Changing the world

It's not often you get to talk with someone who has changed the world. That's exactly what I did this week in a glittering lounge in the Carlton Ritz Hotel, when I sat down with Steve Wozniak, co-founder (with Steve Jobs) of Apple. Wozniak designed the first Apple computer, and together with Jobs, set in motion a company that continues this day to mould our use of digital technology. If you use an iPad, iPod or iPhone, if you have an Apple Mac computer or laptop of any sort, you undoubtedly have Steve Wozniak to thank. Apple, and its co-founder Wozniak have shaped our desires and crystallised our dreams with innovation after innovation. Steve Jobs may be no longer with us, but Steve Wozniak - 'Woz' - lives on, larger than life, and as effusive and buoyant as ever about the future of technology and its role in education.

This week, Woz and I were both invited speakers at the 3rd International Conference on eLearning and Distance Education in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was already sitting in the speaker's lounge, ready to present his opening keynote, when I wandered in, unaware that he was there. There was no-one else in the room. I walked over. We shook hands. We sat down. Then we talked.

The world according to Woz is one of sustained wonder at the many ways technology can be made to do our bidding. As a young boy growing up in the 50s and 60s, he told his father that he would one day own a computer. His father laughed and told him a computer would cost more than a house to buy. Computers in the 50s and 60s were indeed expensive. They were also almost the size of houses. But Woz's dream of one day owning a computer was realised when he began work for the Hewlett Packard computer company. Within a short time he was taking computers apart to see how they worked, and had soon had drawn up the plans to construct his very own computer - the Apple 1. He met Steve Jobs, who said 'we can sell this', and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now aged 62, and with a life time of achievements behind him, Woz has a great deal to say about schools and education. He even became a school teacher for a few years after he had made his fortune and had put Apple behind him. He believes that computers and digital technology are now our prime scientific and academic tools, but balances this with the view that regardless of the impact of technology on society, we still need rich personal and social interaction for effective education to take place. Hence, he says, teachers will always be needed. He is very determined to enforce the idea that children learn best when they are interested. When you have the desire to learn, he says, no-one can take that away from you. And yet, he argues, school is the one environment that currently teaches children that taking a test determines how 'intelligent' they are, but cramming for that test it is certainly not learning. He asks, are schools sending out the wrong message to children, when we ask them to study for test after test? Children are born curious, he says, and all of us - teachers, parents, society - should keep it that way.

On computers and design, Woz is adamant - he is only interested in designing devices that are interactive. 'They need to respond when I use them', he said, 'otherwise I lose interest'. On the nature of knowledge, he told me, all of us need to gain some 'fact' based knowledge, but that this is only the starting point, as we gain skills that will enable each of us to take our place in society. The man is insightful, inspirational and iconic. Yes, it's not often you get to speak to someone who has actually changed the world.

NB: The above content is taken from my conversation with Steve Wozniak, and also excerpts from his Keynote speech in Riyadh on February 5, 2013.

Photo image courtesy of Steve Wheeler


Changing the world by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

20th Century flops?

I have just recorded an interview for my local TV station Westcountry Television. The interview was requested because there has been public outcry about one school in Cornwall called Mounts Bay Academy (very close to where I live here in Devon) that has recently purchased an iPad for each of its 900 students. Here is the story as reported by BBC News. The moaning is from the Tax Payers Alliance, who consider the iPad a 'gimmick' and a waste of taxpayers money. It's to be expected of course. Whenever a school here in the UK announces an innovative scheme such as the iPad project that involves spending money, pressure groups such as the Taxpayers Alliance come out of the woodwork to complain vociferously. But their complaints are ill-informed and certainly not grounded in research.

The headteacher of Mounts Bay, when interviewed, said that she believes that touch screen technologies are the future of learning. She is right. But the future doesn't hang around for long. Schools that do not begin to innovate and adopt new technologies for learning will be left behind in the 20th century. It won't be long, I predicted in my TV interview, before we begin to see non-touch technology in our schools. It's coming, and it's only a matter of time. Our children will sit on our laps and ask 'did you really have to touch a computer to make it work?' That is the future, but for now we have the touch screen iPad and its mimics. Children find touch screen tablets intuitive and easy to use, because they are minimally designed, and there is little to distract them from the real business of education - learning. It is no longer enough for teachers to expect students to passively receive knowledge. Now students need to create their own content, organise and share it, and that is exactly what tools such as the iPad do. Schools such as Honeywood School in Essex (1200 students) and Longfield Academy in Kent (1400 students) and several others around the UK are already forging ahead .... and receiving flak for their farsighted visions. One Australian school in Melbourne - Trinity College - has already done an evaluation study on the 1-1 provision of iPads to their student population. Their Step Forward project findings reveal that iPads can be gamechangers, and can motivate and engage students significantly better than other tools. They have even reduced their paper consumption drastically as a result of the touch screen tools. In the short term, pedagogically, and in the long term, financially, investing in touch screens makes absolute sense. Have a look at this ultimate guide to using the iPad in the classroom, and you will see what I mean. It's a live online document that is constantly being added to by teachers as they find new ways to use touch screen tablets to transform teaching and learning.

It's no good for organisations such as the Tax Payers Alliance to complain about wasting public money on 'gimmicks' and then suggesting that the old tools will suffice. That won't wash at all. Don't they want the best for our young people? Do they want our teaching profession to be stuck in the past as 20th Century flops? Do they want us to prepare our children for the future or for the past?

Image by Ernst Vikne



20th Century flops by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Rotten Apple!

