What Is New

Newsweek published its annual ranking of U.S. 1,300 public high schools. (Read about the methodology.) Is the school your child attends on the list?

Mark Wagner has obviously worked hard on the content for the El Morro Intro to Tablet PC Workshop. Just pop over to the wiki to read the list of topics covered. I'd love to see even more on using Tablet PCs for classroom management, as well as annotating and grading papers. Tablets are great tools for these types of tasks.

Kevin Tofel asks, "how many of you would give up the ability to ink if you had a UMPC with a capacitive display making for a better touch experience?" He started thinking about this after he read that Sintek is developing a 7" capacitive touch display. He's projecting, of course, but it's a good exercise to think through what would change and weigh the pros and cons.

I've thought about this balance between touch and handwriting too. When people have both, they value the freedom of choice to use the right method for the moment. I'd pick touch screen over a dumb display, but a combination touch plus ability to handwrite wins my award. But these are my personal choices. Really, can touch get you through the quick commands and navigation? Sure. Is it valuable for that alone? Yes. The key will be in how a company executes the design because with capacitive touch and a large 7" display you'd need to be careful that you don't brush the display accidentally and send unintended commands.

What do you want? What would you use it for? Work, school, GPS / PND, TV remote control, home automation station, kiosk -- everything? 🙂

They New York Times published an article about a program in Dallas, Texas where schools are attaching a GPS to kids with high truancy rate.

Jaime Pacheco rolled out of bed at dawn last week to the blaring chorus of two alarms. Then Jaime, a 15-year-old high school freshman, smoothed his striped comforter, dumped two scoops of kibble for the dogs out back and strapped a G.P.S. monitor to his belt.

I'm stunned.

I can understand tracing school equipment, such as a notebook PC, that is activated if the PC is lost. But tracking a student as punishment?

On the flipside, here's a different type of tracking. Administrators using devices to access class and student information while they're in the hallways. This isn't new, but it's a better example of technology in schools. iPod Touch, Blackberry or even Windows Mobile phones can be used to access school webpages.

Hunterdon Central in New Jersey is hosting another Tablet PC Academy this year. The three day conference helps teachers, administrators, and others learn best practices on how to integrate the technology into the classroom for teaching and learning.

There will be two sessions this summer:

1. July 15 - 17, 2008
2. July 22 - 24, 2008

Registration is now open for a team of teachers or individuals. There is a discount if you register before June 1, 2008.

This is a fantastic effort by those at Hunterdon Central. It'll be more than just talking with someone else who uses the technology. The hands-on approach will allow you to learn to improve Windows navigation, discuss instructional techniques where Tablet PCs are integrated into the curriculum, and have help troubleshooting issues or concerns.

After adding a few things to the new DIY Multitouch PC forum, I thought it would be good to point you to an historical multitouch document: Andrew Wilson of Microsoft Research published TouchLight: An Imaging Touch Screen and Display for Gesture-Based Interaction and presented a few years ago. Good reminder.