Wired on iTablet

Large-screen color tablets, when they finally arrive, will rock the world. Here's Conde Nast's take for Wired Magazine.

Turn down your sound, then click here.

This Year's Freshmen

Most of this year's Freshman were born in 1991. For many of us, that seems like yesterday. To relate, we've got to be careful about our historical perspective.

For these students...

• Text has always been hyper.

• The KGB has never officially existed.

• Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream has always been a flavor choice.

The Beloit College Mindset List is a great way to jog our thinking. See this year's full list here.

American Government

Here's another brief course profile, this time from the Political Science Department.

American Government

Really US Government

Taught at 2 yr and 4 yr schools

General Education requirement

Requirement for transfer to 4 yr schools

Lecture, quizzes, papers, mid-term, final

Textbooks

Brief

14 chapters, 380 pages, 25 pages per chapter

13 chapters government structure, 1 policy

Brief growing in popularity (due to lower cost)

Comprehensive

20 chapters, 650 pages, 32 pages per chapter

16 chapters structure, 4 chapters policy

Texas

Adds 7 chapters on Texas government

Professors

Both faculty and adjuncts

Most are education oriented

Often tech-phobic

Students

Both freshman and sophomores

Both non-majors (mostly) and majors

Some had HS Civics, others didn't

Many lack college reading and writing skills

Many are politically naive

Others follow Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert

Charter Cities

How can a struggling countries break out of poverty if they are trapped in a system of bad rules?

Paul Romer is developing a radical new model of growth and governance, which calls for the establishment of city-scale special administrative zones.

View Paul's TED talk here, and visit his foundation's web site here.

Aplia Fall 2009 Courses

For Fall 2009, Aplia is offering an amazing 30 courses in 12 different disciplines:

Accounting

Principles of Accounting

Financial Accounting

Fundamentals of Accounting

High School Accounting

Managerial Accounting

Business Communications

Business Communications

Business Law

Excerpted Cases

Legal Environment of Business

Decision Sciences

Management Information Systems

Operations Management

Developmental Reading

Developmental Reading: Mid-Level

Economics

Principles of Microeconomics

Principles of Macroeconomics

Principles of Economics

Survey of Economics

Intermediate Microeconomics

Money, Banking, and Financial Institutions

International Economics

Advanced Placement Economics

Finance

Financial Management

Preparing for Finance

Management

Human Resources Management

Organizational Behavior

Principles of Management

Marketing

Principles of Marketing

Philosophy

Introductory Logic

Statistics

General Introductory Statistics

Introductory Business Statistics

Statistics for Psychology

Taxation

Individual Income Taxation

California Coast Photos

Waddell Creek (x2)

Moss Landing

Business Statistics

Completing our trio of statistics courses – three very different courses.

Business Statistics

• Business school requirement

• 4 yr. schools

• Comprehensive course

• Broad list of topics (metrics, probability, inference, regression, time series, decision analysis, ...)

• Real business data (relatively clean)

• Skill oriented

• Often uses Excel

Instructors

• Business School / Economists / Statisticians

• May have taught this course for many years

Students

• Business school majors (business, economics, finance, accounting, ...)

• Less fear of math

• Interested in decision making

Challenges

• Breadth

• Regression, inference, hypothesis testing

General Statistics

Another in our growing collection of course profiles...

General Introductory Statistics

• General education math option

• 2 yr. & 4 yr. schools

• Many topics (data, graphs, metrics, probability, ...)

• Traditional Approach: Low-level skill & drill

• ASA: Literacy, real data, concepts, active

Instructors

• Mathematicians: skills & drill

• Statisticians: conceptual (new direction)

Students

• Variety of (non-math) majors (e.g. teachers, nurses, ...)

• Fear math

• Many need math remediation

• Don't expect to ever use statistics

Challenges

• Motivation (useful?)

• Math remediation

• Tension: Skills vs. Concepts

Behavioral Statistics

I'm beginning to collect "course profiles". These are like personas, but for courses rather than users. Here's another...

Behavioral Statistics

• Required for Psychology and Sociology majors

• Sophomore or junior year

• Attempts to enhance the "science" image

• Uses large, messy data sets

• Emphasizes hypothesis testing

• Often introduces SPSS

Professors

• Psychology or Sociology Professors

• Most would rather avoid this course

• Often push practice, practice, practice

Students

• Social Science Majors (75% Psych)

• Fear math

• Lack math background, skills

• Would like to avoid this course...

• ... but are required to get through it

Challenges

• Both profs and students want to avoid this course

• Students fear math, lack math skills

• Course pushes rigorous statistical analysis

• Profs push practice, practice, practice

• = Ugh!

Stanza

Stanza is another (of many) book readers for the iPhone. In my opinion, it's a step up from Kindle for iPhone. I'm currently reading my third full novel, but haven't tried technical books. Here's my impressions.

Strengths

• Huge online catalog, includes the Gutenberg collection of 25,000 free classics

• Direct purchase from the iPhone, including books from O'Reilly

• Nice (1 pixel) progress bar along the bottom

• Flips to horizontal, vertical, upside down

• Free

Just OK

• Text look, legibility, etc.

