Monday, January 24, 2011 at 7:37AM Karen Cator, Director, Office of Educational Technology, US Department of Education presents the opening LWF Talk at the Learning Without Frontiers International Festival of Learning & Technology, London, 2011.
Karen discusses the role of technology in learning and how the US is preparing their learners for productivity and competition in the 21st century.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 at 11:26AM 
Article first published May 11th 2010 here then recently updated.
The Apple iPad ushers in a new era of computing that leaves the world of offices behind, a profound paradigm shift that is difficult to appreciate until one has had the opportunity to live, play, work and learn with one. Graham Brown-Martin, founder of Learning Without Frontiers, explains why he thinks this is the most exciting development since the original Mac and why the education sector should take note.
I’ve been enjoying the benefits of an Apple iPad since early April and whilst Steve Jobs made it clear when launched that it was not intended to be a replacement for a laptop I wondered how close it could get. Could I dump the day to day laptop and just use this wafer thin marvel? After all, over the past years I have developed the knack of being able to run a lot of my day to day concerns via my iPhone whilst on the move rather than carrying a laptop in a saddle bag.
Of course, life wasn’t always like this.
I used to pack a MacBook Pro 17” that frankly weighed a ton and was embarrassing to use in a train or plane let alone the underground or on a 453 from New Cross Gate into town. Of course, it was great for those odd times when I was power-using but those days are fewer and further between. A logic board failure meant a recent sidegrade to a MacBook Pro 13” which is light and portable by comparison. But my real use of the laptop is moving my office from A to B with occasional stops along the way. Battery life, long (although not as long as Windows) boot-up times, wear and tear mean that the laptop is not really a mobile device, not something I can just pick up and use without finding the right place, waiting for it to start up or being conspicuous on a bus. It’s a portable office not a mobile computer.
And this to me is the crux of the winning argument for the iPad and the new category of casual computing devices that will certainly arrive from every computer manufacturer who intends to remain in business this time next year.
The iPad marks a paradigm shift in mobile computing that until you’ve lived with one for a few days is difficult to grasp. But let me put it like this, the clue is what our desktops and laptops are and were designed to do and what the iPad isn’t and hasn’t been designed to do.
At the Edinburgh Interactive Festival in 2006 in front of a large audience of hard core gamers with a penchant for overclocking their desktop PC’s and pimping them with neon strips I suggested that by 2010 desktop computers would be all but dead and that laptops would be on death row. Mistaking shock and disbelief for interest I was emboldened and suggested that much of our data would also be stored on remote servers with applications being remotely distributed. I even demonstrated a product, RedHalo, that my associate company had created to do just that for the education sector.
Alas, it was a classic tumbleweed moment reminding me of an earlier career destroying period when in the mid-90’s I presented to a large music industry conference in Cannes and suggested that the record industry business model was dead.
At both conferences I was heckled on stage. I was scathingly reviewed in the press after Cannes where it was suggested my views on copyright showed a lack of social responsibility. After the Edinburgh gig I was heavily flamed online on various well-known forums, my parentage questioned as well as my potential need for medication.
It seems that few people want to hear about disruptive change, despite what our politicians tell us. In the education sector our agencies don’t want it, our trade associations don’t want it and certainly those with business interests in maintaining the status quo don’t want it. Not really.
When you think about it, the attitude from the music industry towards change is little different to large sections of the educational technology sector with the losers ultimately being the end-users or learners.
But change of a disruptive nature is happening faster these days especially in a connected world and particularly with technology. Those who heard Ray Kurzweil’s closing keynote at last years Handheld Learning Conference will recall his proposition that we have entered a period of exponential change where the kind of linear change that used to take 100 years now takes place in less than 10. On this basis my iPad equivalent in 2030 when Handheld Learning Girl will have completed full time education will be quite something.
Will we really be worrying about a lack of keyboard? If so then maybe a Remington typewriter is for you.
My point is this.
From around the 1950’s most people had two options in life that the education system would prepare them for; working in a factory or working in an office. In 2010 both of these options have changed quite dramatically. 
Manufacturing has all but disappeared in the UK and where manufacturing does exist humans are being rapidly replaced by service robotics. This trend will continue to other manual or labour intensive industries including construction. Few people now aspire to work in an office and where offices still exist these environments are also changing.
It’s this latter issue that gives rise to technologies like the iPad which, contrary to popular belief, is not Apple’s take on the Tablet PC. To compare this genre of product to a Tablet PC is to completely miss the point.
