Unless Microsoft innovate seriously, and soon, they will become a minor player in education, and as a knock on effect, business in the next 5 to 10 years. Why?
1 - Students want mobile, anytime, anywhere, Martini style working.
I have seen first hand in my school that students pick flexibility over the desktop pretty much every time. At our school, students have the use of Google Apps, Microsoft Office and currently in Year 8, 1 to 1 iPads. It is now very rare for students to choose to use the MS Office suite as they know that they can't get to their files at home, unless they email them to themselves. For them, using Google Apps or the iPad means that they can access their work without any bother, or extra set up by our IT Tech department. Realistically, this is Martini style of work is how the twenty-first centry learner is shaping up.
2 - Office 365 is missing the killer feature - collaboration.
This may of course change in the future, but Google Apps have got this nailed down to a fine art, where they have made it seamlessly easy to do something which sounds complicated - ie multiple people working on the same document in real time. "Normal", non geeky teachers, love the fact that Google Apps makes this very easy. It is a prime example of technology NOT getting in the way of learning. With MS launching 365 without this feature, they are marking themselves as being a long way behind Google Apps.
I have heard some ICT Leaders saying "we're going with Office 365 because it fits our current system". To me this is a little short sighted and it is short changing the students. Surely this should be "we're going for this system because it fits around our student's needs". I'm sure the IT Technicians would be delighted to have Office and Office 365 as it is easy for them to implement, but when it comes to using this software creatively in an educational setting, there are some serious limitations; you can't collaborate, being the main one. Also, really, your educational leaders in partnership with students need to be the ones making these decisions. A good example of this can be found in the "bottom up" approach to ICT at Berkhamsted school. Their Head has blogged about this here.
3 - The tablet market.
As we know, Microsft have launched the Surface tablet. The problem with Surface is that it comes in 2 flavours. Flavour 1 is the RT version. This is the cheaper of the two versions. This has some serious limitations in that you can firstly only run Microsoft Office on it, and secondly, you can only run apps that have been downloaded from Mircrosoft's App Store on it. This is fine, and no different to Apple's policies, but there is a real scarcity of quality apps in Microsoft's App Store (unless you like your students playing Angry Birds). I'm not even sure this will change because of the poor uptake of the Surface tablet, why would developers create apps for a tablet that no one is using, when they can pour resources into the iPad which most are using? The Apple App Store is where the money is. As long as this is the case, this is where the innovation will be. Not even Android is touching this, despite having a larger OS market share than Apple.
The second flavour of the Surface is the Intel based machine, costing about £1000. This is a good machine, but has a couple of serious limitations. It main advantage is that it can run any PC based program. Great, you may think. The problem is most PC software is not built for touch screen. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to use something like Photoshop or Premiere Pro as a non-touch screen edition.
The worrying thing is that I am hearing some educational leaders say the RT Surface is the answer because it is compatible with MS Office (going back to my original point about why use MS Office in the first place). However, they are not aware of the inflexibility the Surface tablet has and believe they will work like a normal PC. There could be a lot of wasted money and frustration as a result. If the only reason people are buying tablets for schools is to use Microsoft Office, then there are some that are missing the point of tablet technology.
4 - We are using Microsoft Office because we always have.
Realistically, there is, in my opinion, no real need to use MS Office anymore. I can understand why staff see it as a comfort blanket, in that they know mostly how it works. This is what they have always used, this is what Network managers have always used, and this is what the school will be using. However, there are more flexible platforms out there. I had a conversation with a college from a different school recently and she said her Network Manager refused to sign the school up for Google Apps. I don't know the ins and outs of this but it is a shame to see a teacher who has got the benefit of students at heart, being steamrollered by a non educationalist making educational decisions, whilst refusing to budge from a 'traditional' viewpoint of what tech should and shouldn't be in schools.
5 - Post PC world
Like it or not, we are now entering a post PC world. The majority of the work we do will be on mobile devices that fit in with our lifestyle rather than sitting in front of a beige box where you can only access your documents from a network drive. The fact is, Microsoft have not innovated during the period they were dominant and Apple and Google have moved in. Currently, Google dominates the web, Apple dominates mobile devices, and Microsoft dominates the desktop. As the future is going to be dominated by the web and mobile, I can't see any way back for Microsoft as Google and Apple have this sewn up. Microsoft are no longer innovative and have joined the mobile and web party too late in and a ham fisted way.
