One of my students had her iPad stolen - we located it using the MobileMe application on the iPad and reported it to the Boston Police and to the Suffolk University Police, showing exactly where it was at a house in East Boston. This device costs $600, making it grand larceny.
The Suffolk University police were impressed by the technology. They were amazed that we could actually see where the iPad was on a live screen on their computers. They took a report and said that they would look into it. Later on they said that they couldn't do anything since although the crime had taken place on campus, the stolen item was no longer on campus as we could plainly see. (If it had been in a dorm room, could they have done something?) I asked the chief of the Suffolk University police what they could do, and how quickly, since the device has limited battery life and would only report its location as long as it was on. He said they would get their report to the Boston Police in a few days, less than a week. The student They failed to take action to recover it. Details: Using GoogleMap we found the house address; using Zillow we found the house owner; Using public records on Internet we found the people who lived in the house; using ATT Reverse-Lookup we got their phone number. We gave all this to the Boston Police. They were reluctant to go to recover the iPad even though the GPS was Real-time and showed its location. The student (against all recommendations) went to the location and took photos of the Car parked in back of the building (where the GPS showed the iPad to be) and gave the photo of the license plate to the police. Still no action. The police said that even though we knew it was there they were powerless and couldn't get a search warrant or go to get the iPad. The next day I noticed on the MobileMe that the iPad had moved from behind the house to a position in the street in front of the house. This made it likely that the unit might be in a car, or was in a car at the time I was looking at the MobileMe.
I have more details if anyone is interested in hearing them, but don't want to make this entry too long.
We would like to get this story exposed since this type of crime is common, and people believe that they can recover stolen items if they go to the police. Please pass this link along. Best answer may be using social network as did student in another state - see GOOGLE to: www.pcworld.com/.../techsavvy_student_tracks_down_macbook_air_thief.html
I am using iPads in my class at Suffolk University studying digital textbooks and how they are changing education; I loaned this iPad to a student.
to be continued...
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Transformation is Happening in Education
This is a draft of an article I am submitting for publication. It describes the class I teach at Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University.
I divide the students in the class into six teams. Five of the teams are assigned an eTextbook device and the sixth team is given a paper textbook for use through the semester. The digital technologies have changed as new devices have emerged. In the last semester I included: Amazon Kindle, Sony eReader Touch, Apple iPad, enTourage eDGe, CourseSmart. The students in the class are also part of my study of digital textbook adoption. I have been conducting this research as an ongoing longitudinal study over the past two years, to track the trends in student attitudes and behavior toward their use of digital textbooks (eTextbooks) in higher education.
Background:
As education has become a higher priority for the country there has been a greater focus the quality of learning and on the economics providing learning tools and equipment (textbooks). In the 21st-century there is a clear and emerging desire by all stakeholders to take advantage of rich media and access to information provided by the Internet to provide better education. Concurrently the textbook industry and the broader industries of all print media are being disrupted and transformed by digital technology in the form of e-books and eReaders.
The challenges facing each of the major stakeholders (publishers, authors, bookstores, students, etc.) in textbook industry transformation are relatively similar, whether they are on the supply side or the demand side the equation. Each of the stakeholders is facing significant disruption in the marketplace that will profoundly affect their economics, operations and business models. The creation and distribution of information or content in printed form (aka books) is a highly integrated system facing business transformation on the supply-side mediated by adoption rates on the demand side. The dynamics and rate of transformation are being both mediated and catalyzed by a series of social, economic and technology forces.
General Observations:
Students in today's classroom are becoming much more technologically savvy every year. Their comfort with technology comes from growing up in an environment where they have encountered, and in fact been bombarded with new technologies at an ever-increasing pace. Digital technology pervades every aspect of their lives: how they play, how they socialize, how they communicate, and how they learn. These students have grown up with digital devices, and they are on the cusp of a generational cohort that is expecting technology to be integrated seamlessly into most experiences in the personal, professional and social aspects of their lives. It is a foregone conclusion that they are looking to further integrate technology into their academic life as much as possible. These cultural forces of technology are meeting head-on with the traditional academic environment. The academic environment of today can be characterized as a dynamic tension between tradition and innovation, i.e. balancing enhancing the foundation of existing knowledge, while pushing the frontiers of new knowledge. These forces are driving both the content and the media of academia.
Plan to read more about this research and class in future blog entries and in other journals, publications and conference sessions. Also, invite me to speak on this at your conference or group!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Disrupition of Business Model
Last night I was watching a movie about The Temptations and I was struck once again by how much the business model of the music industry has changed. And how much the business models of the publishing industry are being changed.