I have had no problems with my Apple iPod at all. Well, none you want to listen to anyway. I used it a lot to listen to my personal music playlists. Flaming hell, I flogged it to death. That was before my iPhone came along. Now my iPod languishes unused on my bedside table, in a manner reminiscent of that thoroughly stupid cartoon advert about turning your discarded mobile phones into cash. I do have several problems with my iPhone, including capricious battery life, complete failure of edge technology and some initially extortionate monthly charges from O2 which I have now eradicated by taking out a pay-as-you-go contract. Now O2 won’t be able to prise so much cash out of my wallet, but even with all the problems, I’m hanging onto my iPhone because I love its touch screen.

I was intrigued but not particularly surprised then to read that one poor 11 year old British girl called Ellie Stanborough reportedly suffered the terrifying incident of having her iPod explode on her. Experts point to the lithium ion batteries Apple use as the source of the problem. So there in the picture in the Daily Mail is Ellie looking suitably forlorn but uninjured, holding up the wreckage of her once shiny iPod. But here’s the most horrendous part of the story... As you would, Ellie’s parents contacted Apple to report the incident and ask for a refund. Apple responded by offering to refund the money, but only if the Stanboroughs kept quiet about the incident. If the Stanboroughs talked to the press, said Apple, there might be legal action taken out against them. Cor, what a rotten Apple!

This kind of gagging tactic, it has emerged, has also been attempted in the U.S. on a number of other occasions when Apple iPods have apparently exploded. One allegedly blew up inside a young lad’s trousers and badly burnt his leg. The boy’s mother is taking Apple to court in Ohio, and we eagerly await the verdict. In fact the first time this kind of thing happened was in Japan, in March last year! So I would imagine that Apple have really got the pip now that the news has also emerged in the national press on both sides of the Atlantic that not only do they appear to have a serious safety issue with the lithium ion batteries inside their famed iPod devices, they also want a complete news blackout when things go drastically wrong. Chew on that for a while...

Image source

Here's to the crazy ones

Are you considered a little crazy? Are your ideas looked on with scorn, or with mild amusement? Well, don't give up. Twice I have come across the same quote today, in two different versions, and I now think that someone, somewhere is trying to tell me something. So I share it here with you. I'm not sure whether this is even the complete quote, but it's one that really inspires me, and the words also turn up within the amazing portrait by Dylan Roscover of Apple guru Steve Jobs (left):

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward.
And while some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

And here's the 'Think Different' video

Image source

Feeling the pinch

Seems as if Apple enjoys making other rival companies feel the pinch. Or at least, it hopes to stop competitors pinching the 'pinch'. It's all about gesturing, see... ummm... Look, I'm not describing this very well, am I? I'll let someone else do the talking instead. In a recent article in Wired, Bryan Gardiner writes:

Is pinching proprietary? We may find out in the coming months as many companies, inspired by the success of Apple's iPhone, release their own multitouch-enabled laptops, smartphones and tablets. In doing so, these companies -- including RIM, Nokia and Synaptics -- may run afoul of multitouch patent applications recently filed by Apple.

"If Apple's patents are granted, the company could absolutely stop others from using similar technology," says Raj Abhyanker, a patent lawyer who used to write patent applications for Apple. "They'd also be in an especially good position to stop others from including certain features. Apple could stop [their use] not only on mobile devices but also desktops."

So is this a cynical move by Apple to try to gain the upper hand on the upper hand they have already gained? Is this just posturing about gesturing? Y'see it's generally agreed that multi-gesture touch screens will be features of most handhelds in the next few years, so this could turn out to be a real roadblock. The Wired article continues....

If Apple's patent applications are successful, other manufacturers may have no choice but to implement multitouch gestures of their own. The upshot: You might pinch to zoom on your phone, swirl your finger around to zoom on your notebook, and triple-tap to zoom on the web-browsing remote control in your home theater.

That's an outcome many in the industry would like to avoid. Synaptics, a company that by most estimates supplies 65 to 70 percent of the notebook industry with its touchpad technology, is working on its own set of universal touch gestures that it hopes will become a standard. These gestures include scrolling by making a circular motion, moving pictures or documents with a flip of the finger, and zooming in or out by making, yes, a pinching gesture.

But whatever happended to competition and free enterprise? Although I love the iPhone, I think Apple might be acting a little too precious on this one. Did IBM try to patent the index finger click gesture? Did MicroSoft patent the 'frowning when the screen freezes' gesture? Even the name 'Apple' is not that original after all. Just ask Lennon and McCartney (or Adam and Eve for that matter).

Well, I have one or two gestures just for the guys at Apple , and they aren't patented...

Prank iPhone?

I received an e-mail from my friend Maged Boulos yesterday which contained the following warning:

'The first Malware for the iPhone has appeared. It began to appear a few days ago as a package named "iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep" and was described as "An important system update. Install this before updating to the new 1.1.3 firmware." During the installation, the package overwrites some other applications including OpenSSH and "Erica's Utilities"—a collection of command line tools for the iPhone. If the user uninstalls the fake 1.1.3 prep package, these other apps are also removed. No explicitly malicious actions are taken though; all the user need do is to reinstall the lost apps.'

This application problem is probably an unintended side-effect, and the fake package appears to be a prank, intended to be harmless. But it does show the potential for malware to do damage to iPhones and the need for users to be cautious.

Well, it's very nice of the malware writers to think of us iPhone users. We would feel left out if they hadn't created some special viruses just for us. If I ever meet one though, I will cheerfully dispatch them prematurely to the place all virus writers are destined to end up...

And get this.... the University's intelligent anti-spam software 'cleverly' identified Maged's e-mail as 'spam', so I didn't see it immediately, as it was zapped into my 'to delete' file.