Stephen's Untold Stories

The key word is, of course, “slowly.”

Smartphones now have hundreds of applications meant to educate kids — from graphic calculators to animation programs that teach spelling and phonics.

And while most public schools don’t allow the devices because they’re considered distractions — and sometimes portable cheating tools — some school districts have started to put the technology to use.

The key, educators say, is controlling the environment in which they are used.

In St. Mary’s, Ohio, a school district of 2,300 students is continuing a pilot program where third-, fourth- and fifth-graders are assigned PDAs, or personal digital assistants, for use as a learning tool in the classroom, and at home. They use applications created by a company called Go Know! to draw pictures and create sketches, journal and write essays, said Kyle Menchhofer, the district’s technology coordinator. Other applications create flash cards for spelling and math.

Students took the phones on a museum field trip where they took photos, uploaded them to a server where the teacher could view the assignment and wrote blurbs about what they saw.

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They started this a year ago, and here are the results.

We knew the “what” already: ACU handed out 957 devices to incoming freshmen, as well as 169 to faculty and another 182 to staff. It wasn’t a blind move, or a gimmick; it was the result of much research, planning, and even a faculty contest to submit ideas for implementing technology — namely, the iPhone — into the curriculum in ways which would be beneficial, non-distracting and begin to chip away at the age-old paradigms of the lecture hall.

The incoming freshmen were given a choice between an iPhone, an iPod touch, or neither. Unsurprisingly, every incoming student accepted one or the other, with about 36% choosing a iPod touch over an iPhone. This is in large part due to the fact that the school, for several reasons, was unable to provide any contract with the iPhone, and many students had existing cell phone contracts which would result in a significant enough penalty to discourage starting an AT&T plan. Even among those, though, there were some iPhone switchers willing to pay the price.

The ACU iPhone initiative would be a gimmick if research wasn’t done in post to determine its results. Several surveys were taken (with an unusually large percentage of respondents), and information was compiled. One of the questions asked was about the distraction level the iPhones and iPod touches generated in the classroom. George tells me that, in a post-semester survey, 90% of the faculty and staff stated that the devices “were not a distraction in class.” Students reported that they were bringing their devices to class, and that their performance, grades and class work all benefited. The studies also revealed that 82% of the students had used the web portal at least once per week during the Fall semester, 49% said they were given at least one assignment that required device usage outside of class, and 60% of students said they had regular opportunities to use the device for at least one class.

On the faculty side, about 65% of the 167 iPhone/touch-using faculty and staff members responded to survey questions on topics such as demographic and experience factors, personal and classroom usage, and perceived impact on student engagement and performance. An overwhelming majority of the respondents deemed the program a success, said that there was adequate communication and that the device was easy to use and implement. 70% responded positively about the course calender, 83% were in favor of online course documents, 63% for podcasts, 74% were happy about in-class internet searches, 76% responded favorably to the devices’ role in taking attendance, and a whopping 87% stated that they felt comfortable about using the devices for required course activities. The research also revealed that faculty were using the devices to students’ benefit, even when the students in their class didn’t have them. All in all, a positive response from the faculty and staff, and a desire for further training and continued app development.

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I’d love to see some students who are doing things like this with iPhones or iPod touches. Be sure to check out the video down below.

Jorge Colombo drew this week’s cover using Brushes, an application for the iPhone, while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square.

“I got a phone in the beginning of February, and I immediately got the program so I could entertain myself,” says Colombo, who first published his drawings in The New Yorker in 1994. Colombo has been drawing since he was seven, but he discovered an advantage of digital drawing on a nighttime drive to Vermont. “Before, unless I had a flashlight or a miner’s hat, I could not draw in the dark.” (When the sun is up, it’s a bit harder, “because of the glare on the phone,” he says.) It also allows him to draw without being noticed; most pedestrians assume he’s checking his e-mail.

There’s a companion application, Brushes Viewer, that makes a video recapitulating each step of how Colombo composed the picture.  Colombo leans heavily on the Undo feature: “It looks like I draw everything with supernatural assurance and very fast—it gets rid of all the hesitations.”

Colombo’s phone drawing is very much in the tradition of a certain kind of New Yorker cover, and he doesn’t see the fact that it’s a virtual finger painting as such a big deal. “Imagine twenty years ago, writing about these people who are sending these letters on their computer.” But watching the video playback has made him aware that how he draws a picture can tell a story, and he’s hoping to build suspense as he builds up layers of color and shape.

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Thanks to my dad for alerting me to this one!

Are you a PC? Then you’d better not go to the University of Missouri’s journalism school, where 99.5 percent of the students have Macs and incoming freshmen have just been told they’ll need an iPhone or iPod Touch as well.

Why? So they can play back lectures in their free time, according to Associate Dean Brian S. Brooks.

“Lectures are the worst possible learning format,” he told the Columbia Missourian, the campus newspaper. “There’s been some research done that shows if a student can hear that lecture a second time, they retain three times as much of that lecture.”

In a conversation with FOXNews.com, Brooks said that any MP3 player could actually be used.

“You could use a Zune, for example,” he said.

But he said the Apple devices, which start at $200 apiece, were made official requirements for the benefit of students on financial aid.

“If it’s required, it can be included in your financial-need estimate,” he told the Missourian. “If we had not required it, they wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Brooks said the journalism school was stressing Apple devices to standardize software — lectures are downloaded for free from a special section of the iTunes Store — and because so many students either already had or wanted an iPhone or iPod Touch.

“There are about 50 other schools across the country that are doing this,” he said.

