Day 30 – Lessons Learned, 30 Days with a Windows 8 Tablet
A Windows 8 Tablet for Teaching and Learning - Day 30Thursday, January 3, 2013
Well, I made it. Over the past 30 days I have documented my experience each day with using a Windows 8 tablet for education purposes. Perhaps the best test of any new device is if you want to go back to what you had used previously. After 30 days with a Windows 8 tablet I do not want to go back to my iPad or Android tablet. In fact, when I use my iPad, I now find myself swiping in from the top, bottom, and sides expecting to get to the shortcut menus I have grown accustomed to using over the past 30 days. The Windows 8 tablet interface seems so much more efficient and I would dearly miss the Wacom digitizer with S-Pen input that comes standard with the Samsung Ativ Smart PC 500T.If I had to go back to the iPad I would be giving up many things. I would lose the ability to work with the full version of the Microsoft Office programs including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I would lose the digitizer S-Pen and the OneNote application that I now use daily. I would miss the ability to snap two windows side-by-side. I would miss the cross-device workflow that Skydrive provides me for access to all my files stored in the cloud. I would miss the ability to automatically have my OneNote files synced to Skydrive and accessed on my Windows Phone 8. I would miss having access to the millions of flash-based websites that I still regularly come across. I would miss the Snipping Tool. I would miss the microHDMI port that allows me to easily connect to a HDTV, or to a projector with a special adapter. I would miss the Xbox streaming music service that plays in the background as I use other applications.
I would miss the multi-user logon that comes in very handy when someone else in my family wants to use my tablet.
Probably one of the most used features that I would miss is access to the expandable storage available on the Ativ 500T via the microSD card slot and full-size USB port. If you have a brand new iPad one of the first realizations you have is that there is not an easy way to get content off of the iPad without setting up a special account like Dropbox, iCloud, or email. This all requires advanced setup tied to an AppleID. With the Ativ 500T it is easy, just copy the file from the Ativ tablet to a USB thumb drive no matter if you are using a local account or a Microsoft account.
I produce multimedia files regularly and having access to audio and video files from a USB thumb drive is incredibly useful when sharing or reviewing content. Yes, I could access them from the Cloud but it is much faster to do a file copy to a USB drive than it is to upload and then download files in the cloud.
I would miss the multi-user logon that comes in very handy when someone else in my family wants to use my tablet.
Probably one of the most used features that I would miss is access to the expandable storage available on the Ativ 500T via the microSD card slot and full-size USB port. If you have a brand new iPad one of the first realizations you have is that there is not an easy way to get content off of the iPad without setting up a special account like Dropbox, iCloud, or email. This all requires advanced setup tied to an AppleID. With the Ativ 500T it is easy, just copy the file from the Ativ tablet to a USB thumb drive no matter if you are using a local account or a Microsoft account.
I produce multimedia files regularly and having access to audio and video files from a USB thumb drive is incredibly useful when sharing or reviewing content. Yes, I could access them from the Cloud but it is much faster to do a file copy to a USB drive than it is to upload and then download files in the cloud.
Another plus, I do not have to plug in a cable to sync content, courtesy of a full-size independent USB port. This is particularly noteworthy for teachers that may be exploring the flipped classroom approach to learning as you will need to grapple with how to get video content to and from large numbers of students, potentially without Internet access. It may be old fashioned but the USB approach to sharing is extremely flexible in solving distribution problems of large multimedia files, particularly if you have slow or no Internet access. If you have ever had a classroom full of students all going to the same video on the Internet you know what I mean.
There has been a lot of debate about whether tablets are consumption or production devices. I think my posts over the past 30 days clearly demonstrate that the Ativ 500T is capable of producing content using full-blown Windows applications, not just apps.
There are a couple of areas that the Ativ 500T falls short of being a complete laptop replacement for me. The Ativ 500T uses the Clover Trail processor that I have grown a deep respect for over the past 30 days. Clover Trail is x86 compatible giving me the capability to run the millions of programs developed for Windows 7 and Windows 8 devices. The one chink in the armor of the Clover Trail processor is when you need raw processing power. Processor intensive applications will struggle on the Ativ 500T. If you are doing much video editing or screencasting you may want to consider a different choice with a more powerful processor. Luckily you have choices, Windows 8 tablets come in a variety of form factors and processor capabilities.
One option would be to select the Intel i5/i7 processors that are now available on some models of Windows 8 tablets. Most notably the Microsoft Surface Pro (not the RT model) will be coming out later this month that features an Intel i5 processor and digitizer Pen. There are tradeoffs as the i5/i7 processors will get about half the battery life of Clover Trail but that is the price you pay for a more powerful processor. For everyday tasks like checking email, browsing, and word processing the Clover Trail processor is more than adequate and you get to enjoy 10 plus hours of battery life. If however you need more processing power, you may want to consider the Intel i3/i5/i7 series of processors just now coming to market on new Windows 8 tablets. Choice is good.This wraps up my first 30 days with a Windows 8 Tablet blog series but I have much more to explore. I have not had a chance to use the Remote Desktop Client. I also have not had the chance to explore some VDI connections that we are implementing in another ITC Lab this semester. It could be that either a RDP or VDI may be a solution for the weaker Clover Trail processor. Perhaps I could login to a VDI session on the Ativ 500T and access a more powerful virtual computer on the network, do my video editing there with more processing power available then copy the finished file back to the Ativ tablet. I also need to use the Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise editions on a tablet to get the benefits of Active Directory, shared network drives, Group Policies, new software installation over the network, and system updates.
I also need to explore the mass deployment options available for Windows 8 tablets on a larger scale. The good news is that since this is Windows 8, Microsoft has a whole Suite of tools for mass deployment and management tasks including Windows Server 2012, SCCM, and the new Intune web-based service for managing and deploying apps remotely. These are standard enterprise tools that most IT departments are familiar with. The Intune service is new and consists of a monthly service subscription but as many iPad deployments have found out not having access to deployment and management tools make for a support nightmare as time goes by. How do you provide system updates and install apps over time? Sure it is easy if you have one tablet but what about 100 or 1000? Windows 8 should be able to easily scale for larger deployments and the benefits of having management tools and a plan for ongoing support cannot be overestimated.
That’s it, my final post for day 30 of this series. I still have not produced any videos, perhaps someday, but school starts back Monday, Yikes! I may add some additional posts here as I learn more about some of the outstanding questions I still have. Please drop me a note and let me know how your tablet deployments are going or if you have any questions about my experiences of using a Windows 8 tablet for educational use. You can email me at techtalk@eiu.edu or I invite you to subscribe to our TechTalk4Teachers podcast about teaching and learning with technology.
Visit the following websites for more information about other projects I am working on:
http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/
http://eiu.edu/itc/
Until next time…
Keep on Learning,
Dr. Grissom
Dr. Grissom
Tom Grissom, Ph.D.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar