McGraw Hill SmartBook

Despite the much-publicized grumblings about CES being less relevant this year due to the direct absence of big players like Microsoft, Apple, and Google, there were clear trends and several standout products at the January Consumer Electronics Show, which will likely impact K–12 education. Here’s a short list of highlights from CES, starting with an overarching trend that’s bound to affect a wide range of devices in coming years.

The future of display technology, foretold. Just the other day, I eyed a ceiling-mounted projector in my library that cost over $5,000 back in 2000 and still works, but just can’t cut it in today’s wide-screen, HD world. Considering the prospect of replacing it, I wonder, where will it end? Well, thanks to CES, I think I know: Ultra HD. It’s the display standard that’ll set the new bar for virtually all screens in the future.

Also known as 4K or Quad HD, Ultra HD was originally driven by digital cinema’s requirement for a high-def display dense enough to look good on really huge screens. Ultra HD displays, those boasting a horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels (a common one is 3,840 x 2,160), are definitely headed for a living room TV near you. At about 8.3 megapixels, Ultra HD has four times the pixels of HDTV. It’s not just about TV, though: Panasonic debuted a 20-inch Windows 8 tablet at CES with 4K resolution, and Qualcomm announced that its newest Snapdragon 600 and 800 mobile processors are now engineered to handle Ultra HD, too, so expect Ultra HD to make its way onto the screens of even the smallest personal devices. We’ll also see more OLED screens in the marketplace, with their richer colors and higher contrasts. Samsung has introduced super-thin, bendable, nearly unbreakable OLED displays. The technology, called Youm, could make curved screens and other yummy new display form factors commercially possible. Plus, Youm mojo could prove valuable in school settings where only the toughest screens survive. Some think Ultra HD could be the ultimate display resolution, the finest display we’ll ever need… or want. Do I believe that? No. But it should satisfy us for a while.

Adaptive ebooks and courseware. Imagine textbooks that actually revise themselves on-the-fly to adjust to an individual reader’s comprehension. That’s the idea behind SmartBooks from McGraw Hill Education. They’re multi-platform etextbooks, readable online or off, that adapt to how students respond to periodic review questions, reinforcing material that needs more attention. The company uses student behavior models to create the most efficient path toward subject area mastery. McGraw Hill Education is yet to set SmartBook prices, but expects them to be comparable to standard ebooks. Pearson was also reportedly at CES promoting similar adaptive products.

Gaming pioneer Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, also believes that software that adapts to learners—keeping them on the optimum edge of their ability—maximizes academic achievement and learning enjoyment. That’s the idea behind his company, BrainRush. See how it works yourself: I challenge you to visit www.brainrush.com and take one of their sample lessons. Unless you immediately nail the drill, you’ll feel the software adjusting to your mistakes. I took the lesson on South American countries and could sense the software repeatedly trying different ways to get me to stop confusing Guyana with nearby French Guiana. Eventually, I caught on. And Paraguay is north of Uruguay… duh.

Robotics for students of all ages. Fans of Lego Mindstorms robotics kits, popular in classrooms and homes for well over a decade, will be happy to hear that a new set, Lego Mindstorms EV3, is scheduled for release this spring. The $350 kit reportedly includes 17 different bot designs. Builders can follow plans on paper or tablets, or they can invent new robots freestyle. The kit includes a variety of new and improved sensors and capabilities, has a Linux-based, programmable brick that aspiring hackers can mess with, and is compatible with Mindstorms NXT components. Students can remotely control their robotic creations with apps for iOS and Android, and curricular support is available at www.legoeducation.us.

While the Mindstorms kit is recommended for ages 10 and up, younger kids can have hi-tech fun with Cubelets from Modular Robotics. Cubelets are blocks that simply snap together; no wiring or programming is needed. Each block has either a sensor, logic, or action function. Put them together in different ways and they do different things. Kits start at $159.95.

The XO Learning Tablet. Remember the One Laptop Per Child initiative and the so-called $100 laptop from back in 2005? Well, the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit has now unveiled a commercial product, the XO Learning Tablet. Manufactured by Vivitar, it will be available in the U.S. through retailers, including WalMart, sometime next fall for a price rumored to be around $149. The 7″ tablet will feature front-and rear-facing cameras and can function as a standard Android tablet in parent mode, or a heavily skinned, child-centered, and career-focused Android tablet for kids as young as three. When it’s in child mode, young users choose a professional aspiration—say scientist, for example—and then get access to a vetted set of apps relevant to scientific pursuits. (Alas, school librarian is not currently a career choice.) A robust parental dashboard gives adults full control over their child’s access and provides detailed reports on how the tablet is being used.