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More and more colleges are starting to do this. It’s nice to see some research that shows it is worthwhile.

The ability to pause and rewind podcast lectures gave the upper hand to college students in a recent study that compared the performance of students who attended a lecture in person and those who viewed it from iTunes University.

The study, “iTunes University and the Classroom: Can Podcasts Replace Professors?,” was conducted at the State University of New York Fredonia. It called for some introductory psychology students to watch a recorded lecture available online and others to attend a traditional classroom lecture.

Students who watched the lecture podcast–available from the iTunes U online video library–scored an average of 71 percent. Students who sat through the 30-minute classroom lecture scored an average of 62 percent, according to the study.

Dani McKinney, the study’s lead researcher, said test scores were most dramatically affected by note taking. Students who watched the video lecture and took notes, McKinney said, scored an average of 15 points higher than their peers in the lecture hall.

“They listened to [the podcast] over and over,” said McKinney, a Fredonia psychology professor since 2006 who completed the iTunes study with researchers Jennifer Dyck and Elise Luber. “Listening passively doesn’t get anything accomplished. It’s not enough to just do rote memory and repetition.”

Examining the notes taken by students who participated in the study, McKinney said it was clear many students took advantage of the pause and rewind buttons.

Read the rest here.

Now THIS is really sweet. I already installed it on my iPod touch, and it works great!

This could mean a lot for schools that have already purchased iPod touches for their students. Now they don’t have to buy a separate device.

You may not have the latest $359 Kindle electronic book reader from Amazon.com, but if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, a new application will let you access much of the same content on your Apple device.

In a bid to increase its slice of the e-book market, the Seattle-based online retailer rolled out a free program Wednesday that brings several of the Kindle’s functions to the iPod and iPhone’s smaller screen.

The program, which can be downloaded from Apple’s online application store, lets iPhone and iPod Touch users read the same electronic books that Kindle owners can buy on Amazon.com. As with the Kindle, the iPhone app lets users change the text size on the screen, and add bookmarks, notes and highlights.

The application does not connect to the Kindle store, however, so users must access the Web browser on their iPhone, iPod or computer to buy the content. Users cannot read magazines and newspapers on the Kindle application, either.

If you happen to have a Kindle and an iPhone, Amazon‘s program will handily sync the two so you can keep your place in the same book on both devices.

Read the rest here.

That’s what these students are doing in Houston.

Studying on your laptop is so 2007. A group of biology students at Houston Community College’s southeast campus just turns on iPhones.

“Instead of bringing your book to class, you bring your phone,” said Lisa Jackson, one of 15 students enrolled in Anatomy and Physiology II as part of a pilot project to deliver course work on Apple’s trendy smart phones.

Lifang Tien, a biology professor, and Roger Boston, who teaches computer science and business technology, received $100,196 from a fund created by HCC Chancellor Mary Spangler to encourage innovation, then used the money to buy phones and pay the monthly bills. Students have to give the phones back at the end of the semester.

In return, Tien and Boston are studying whether delivering instruction on a phone that can connect to the Internet anytime and anywhere makes a difference in how students learn.

Tien’s students like the convenience. Tiffany DeBurr Brewer has studied in her car while her three kids raced noisily around the house.

“I can study in my spare time,” she said. “I don’t have to lug a laptop around. It makes my life easier.”

Read the rest here!

Another one you must bookmark.

If you’re thinking that all your iPod can do is play music, think again. With a little ingenuity and guidance, you can turn your iPod into just about anything, whether it’s a remote control or a notepad. Read on to find more than 75 tutorials that will walk you through projects that will transform your iPod.

Link to site

It’s called MoFuse, and it’s free!

Here is what my site looks like on a PDA or standard mobile phone.

http://stephenrahn.mofuse.mobi

And here is what it looks like if you have an iPhone!

http://stephenrahn.mofuse.mobi/iphone

I certainly hope so. I’m getting one!

The 3G iPhone will be announced June 9, the likely date of Apple CEO Steve Jobs‘ keynote at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference, analysts said in research notes on Thursday.

The 3G iPhone will be the “first of an impressive wave of new products” from Apple, wrote Citi analysts Richard Gardner and Yeechang Lee. They also expect an updated Mac laptop and iPod lines. The Apple conference is scheduled for June 9-13 in San Francisco.

Those predictions are consistent with a February prediction Gardner made that 3G iPhones will be announced by midyear. The 3G iPhone release will help Apple meet its target of shipping 10 million iPhones in 2008, Gardner wrote at the time.

Apple is confident it will sell 10 million iPhones this year, officials said during a conference call on Wednesday to discuss the company’s second-quarter earnings.

When asked about the possible release of a 3G iPhone, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer declined comment. Apple has new products in the pipeline that the company is excited about, Oppenheimer said.

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I wonder how many other schools have one of these.

• iPhone Portal at Vanderbilt University

My contract with Spring is up in May, and I have pretty much decided that I’m going to get an iPhone. I am very excited about the possibility of the 3G version with GPS capability. I’ve been playing around with an iPod Touch, and it is an amazing device. The new iPhone should be even better.

A June introduction of the 3G iPhone could tie in with Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference to be held in San Francisco from June 9 to 13, especially if that event also sees the arrival of the finished version of the iPhone SDK, which is currently in beta.

What’s going to be packed into the new iPhone? GPS seems likely, as well as a dual-camera arrangement to allow 3G video calls as well as taking photos with the screen as a viewfinder. The industrial design of the handset is likely to change, as Apple and handset buyers are both particularly style-conscious.

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