All of the really innovative educationalists I have come across, both in schools and on twitter, are innovative because their practice has been enabled by the use of Apple and Google together in the classroom. It is a naive argument to say the two are not aligned. Google needs Apple to bring its platform to the widest number of paying customers, Apple needs Google because they have the best cloud infrastructure and make some of the most solid productivity apps on iOS (and of course YouTube).
6 - "We need a physical keyboard to do things properly"
Whilst this is true of most 30-60 somethings, the students we are teaching today have always used touchscreen technology. This is how the majority of students work. They are not taught how to touch type anymore. Besides this, once voice recognition software gets it act together, there will be no need for typing at all!
Granted, you will need a physical keyboard and mouse for more specialist IT tasks, but realistically, in school, this does not happen too often outside of IT lessons.
Summing up...
I can appreciate that Microsoft operating systems can still play a solid role in education (although the day we won't need a server is fast approaching). I'm not anti-Microsoft at all, it's just their products to not fit the needs of my Twenty-first century students (their products used to in the mid 2000s), and what is a shame to me is that some schools are not are not willing to embrace this mobile/cloud philosophy because of the fear of letting go of Mircosoft. This fear comes from staff in the establishment losing their comfort blanket. When we first introduced Google Apps to our students there was no fear at all. They saw the benefits and they choose to use it over MS products, because it fit their needs of Martini learning. I am positive that if Microsoft Office fitted their needs better, they would choose to use this.
The idea of a twenty-first century student being ingrained in using collaborative, mobile platforms and the cloud for their work is an exciting one as they will go out into the business world with the right skills for our globalised economy. If these are the leaders of the future, and they are not choosing to use Microsoft products now, then Redmond could be in serious trouble as more and more schools see these are the skills that they need to equip their learners with.
Friday 7 June 2013
Wednesday 5 June 2013
iPad Apps for Computing in the classroom
I'm currently using Gamemaker with my Year 8s to further introduce them to the concepts of programming. As we are running a 1 to 1 iPad trial with them, I thought I would find some apps which I could use for homeworks to re-enforce our programming work in different interfaces. All of these apps are free with the exception of Codea. This is what I'm using, and planning to use:
The students love this app, graphically it is very visual and the fact that you can unlock different characters appeals to them. Currently the app is possibly not the go to in order to teach hard core programming, but is a good top up for homework. The developer noticed I was using the app via my twitter account and has been in contact to ask for feedback. It's really good to see this sort of interaction between developer and teacher/student and it looks like the team behind Kodable are working on some really interesting concepts for older students. They have even agreed to do a Facetime conference with our 6th Form tech society which is very generous of their time.
This is a great app and it ties in with Scratch brilliantly in the fact that it uses the same block based system for programming. There are a variety of things that you can create in the app. I have set the students tasks, such as program the app to draw a shape. Many students have gone above and beyond this to create some cool things like Etcha Sketches and detailed drawings.
Similar concept to Kodable and is great as a top up for students learning programming. I normally set a certain amount of levels to be done for homework.
This is another great app for teaching programming routines, and it gets the students to think outside the box. The aim of the game is to move boxes to different areas on a stage. The students have to think about how to structure their program before the run it. As with all programming there are multiple ways to complete the levels, some more efficient that others (ie using loops rather than long hand).
This is the only paid for app on this list, but it has some serious possibilities. The Cargo Bot app was built entirely on an iPad using this app. This is probably geared more towards older students in that they have to learn a programming language to use this app, Lua is the language of choice here. I am planning to use this next September and I will introduce it by getting students to modify an existing program within the app, rather than have them build one from scratch. I can see lots of differentiation opportunities in this app so it should appeal to a wide spectrum of ability.
Programming in Education on the iPad is still in relative infancy, but with exciting developers like SurfScore (Kodable) and Two Lives Left (Codea), things are looking interesting.
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