• Page turning (tap left or right edge of screen)

• Font size options

Weaknesses

• Cover art, book jackets, title page, front matter poorly formatted and displayed

• Classics were apparently scanned, and contain frequent scanning errors

• Recent version crashes when trying to set options

Amazon purchased Lexcycle, the company that created Stanza, in late April. Perhaps this will lead to a much improved Kindle application on the iPhone. Now that iPhone 3 is out, direct purchase from Amazon for the iPhone seems likely.

Kindle for iPhone

I've read several Kindle books, both fiction and non-fiction, using the new Kindle for iPhone application. Here's my impressions:

Strengths

• Beautiful icon (really)

• Purchase through Amazon, with history, recommendations, etc.

• Book previews available free of charge

• Quick, easy downloads

• WhisperSync between devices

Just OK

• Text look, legibility, etc.

• Page turning (tap left or right edge of screen)

• Font size options

• Bookmarks

Weaknesses

• Cover art, book jacket info, title page, front matter missing or poorly presented

• Progress through the book (and the length) are very difficult to judge

• Can't (currently) purchase books from within the application

• None of the books, even classics, are free

I'll review some other iPhone book readers soon.

IDEO Method Cards

If you care about your users, you should have a deck of IDEO Method Cards. And use them.

To get you started, there are four kinds of cards. Sort them. (These are listed in the order you should do them.)

Learn: Collect and analyze information, looking for insights and patterns.

Look: Watch users go about their daily lives, to discover what they really do and what they really need.

Ask: Let potential users contribute to the design process, in ways that really help.

Try: Test the ideas before building everything. Evaluate and adjust.

IDEO Method Cards

Calculus

Calculus notes from the Cengage team...

Calculus Courses

• Mostly 4 year schools

• Taught in the math department

• Required course for many majors

• Multi-term sequence

• Homework, but not necessarily graded

Instructors

• Tenure-track math faculty

• Consider this "their course"

• Appreciate the beauty of mathematics

Students

• Generally successful students

• Science, pre-med, engineering, physics, computer science, math

• Varied background: 20% no HS Calculus to passed AP Calculus

• Few have interest / love for math

• Generally looking for minimum work to make the grade

Key Problems

• Instructors: Diversity of students' math backgrounds!

• Students: Motivation, time management.

Developmental Math

I spent some time with the Cengage editorial team yesterday, and want to capture some key points.

Developmental Math Courses

• Mostly 2 year schools

• Many small sections

• Students test into the course

• Usually non-credit

Instructors

• A few lead instructors - full time

• Many adjuncts - freeway flyers

Students

• Generally struggling in school

• Many non-traditional students

• Resent having to take the class

• Lack basic math skills

• Fear Math

Key Problems

• Instructors: Time

• Students: Fear, motivation, math skills

CafeScribe

Cengage recently announced that 250+ titles will be available as online books through CafeScribe. Krugman is available for $58.67.

It seems that the goal is to allow highlighting and annotation, and sharing of these notes among a community of readers. So far 11 folks have purchased Krugman, and one person has added two brief notes.

I'm skeptical. CafeScribe requires installing the MyScribe application. This required a 56.8 Mbyte download for Macintosh. The website and application appear both slow and clunky. The application crashed the first time I launched it, and the website gave we 404 errors.

Although it's promised on the homepage, I wasn't able to find a full demo book to download. At best I found a two page document, so it's hard to tell what full texts will look like.

CafeScribe

Comments?

Scribd

Scribd provides online publication of books, artwork, reports, and so forth using iPaper technology. Documents may be public or private, free or paid.

iPaper is essentially an improved version of FlashPaper. It's got a clean interface, and seems to import documents flawlessly – more than I can say for FlashPaper. Make sure you check out the button with all the little squares, used for navigation.

Here's some samples:

Scribd Site
The Art of Woodworking Outdoor Furniture
Aplia Flash Documents (via Confluence)

Spaghetti Sauce

Options are good?

Just when Barry Schwartz has us convinced that too many options cause all sorts of grief, along comes Malcolm Gladwell to tell us that we really need a few choices.

Another outstanding TED talk at...
www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

CrunchPad

Although the CrunchPad seems to be a crude prototype, the concept is interesting.

Would students buy a similar device along with their laptop and cell phone? Instead of their laptop?

www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch-prototype/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-0Nce5oTQ

Freedom of Choice

We often think that choice – more options – is good, but maybe not. Check out this excellent TED talk video.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz...

Add an option; go to jail.
 

Wired to Care

WIRED to CARE
by Dev Patnaik

Patnaik claims that companies prosper when they create widespread empathy. He's so right.

At Hewlett-Parkard we called this next bench, creating products for the person at the next workbench – someone we knew well. At Apple we aimed to create products for mere mortals, often our not-so-tech-savvy mothers.

At Aplia we ask what challenges our instructors and students are facing, and look for ways that technology might help.

In each case, the key is empathy - walking a mile in our users shoes. The book's a great read.

White Pixels Are Free

Why the name "White Pixels"?

Think of it like this. Most visual design can be improved just by cleaning things up – by removing what's not really necessary.

Pretend that every pixel – every single little dot – on the screen costs you $1000. Every line, icon, or bit of text must justify it's existence, because they're all really expensive.

But white pixels are free!