Eideard

A yearlong pilot program with digital textbooks on Apple’s iPad found that students’ algebra scores increased by 20 percent when compared to a curriculum with traditional books.

On the heels of Apple’s e-textbook announcement in New York City this week, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced the results of its “HMC Fuse: Algebra I” pilot program at Ameila Earhart Middle School in California’s Riverside Unified School District. The Algebra I digital textbook is touted as the world’s first full-curriculum algebra application developed exclusively for Apple’s iPad.

In its test run, the “HMH Fuse” application helped more than 78 percent of students score “Proficient” or “Advanced” on the spring 2011 California Standards Test. That was significantly higher than the 59 percent of peers who used traditional textbooks…

The first pilot program took place during the second trimester of the 2010-2011 school year, when students using “HMH Fuse” were said to have scored an average of 10 points higher than their peers. But that number jumped even higher for the California Standards Test in spring 2011, when “HMH Fuse” students scored about 20 percent higher than students who used traditional textbooks…

A white paper on the HMH Fuse Pilot Program is available for download from the publisher. Other schools and students can download the “HMH Fuse Shell” applications available for free on the iPad App Store, with curriculums available as in-app purchases within the applications.

Bravo!

Turns out we aren’t that different from other apes after all. Our primate cousins at a handful of zoos love to use iPads to combat boredom just as much as humans. Zookeepers say that the device is perfect for orangutans, and many have been taking part in guided touchscreen interactions with all sorts of apps, including music, games, movies, cartoons, art, painting, drawing, photos and videos.

The orangutans have been playing with the iPads for the past several months, and now a U.S. charity is hoping to round up more of the tablets so the apes can Skype with orangutans at other zoos.

“They like many of the free apps that I think children would like – they like the free apps where you can fingerpaint, they like the apps where you can use the drums,” says Trish Khan, Milwaukee County Zoo’s orangutan keeper. The iPads help provide a little extra enrichment, physical and mental stimulation for the apes living in captivity….

The group’s Richard Zimmerman told the BBC they’re not yet comfortable just handing the tablets over to the apes, even with a protective cover. “As soon as we hand them over to the orangutans, we figure the lifespan could be as little as 15 seconds – whether they meticulously take them apart or just snap them in half.”

Some possible solutions include developing a new protective case or affixing the iPad to a wall – the image from the tablet could then be projected elsewhere for zoo visitors to watch.

Orangutan Outreach is accepting donations of cash or gently used iPads to get more tablets in the hands of apes and their zookeepers.

A team of US researchers has devised a way for people with impaired vision to use the touchscreen of an iPad as a Braille keyboard. It turns some previously fundamental thinking about how to make technology accessible to blind people on its head.

Instead of using a keyboard or mechanical writer, users type directly onto the flat glass.

“Instead of having fingers that find the buttons, we built buttons that find the fingers,” said Stanford’s Sohan Dharmaraja, one of the researchers on the project.

Users place eight fingers on the screen and the keyboard appears. Shaking the device activates a menu, and further interaction is achieved by regular touch gestures.

Mr Dharmaraja, alongside team-mates Adam Duran – an undergraduate from New Mexico University – and assistant professor Adrian Lew, came up with the idea during a boffin’s X-Factor-style contest…

There are some obvious benefits to using touchscreen technology over traditional Braille writers.

“Current physical note takers are big and clunky and range from $3,000 to $6,000. Tablet PCs are available at a fraction of the cost and do so much more,” said Mr Dharmaraja…

Accessible touch screen devices such as the iPad offer a huge range of possibilities for developers and for blind and partially sighted people,” said Robin Spinks, the Royal National Institute for Blind People’s manager of digital accessibility.

“This prototype Braille keyboard for touch screen devices represents a very promising development, and RNIB look forward to being able to test it with our members in the future,” he added.

Bravo! There is so much capability for development with additions for accessibility in the new touchscreen devices. And options like Siri – in iOS5 – will add even more potential for developers.

There’s a video demo over at the Stanford University site.

The long-awaited $35 laptop is here, the Indian government said on Wednesday. And it’s not a laptop!

Kapil Sibal, India’s minister for human resources development unveiled “Aakash,” a tablet computer that will cost the ministry 2276 Indian rupees, or $50, at a press conference in New Delhi.

Free tablets were distributed to 500 students invited from across India to the event. The government will be providing subsidies to students to bring the cost down to about $35.

The tablet, which has a seven-inch touch screen and 256 megabytes of RAM, will use the Android 2.2 operating system from Google and has two USB ports…

DataWind, a company founded in 2001 by two brothers who live in Canada, Suneet and Raja Tuli, won the tender for the tablet, beating out several other bidders. The company’s research and development is based in Montreal, but its products were, until now, mainly sold in the Britain…

Unlike DataWind’s other products, which are made in China, the new device will be manufactured in India, Ms. Khan said, by a company called Quad. DataWind won the tender from the government to provide 100,000 devices, beating out several other bidders, Ms. Khan said. If the trial run is successful, “the next order is for one million units,” she said.

There are three significant aspects to this announcement, the culmination of an Indian project to bring cyber-education to their schools.