Before the digital disruption that was initiated by Napster, the business model centered around the record company and its agents. The record companies determined what artists were successful and what music we would hear. The record companies controlled distribution and music was available for purchase in retail stores. Now we look at the plethora of business models in the music industry in the redistribution of power and profitability they brought to the industry participants. Music can be purchased by individual song (e.g. iTunes) or albums, through subscriptions to services which provide all songs as long as your paid subscription is maintained current, through selective paid services which offer choice of music genre or type, but not individual songs (e.g. satellite radio), and through free services which are either customized (e.g. Pandora) or generic (e.g. FM radio) and supported by advertising.
It's interesting to apply these models by analogy to the publishing industry and in particular to the textbook publishing industry. Looking back only a few years, we can see, the textbook publishing industry using models are analogous to those that we saw years ago in the music industry. The major publishers control the selection of authors, content, production and distribution of textbooks. But things have changed rapidly. We see some of these same business models as we saw in the music industry, already established in the textbook publishing industry and competition building in several of the arenas. For the purposes of this discussion, I will be considering only digital textbooks, not paper textbooks. In the arena of individual purchase we see bookstores such as Amazon (i.e. Kindle), Barnes & Noble (i.e. Nook) and Apple (iTunes) competing to sell individual books. They are employing different proprietary technologies to try to lock users into purchasing only from their stores or to read books that have been distributed only by them. Publishers are also selling directly through websites.
Subscription business models for textbooks also exist already in the marketplace. These include CourseSmart, and eChapters, for example. Both of these services provide students with access to the digital textbooks online and through multiple devices whenever and wherever they want to access them. These services are currently more narrow than the music subscription services, in that the student subscribes only a single textbook for a set duration of time, typically a semester. That time period can be extended. We can expect to see these subscription models expanded to include access to multiple textbooks for a duration of the course study. It is likely that this expanded model will be done in conjunction with either universities or departments within universities.
Other business models are also emerging, which are similar to the custom music services business models. However, because of differences in the industries, the selection of content is being driven more by intermediaries, namely professors or instructors, then by the ultimate consumers (the students). Custom textbooks and remixes (to borrow a term from the music industry) can be created by faculty through Flat World Publishing. This ability enables the creation of unique textbooks with quality content tailored to the individual professor's class and teaching style.
The controversy over providing advertising to students within the body of the textbooks has delayed the emergence of the advertising supported free textbooks for students. However, I would not be surprised to see this model available within the next year. This model may make its first emergence through the bundling of textbooks with textbook eReader devices.
What do you think?
Mitchell Weisberg
Before the digital disruption that was initiated by Napster, the business model centered around the record company and its agents. The record companies determined what artists were successful and what music we would hear. The record companies controlled distribution and music was available for purchase in retail stores. Now we look at the plethora of business models in the music industry in the redistribution of power and profitability they brought to the industry participants. Music can be purchased by individual song (e.g. iTunes) or albums, through subscriptions to services which provide all songs as long as your paid subscription is maintained current, through selective paid services which offer choice of music genre or type, but not individual songs (e.g. satellite radio), and through free services which are either customized (e.g. Pandora) or generic (e.g. FM radio) and supported by advertising.
It's interesting to apply these models by analogy to the publishing industry and in particular to the textbook publishing industry. Looking back only a few years, we can see, the textbook publishing industry using models are analogous to those that we saw years ago in the music industry. The major publishers control the selection of authors, content, production and distribution of textbooks. But things have changed rapidly. We see some of these same business models as we saw in the music industry, already established in the textbook publishing industry and competition building in several of the arenas. For the purposes of this discussion, I will be considering only digital textbooks, not paper textbooks. In the arena of individual purchase we see bookstores such as Amazon (i.e. Kindle), Barnes & Noble (i.e. Nook) and Apple (iTunes) competing to sell individual books. They are employing different proprietary technologies to try to lock users into purchasing only from their stores or to read books that have been distributed only by them. Publishers are also selling directly through websites.
Subscription business models for textbooks also exist already in the marketplace. These include CourseSmart, and eChapters, for example. Both of these services provide students with access to the digital textbooks online and through multiple devices whenever and wherever they want to access them. These services are currently more narrow than the music subscription services, in that the student subscribes only a single textbook for a set duration of time, typically a semester. That time period can be extended. We can expect to see these subscription models expanded to include access to multiple textbooks for a duration of the course study. It is likely that this expanded model will be done in conjunction with either universities or departments within universities.
