More thoughts on the Foleo....

After a few hours of reading more about the new Foleo and watching Palm's video conference on it, here are a few more of my thoughts.

- The Foleo can be used as a standalone device (i.e. without a smartphone). It has built-in WiFi, a USB port, a VGA port, an audio-out jack, and slots for SD and compact flash cards. (There is no hard drive.) I think Palm is purposely under-selling the Foleo's potential as a low-end laptop, but in fact, that seems to be what it is.

- The price is right. I was expecting more of a UMPC-type device, and at $1,500-2,000, these devices are way too expensive for what they are. However, at $500, the Foleo seems affordable. And you can bet the price will drop over time.

- A drawback of the Foleo is that it is one more device to carry around. How this works for you will probably depend on your personal preferences and how you use different devices now. Personally, for "real work," a big screen is important to me, as is access to desktop applications. Currently, I use my phone as a wireless modem for my laptop. I have a very small notebook that I love. (For entertainment like music, reading, etc., I prefer mobile devices.) My laptop is 2.8 pounds and has a DVD player, a 40 GB hard drive, and a 1.6 GHz processor. It's a "real computer" that can boot Windows or Linux, and it's not a lot bigger than the Foleo. I do like the form factor of the Foleo, though I wish it had a tablet-style flip screen. I think for people who have been able to wean themselves from a laptop and are able to use their smartphone as their mobile computer, the Foleo is a great product. For people like me who still find a laptop indispensable, it's probably not as relevant. (Maybe I'll evolve though....:)

- I really like that Palm says they'll support a variety of devices, including the iPhone. The whole idea of using Linux (although Palm has their own version, which could be a concern) should be to open the device up to developers. As they've done in the past, Palm is opening their device and encouraging lots of development. Apple has chosen not to make their devices accessible, and I think that's a mistake.

- There is apparently no support for old Palm OS apps. (In fact, Palm is reaching out to developers to develop PIM apps.) While this is a little unfortunate, it probably makes sense.

- Is this device relevant to education? It's hard to say. I'd guess not too much in its first release, but very possibly down the road. If the price comes down to under $300, the processor gets more robust, and some solid educational applications are developed -- all of which seems likely -- this could be a decent educational laptop. With all the new Web 2.0 apps (and the addition of offline syncing), this could be very powerful. In fact, it could be a step closer to the super-user-friendly, book-type form factor computing device we've dreamed of for schools. Of course, we'll watch what happens with OLPC and the Classmate as well.

All in all, I think this is a good move for Palm.

The Foleo is here

Palm today announced its new product line with the Foleo as the flagship product. The product line is "mobile companions," products to act as add-ons to smartphones.

The Foleo has a 10 inch screen and a full-size keyboard and connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth. It has a VGA connection, which is a nice feature for making presentations.

The Foleo is being marketed as a small, light, instant-on device with a large screen and full keyboard. At the D Conference, Jeff Hawkins said "You can use it as a little laptop...We're careful not to position it as a laptop... it does have a lot of functionality built around the phone."

Hawkins also said that the Foleo runs Linux with a graphical interface. (Presumably this is the new Linux-based Palm OS recently announced.) Dataviz has written a version of Documents to Go for the Foleo. Other apps are presumably under development.

No processor or memory specs as of yet (except that Hawkins said the processor is too slow to do video and he'd use a faster one next time).

The release price is $499 (after a $100 rebate). There is not a release date for this product yet, but Palm says it will be available "this summer."

Stay tuned for more details and commentary.

Handhelds and administrators

The University of Southern Mississippi has been a pioneer in the field of using handhelds for administrative leadership. Each year they host a School Leadership Institute for building-level administrators. One part of that institute focuses on using handhelds as a tool for time management, classroom observation, student records management, and other tasks.

Drs. Ronald Styron and Kyna Shelley are now conducting a research study on handheld use by school administrators.

The purpose of the study is to evaluate school leaders' opinions about and their use of personal digital assistants or handheld computers. There is some research to suggest that PDA's are viewed as making the job of school leader a more efficient undertaking. Likewise, efficient and effective leadership has been associated with stronger school performance.

If you are a K-12 school administrator and use a handheld, they need your input for this research. The survey is online and should only take about 10 minutes to complete.

Thanks in advance for your valuable assistance.

Trying to make iPod content interactive

With all the iPods that are out there and the power of mobile devices to differentiate instruction, I've been looking at various ways to incorporate more interactivity into iPod content.