And who knows what else? One of the great things about CES is that, warts and all—and no matter how cringe-worthy its keynote address might happen to be—the annual trade show retains its spirit of playful innovation. That was demonstrated this year by the number of creative products at CES that were funded through the grassroots online platform Kickstarter. Who can foresee how these products, no matter how whimsical they seem now, might wind up touching the future? Consider the Puzzlebox Orbit Brain Controlled Helicopter. While it may seem like nothing more than an impractical plaything today, the company is encouraging the development of the open-source BCI (brain-computer-interface) that controls the toy copter. BCI technology is already impacting “serious” fields like vision science and prosthetics, and—who knows?—it could even wind up affecting the most serious profession of all, education.

Launched in October 2012, StarWalk Kids currently offers 150 gorgeously designed pre-K through grade 8 ebooks from about 60 authors in its growing collection, which is expected to swell to 400 titles by the end of the 2012–2013 school year, according to Liz Nealon, cofounder of the product’s parent StarWalk Kids Media.

Tightly curated for exceptional quality, the collection is about 60 percent highly illustrated nonfiction, and all titles are simultaneous-access licensed, making a subscription to StarWalk Kids a solid way to support Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for reading and writing. Each title includes vetted links to author and illustrator information, plus a “Teaching Links” PDF that lists the related CC standards, with ideas for extending learning through supplemental classroom activities.

StarWalk ebooks are basically device agnostic and can be enjoyed using virtually any device with a Flash-enabled Web browser to display the excellent, proprietary StarWalk Reader. IPad users will also soon be able to stream StarWalk Kids titles via an HTML 5-based app currently awaiting Apple approval. Users can have titles read to them by professional narrators, with or without text highlighting, or they can read selections themselves.

Teachers will appreciate the simple yet robust toolkit built into the StarWalk Reader, which includes the ability to highlight, add notes, zoom in or out, and jump to a page by either entering a page number or mousing over the bottom of the screen to reveal page thumbnails and selecting any of them. Educators and parents can also use StarWalk’s advanced search feature to browse the collection by Lexile level, alphabetic reading level, CC standards, and other criteria.

Whether its ebook titles were initially published in print or are digital originals, StarWalk Kids is meticulous about design and offers only fixed-format ebooks to preserve their visual integrity. While they’re perfect for viewing on interactive whiteboards, computers, and full-size tablets, the obvious trade-off for that visual consistency is that StarWalk Kids titles aren’t as easily viewed on smaller devices like smartphones as reflowable text ebooks would be.

It’s also worth noting that non-subscribers can buy many StarWalk Kids titles à la carte to enjoy on Kindle Fire and Nook tablet models.

For more information about StarWalk Kids and to sign up for a free trial, visit www.StarWalkKids.com.

Screenshot from Rosen Interactive Ebooks.

Rosen Digital has introduced a free, interactive ebook platform that customers can populate, à la carte, with unlimited, simultaneous access licensed, nonfiction titles for $34.95 each or $209.70 for a set of six.Sixty titles are currently available and an additional 60 will be released in January 2013.

The ebooks feature colorful designs, eye-popping photographs, plenty of maps, charts and sidebars—and even video clips. And they’re perfect for individual use or classroom sharing via an interactive whiteboard. Young learners can explore the ebooks at their own pace, reading selections independently or choosing to listen to them read by a professional narrator with optional text highlighting, making them perfect for emerging and mature readers alike. While the interactive ebooks are excellent in themselves, what really distinguishes them are the instructional activities students can complete as they read the selections.

Targeting Common Core standards, which focus on reading, writing, and expressing understanding through various digital media, each ebook comes with three integrated lesson options created by Shannon Miller, a district teacher librarian and technology specialist at Van Meter (IA) Community School.

In one ebook series called “Speed Machines,” for example, students reading the title Alfa Romeo can be asked to summarize the main ideas by writing an email expressing their opinion, designing an informative Web page, or introducing the sports car company in a social network profile. If they choose to do the latter, they won’t be posting to Facebook. Instead, each dual-page view has an “activity assistant” workspace above it, which prompts students to do things—generally based on their understanding of the two pages of content. Students who opt to create a social network profile select a username above one two-page spread, then choose a profile picture from a set of Alfa Romeo images that pop up, and so on. Then they gradually complete their mock-profile learning activity as they read and write in an environment that’s safe, self-contained, and doesn’t require students to set up individual accounts. Same deal with blogs, wikis, Web pages, and other activities: students learn about publishing in various digital media through simulations that can only be printed or emailed.

On the other hand, the printable lesson plans for each learning activity do suggest extension activities that employ third-party sites, including Fakebook (A Facebook-like profile creation site for educational use), Wikispaces, and Club Penguin—activities that the publisher suggests be done with adult supervision. While Rosen Interactive ebooks currently serve grades K–6, Miriam Gilbert, director of Rosen Digital, says that titles for secondary students are coming. While Rosen Interactive ebooks are currently formatted in non-reflowable text and viewable in a Flash-based reader best suited for full-size desktops and laptops, Gilbert says an HTML5-based reader is also in the works, which will enable the ebooks to be used on a wider variety of devices.

