Tabletish

The rumours continue to ruminate, the possible leaks continue to leak, the stories continue to be told.

It is almost 100% likely that Apple will sometime this year, probably this month, release a table slate type device.

No one knows for sure, but there are lots of rumours and speculation running around the web.

One thing that I recently heard about and caught my eye was this simulation of a tablet device showing a magazine. Note that this is not the Apple device, this is just a concept of a future device.

This concept is Sports Illustrated, however replace a sports magazine with a core text book, or a relevant magazine for a vocational area.

No more just pictures and text, now throw in video, audio and animated diagrams.

Yes we can do this already, and with the NLN Materials this was been done a few years ago. However the difference now is the device on which someone would view this content. With 3G and WiFi you can now have the connectivity to download content quickly and easily when you want to use it. A device with a battery life of a day rather than an hour and a half. A device with an intuitive interface that just works then one that requires a pen, stylus or a degree in mechanics to work out how it works.

I have no idea when the Apple device will come out though I think the 26th or 27th January are possible, I certainly will consider getting one.

4 thoughts on “Tabletish”

  1. Just thought its worth mentioning all the interactive activities that don’t require keyboards such as flash games.

    I’m still not holding my breath for tablets in the classroom, there is still an ergonomics issue to address.

    Pretty sure apple won’t be the winners of the market race though!

  2. The key tech development needed to have this sort of device really work is the interface. Books have such a rich user interface that it’s actually very difficult to superceed. The ability to hold multiple points in a document using different fingers and the feedback you get (eg a sense of how many pages are between each point from the weight/thickness of the pages) is really useful in study – it can provide a vicceral learning experience, feeling the weight of the words. Then there’s the ability to fold down page corners and to do so in different ways, to stick on colour coded post-it tabs, to write in the margins, to have certain commonly used pages fall open naturally when flicking through because the spine has been creased at that point…I could go on but these are all things that contribute to the effectiveness of paper books for learning and as yet, I’ve not seen a virtual rendition of a book that comes close to exceeding this feature set.

    I’m hoping the Apple device, if it exists, will mark a break through on interface design. Given the strength of rumour that Apple have been working on this for a fair while and there’s nothing that innovative being suggested in the hardware, I’m hanging on to the hope that the delay in launching this device is due to interface design work rather.

    It could be argued that the iPhone’s innovation was in it’s interface (and app store) and it’s that sort of game changing improvement i think we need if this class of device is going to change the learning landscape.

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