or not to tablet?”