Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
[polldaddy poll=5830314]
Jason Hiner may be a bit premature in suggesting that the Android tablets have failed but he does point to some very relevant limitations of Android tablets when compared to the iPad. Based on the explosive growth of the Android phones in 2010 many tech commentators expected the Android tablet to at minimum match iPad sales in 2011 but this never happened. Hiner offers the following for reasons for Android tablet lack of success in 2011:
- The price
- The lack of tablet apps
- The enterprise doesn’t trust Android
- The 16×9 problem
While I agree these are significant limitations with the Android devices, I also think that you need to take into account the poor battery life, unreliability of the Android OS and apps as well as the fragmented user experience. In the past month two months that I have been using a Samsung Galaxy Tab I have been shocked at how easily I can repeatedly cause applications to crash or freeze, how poor the battery life is not and how long it takes to recharge the Galaxy Tab.
Perhaps the biggest indicator that I don’t trust Android and the Galaxy Tab surfaced on a recent ski trip that my family and I took over the Christmas break. I didn’t want to pack so much so I limited myself to only my laptop and one tablet. I chose my iPad because it was much more reliable and the battery life was so much better. When one is traveling you don’t want to spent time tinkering with a device, you just want it to work.
I won’t go so far as to agree with Hiner and suggest that the Android tablets are a failure I will agree with him that there is a long way to go before they reach the level of functionality and reliability. The sooner they get to this point the better it is for everyone–the more competition there is in the emerging tablet space the more we all win.
As part of their CNET 100 (10 lists of 10 products) CNET identifies the most important important tech products of the year in each major gadget category. It is interesting to note that of the top 10 tech products 8 contribute to the advance of mobile technology. It is also interesting to note that the iPhone 4S is the 1st product in the most important list and also the 10th item in the most disappointing list. Even though the iPhone 4S offers much more than the iPhone 4 for features, power and battery life people are expecting much more from Apple.
See top 10 tech products of 2011…
Patrick Gray offers this driving principle for the New Year:
Reward success, celebrate failure, and punish inaction.
From learning theory perspective error and error correction (failure) is integral to learning and yet for the most part our learning and business environments punish failure or at least penalize it enough that many people become paralyzed by the fear or anxiety that thought of failure may bring.
Perhaps the easiest way to deal with this challenge is to make everything an experiment. We all know that failure is part of experiments so if we start out with accepting the fact that something could go wrong then it is OK to fail and the potential for innovation and learning can flourish.
Christopher Dawson predicts that the following major technologies will have a major impact on Education in 2012:
- Analytics and BI will go mainstream
- Google’s tablet will NOT be the holy grail of 1:1
- BYOD will make 1:1 possible in a big way
- Khan Academy, et al, will give publishers and mainstream educators a run for their money
- We will say goodbye to a lot more libraries and hello to a lot more information
Of the 5 predictions that Dawson makes I have to agree with him fully on his final three. Bring your own device (BYOD) not only makes logistically with the cutbacks we face in Education it also makes sense financially. Technology is the easy part of this major trend but the challenging part is the fact that since some faculty and staff have lived and worked in an environment of control where technology has traditionally been provided that it may be difficult for them to give up some control and adopt to this change.
Similarly, open education resources like Kahn Academy and many others as well as the move from books to digital resources will be technologically easy to implement but will face opposition from those who still prefer the “traditional” approach that has worked for so many years.
One of the consistent trends that I have seen over the years is that getting the technology in place is the easy part but the hard part is getting the faculty to use technology to enhance the learning environment. I was willing to cut faculty and staff some slack on their apprehension toward adopting technology even up until about 19 months ago but with the release of the iPad and subsequently the iPad2 and Android tablets my patience has run out. Why? Prior to the IOS and Android devices becoming so popular and readily accessible it wasn’t that easy to live and work digitally and faculty and staff could use the excuse that they needed training and support in order to be able to work digitally. We are finally at a point where training isn’t required to use technology like an iPad or Android tablet. Faculty still do need significant instruction and support in learning how to create effective learning environments but at least now the technology part of this process is no longer a hindrance.