Other business models are also emerging, which are similar to the custom music services business models. However, because of differences in the industries, the selection of content is being driven more by intermediaries, namely professors or instructors, then by the ultimate consumers (the students). Custom textbooks and remixes (to borrow a term from the music industry) can be created by faculty through Flat World Publishing. This ability enables the creation of unique textbooks with quality content tailored to the individual professor's class and teaching style.
The controversy over providing advertising to students within the body of the textbooks has delayed the emergence of the advertising supported free textbooks for students. However, I would not be surprised to see this model available within the next year. This model may make its first emergence through the bundling of textbooks with textbook eReader devices.
What do you think?
Mitchell Weisberg
Monday, September 20, 2010
How will an author succeed in the New Textbook World
September 20, 2010
So I was reading this article in the NY Times and started thinking about the future world when authors, like musicians in the current music industry, will face a different paradigm to break into the market. This situation would be analogous to the situation the freelance journalist (Amy) faced in the article:
Can Digg Find Its Way in the Crowd?
By Todd Wasserman Published: September 18, 2010 NY Times
In order to get her material to the front page of Digg, this journalist actively sought out and built a social network in the Digg community. She nurtured them by recommending their material to befriend them and to, in turn, have them eventually recommend her writings. Once her material was visible, it got “voted” by the masses to the front page of Digg. Yet we believe that the articles are selected by the masses of Digg readers, not by a few judges, managers or editors. As the article states, “there is no handful of editors [at Digg] … deciding which articles will get to the front page… the masses are deciding.” But a closer examination reveals that there is an elite group of writers who have emerged or established themselves as the “gatekeepers” and who have the power to place material in front of these masses for them to vote. They have usurped the power of editors and have the power to initiate the potential viral effect of the marketing by placing material in front of the masses with their endorsement.
This appears to be much the same as marketing to the leading faculty or established publishers to get content (chapter, case study, book, etc.) into the future classroom. Does someone have to do the marketing or to engage the social forces for the first look at new material so it can at least be considered by the masses? We talk about crowd approving or voting for most popular articles or items on social media.
Will we see the same result in the future for textbook content and authors? Will communities emerge of authors who are known for various subject areas, who are succinct, knowledgeable, or otherwise desirable? Who will determine which new authors emerge to have their material more widely disseminated than their own classroom?
The overwhelming amount of new material being produced implies that there must be some mechanism or process for the initial visibility of the material, i.e. to get into the media for the masses to vote. Will new authors be like free agents, working without a publisher? Will there be an elite group of authors who dominate the landscape of textbooks, each with a major publisher behind them? Who will fill this role in the future textbook publishing environment?
Mitch
Monday, June 28, 2010
Pirates... or Are They Buccaneers - It Depends on Your Perspective
As I watch the digital reader device market exploding is fascinating to look at the role that's being played by the Pirates.I find it interesting to reflect on the history of piracy and how it plays into the transformation of this market. In the early days the Pirates were simply thieves with boats out to make money for themselves. However powers that be soon saw an opportunity in clandestinely hiring the Pirates to do their bidding. Oft times, these pirates who are working for a cause (merchants, royalty, or sovereign states) were called buccaneers. Carrying out their acts of piracy actually furthered the cause of the sponsor.
Some of the free digital books that are available on the web are pirated, illegal copies which steal the profits from their rightful owners.But what about the Buccaneers, those entities putting free digital books on the Web with the intent of furthering the market, and driving our civilization into the future? What about the Buccaneers were writing open-source code to break DRM and giving it away for free (with no intent of profiting themselves)?
Can we consider them positive forces in the marketplace, lubricating the gears of change in driving us more quickly into the transformed publishing environment?
What do you think?
Some of the free digital books that are available on the web are pirated, illegal copies which steal the profits from their rightful owners.But what about the Buccaneers, those entities putting free digital books on the Web with the intent of furthering the market, and driving our civilization into the future? What about the Buccaneers were writing open-source code to break DRM and giving it away for free (with no intent of profiting themselves)?
Can we consider them positive forces in the marketplace, lubricating the gears of change in driving us more quickly into the transformed publishing environment?
What do you think?
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Piracy and Its Potential Impact - What do you think - Where do you stand?
One thought that the publishing industry would be able to cull lessons from the experience of the music industry and preempt some of the mistakes that were made. One example of a mistake would be the pursuit and suing of end-user consumers. Other questionable solutions that were tried in the music industry include proprietary DRM solutions and multiple licensing arrangements with different music vendors.
