Google: “Hundreds” Of S...

During this morning’s keynote at the annual  Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) conference in Orlando, Florida, Google’s Product Manager for Chromebooks, Rajen Sheth, shared an update on Chromebooks ‘ headway in educational institutions. According to Sheth, today there are now “hundreds” of schools using Chomebooks in 41 states across the U.S. There are, of course, some caveats to those figures. For starters, no exact number of Chromebook devices was given. In addition, among those “hundreds” of schools being counted, some may be only using a single set of Chromebooks in their institution, from the sounds of it. And what constitues a “set?” That, too, is unknown. According to Sheth, of the “hundreds of schools” using Chromebooks, Google is counting those that have “outfitted at least one classroom with Chromebooks.” A more interesting figure is the one that was not shared – how many individual Chromebooks have actually made their way into the U.S. school system? Sheth also announced three new major deployments of Chromebooks in school districts, which, while clearly individual “wins” worth bragging about, aren’t necessarily indicative of the Chromebook’s overall momentum. Combined, the three deployments will see 27,000 students provided with Chromebooks – a 1 student per 1 Chromebook ratio. These newly signed up districts include the Council Bluffs Community School District in Iowa which is deploying 2,800 Chromebooks in its high school and 1,500 in two middle schools, the Leyden Community High School District in Illinois which is giving the devices to 3,500 students in their two high schools, and the Richland School District Two in South Carolina which will deploy 19,000 computers. But given the very introductory nature of this morning’s keynote – a keynote which focused on Chromebook’s advantage over traditional PC’s (Chromebooks automatically update!, less headaches for I.T.!, it’s all web!, etc.),  it’s clear that Google’s Chromebook push is in very early stages yet.

MusicShake Brings Its M...

At some point, you may have found yourself bored out of your mind by your current music selection, and resisting the urge to try one of the eleventy million music discovery services out there, you think, “By God, I’m going to do it myself.” You rush home, download a music suite, start furiously clicking and recording, only to be sooner or later confronted by the reality that you have no idea what you’re doing, and reprimand yourself for turning down those music lessons in fourth grade. The Korea-based, VC-funded MusicShake launched back at TechCrunch40 in 2007 to solve these woes, allowing users to create their own music in a fun an intuitive way. Today, MusicShake provides over 2 million different music patterns, categorized into different generes and samples, to allow users to build music — as if with Lego blocks. For music novices, MusicShake has an intelligent algorithm that, when starting with a blank slate (or staff), you can add different samples or templates, picking and choosing from sounds you like, and the algorithm works in the background to optimize them, make sure the different parts are aligned — so you sound like a maestro. MusicShake Founder Kihong Bae tells us that it’s essentially a free, web-based GarageBand , which has very low barriers to entry and is a bit more novice-friendly. It can’t compete toe-to-toe on every level, but its a great alternative. All of the service’s samples are created by the team’s very own musicians and “music robot,” which means they’re copyright free. The team revamped the service last year, offering a brand new website, and a user experience that allows you not just to create new music, but comment, listen, consumer not only your music, but those of other aspiring musicians — the goal of which was to create a mini-community for all music lovers. MusicShake also enables users to add their tracks to slideshows and videos, then upload those videos to YouTube or their social network of choice. To date, MusicShake tunes are acting as soundtracks on over 300,000 YouTube videos that have generated over 1 billion page views. Again, this is all free, unless of course you’re looking to use the tracks for commercial purposes, in which case the company charges a reasonable $20 for licensing. (The company recently released its “YouTube Producer” iPhone app , which lets users search for copyright-free music, add to their videos on their iPhone and upload directly to YouTube.) Naturally, many video and content creators want to add music to their content, and as MusicShake provides a trove of license-free tunes, it’s a great resource to quickly find and upload soundtracks. With this in mind, MusicShake has recently launched a whole new addition to their service that focuses on education — in bringing its service into the classroom. Nearly every school, whether it be elementary, middle, or high school, has media class where students learn to generate video, music, slide shows, etc. — and there’s always musical accompaniment. Of course, some schools have the funding resources to buy Macs for their classrooms, and thus already have GarageBand in use. Of course, most schools don’t have that budget, and when teachers want to grab music, they’re forced to rely on paying for stock music, which isn’t cheap, or taking their chances with free music. MusicShake EDU gives students an unlimited supply of music to use in their projects without requiring them to have prior music experience. Songs can be created instantly and used immediately, or students can refine each block in the song; plus, music samples are copyright free. At $499 per year, the service is pretty affordable, especially as it provides unlimited MP3s and WAVs for every student in your school, which, in most cases is less than one dollar per student per year. (It also helps that MusicShake meets the California Learning Resources Network review criteria, meaning it’s approved for social content.) Next up, MusicShake will be building out an API, so that smaller video-creation services can quickly add tunes from the MusicShake catalog into their content, in addition to focusing on creating an award system to encourage users to return and up the level of stickiness. MusicShake struggled through the recession, but they’ve seen increased traffic since launching their web app. Bringing the service into the classroom and to small video providers is a great way to increase their reach. We’ll see if it can help turn the startup around. For more, check out the introductory video below, and let us know what you think.

iPads And Digital Textb...

