Another great Apple video!
Archives For mobile
IDC offers the following predictions for 2012:
- The world will spend a whopping $2.1 trillion on tech in 2013
- Tech will grow insanely fast in emerging countries
- 2013 will be a make-it-or-break-it year in mobile for some vendors
- Big IT companies will feast on smaller cloud players
- A lot of smaller, specialized clouds will sprout up
- Everyone will become an IT person
- Big data will get bigger
- The data center as we know it is over
- Your work computer will be an ID you keep in your head
Tis the season for IT predictions and this years predictions are starting with some tried and try favorites. Cloud and mobile computing have been the “next big thing” for almost five years now and perhaps in 2013 we will start to see some of the earlier years predictions coming true. With the uptake of the iPad and other tablets we may now finally see some of these predictions come true. The ability to use ones own mobile phone or tablet to get real work done is finally a reality and this is will be putting significant pressure on IT departments to keep up.
One of the challenging predictions for IT is that “everyone will become an IT person”. What this really means is people are tired of hearing “NO” from IT and are using tools like Dropbox, Google docs and a wide assortment of free file sharing resources to get their work done without IT’s support. While this is great for the end user because they don’t have to deal with IT and can just get things done, the security risks involved in sharing corporate, government or academic data on some of these networks is significant and we may see 2013 or perhaps 2014 as the year of the renewed security threat.
IT departments that are currently facing this uncontrollable user driven shift only have themselves to blame. Cloud and mobile computing have been significant forces for many years now and there was plenty of time to develop strategies to work with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) workers. Proper planning and proactive responses to the cloud and mobile trends would have prevented what many will see as a reactive response to this shift. Proactive planning would have also alleviated many of the security concerns that will become big news are a result of the BYOD trends that are driving change.
Perhaps the most accurate predictions is that 2013 will be a make or break year for many companies. IDC has suggested that that mobile phone and tablet companies that don’t attract interest from at least 50% of app developers won’t survive. Apple and Android are the market leaders so it is their lead to loose. Will RIM make it? Will Microsoft’s bet on Windows 8 on the phone, tablet and desktop be enough or is it too little too late? Will 2013 be the year of consolidation in the cloud and mobile space? Regardless, 2013 should prove to be an interesting and pivotal year.
MIT’s New Free Courses May Threaten (and Improve) the Traditional Model, Program’s Leader Says – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education-Wired Campus blogger Jeffery Young, Rafael Reif, MIT’s provost stated:
My point is that for a while I view this as augmenting the education you get on a residential model. And yes, it may threaten, and if it does the residential model has to get better. Our objective is to actually use MITx to even increase further what we do on campus, to make it stronger and to be able to resist and survive and do very well in this potential disruptive situation.
To those who are stuck in the delivery mode of educational content MITx and all other forms of online learning or mobile will be a threat. To those who view online and mobile learning technologies as tools that can be used enhance learning this will be an opportunity to learn from the best and radically improve the academy. Well positioned and implemented mobile and online technologies can shift the delivery of content to outside of class (where it belongs) allowing the instructors and students to use valuable class time to go deeper and explore the application and integration of that content in meaningful ways.
Helping students to assess high volumes of information that are available through many digital means and also helping them make the meaningful connections which are essential to learning are a fundamental part of the roles instructors must play in 21st century learning environments.
It is ironic that the technology writer who once said that the iPad is good for only two things is now offering a top 20 list for the same device. To be fair to Jason Hiner of Tech Republic he did add note taking to his first two uses, reading/viewing and multitouch interaction. So now that Hiner is offering a top 20 list we may assume that he has found many more uses for the iPad–or has he? If you look closely at Hiner’s list you will find that many of the apps fit into one of his first three use categories but he has unwittingly or unknowingly added a fourth and perhaps even a fifth category–organization and learning.
Apps like Flipboard, Kindle, Documents to Go, Pulse, Skygrid, Propublica, NPR, Guardian Eyewitness, Big Picture, Weather Channel, Netflix, WeatherChannel and NASA all fit into the reading or viewing category. Most of these apps are recognized as some of the best news, news aggregator or media apps in the Apps store. Since I have almost all of these Apps on my own iPad I can confirm his assessment. In addition, most of these apps fully utilize the iPad’s multituouch interface and when you add the the editing apps, iA Writer and Penultimate Hiner’s usage categories may initially appear to be complete.
But Hiner has included Evernote, which is by far the best organizational tool that can be found on any computer, smartphone, and tablet and Things which is arguably one of the best To Do list tools available so he has added something new to his category list. While these two applications do fully utilize the multitouch interface and allow one to view what they need, these apps do much more–they help one stay organized and make life much more efficient. I have often referred to Evernote as my external brain because it enables me to store and access so much more information than humanly possible and it functions as my external or augmented intelligence. Because, Evernote helps me to make so many more meaningful connections within the data than what I could do on my own, I also put this app into the learning category. This is not the only app in Hiner’s list that falls into this category.
The Rosetta Stone is clearly a learning app because it enables one to take advantage of the very popular language software that was originally confined to a computer. Mobile learning is perhaps one of the most powerful functions that the iPad supports because it can be used to help us learn all the time and everywhere. Whether one is using the Rosetta Stone app or augmenting one’s intelligence with Evernote the iPad is a useful tool that helps us make meaningful connections which is the foundation of learning. The iPad is also an powerful learning tool because its ease of use and efficiency enable the user to focus on what they want to do as opposed to the technology. For many years I have been predicting that technology will eventually mature to the point where it disappears and we then focus purely on the task at hand–we are finally getting to that point.