As we now approach critical mass of e-book readers we are witnessing the emergence of broad instances of digital text or e-book piracy. Initially this piracy was limited to a few relatively unknown and highly technical sites. Most of these sites offered primarily technical literature or limited numbers of textbooks and novels. However, with the recent emergence of larger numbers of e-book readers there has been significant growth and spread of digital book piracy. Industry sources suggest that the growth of piracy is now exponential and out of control. According to PCWorld there are "virtual bookshelves stuffed with pirated e-book titles ranging from copyrighted popular fiction and nonfiction to college textbooks and how to e-books" which are downloadable and readable on any of the current e-book readers (e.g. Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, or the computer).
The various players in the publishing industry each have a different stake vested in piracy of digital texts. Setting ethics aside (if one legitimately can do that) the increase in piracy creates a large opportunity and rapid growth of the eReader device market. This growth spurs innovation, increases profitability, and drives down the cost of the eReaders via the learning curve effect (lower cost per volume). Publishers and authors, on the other hand are being harmed economically by the piracy. They're responding with attempts at DRM protocols. They have not engaged in widescale prosecution efforts, although they have targeted specific piracy sites and operations. They are also exploring opportunities to combat piracy or creative pricing schemes that will provide quality legitimate e-books at prices that will be attractive to the market. E-books may also prove to be more popular with a segment of the population that cares more about ethics and economics, leaving piracy to serve only a small segment of the market.
The battle lines are still forming in the revolution in transformation of the publishing industry. The structure of the outcome is uncertain, yet we know for sure that e-books and eReaders will become more popular rapidly.
What is your opinion on the evolution of this aspect of the industry and the roles, actions, and reactions of the various industry participants? Would you buy a pirated e-book? We look forward to seeing your comments.
Mitch
Source of PCWorld quote: http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/330902/e-book_piracy_publishing_industry_next_epic_saga_/
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
New iPad - is it Fish or Fowl?
A recent article in the Fox News asked if the direction being taken by many of the newer eReader devices and the iPad in particular, is really a better eReader or a "lite" laptop or netbook. I am interested to see how my students (and the market) respond to this choice. Do we want - or need - a light workstation that's portable or just an eReader for student textbooks. Will the market for eTextbooks be closer to textbooks or will students want a multi-purpose device? Comments?
Technology Innovation in the Classroom Presented at Recent iConference on Informatics
I presented some of the results of my class at a recent conference. Here is a copy of the press release:
Mitchell Weisberg, a lecturer at the Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University was selected as a Session Chair at the 2010 iConference in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. He also presented a peer-refereed paper at the conference on “Innovative Technology in the Classroom: A Live, Real-Time Case Study of eReaders Disruption of the Publishing Industry”.
The research and paper are based on his teaching of Strategic Management 429 with a focus on industry-disruptive technologies. His presentation covered how he taught the class and the class’ conclusions regarding the impact of digital technology on the textbook publishing industry. It provided detail on the innovative component of using digital readers to enrich the students’ experience with the subject. Student teams used the digital textbooks (eTextbooks) including Sony eReaders, Amazon Kindles, and CourseSmart online textbooks in the class. He sought funding from Pearson Education, the publisher the class textbook, to make these devices available to the students. Students analyzed the companies and developed strategies to compete in the transforming publishing market. By using the devices that they are studying the students became engaged in a “real-time case study” in the course. This has the impact of providing a longer term learning effect. As an example of this impact, a student from the previous semester caught professor Weisberg in the hallway for an extended discussion of how the market is continuing to evolve and how the course has engaged him in continuing to examine these businesses.
Background on the iConference:
The 5th Annual iConference, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign brought together scholars, professionals and students to examine impacts of the iSchool movement, and how impact can be defined, identified, measured and communicated to key audiences. The iSchools are interested in the relationship between information, people and technology. This is characterized by a commitment to learning and understanding the role of information in human endeavors. The iConference was held on February 3-6, 2010 at the Conference Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Papers presented at the conference are published in a peer-refereed publication.
For more information:
iConference Program http://www.ischools.org/iConference10/program/
iConference Overview http://www.ischools.org/iConference10/2010index/
iSchools http://www.ischools.org/,
Mitchell Weisberg, a lecturer at the Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University was selected as a Session Chair at the 2010 iConference in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. He also presented a peer-refereed paper at the conference on “Innovative Technology in the Classroom: A Live, Real-Time Case Study of eReaders Disruption of the Publishing Industry”.