I do not want my children learning math proofs on iPads. I simply do not see the value in it. iPads will not help with identifying sentence clauses or writing an essay. There’s a place for interactive learning and there’s not. It’s a clear line. Give science and history teachers iPads loaded with demos, videos and soundbites. Allow children to pinch and zoom DNA strands and the inner workings of WWI trenches. But make my kids do math drills on paper with a dull pencil. Please. Simply put, the movement to digitalized learning scares me. iBooks 2 is just the start. Digital interactive learning has always been the future but I fear for my children now that it’s here. Education evolves. Just several generations ago children were taught differently. Some subjects were clearly taught simply so children could learn how to learn. Basic history for example. Columbus did not discover the new world yet that’s what is taught to children through the classic poem. Most of us also learned cursive writing where previous generations also learned calligraphy — both somewhat useless skills today. Kids are now taught to pass tests. Knowledge is externalized, stored on some Wikipedia server or graphing calculator until needed. Learning is still prevalent in schools, but the storage of facts and thoughts is not. Digital textbooks will only further this problem. Just click on a word to get its definition, says Apple. My fear isn’t unique. iBooks 2 signals a stark change in education in a similar but more pronounced fashion as older tools. For instance my late grandfather, an engineer for the Michigan-based utility company Consumers Energy, proudly gave me his slide rule before my first trigonometry class. His hope was that I learned math rather than just learning how to get the right answer. I still have that slide rule, but I unfortunately never learned how to use it. I instead learned how to program Mario and Tetris clones into my TI-86 graphing calculator. You see, my grandfather, like most of the greatest generation, knew math. He knew how math worked . That generation learned math methods in primary school prior to addition or subtraction. They learned the process of math since the tools were not developed yet to aid in problem solving. By the time the baby boomers came along, calculators were becoming commonplace and the process of externalizing knowledge had begun. Save an extraordinary math teacher, most of Generation X and Y saw math completely through the eyes of a calculator. Now ours kids are poised to learn through the iPad’s dual-core A5 processor. Of course tools like calculators and digital textbooks are created and used with good intentions. Calculators let students perform actions like graphing before they completely understand the process. It gives a visualization previously not available. The same thing applies to digital textbooks as they are designed to make learning smarter, more fun, through interactivity. Students can get instant feedback on math problems rather than waiting for the teacher. Lessons can be broken up in 20-minute segments as that’s often the attention span of most people. But it’s important to remember that a calculator, and now an iPad, is a supplement and not a replacement for proven teaching methods. Learning is expensive for everyone involved. Apple is smartly marketing iBooks 2 as a cheaper alternative. I remember paying $400 for an outdated textbook and the school only buying it back for $15. The college kid inside of me is excited. Cheaper books, less to carry to class, and a digital content management system — all awesome. iBooks 2 has a place at the collegiate level but my excitement has little to do with actual education but rather the additional conveniences offered. My children are just now entering the school system. They have computers in the classroom that are part of the curriculum. Computers and iPads can be powerful tools, but they need to be used in a limited fashion in primary and secondary schools. Today’s children already have short attention spans. Hand an iPad to any child between kindergarten and twelfth grade and see what happens: they will jump around between apps. Then tell them to read a chapter of a biology textbook. Nine out of ten will probably watch a video of a frog jumping at least a dozen times during the allotted time. Printouts and real books command focus in a way greater than an electronic device. Minds might wander away from the text, but at least they won’t be playing Infinity Blade II. It’s easy to get caught up in Apple’s hype machine. It sounds great during Apple’s carefully crafted dog and pony show. iBooks 2 is no doubt a powerful tool — I wish I had it in college. This isn’t a luddite rant against the cotton gin, as I fully appreciate the positive impact that digital textbooks could have on learning. But I’m more fearful that the amount of pure learning and knowledge retention will be replaced by flashy videos and loud graphics. Remember, Apple’s primary goal is to make money, not educate our kids. Learning needs to be reinvented but I’m not sure the proper way is through an app. [Image: F.C.G / Shutterstock ]

Houghton Mifflin, McGra...

Today at Apple’s education event, the company introduced iBooks 2, a textbook platform that effectively transforms $200 textbooks into iPad apps at a much more reasonable price. But of course, a textbook platform isn’t worth a thing without the educational powerhouse publishers behind it. Luckily, the first up to the bat on the iBooks 2 platform are names we know well: Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. They’re responsible for 90 percent of the textbooks sold. Pearson will be offering Algebra 1, Biology, Environmental Science and Geometry, while McGraw Hill offers Algebra 1 , Biology , Chemistry , Geometry and Physics . All of McGraw Hill’s offerings are available today, and Pearson’s Biology and High School Science are also available today, with its other textbooks to follow. Apple is also working with DK Publishing, which has four books launching today: Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life , Natural History Insects , Natural History Animals , and My First ABC .

