Unacceptable lag between invention and production - large interactive lcd

The Achilles Heel of electronic whiteboards is the digital projection necessary for the image.
We should be at the point of seeing large lcd or plasma screens using touch technology.
Would Chung Lee's approach work with 42"+ lcd screens?
It should do. I notice that plasma screens have a glass front as opposed to the flimsier lcd panels. Would plasma then be a better solution so that the pen does not scratch the surface?
It seems strange that this idea is still at the inventor stage and not in mass production. Come on electronic companies!
The technology is at least 18 months old. Look at this clip from 2007:

The "entrenched" digital immigrant (and native?).

Marc Prensky's term for a late adopter of technology, as opposed to one who has known nothing different, is "digital immigrant".
Two years back we were using this concept to explain the differences between "digital natives" and "digital immigrants". Many parallels between new immigrant behaviour and that of someone who had learned how to use computers, and thus slowly change their ways of working, could be drawn.
But there is another layer to this.
Probably occurring more often in the immigrant than the native, there is a "just enough knowledge and no more" approach as well. There are those who have become entrenched in some Word, some spreadsheets, an on-board mail client, Skype and the ever present powerpoint, and that is it. There is not the wish to move further than this.
"Good enough for what I want to do", they might say.
How common is the entrenched digital user? What might move them on to consider other digital computer and collaborative tools?

A stable GChrome

Tabs along the top, Ctrl T yields your most accessed pages and recent bookmarks, a neat and easily accessible bookmarks toolbar, and what seems to be really fast accessing of pages - that's my first impression of the Google Chrome browser.
The address bar provides very fast searching and guesses. The browser seems to be learning from what I have accessed previously. Very impressive.
Trying this over the last few days has given me much more confidence than when I tried the original buggy Beta version.
After Google announced a concentration on their core business, and the dropping of non related projects, I did wonder whether Chrome would survive. But with their other unexpected announcement regarding Native Client technology - allowing the browser the full power of the onboard computer - now that makes sense.

The Networked Student

It is always difficult to get a vision of the future. How will students work in 5 years time? What is the "classroom of the future"?
This clip on the Networked Student gets close to how students might work in the future and certainly how they can work now. Notice how the student is constructing his own learning and also the role of the teacher - a significant and important role in the facilitating of learning.

Venturing into Google Apps for Education

We have taken the plunge. After working on the general GApps system, with each using their private Gmail account, we have moved over to using Google Apps for Education.
We are taking it slowly, with the central core of users changing first.
It took 4 days for my Gmail to transfer from my private Gmail account to the GApps4Ed account and we are transferring Gdocs into the system as well as making sure all new Gdocs are initiated in the GApps4Ed site.
Some immediate points I notice:

1. The spam folder is almost always empty. This is good - and for a school really important. When we move students into this system this will be a real plus.
2. It seems fast. Difficult to prove this, just an impression.
3. Using Firefox there is no problem between having tabs pointing to the old system and the new. It does not get confused with user and password issues.
4. Gnotebook is not available in GApps4Ed but there is no difficulty in using it. With the embedded link bottom right of Firefox I can access the notebook at any time.
5. We have enabled GLab features and it is easy to chat, have a bigger range of stars to mark mail and, really usefully, use GTasks - great feature.
   

Google Docs for Classroom Collaboration

The point about GDocs is that it is a versatile sharing and collaborating system.
Okay, it's editing facilities may not be as good as Word, but it is as good or better than what I am using here.
But it does need to be set up - either as a school based GApps site or the individual teacher using the open GApps.
Here is a slideshow showing one approach:
http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dd2d8h8d_54f6zt7vgw

The end of the electronic whiteboard

The electronic whiteboard promises much but is a clunky and imperfect technology.
The main problem is that it relies on a digital projector for the image. The teacher/presenter gets in the way and worse, the room's light level has to be kept low so as to see the dim projector image.
LCD flat panels are a pretty good substitute for the digital projector, and now the multi-touch lcd panel is going to supercede the electronic whiteboard. Let it happen! And fast!
The CNN coverage using this technology was impressive. John King's fingers did the work and awed everybody. However, the credit must go to inventor Jeff Han who first demonstrated this to a very impressed audience at TED.com.
Keep up to date in this area following the Multitouch blog.