The research and paper are based on his teaching of Strategic Management 429 with a focus on industry-disruptive technologies. His presentation covered how he taught the class and the class’ conclusions regarding the impact of digital technology on the textbook publishing industry. It provided detail on the innovative component of using digital readers to enrich the students’ experience with the subject. Student teams used the digital textbooks (eTextbooks) including Sony eReaders, Amazon Kindles, and CourseSmart online textbooks in the class. He sought funding from Pearson Education, the publisher the class textbook, to make these devices available to the students. Students analyzed the companies and developed strategies to compete in the transforming publishing market. By using the devices that they are studying the students became engaged in a “real-time case study” in the course. This has the impact of providing a longer term learning effect. As an example of this impact, a student from the previous semester caught professor Weisberg in the hallway for an extended discussion of how the market is continuing to evolve and how the course has engaged him in continuing to examine these businesses.
Background on the iConference:
The 5th Annual iConference, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign brought together scholars, professionals and students to examine impacts of the iSchool movement, and how impact can be defined, identified, measured and communicated to key audiences. The iSchools are interested in the relationship between information, people and technology. This is characterized by a commitment to learning and understanding the role of information in human endeavors. The iConference was held on February 3-6, 2010 at the Conference Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Papers presented at the conference are published in a peer-refereed publication.
For more information:
iConference Program http://www.ischools.org/iConference10/program/
iConference Overview http://www.ischools.org/iConference10/2010index/
iSchools http://www.ischools.org/,
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Challenges to the Professor
I have been focusing mostly on the college classroom and addressing my material to university faculty. this is because that's the venue in which I teach. I'm currently a lecturer at Suffolk University, part-time. (I am looking for a full-time nontenure university teaching position if you know of one.) However much of this material applies to the K-12 classroom setting as well. A few colleagues teaching in that arena should please feel free to add comments on your experience.
Bringing innovation into the classroom is a challenge to faculty. In fact it is a series of challenges, each with many dimensions. at the surface there is a simple matter of selection and a gathering of class material. Some books exist only in one e-Reader format, some in multiple formats, and some not at all. And the challenge only begins here. Having selected the book, the syllabus must be adjusted to address the material included in the text. Page numbers and locations vary from one e-text to another, and may even vary within one e-text to another depending on the font size selected by the user. Diagrams, charts and other visual aids for the students are often displaced in the device displays.
Students however show very different degrees of acceptance of the devices. Many of them, having grown up with digital devices with her whole life are very comfortable with the eReaders and they quickly embrace them. Others are less enthusiastic. Some students print out hard copies of the material on the digital device to read and study from. Others spend the time reading the digital device but they take their notes on paper which makes sharing more cumbersome. At this point about two thirds through the semester and seeing good acceptance of the devices but the jury is still out. At the end of the semester I will be looking back and see if there is any either quantifiable difference in learning as evidenced by student test or quiz scores.
I'm finding that I often have to read the material on multiple devices just to be familiar with the materials presented on them. This creates a significant amount of additional work. I also need to be able to respond to questions referring to a location number into digital text, and to be able to find references in written papers from the students that referred locations in the digital texts.
In a future blog I will write about other tools that are brought into the classroom that may eventually tie into the digital books. This includes our use of wiki's to remove barriers of time and space.
And so the experiment goes on.
Bringing innovation into the classroom is a challenge to faculty. In fact it is a series of challenges, each with many dimensions. at the surface there is a simple matter of selection and a gathering of class material. Some books exist only in one e-Reader format, some in multiple formats, and some not at all. And the challenge only begins here. Having selected the book, the syllabus must be adjusted to address the material included in the text. Page numbers and locations vary from one e-text to another, and may even vary within one e-text to another depending on the font size selected by the user. Diagrams, charts and other visual aids for the students are often displaced in the device displays.
Students however show very different degrees of acceptance of the devices. Many of them, having grown up with digital devices with her whole life are very comfortable with the eReaders and they quickly embrace them. Others are less enthusiastic. Some students print out hard copies of the material on the digital device to read and study from. Others spend the time reading the digital device but they take their notes on paper which makes sharing more cumbersome. At this point about two thirds through the semester and seeing good acceptance of the devices but the jury is still out. At the end of the semester I will be looking back and see if there is any either quantifiable difference in learning as evidenced by student test or quiz scores.
I'm finding that I often have to read the material on multiple devices just to be familiar with the materials presented on them. This creates a significant amount of additional work. I also need to be able to respond to questions referring to a location number into digital text, and to be able to find references in written papers from the students that referred locations in the digital texts.
In a future blog I will write about other tools that are brought into the classroom that may eventually tie into the digital books. This includes our use of wiki's to remove barriers of time and space.
And so the experiment goes on.
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