March 5, 2014
Note: This story was first published in The Loop Magazine Issue 15 on November 21, 2013.
It’s 2010. A crowd of inner city school teachers have gathered inside the principal’s office. On his desk sits what seems like a giant iPhone to some, a silly device without a physical keyboard to others. To me—someone who had watched Steve Jobs’s iPad unveiling a few weeks before—it looks exactly what Steve called it: a magical thing.
Flash forward to the year 2013, and a number of teachers still remain to be convinced. Who could blame them, when many a “new new thing” has appeared like a godsend yet served only to lengthen teachers’ workloads, adding nothing to sound pedagogy? Look at email. It’s a technology that’s supposed to save us time, and yet, it’s effectively tied us to our desks for longer each day.
Thankfully, the head of learning technologies at my school is an iPad convert. Earlier this year, he ordered 100 iPad minis, still far too few for each student to have one each, but as much as our beleaguered budget would allow in these austerity-ridden times, when UK government cuts are really starting to bite. To encourage take up, we ran a training session where we faced some familiar questions: How can students type long essays on an iPad? I can’t use Microsoft Office in any meaningful capacity—how do you deal with that?
Here’s a rough transcript of what I told the 100-plus staff that crammed into our drama studio on a hot summer’s day in July: “An IOS device is not a replacement for your computer, although your students may beg to differ. If you want to type, use a Mac. If you want Office with all its foibles, grab a PC. Good luck with that. If you want student-centered learning where your youngsters lead on research projects and where the teacher acts as facilitator, choose an iPad. If you want instant Internet to save vital class time, rather than slow-to-load PCs, choose an iPad.”
I went on to use the example of how my history students accessed university research databases and national archives, used the Notes app to bullet point their findings, and dictated a general summary to the rest of the class with a voice-memo app. And not a single student loses anything because the save button is not required in these iCloud times. This last point is important—so many teachers and students still rely on on USB sticks, despite the fact that Dropbox is so much better.
Some other observations I shared with my colleagues:
Avoid subject-specific apps, as they tend to dumb down content. Instead, turn to general apps that can be used in a multitude of learning environments including multimedia functions so that students can have a little fun and be creative with their presentations.
Set up stations of learning just like in Montessori schools with a few iPads at one of those stations to facilitate a research task.
Where possible, have one iPad per student.
That last suggestion caused some in the audience to balk. “Isn’t education supposed to foster collaboration?” one colleague of mine asked. “How is that achieved when we are all working on separate machines?” Great question. Instead of responding verbally, I had a staff member come and sit by me while I played on my iPad. He just sat there. “How do you feel?” I asked him. “Lonely”, he replied. Then I gave him a spare iPad and we both went onto the BBC News app. Immediately, forgetting the audience, he started speaking to me about a news item, and I shared with him what I was reading on the same app. Now that’s collaboration. Each student should have a separate iPad, but they can still work together to achieve a common end.
I used another example of how a student in a sociology class brought her own iPad to a lesson. She explained to the teacher how she used a sketching app to draw diagrams to help her remember what she was learning and how anything she wrote down on an iPad wasn’t simply copied from the teacher’s PowerPoint to her Pages app. “Using an iPad makes me think about what is being conveyed,” she said. “I feel I understand more when I write on it, as if the information somehow goes through an extra filter that doesn’t exist when I use a pen and paper.”
I promised my audience that I would send them an app a week to try out. They liked that suggestion, but some still had legitimate concerns. At the end of the training, a teacher stayed behind to express her fears about how these devices will be the preserve of the “good kids,” piloted only with those university-bound students who will look after them. At that exact moment, I couldn’t really provide an answer. Until now—until last week in fact, when I planned a lesson for a particularly difficult bunch of students, all with various needs and with outside barriers to learning. I opted for a snazzy start, presuming the iPads’ “new new thing” would provide one. What followed was not the bells-and-whistles lesson that I had hoped for, but chaos didn’t ensue, either. Instead, the result was a surprisingly calm, purposeful lesson where the hitherto problem students engaged fully in what they were doing. Which leads to my next observation: iPads are brilliant for behavior management and should be targeted at all students, particularly the naughtiest.
We are just getting started with these magical devices. It’s going to be an interesting year.
Nick de Souza’s Bio:
Nick lives and works in London, UK, and teaches History and Politics at a school for 16-19 year olds. He used to write for World Link, the magazine of the World Economic Forum, and served in the European Commission’s press department. Teaching remains his passion, yet it faces a run for its money from his love of iPads.