From Edu To Non-Profits...

YouTube may be best known for its viral sensations, lawn gnomes, and feline shenanigans, but the site’s massive collection of content has given rise to plenty of more benevolent — and, some might say important — trends. Like helping non-profits including charity:water harness the power of video to connect to millions of viewers. And serving up lectures from major universities, opening the doors of learning to remote villages hundreds of miles away from the nearest school. In short, YouTube has done a lot of good so far. And it’s hoping to do a lot more. Hunter Walk , a long-time Director of Product Management at Google who has steered YouTube’s product side for years, recently decided that he wanted to spearhead YouTube’s social good efforts. Granted, the role he wanted didn’t exactly exist yet, but he managed to convince YouTube chief Salar Kamangar to let him create it. Walks’s new, self-appointed mission: Bake ‘good’ into any part of YouTube he can. He explains that plenty of YouTubers have worked on projects to support social good efforts in the past, but there’s never been any consolidated effort to do so. So these days he wanders the company’s halls, asking people if they’d be interested in launching an expedited support queue for non-profits, or a new white-list feature for schools. He says he rarely gets turned down — adding that YouTubers tend to view it as pro bono work, and they’re generally happy to help. Walk says that he views YouTube’s relationship with ‘good’ as supported by three main pillars: Causes & Non Profits; Education; and, finally, Activisim and Free Expression. YouTube’s special relationship with non-profits goes back to 2007, when the site began giving them free access to features typically reserved for premium content partners. These include videos that are longer than fifteen minutes in length and the ability to include a special Donate button that lets users contribute money. Non-profits also have the unique ability to include links to external sites using YouTube’s annotations feature (which they can use to drive people to a petition or ‘further information’ page, for example) — no other partners are allowed to use annotations to link off-site. And today, as one of the first fruits since Walk took on his new role, YouTube is launching a ‘Playbook’ of best practices that non-profits can use to effectively produce and distribute their YouTube videos (YouTube first launched a broader-ranging Playbook last July, and it plans to launch more vertical-specific guides in the future). Walk says that non-profits have more features coming soon as well, including the ability to live-stream video, which is currently in testing with a handful of partners. Walk’s second pillar — Education — is also fairly well established on the site. YouTube’s Edu Portal features thousands of videos from the likes of Harvard, Yale, and online schools like the incredible Khan Academy. This educational content has been watched a whopping 22 billion times on the site already. Walk says that up until now YouTube has been primarily focused on acquiring all of this content to build up its library. Now, it’s beginning to focus on the second, and equally-important step: curation. Teachers and scholarly institutions will increasingly be able to build out and share lists of their favorite videos, drawn from any of the site’s EDU channels. And YouTube is also focusing on making the site more school-friendly. Historically some students have had issues watching YouTube because their school’s firewall blocks the site (apparently it’s easy to waste time on YouTube). To help remedy this, YouTube is testing a ‘YouTube for Schools’ domain that will schools will be able to whitelist. This would enable students to watch videos as they please, but only content that appears as part of the Edu part of the site. With these additions and others, Walk says he’s hoping to make teachers’ livers easier, and to give people who don’t have classrooms the power to listen and learn about anything. Which brings us to Walk’s third pillar, which he dubs Activism and Free Expression. This pillar has more to do with how people are using YouTube, than it does with any particular improvement the site can make. Walk recalls an experience he had during a trip to Baghdad two years ago, when he asked a 17 year-old girl what she used YouTube for. “It allows me to understand what the world cares about”, she said. And the ability to watch a variety of camera-phone footage and news reports from various media outlets helped her arrive at her “version of the truth”. Walk also points to 2011′s Arab Spring, when social media services helped Egyptians spread news with each other — and around the world. Despite the fact that Egypt blocked the Internet for two weeks, Walk says that the number of video uploads in that region actually shot up 2x. Another interesting stat: the highest usage of YouTube per capita/Internet user is in Saudi Arabia. The reason? Walk says the less diverse the media sources available to a user through traditional routes like television and print, the more important it becomes to them to find other content. Which is why Walk says YouTube is committed to providing its entire corpus of content to all of its users. Walk didn’t have any upcoming features to discuss around this third pillar, but based on my conversation with him, it’s the one he’s most passionate about. He made it clear that, despite plenty of forthcoming hurdles around government censorship, YouTube is committed to hosting and freely distributing footage of the demonstrations, the speeches, the atrocities, and the joyous celebrations that will shape the world in the years ahead.