If you’re interested in a product that supports both traditional literacy and information literacy, you can learn more by visiting rosendigital.com, where you can watch a demo and view sample interactive ebooks.

Looking for a fresh way to create rich educational presentations? Meograph helps users create and share uniquely dynamic interactive projects, incorporating Google Maps and Google Earth to generate a story time line, which can be enhanced with images, video clips, text, audio narration, and links for more in-depth information.

Currently in an early Beta release, Meograph is already a promising way for educators to fashion presentations on any topic where a visual grasp of time and place is central to understanding, making it especially suitable for social studies/history content.

Creating a Meograph presentation is totally intuitive. The Web-based program asks users to answer three basic questions: What happened, when did it happen, and where? It then automatically plots that information on a time line and presents it in chronological order via the viewer’s choice of Google Maps or Google Earth (download required), flying around the globe, displaying where each event took place in time. Creators can add still images or up to 15 seconds of any YouTube video to enhance their story, and record up to 10 seconds of narration from within the browser. To add longer narration, you can record using a third-party app such as Audacity and import the MP3 file. Viewers can elect to watch Meographs in chronological fashion or select points on the time line, hop around, and click “See More” links to further explore a topic.

While the following topic may not be your cup of tea, I chose to get my feet wet with Meograph by creating a presentation on the early roots of punk rock. Electing to begin in 1964—with the formation of the proto-punk band the MC5 in the suburbs of Detroit—I soon had Meograph whizzing over to New York City in the mid 70s, then jetting to London to illustrate how the musical movement cross-pollinated within the next decade and a half, peppering my presentation with band images and album art, plus short concert snippets via YouTube (see video below). Just three weeks old when I tried the application, Meograph enabled me to open a chat window and get prompt responses to my questions and also to provide feedback that, the company says, will inform rapid updates to the new service. Indeed, Meograph seems genuinely eager to hear from early-adopting educators like us.

So you should definitely play with Meograph. It could become a great presentation and project tool that would sure beat static PowerPoints (groan) or, even worse, poster projects (really, just shoot me) as a 21st-century assessment. Sure, thinking in four dimensions (facts, multimedia, interactivity, and context) is tricky, so Meograph is something that may have to be seen to be fully understood and appreciated. That’s why I recommend that you check out a polished sample presentation at meograph.com/demo.

Educators can use Meograph to create presentations that are perfect for sharing on interactive whiteboards, across social networks, or embedded in websites. Easy enough to use, Meograph could also be assigned to secondary students as a medium for research-project assessments in a cutting-edge, Web-based format that combines the viral appeal of both video and infographics in a modern mashup that teens are sure to get excited about.

To create an ebook or app in Aerbook Maker, start in the users’ dashboard, where you can upload an imprint logo. Next, set the project’s dimensions and orientation from a drop-down menu that makes selection easy with presets currently available for Kindle Fire, iPad, iPhone, iPhone retina display, and Instabook for Instagram. Alternatively, a user can create a project in any custom dimensions they choose. A cover can be added as well as titles and author names. Blank projects start out with a single page in the editor and authors can add images, text, video or audio, repositioning and resizing items and tweaking designs on the fly, with all project changes saved to the cloud. Pages can be saved as templates, too, making it easy to reuse page layouts—a feature that school librarians and teachers could tap into to make it easier for younger students to create picture books.

More sophisticated students can add depth, motion, and interactivity to their ebooks by adding “behaviors”—actions that happen when readers click on them—to any project element. Behaviors include internal links for jumping—hypercard-style—to another page within the book or external links for opening Web pages; playing an audio or video file; or revealing or hiding a page layer. Authors can also add parallax animation, a simple technique that simulates depth by making page elements move at assigned speeds, depending on how “far” they are designated to be from the viewer.

Authors can also elect to share parts of their books on the Web and across social networks for feedback and collaboration, another advantage of cloud-based creation. Once a version of an ebook is deemed complete, you can export it as a downloadable file that can be made available for free or for sale on a private website, or submitted to Amazon or Apple. Soon, Aerbook promises to offer a direct channel for selling DRM-free iBooks directly to customers, all from the Aerbook dashboard.

Still brand new, Aerbook Maker is already pretty cool stuff. I was able to create a basic ebook and export it in a couple of different file formats within an hour. Creating apps is undeniably trickier: they’re exported in Corona format, which requires developers to have a copy of the free Corona SDK to view it in a simulator and build it for distribution. While that may sound daunting, it’s worth remembering that an eighth grader created Bubble Ball, one of the most popular iPhone apps ever, so we might think twice before selling our students short. Plus, Aerbook promises to further streamline and simplify app development, too, eventually offering a complete Web-based app-building and distribution service.

Since many of us still have a couple weeks left before school resumes, the time to sign up for a free account and experiment with Aerbook is now. If you have any ideas about unique ways to use the product in education, or if you’d like to try piloting Aerbook Maker in your school, you’re invited to contact the company at aerbookmaker@aerbook.com.