Desktop PC’s since the earliest Apple II and IBM PC were all about office tasks. In the same way we apply technology over existing teaching practice, technology was also layered over traditional office tasks so word processing replaced the type writer, spreadsheets replaced the ledgers and so on. Things got so sophisticated that the computer companies created whole operating systems to emulate an office environment with filing systems and other desktop and office based metaphors.
Microsoft won this era of computing evolution and successfully applied their technology across a broad range of devices that let you take your office wherever you needed to be. You could have your office on your big desktop, in a laptop on a Tablet PC or even in a smart phone.
Tablet PC’s and smart phones that emulated offices failed because they lacked relevance and the same can be said for pedagogy when teaching practice fails to respond to the impact and meaning of new pervasive technologies.
With the office metaphor out of the picture and things begin to slow down which is why Microsoft's share price has flatlined as they cling on to meeting the needs of the past. Whereas corporations like Google and Apple have seen a different future.
It should be said that Microsoft have some amazing technology in their research facilities and consumer electronics groups yet the organisation is so hamstrung by its archaic yet overly powerful operating system and office application groups that anything genuinely innovative is strangled at birth less it deflects investment from the fiefdoms of those who would be kings.
The fact is that the office metaphor doesn’t work anymore, it’s just not relevant to the way most people now wish to see their lives. Why do we need to have a “computer” with an “operating system” that we must master with endless “applications and drivers” to configure and so on? As I wondered out loud in a recent volley on one of the Becta research lists - why do I need a bulky lump of tech with a lardy OS when I just want to surf, write, look and listen? If a computer is really advanced then anyone should be able to use it without any formal training.
This razor blade business model of constantly buying bloated operating systems, massive applications, managed services and an industry that exists to show you how to switch it all on and off has got to be heading for the cemetery.
So can I carry out most of my day to day work using an iPad?
Well the answer is pretty much yes. This article has been entirely written, edited and uploaded using one, the video’s and images were all filmed using an iPhone, the images edited on the iPad.
The majority of my work email has been conducted via my iPad and I’ve been using a MiFi from Three for times when I was away from a WiFi connection as my iPad isn’t 3G. I’ve written whole reports and proposals using the iPad with embedded charts using the iPad version of iWorks. Ironically one of those proposals, for developing a conference programme about innovation in learning and technology, was turned down no doubt in favour of somebody who put theirs together using old school tech and has mastered a funny handshake.
The keyboard takes a little getting used to and I use a bluetooth one for when I need to get large quantities of text down but I’ve also started using the Dragon Dictation voice recognition App and it’s spookily good and quicker than my typing. Importantly the iPad battery seems to last forever requiring a charge every 2 to 3 days.
But what I’ve really noticed is that the iPad has opened up a whole set of new casual computing activities that I hadn’t really bothered with before. I now regularly read the morning papers using it, I stream video to it using the Air Video App from my domestic media server, it’s an immediately on surfing device, rapid note taker, musical instrument (Korg Electribe), I’m reading SuperFreakonomics on it for myself and Winnie the Pooh for my youngest using iBooks, I’m catching up on old episodes of The Soprano’s while I’m sitting on trains, gaming based on the iPads accelerometer and large screen feels more involving. To date I’ve had no problem whipping it out at bus stops around the Elephant and Castle Favela because, after all, nearly everybody else is packing iPhones and Blackberry’s anyway. Either that or it’s because I’m 6’3 and have recently taken up boxing.
In a few short weeks I’ve found that my iPad, like a sort of transitional love object, is rarely far from my finger tips. But here lies a new problem. The iPad is intended as a personal device, it’s not easily adaptable for sharing. Friends, family and interested bystanders who want to hold and test the device have access to my private email, social media accounts, etc. There is no “guest account” and from what I understand nothing on the horizon although a printing App is coming soon. If this really is a new, third category of device between the smart phone and the laptop then guest or multiple accounts is a must.
So much for my personal impressions, what of education?
My instinct tells me that whilst initial sales of the iPad have been to trend setters and early adopters in the consumer sector the big uptake of iPads will be in the vertical markets such as education and healthcare before it then levels out to the rest of the consumer sector.
Why? Because I think that beyond the “Apple fanboy must have latest gadget” consumer it’s going to take longer for regular consumers, the kind that immediately got the iPhone, to get their head around why they need or want an iPad. Casual computing is a whole new category and one that will, in my opinion, be vast but will take time to gestate.
Sectors like education, however, should immediately grasp the power and meaning of a platform such as the iPad and, as I’ve said, the wave of similar devices that the iPad will spur from other manufacturers in the same way that the disruptive iPhone sent them rushing back to innovate at the drawing board.
