Over twenty years ago, Apple released a concept video to illustrate a vision about computers in the future. The video, simply titled Knowledge Navigator, anticipated wireless networks, steaming video, the World Wide Web and truly portable netbook style computing. To this day, no company has succeeded in achieving that vision. Maybe after 23 years Apple would introduce a product that  does.  With the launch of the iPad yesterday, we might be waiting a little bit longer.Read more...

After reading a dozen or so "research summaries" of the effectiveness of various popular technologies marketed to schools, the familar experimental design pattern emerges (feel free to recite it along with me): two groups are formed, one with the technology and the other without to serve as the control, etc...  Unfortunately, that's about as close as these "research summaries" get to being classified as research.  Too many times it seems, they lack rigor in their design, control for bias, analysis and jump to conclusion of a causal relationship in their results. Read more...

Back in the days before the term "Web 2.0" was coined, I started making note of when an emerging technology came into use by the early adopters and how many years it would take to reach the mainstream croud at NECC. This year's data point is Twitter. Sadly, the lag isn't getting any shorter:  It's still about three years.Read more...

Each year before NECC, we begin to receive the direct mailing materials from a variety of vendors luring participants to attend their session, watch a demo, win a T-shirt. For the last few years, we've made collages out of the mailers. It's helpful to visualize the variety, as well get a sense year-to-year whether the economy has slowed or not. If this year's collage is any indication, it hasn't seemed to impact vendors' budget for marketing.

Last night was the forth installment of #educhat, an impromptu Twitter-based real-time conversation amongst educators world-wide. I decided to take a closer look at measuring how widespread the participation in the conversation really is. The results were interesting.Read more...

Here's a suggestion for all you conference program planners out there:  Use a Twitter backchannel for dialog, questions, and suggestions from your audience. Doing so will keep presenters sharp, the audience engaged, and attendance growing. Otherwise, expect attrition to rise as participants raise their expectations for interactive professional development. Read more...

Earlier this month, I attended two conferences back to back in Austin (CoSN and SxSW Interactive). For me, the unfortunate side effect of attending conferences has always been some combination of a strained back, stiff neck, and sore feet. But for the first time ever, none of these were the case. This time, something was different: I wasn't carrying my laptop bag everywhere I went. Instead, all I had with me was my iPhone. Read more...