Nick’s Website | Nick’s Twitter
Written by Dave Mark
The Associated Press asked Ellen DeGeneres for permission to share her now-famous Oscar selfie with subscribers to their photo service. But does Ellen have the right to give it away? Who owns that picture?
Um, well, I guess Ellen does, right? After all, she took it with her camera, right?
Not so fast, cowboy.
The problem, according to Los Angeles-area entertainment lawyer Ethan Kirschner, whom The Wire also spoke with, is that DeGeneres might not own the copyright on the photo. “Historically,” Kirschner told me, “it’s always been the person who pressed the shutter who’s technically the person that owns copyright.” In part, that’s a function of the age of the art of photography; the idea that everyone has his own camera in his pocket is a fairly new one. When the courts were trying to figure out who gets copyright, they “had to assign copyright to someone; they gave it to the person that literally pressed the button.”
In the case of the Oscare selfie, that person wasn’t DeGeneres — it was actor Bradley Cooper.
Really interesting discussion of copyright.
Written by Dave Mark
A patent troll by the name of Penovia LLC has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit claims that Apple’s iPad infringes their acquired patent that’s about a maintenance technique that monitors office machine status without personal attention. This is the typical type of case that the Federal Trade Commission is now studying to find ways to assist tech companies from having to waste their time fighting such suits.
When I see the phrase “acquired patent”, I see red. In my opinion, this type of lawsuit is destructive and serves simply to line someone’s pockets. This needs to be fixed.
Written by Dave Mark
“Get together?”
The subject line of the e-mail was like every other come-on that hit Jan Koum’s in-box in the spring of 2012. He was pounded daily by investors who wanted a piece of his company, WhatsApp. Hatched on his birthday, Feb. 24, 2009, WhatsApp was emerging as a global phenomenon. Some 90 million people were using it to text and send photos for free. No social utility had ever grown as fast. Facebook had only 60 million by its third birthday. And at the time close to half of WhatsApp users were returning daily.
Koum looked at the e-mail sender: Mark Zuckerberg. Now, that was a first. The Facebook founder had been using WhatsApp and wanted him over for dinner. Koum stalled, then finally wrote back saying he was traveling soon and dealing with server issues. Zuckerberg suggested they meet before Koum left. Koum forwarded the reply to his cofounder, Brian Acton, and his sole venture backer, Jim Goetz, a partner at Sequoia Capital, adding the word: “Persistent!”
Take the meeting, Acton said: “When someone of Mark’s status contacts you directly, you answer the phone.”
This is a fascinating read.
Written by Dave Mark
In the embedded video, an Apple CarPlay rep gives a detailed hands-on walkthrough of CarPlay in this gorgeous Ferrari. The interface looks exactly like what you’d expect from iOS. The controls seem responsive, the interface elements consistent.
Compatible with the iPhone 5 and up, CarPlay is “loaded” into the Ferrari’s built-in navigation system by way of a Lightning adapter located underneath the armrest. Wireless connections are coming, at least from Volvo, but our test was limited to traditional cables.
I believe this means that you’ll plug your phone into a lightning connector in the console, with wireless (WiFi) support on its way.
Once it’s connected, Ferrari will continue to utilize its own infotainment system, but users can load CarPlay by hitting a dedicated dashboard button, allowing all touch and voice inputs to be diverted to your iPhone. This loads the CarPlay dashboard, which features a familiar array of icons and services you’ll recognize from your iPhone. From here, it’s a case of using the touchscreen or calling upon Siri to load each of the services — the latter of which can be summoned with the Siri Eyes Free button located on the reverse of the steering wheel.
This is what you’d expect. If you don’t own an iOS device, you can still use the radio, etc.
The first thing we noticed is how speedy everything is. Apps load quickly, and Siri’s contextual algorithms hastily recognized our voice commands and responded appropriately. Apple has also implemented safety features to ensure services do not draw your attention away from the road and push forward its “hands-free” theme. For example, when we sent or received a message from a contact, Siri would only read the message back to us and we never once got the chance to see its contents.
The overall impression I got was that this interface belonged in this car. This is the factory media control center, not a 3rd party product grafted in place. The Siri integration was very well done. 3rd party CarPlay apps were also seamlessly integrated. The video shows off playing content from various sources (your music library, I Heart Radio, various podcasts) and it all works exactly as you’d expect.
When I buy my next car, the availability of CarPlay will definitely be a major factor in which car I choose. Sadly, there’s little chance I’ll be buying the Ferrari below. But I can dream, can’t I?