I started with Quizzler, a program that I really love for handhelds. A big benefit of this is that if you already have a bunch of Quizzler quizzes created, it's an easy port. However, the features of this are pretty basic and include no multimedia support.

Next I got the quiz program PodQuiz Maker. It's basically a front end to the Notes program. Good idea, but not the greatest implementation. It does have a way to link to sound and video files, but it's very awkward.

Then Apple announced the new iQuiz program as an iPod game. (Tony Vincent has written a review of it here.) It has a beautiful interface, but no way to link to sound or video files. For my envisioned application in education, this misses the whole point. (We want to be able to provide information and then have a way to interact with it.)

Next, I found Mogopop. This is getting closer. They have a nice web-based interface for content creation. You can link to sound, video, and images. There's no built-in way to do quizzes, but you can do this through hyperlinks. The program is very new and seems a bit buggy in places, but it has definite potential.

Here's a sample project I made:

Mobile curriculum...

plug in and iPod it
requires FREEmanager

(You'll need to download the Mogopop Manager program to download this to your iPod.) Once you get it to your iPod, it will be in Extras.

The next thing to build into this is recordkeeping. That's a big project though.

Does anyone know anything else out there for creating interactive content for the iPod? I'm not sure whether to wait until Apple realizes that closing their device to developers is unwise (probably a very long wait), hope some developers come out with better tools, or start working on something myself.

Do your students have cell phones?

Tech coordinator Darren Draper is doing an informal survey to see how many students have their own cell phones. If you have time, please do a quick survey of your students. Then either post your results to the spreadsheet linked in the blog or email Darren the info.

The deadline for getting data to him is May 23, so act now!

Thanks. We'll be eager to see the results.

Podcast on mobile tech

My latest mashup, which is on mobile technologies (one of my favorite topics:), is up.

For summer, I thought it would be fun to do some shows on "copyleft" content sources that teachers can use free of charge, since I know a lot of us will be creating new curriculum materials over the summer. If you have some favorite sites for copyleft-licensed images, music, video, etc., drop me an email or post them here. Thanks.

New media player/recorder options

In the ongoing quest to find the best sub-$100 media player with a built-in voice recorder, I've just spent some time looking at Sandisk's new offerings, and I like them.

The reason I haven't liked Sandisk's low- to mid-range players in the past was that they required AAA batteries. Now, most of their new devices are rechargeable.

I've done some recording with the Sansa c250, and the quality is cleaner than most devices I've used in the past. (Hear a comparison here.) This device also supports photos and video (though on a pretty small screen) and has a micro SD slot to add memory. This is the first device under $100 that I've seen with these features.

The Sansa Express is even cheaper. It has voice recording and expansion, but has no color screen.

On the high end, Sandisk also has the Sansa Connect which has a wireless connection that can be used for Internet radio or downloading music. It's also integrated with flickr for photo downloading. On their podcast, Engadget recently speculated that all media players will have integrated wireless of some kind (cell or WiFi) in a couple years.

Then there's the new Sansa Shaker. You shake it to change songs. I have to say that I don't really get that one.:)

Differentiating instruction: a big idea?

I've been thinking a lot about the challenge of differentiating instruction in the current educational environment and about the potential of applying RSS technology to curriculum and learning.

Imagine a system in which a variety of student data is fed into a managment system. This data would include not only test scores, but classroom observations, reading level, learning style preferences, native language, personal interests, etc. Then the management system generates an RSS feed that drives a customized learning plan for each student. Lessons, projects, and assignments are then given out based on each student's individual needs.

Anyone know anybody working on something like this?

Google tools rule

If you haven't started using Google's Web 2.0 tools, check them out! They let you create word processed documents, spreadsheets, and more in a browser -- no Office suite required. A really cool side benefit of these tools is that you can access your documents from any browser and even collaborate on documents with others. Oh yeah, and they're free.

I was initially pretty skeptical [my normal frame of mind] about the potential of Web 2.0 type tools to replace Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Now that I've used them though, the idea is growing on me.

With the recent announcement of a forth-coming presentation (read: PowerPoint-like) application, this suite suite will be adding a piece we've all been looking for.

Another critital piece that is apparently in the works is the ability to sync documents to the desktop for offline use. This is a pretty important piece for schools (many of which still don't have 100% reliable connectivity) and for those of us who spend a lot of time on planes.

Every time I'm in a school and hear a kid telling some variation on the "the-computer-ate-my-homework" story ("My document was here and I have no idea what happened to it," "I forgot my USB drive," etc.), I think about the potential of these tools. Pretty exciting stuff. And did I mention that they're free? :)

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