Putting the iPad into the hands of children has been a revelation to me. When the iPad was launched and all there was to see was a video I took the time to show it to some school children aged between 8 and 13. With all the static on Twitter and forums between the Apple lovers and haters it seemed sensible to hear what younger people thought. Unsurprisingly, the younger children quickly grasped the concept and wanted one, the older the child and especially those over 13 were less convinced by the video.
Once I received my iPad I wasted little time in downloading new Apps and getting the iPad into the hands of youngsters. The only real problem I’ve had has been getting it back. Some of the Apps are just awesome with Theodore Gray's (of Wolfram Research fame) The Elements, an interactive guide and stunningly illustrated eBook to the Periodic Table, being one of the most notable. But there are already stacks of relevant App’s appearing.
Those who attend the Handheld Learning Conferences will know Handheld Learning Girl who is now aged 4 and starts full time education at primary level in September. HHL Girl is somewhat fortunate in that she gets to experiment or be experimented on with lots of new gadgets from early iPods to Nintendo DSi’s, PSP’s, 2G iPhone, Wii’s, PlayStation 3, Apple TV and a Byron Review busting iMac in her bedroom. Actually she is a very willing guinea pig and seems to have taken a natural interest in such things but she is by no means unusual amongst her peers who attend the same inner-city state primary in a highly culturally and socially diverse part of SE London.
The most surprising aspect of her immediate use of the iPad was an instantaneous understanding of how to operate it without any instruction at all. Of course, she’d had the experience of using Apps on her iPhone but that also required no instruction and the skills were completely transferable but how she used the iPad as a consequence of the size of the screen was different and noticeably better.
In her first session of proper usage that lasted about 2 hours (she had to be gently stopped for a break) she explored numeracy, literacy, art, music, singing, evolutionary biology (understood), the periodic table (not fully understood), a fast paced game called “Snail Mail” and then finished off with a round of Golf. Those that have suggested the iPad is a read only device for delivery of content really haven’t used one, there are creation tools available in abundance.
She has since been a regular user of the iPad for both passive and interactive applications including watching movies and using BBC iPlayer for catching up on missed episodes of Cbeebies and Dr Who. Having dropped the iPad on numerous occasions it has proven to be quite robust, certainly more so than a dropped laptop.
Now, I’m not as qualified as many of the people who visit this site to say how valuable this new device is to the learning and teaching process after all until it’s used as a tool it is just an inanimate piece of tech. It’s usefulness will surely depend upon how it’s deployed. But here are a few thoughts.
HHL Girl is not especially unusual in her acceptance of what we call technology but has always been there as far as she is concerned. Her peers from better off and less well off homes are hardly different in their natural use of these devices. I could be fooling myself but I think she is learning something from using them from problem solving to reading to counting to simple arithmetic and more. She also uses them across the things that she does and by that she doesn’t seem to view it as a “computer or technology” session, she’s often combining activities with cutting up paper or drawing or playing make believe with toys. So I’d say that this technology is already embedded in her world to the point of invisibility. The iPad form factor is especially good for embedding because it takes up little space and is often lying on the floor as part of her other combined activities. I call this her “personal Microsoft Surface mode”.
We have a generation of parents who use smart phones, have social media pages on things like Facebook and play casual games, who are very much engaged in the digital world around them. Heck, a lot of them are even playing full bodied video games and spending family afternoons together around consoles like the Wii.
I understand that there remain digital divides yet I also live in one of the more deprived parts of the country, albeit in a leafy corner, but still I see people from all walks of life staring at the mobile computer in their hand at the bus stops and chip shops along the Old Kent Road. In my opinion this divide does not exist in the same way that the “Home Access Programme” might have us believe where the solution has been to layer an expensive old style model on top of a serious challenge.
My canard then is that HHL Girl and children like her up and down the country are coming to a primary school near you supported by parents who already have an expectation about mobile and pervasive technologies. Yet schools in some parts of the country and indeed HHL Girls own school where she is due to join this September are ill-prepared for this generation. They are still preoccupied with interactive white boards, ICT suites, keyboarding skills, learning platforms, educational software that is so boring your grandmother would die using it. Perhaps there’s a nod to installing a WiFi network but it stops at the school gates and woe betide you should you want to bring your own learning weapon of choice to have constant access to that network in a way comfortable to yourself.
So what will happen when these children arrive in the classroom?
Some will, of course, be lucky. They will encounter some of the incredibly talented teachers who are taking the risks to rise to the challenge of engaging with this generation with a teaching approach fit for the future. Some will be unlucky and will risk being a generation lost to somnambulism at best or Ritalin at worst, accused of being disruptive because they can not contain their desire to learn.