UPDATE: David Barnard pointed out that the wireless connection will be WiFi or WiFi direct, not Bluetooth.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
I like this better than Google’s offering because it has an onscreen interface. While it doesn’t rely on a smartphone to control the device, it is an option, in addition to the included remote.
Written by Dave Mark
Controversial. And fascinating.
The cost of the equipment BeAnotherLab is using to create this illusion is modest: The group uses secondhand PlayStation Eye cameras, arduino-powered servos and motors to control the movement of the camera, laptops, and Oculus Rift headsets. Each set up costs around €500, or $685 but the “gender swap” setup requires two sets of equipment to function, one for each participant.
“In Brazil there are many problems with violence against women, which comes from their own partners,” Bertrand explained. “What would it be like if a man could see through the eyes of a woman? Would he act in the same way?”
Some of this is NSFW.
Written by Dave Mark
These pictures, taken by Latvian photographer Kaija Straumanis are making the rounds right now. I kind of like them. Take a look. If you are interested in how they were made (it might spoil the magic, but read if you must know), read the article below the pics.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Lisa Fleisher for WSJ:
Speaking at the Saïd Business School in Oxford, U.K., Steve Ballmer, who stepped down from Microsoft one month ago, admitted that he would re-do the last ten years if he could.
“We would have a stronger position in the phone market today if I could re-do the last 10 years,” he said. The answer, he said, is to pick up and try to catch the next wave.
It’s good that he admitted something we all knew for a while now.
If you have even a tiny little taste for Frank Zappa, take the video below for a spin. These are a series of answering machine messages from Zappa’s home recording studio, the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK). So very delicious.
As one commenter said, “hmm. Zappa. that’s a twitter feed i would follow.”
[Via brother Stu]
Written by Dave Mark
Phishing is typically done using HTML that lets someone hide a malicious link in an email disguised as a legitimate link.
To circumvent this, companies started sending plain text emails when talking about sensitive matters such as account security and personal information.
The (valid) reasoning behind this decision was that, since the mails were only made up of text, there wouldn’t be any links to click on. They could thus start educating their users to never click on links in emails when about to enter personal information. Instead, they would invite them to manually select the portion of text that corresponds to the URL they’re asked to follow, and paste it in their browser’s address bar.
Such instructions are easy to follow, and shouldn’t lead to any surprise – or so you’d think.
Very interesting article. The big surprise to me was when I actually dragged my cursor to hand-copy a URL, then pasted it into my browser and a completely different text string appeared. I get it, and I should know better, but I was still completely surprised by the result.
Worth a read.
Written by Dave Mark
To me, this is a tragedy. I love RadioShack, grew up building projects using parts I got from their back shelves. Somewhere, they made a wrong turn, trying to compete with the likes of Best Buy and phone retailers.
If I was the CEO, I’d rethink the plan and find a way to become the supplier of choice to the Maker movement. Over time, RadioShock has taken shelf space away from items useful for Makers (like resistors, capacitors, quality soldering kits, and packaged projects) to sell toys and consumer electronics.
Somehow, the RadioShack I grew up with lost its soul. Sad.
Written by Dave Mark
Yesterday, we posted about Peter Oppenheimer accepting a position on the Goldman Sachs Board of Directors. This morning, Apple announced that Oppenheimer would be retiring at the end of September. Luca Maestri will take his place.
Apple today announced that Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s senior vice president and CFO, will retire at the end of September. Luca Maestri, Apple’s vice president of Finance and corporate controller, will succeed Peter as CFO reporting to Apple CEO, Tim Cook. Peter will transition the CFO role to Luca in June and the balance of his responsibilities over the remaining time allowing for a professional and seamless transition.
“Peter has served as our CFO for the past decade as Apple’s annual revenue grew from $8 billion to $171 billion and our global footprint expanded dramatically. His guidance, leadership and expertise have been instrumental to Apple’s success, not only as our CFO but also in many areas beyond finance, as he frequently took on additional activities to assist across the company. His contributions and integrity as our CFO create a new benchmark for public company CFOs,” said Tim Cook, Apple CEO. “Peter is also a dear friend I always knew I could count on. Although I am sad to see him leave, I am happy he is taking time for himself and his family. As all of us who know him would have expected, he has created a professional succession plan to ensure Apple doesn’t miss a beat.”
“Luca has over 25 years of global experience in senior financial management, including roles as a public company CFO, and I am confident he will be a great CFO at Apple,” added Tim. “When we were recruiting for a corporate controller, we met Luca and knew he would become Peter’s successor. His contributions to Apple have already been significant in his time with us and he has quickly gained respect from his colleagues throughout the company.”
