My iPhone Apps for Learning Solution 2010
Brent Schlenker,
Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development, March 12, 2010.
This list of apps that support learning on the iPhone is worth reading on its own merits. I wouldn't recommend for learning a closed platform like the iPhone, but the sort of things you can do with this set of applications described the sort of support environment you want to develop in order to enable mobile learning. In particular, appls like Bento, a personal database application, have a lot going for them. (Hits Today: 0 Total: 3)
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Re: My iPhone Apps for Learning Solution 2010
The iSchool initiative (https://www.ischoolinitiative.com/Home_Page.html) has a list for K-12. Obviously, a lot of people are thinking about how to capitalize on this technology, closed or not.
This raises two questions about the assumptions undergirding your non-recommendation as follows:
1) Are iPhoneOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, etc.) really closed? a) You can create a web app (http://www.apple.com/webapps/) that is free, open and responsive to its users. b) You can create a free native app as long as it meets mostly reasonable standards. c) You can create an ePub-based eBook that can be synchronized to an iPhoneOS device.
So, perhaps this conversation needs refinement where we consider the degrees and varieties of "closed-ness." Quite frankly, I see more incentives to learning via an iPhoneOS device than disincentives. To me, they seem more enabling than disabling.
2) How exactly does this kind of closed-ness impede learning? [Comment]
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Re: My iPhone Apps for Learning Solution 2010
Well, Frank, I am by no means the first to argue that the iPhone approach is a closed platform. You cannot distribute an application for the platform without Apple's approval, some widely used specifications (such as Flash) are simply disallowed, and Apple has been demonstrably arbitrary in its decision-making on this.
As for how the closed platform impedes learning, I have talked a lot about this over the years and I am not in a position to recapitulate that whole discussion in a single comment. But in brief, when the platform is closed, the ability to have a free discussion or conversation is limited, and this impedes learning. It is not sufficient to say that in some cases some free conversation is allowed. When you are subject to the whims of the platform vendor, your ability to have a free conversation is impeded. If you don't believe me, create an app the purpose of which is to criticize Apple and see how far you get with it. [Comment]
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Re: My iPhone Apps for Learning Solution 2010
The question I meant to ask is whether iPhoneOS devices are all that closed and to suggest that closed-ness is a matter of degree. One might even argue that nothing is truly and fully open. So, perhaps we are talking about differences in degree rather than differences in kind.
So, with iPhoneOS devices enabling web applications that require no Apple approval and with iPhoneOS devices supporting unencumbered ePub-based eBooks/eTexts, one has to ask whether they are really all that closed that we should dismiss them out of hand.
As for native iPhoneOS applications, sure, Apple approval is required. However, Apple has approved many apps that support blogging, twittering and so on where criticism of Apple of any other entity is largely unencumbered.
So how is Flash, a closed and proprietary environment, essential to free and open conversation? I just don't get that. [Comment]
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Re: My iPhone Apps for Learning Solution 2010
Of course closed-ness is a matter of degree. I don't know what you're establishing when you establish that. Apple stuff is much more closed than other stuff. Yes the door is open a crack. But you still work on the Apple platform at Apple's whim - as demonstrated by its refusal to allow flash to play on iPods and iPads. Only web technology allowed by apple will play on Apple - so you can't say you can run just any web application you want. You can't.
Flash - the .flv format - is open, and you can get open source viewers for it. But that's not the point. The point is, when Apple tells you that you can't use something, whether or not it's open, then Apple is not open.
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