First, is recognition of a new paradigm created worldwide by Apple’s introduction of the iPad. That took a partially-realized form factor to something truly useful. Lightness, thinness, miniaturization possible with the latest components. Apple proved the concept. The world is adopting it.

Thanks, Ursarodina

February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

In a new variation on the “brick in a box” scam, a South Carolina woman who thought she purchased an iPad from two men in a McDonald’s parking lot discovered yesterday that the purported tablet was actually “a piece of wood painted black with an Apple logo.”

According to a Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office report, Ashley McDowell, 22, told deputies that she was approached by two black males who claimed to have purchased iPads in bulk and were selling them for $300 apiece. After McDowell explained that she only had $180, the duo agreed to sell her the device at a cut rate.

But when McDowell drove home and opened the FedEx box containing the iPad, she instead discovered the wood with the Apple logo. The “screen”–which was framed with black tape–included replicas of iPad icons for Safari, mail, photos, and an iPod. It also had what cops described as a “Best Buy sales ticket…”

Deputies have dusted the phony iPad for fingerprints. McDowell told probers that the swindlers were driving “a white Impala with no rims and no tint.” One of the men, she noted, “had a gold tooth.”

Har.

Here’s a link to the original police report. How did they keep a straight face?

The FBI released its first app for Apple’s iPhone on Friday, called Child ID.

The app can store photos and information on a child, such as height, weight, date of birth, gender, ethnicity, hair and eye color and whether or not they have pierced ears.

“Using a special tab on the app, you can also quickly and easily e-mail the information to authorities with a few clicks” in case a child goes missing or in other emergencies, the FBI said in announcing the app’s release.

Parents and guardians of a child can also call 911 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children from within the app. Child ID also has a list of safety tips for parents and a checklist of things to do if an emergency arises.

The phone can store multiple entries for multiple children, but filing out information about a child doesn’t automatically send it to the FBI. Everything entered using the app stays on a parent’s device running Apple’s iOS software – which includes the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.

The only time the information is shared with law enforcement is when a user emails an entry on a child to police or the FBI.

There is a flaw or two in the software. The concept is in the right part of our social lives.

It’s worth considering for all geeky parents – though I guess the iOS devices are now mainstream enough, I can leave off the geeky part.

NASA has launched an iPad application for those interested in Earth science.

Dubbed the NASA Visualization Explorer, the application delivers real-satellite data, including movies and stills, of Earth, that enable users to learn a bit more about the “natural world.” Short stories accompany the videos and stills to explain what users are seeing and why it’s important.

“The app will explore stories of climate change, Earth’s dynamic systems, plant life on land and in the oceans–all of the small and large stories captured in data by NASA satellites and then visualized,” Michael Starobin, a senior producer at the Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement.

“Science should be accessible to everyone, and visualization reveals the meaning and value of the often intangible, but essential, data delivered by NASA’s research efforts,” Starobin continued. “Data visualization makes information immediately visual and understandable when it otherwise might go unnoticed.”

In addition to visualizations, the app also comes with six editorial features related to Earth science. According to NASA, two new editorials will be added each week. The organization also said it might include stories about the sun and solar system at some point.

The free NASA Visualization Explorer is available now in Apple’s App Store.

I just love finding apps like this, and I think you’ll be excited too. The British Library has released 1000 books from its 19th Century collection into a free iPad app that includes novels, historical works, poetry, philosophy and scientific books.

The books have been scanned in high resolution and color so you can see the engraved illustrations, the beauty of the embossed covers, along with maps and even the texture of the paper the books were printed on.

You can search the collection, browse titles by subject, and even read commentary on some of the titles. The books can be downloaded for reading offline.

In general, I found the app a joy to use. It was fun to browse titles, or search for things I was interested in. While some of the type is old and weathered, you can zoom in and read everything without issue…

Although the app is free, the British Library plans to charge for an enhanced version of 60,000 titles later this year. Many of the books have an option to buy, and when you click you are sent to Amazon to purchase a printed copy. The app is iPad only for now, but will be coming to the Kindle Reader and Android tablets in the future. If you grab the app let us know what you think.

This seems to have been a moderately literary weekend. Though never a fan of the Compleat 19th Century, I was mentored quite happily for a spell by a pedant with a doctorate in Victorian poetry, prose and drama. Younger days.

If you are properly equipped, I can recommend the app.

LeafSnap lets you identify tree species on the spot.

It’s nice to see technology lessen the influence of geographical limitations on education. I see it in the young and diverse crop of grandmasters from all around the world. If you can get to an internet connection, you can reach the world of chess, and come in contact with the chess elite.

In other areas, too, you see this happening. Now comes an app that lets you identify trees just by snapping a pic and having the image analyzed on the spot. This is quite cool.

There seems to be a requirement that you be connected to the internet when you snap your pic. Available for iPhone and iPad. If you decide to download it and give it a spin, please let us know how it goes.

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From the Leafsnap website: “Leafsnap turns users into citizen scientists, automatically sharing images, species identifications, and geo-coded stamps of species locations with a community of scientists who will use the stream of data to map and monitor the ebb and flow of flora nationwide.”