Posted on Wednesday, 3rd February 2010 by Moncrief
It is amazing, just a few days after the anticipated announcement on Apple’s iPad—there are so many blogs downplaying the WOW factor for the consumer market. So, have to have the $500-800+ iPad, but can begin where they are. This might be a few laptop carts, a half a dozen desktop labs and a new smart phone policy on campus.
So, Apple’s iPad is to Blackboard, as the Blio eReader is to Moodle. When we look at it from an educational perspective, we need to look to history to see where we are going. It may not be the Apple iPad, or the Blio eReader, but, somewhere instantaneously they are “selling” it to education. Certainly, much has been made about Amazon’s Kindle DX and the Barnes and Noble’s Nook with no certain fanfare. Is the iPad the eReader/eTextbook’s Knight in Shining Armor? Before we rush out and think that the iPad is going to replace textbooks, we need to look at the history of open-source in education.
Certainly, you recognize the two LMS (Learning Management Systems) in my title, Blackboard and Moodle. In the history of LMS systems, Blackboard, and others, have been that standard in Enterprise Systems. Then we saw the rise of Moodle, Open-Sourced and Economy-friendly. For Education, this was a game-changer! There was now an affordable market for individual schools, districts and states to create and develop learning content themselves. As a consequence of this Open-Sourced development, several of the Enterprise Systems merged and focused their product.
This same, cat-and-mouse type of development will be seen in the eReader market too. We can already see the set up of the development game. Apple and their iPad are moving us closer to a hybrid environment for the eReader that includes both text and dynamic content. However, on the sideline and quite possibly the Moodle of this equation is the Blio eReader. If you are not familiar with Blio, you can read about them here.
Blio can convert any book into the Blio format and bring it to the reader in rich color-format. It will not only allow for text to speech, but also synchronize unabridged audio with digital text (they call this print + audio). Blio can also customize research tools and bind together LMS-type functionalities inside the eText. All of this in a product that can go from reading it on your laptop in class (you get to page 23), and continue reading in on your iPhone on the bus home (it will load to page 23). How cool is that?
For Education, this multi-platform reader is ideal. If a school wants to ramp up the eReader program, everyone does not in between. The Flex option is most likely where we may land.
Posted in 21st Century Education, Technology in Education
Comments (5)
February 14th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Greatings, http://www.realworldteaching.com to GoogleReader!
Boldy
February 19th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
I’ve been reading the infroamtion on your site for quite some time now, just wanted to do a quick post and say thank you for all of the useful information you have been providing your readers all this time.
February 21st, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Thanks for the comment. Real World Teaching is about what is “real” in teaching. It is about the application of knowledge and the thrill of experiencing life!
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:21 pm
I am a student and i found your information on the site very useful for my study, Please keep it up.
April 25th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Todo dinбmica y muy positiva!
Boldy