“I love Apple and the people I have had the privilege to work with and after 18 years here, it is time for me to take time for myself and my family,” said Peter Oppenheimer. “For quite some time, I have wanted to live on the central coast of California and get more involved at Cal Poly, my alma mater; spend more time with my wife and sons; travel to interesting parts of the world; and something I have wanted to do for years— finish the requirements for my pilot’s license.”
March 3, 2014
Like millions of other people around the world, I cheered Tim Cook’s comments in response to a question from the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) at last Friday’s Apple shareholder meeting. The organization asked Cook to commit to only those things that were profitable—Cook refused, saying that Apple made decisions for a variety of reasons.
You would think that would be the end of the situation—sadly, it wasn’t. I don’t feel the need to defend Tim Cook, but I do feel it’s necessary to clarify some of the things that are being said after the shareholder meeting.
The NCPPR is known to be “climate change deniers.” There is nothing wrong with that—people and organizations are free to express their views and buy stock in companies. Having said that, it is interesting to read Greenpeace’s description of the NCPPR:
…it’s worth noting exactly who the NCPPR is, since the vanilla-sounding name doesn’t offer much. The NCPPR is a front group for fossil fuel companies that has spent decades seeding lies to create doubt about the reality of global warming. It received $445,000 in funding from Exxon Mobil from 1998 to 2008. More recently, the front group has marched in lockstep with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that has produced model state legislation for discriminatory voter ID laws, Stand Your Ground gun laws, and attacks on clean energy.
I honestly don’t care about the NCPPR’s views one way or the other. However, they seem to have taken Cook’s comments, twisted them around, and ran with them to suit their needs—that’s dishonest. The truth is a bit different—that’s what I want to address here.
After the shareholder meeting, Justin Danhof, director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project, published the following statement:
“Although the National Center’s proposal did not receive the required votes to pass, millions of Apple shareholders now know that the company is involved with organizations that don’t appear to have the best interest of Apple’s investors in mind,” said Danhof. “Too often investors look at short-term returns and are unaware of corporate policy decisions that may affect long-term financial prospects. After today’s meeting, investors can be certain that Apple is wasting untold amounts of shareholder money to combat so-called climate change. The only remaining question is: how much?”
Here is what Tim Cook actually said during the shareholder meeting when the NCPPR asked him to commit to only pursuing profitable projects:
“No, I wouldn’t be willing to say that because we do things for other reasons than profit motives. We do things because they are right and just and that is who we are. That’s who we are as a company. I don’t…when I think about human rights, I don’t think about an ROI. When I think about making our products accessible for the people that can’t see or to help a kid with autism, I don’t think about a bloody ROI, and by the same token, I don’t think about helping our environment from an ROI point of view. It’s not how I look at it. My simple point was if you did only look at it in that way for the Maiden data center, the same decisions would have been made and so there are cases where you can see these two spheres connecting but I’m not going to say that that’s all I’m going to do by any means. I don’t look at it that way. Just to be very straightforward with you, if that’s a hard line for you, if you only want me to make things, make decisions that have a clear ROI, then you should get out of the stock just to be plain and simple.”
[…]
Thank you. I think it’s so important to remember that the Apple brand stands for something and you can’t take each piece of it and say, “This has a 20% ROI and this has a 15, and you shouldn’t have given this $100 million to education,” and all this kind of stuff. That’s not the way we look at it. It’s not who we are as people.
Danhof would have you believe that Apple is involved in some kind of conspiracy, but as you can see from the comments, Cook was addressing more than Apple’s moves to improve the environment1.
Apple is addressing worker safety in its factories, accessibility options for those in society that can benefit from those features, and yes, improving the environment from toxic chemicals.
Cook isn’t saying that anyone with a different view on climate change should abandon Apple’s stock2—that’s just Danhof’s twisted way of portraying the situation to add fuel to his fire. Cook is merely defending the principles that make Apple a great company. That is the reason most people invested in Apple in the first place.
I applaud Tim Cook for defending the products Apple makes that help the blind, or the autistic children, and the environment. Maybe the ROI isn’t as great on those items, I honestly don’t know, but Apple is a better company for recognizing those issues and addressing them where they can.
Doing what’s right isn’t always the easiest decision to make, but it is always the best one.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
The strategy today is simple: In order to move fast, build what you can’t buy or risk losing control of your fate and becoming the next Palm, Motorola, or HTC. And if, in the process, you disrupt an Oracle or a Qualcomm? So be it.
This is really interesting. I had no idea Facebook built its own servers, but it makes a lot of sense—if the incumbents can’t do it, build it yourself.