It’s not specifically the iPad that is the silver bullet here but the era of new style of invisible, matter of fact, computing that it arrives with it. Any manufacturer that doesn’t have an iPad like device by end of 2011 will be out of the game at least where end-users / consumers are concerned. The impact that this new style of computing will have will need to be reflected in the way we integrate technology into our teaching practice.
disruption, education, ipad, learning, teaching in Handheld Learning, Mobile, disruption Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 9:00PM 
Hallelujah!With family stretched across Ghana I enjoy frequent visits to the country, now even more so as I prepare for LWF's first African symposium now planned for 2012 under the .create banner.
After returning to Accra following a 2 year hiatus it was easy to notice that the colour of Accra had changed. I'm talking about the colour of the buildings, small trading huts, bars, homes and even schools.
Accra now gives the appearance of being almost entirely painted the colours of the mobile phone companies vying to compete in this promised land. The red of Vodafone, the yellow of MTN, the blue of Tigo, the purple of Zain and so on.
One has to actually be here to truly understand the sheer extent of the corporate brandalism that has been wrought upon Accra & who knows how far into the rest of Ghana & perhaps the African continent. Certainly enough to induce a panic attack for my friends at Adbusters!
Driving 300 KM journey from Accra to Axim through coastal villages the brandalism even extends to buildings amongst the homes of typical rural construction. Every town and village I past through no matter how large or small had more than it's fair share of branding in an explosion of red, yellow, blue and purple. One might beg Banksy or the Ghanian graffiti artist, Dreph, to pay a visit to break-up the monotony with a relevant urban intervention.
Whilst the painting of buildings has been seen as a legitimate method of promotion for many brands working in various sectors from soft drinks to booze to coffee to newspapers to tobacco etc the tradition has usually been applied to relevant buildings. So a newsagent may be branded by certain news provider, a bar branded by a booze brand etc. Where there is regulatory control, limits are set on how corporates may impact the surrounding environment, particularly in residential areas. After all would you want to wake up to find your entire street as continuous billboard for a series of tobacco or soft drink brands?
But in Accra & further into Ghana it appears that this trend is not limited to relevance.
Limited regulatory controls, a cavalier attitude to corporate social responsibility & an abundance of less affluent people has created a fertile ground for exploitation bordering uncomfortably to the point of neo-colonialism.
Is it a bank, a dentist, a grocer, tyre shop - who knows?It works like this.
You own a small (or sometimes quite large) building usually near a main road. You may be living on a limited income & so don't have the funds to spruce up your building with a fresh coat of paint.
Along comes one of the painting street teams from the mobile operators and offers to paint the outside your building from top to bottom in any colour you like as long as it's theirs replete with corporate logo.
That's it. The whole deal.
It doesn't matter if your building has nothing to do with mobile communications. You could be selling fruit, groceries, car tyres, building supplies, a rural bank, bicycle repairs, hair dressing or pretty much anything or nothing. You get your building painted for free & have the privilege of carrying the corporate brand in perpetuity. There's a good chance that if you fell asleep in the street after a night out in Accra you would wake up painted & logo'd.
So, given that back in London, hiring a bill board even in Peckham, SE London costs £800 per month or hosting a mobile phone base station in the UK gets you circa £25K per annum to fix the church roof one might assume that the owners of these brandalised buildings receive a monthly stipend for their trouble.
A free mobile phone & data for a child of the building perhaps? A few hundred Cedi's each month to help with the household maybe? Ok, how about a free Wi-Fi base station so local people can get online for a little while? Alright then, how about free Internet for the local school? Or how about help renovate some of Ghana's architectural heritage by painting some of them (not in corporate colours) in exchange of a "small" branding opportunity on the information programme?
No, you get your building painted and that's the extent of the deal.
Now for many, especially those living on a limited budget without knowledge of the value of promotion & a prime location, this might appear like a good deal. However given an absence of regulation & an abundance of less-affluent people the result is that whole sections of streets have been taken over by corporate branding on an unprecedented scale & to a level that international operators, wouldn't consider having on their, or their shareholders, home turf. Add to this the fact that virtually every main road lamp post & "official" advertising billboards also carry mobile phone company branding & you should be getting the message.
Only rarely, and this appears to be a closely guarded secret, are some building owners offered financial compensation for turning their building into a promotional blight on the landscape.
So, let me jump off the moral crusade bit for a moment.
The good news then is that the mobile operators are taking Ghana & presumably the African continent seriously. After all Ghana is the 2nd fastest growing African nation for mobile data use. Even Google have offices in Ghana these days!
There's a feeding frenzy & land grab for the market here that is palpable & given that landline communication just isn't viable means that mobile is where it's at if you want to keep in touch with loved ones & the world.
Free Internet for the school perhaps? Not likelyAlmost everybody, rich or poor, has a mobile phone & calls are relatively inexpensive. 3G & Edge mobile data is available & also not so expensive by UK standards although very slow by comparison & priced out of the pockets of the average Ghanaian. Yet all of the Ghanaian telco's are investing heavily in the roll-out of 3G and mobile data - but for who?
Surely there is a massive opportunity for the mobile operators to expand their market share by offering the society they serve with something a little more generous than painting the town red, yellow, purple or blue?
As Ray Kurzweil said at our Handheld Learning Conference in 2009 "the mobile phone is now a window to the world of knowledge, information & learning".
Ironic then that during the 2010 World Cup global mobile operators rallied around a worthy project called 1Goal which encouraged a SMS petition calling for the provision of primary education to more than 75 million children mostly in Africa. The campaign even featured Ghanaian striker Michael Essien.
Yet the solution lies within their own technology & service offer rather than cans of paint & SMS campaign.
Would the mobile operators consider laying down their paint brushes for a moment & putting their technology to use in the provision of affordable learning to a population where many can not afford primary education & the state provision is stretched & limited especially in rural areas?
With inexpensive yet powerful Android-based, Internet-enabled, smart phones & mobile tablets about to flood the market is there not a new opportunity for these mobile operators to use their own technology to try a smarter kind of marketing that builds their market by investing in their future consumers?
There are enough pre-owned iPhones, Android, Nokia & other smart phones sitting in the bottom draws of those in the West & East who upgraded that every kid in Africa could have one. Can we fix this to make it happen?
A missing piece of the puzzle then is mobile data and this, I believe, is where our colourful, paint-happy phone companies can play a part by providing free or subsidised mobile data to kids given these pre-owned smart phones.
Fraud or misuse of such a philanthropic scheme by the mobile operators could be reduced by locking the data-contract to each phones unique IMEI number whilst limiting access to certain online destinations.
This relatively small investment would demonstrate real social responsibility on behalf of these corporates whilst developing the next generation of data hungry consumer. Granted it's a long game but one that makes for heroes in the hearts & minds of customers. Surely this is the ultimate "win-win", "virtuous circle" where locally relevant content drives uptake of mobile data, where local developers create sustainable local wealth, local wealth drives uptake of mobile data and higher spec'd handsets. Rather than fight over slices of a small pie, why don't the telco's bake a bigger pie? Who can lose in this scenario?
Lamp post brandalismAm I in an idealistic la-la land? Could the Ghanaian or wider African population really develop into a world-class, technologically agile population fully at grips with the new disruptive wave of mobile communications, data and the App Economy that has redefined the global software industry?
After all, unlike the recently discovered oil where it's rumoured that Ghana receives 5% on the barrel whilst the gas prices keep going up at the pump, a mobile app developer in Ghana gets the same 70% of the box office on the AppStore that a developer in Silicon Valley gets. This must be a world first and a huge opportunity for local talent to compete and export to the global digital economy whilst retaining local cultural relevance and identity.
Enter Leti Games based in East Legon, Accra. Ghana's first iPhone / iPad App developer created and launched iWarrior onto the App Store nearly a year ago & have never looked back.
Leti Games co-founder, Eyram TawiaFounder Eyram Tawia tells me that his vision to expand his operation by hiring only home-grown talent. As a mentor for the Meltwater Incubator he has his finger on the pulse & is already developing the next generation of local entrepreneurs whilst eyeing up some of the local universities best new game developer talent.
Leti Games are already at an advanced stage of releasing a number of new games including a fabulous soccer-based MMORG that works across mobile & web platforms with social media plug-in's for Facebook, etc.
Eyram Tawia, Leti GamesEyram firmly believes that rather than Ghana's recently discovered oil the countries greatest asset is its people & investing in their learning is the key to national prosperity & well-being.
The mobile provider community can & should play a pivotal role here. The new App Economy has proven that you no longer need to operate out of Redmond, Silicon Valley or Shoreditch to take on the big boys. Leti Games are doing it from a small development studio in Accra & for my money I see locations like Ghana as having great prospects for becoming the home to a new "Hollywood" of App developers.
All it takes is a little imagination combined with a good deal of collaboration backed with support from government, smart investors and technology providers keen to dominate the market in this new African gold rush.
This time instead of taking things away, let's leave something valuable behind.
accra, africa, app economy, brandalism, branding, digital, education, ghana, learning, phone, teaching in Activism, Handheld Learning, Mobile 
