TeacherTabletPC

• InkLearn is a tool for learning to write in Chinese—this looks very cool; I wish I’d had something like this when I was learning Japanese (from “InkLearn has a Home”).
• Lenovo is offering a free tablet pen for doing a survey—I strongly recommend having a second pen available just in case, since without the pen the tablet isn’t terribly useful; I personally use a Wacom-Cross pen nearly all of the time and keep the OEM pen as a backup, but I did the survey to get another spare anyway (from “Got a Lenovo? Get a Free Tablet Pen!”).
• Tracy’s thoughts on moving back to OneNote and how she uses it with Journal, et al. (“Sliding over to OneNote…again”).

Since it’s the end of the quarter and I’m pressed for time (even more than usual), here’s some quick OneNote stuff (mostly ON2007), via Daniel Escapa’s OneNote Extensibility & More Blog:

• Sort Pages PowerToy
• Sort Sections PowerToy
• Note that using a 0.25 tip (new default in ON2007) means no pressure sensitivity
• List of 23 entries on various blogs all about OneNote

In my quest to have interesting news and links to post about here, I’ve been reading bunches of other education and tablet blogs and looking at all sorts of web sites. If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve gotten to really like GottaBeMobile.com. They’ve got video blog entries they call “InkShows”—here’s their list from February:

Hardware Inkshows

• Fujitsu T4215 Tablet PC Hardware InkShow: Rob Bushway takes a look at Fujitsu’s convertible and does a comparison with the Lenovo Thinkpad X60.
• SR668 RuggedBook Tablet PC Inkshow: Rob and his son Dax do their best to beat up, drown, and otherwise destroy Samwell’s ruggedized Tablet PC.
• Quick Look at the LG XNote C1 Tablet PC: Just when you thought the CES coverage was over, Dennis Rice and Warner Crocker take a look at the LG XNote C1 Tablet PC.
• The Electrovaya PowerPad 95 InkShow: Warner Crocker examines the PowerPad 95 battery.

Software Inkshows

• PhatWare PenCommander Software Inkshow: Matt Faulkner walks you through using PhatWare’s PenCommander.
• The New York Times Reader Inkshow: Warner Crocker takes a look at The New York Times Reader.

From “The Influence of Learning Styles on Learners in E-Learning Environments” by Naser-Nick Manochehr (pdf) in the December 2006 issue of CHEER:

The results revealed that for the instructor-based learning class (traditional), the learning style was irrelevant, but for the web-based learning class (e-learning), the learning style was significantly important. The results indicated that students with the Assimilator learning style (these learn best through lecture, papers and analogies) and the Converger learning style (these learn best through laboratories, field work and observations) achieved a better result with the e-learning (web-based) method.

(as seen in Learning and Learning Style Preferences in Steve Myers’s blog)

Since I’m buried under a heap of grading (well, actually, I crawled out for a quick break and decided to use the break to post here), I’ll follow the lead of GottaBeMobile.com and post a quick reminder about the changes in Daylight Saving Time in the US. As all the running around by our IT staff at school indicates, this is kind of a big deal, even though it really shouldn’t be (they were very insistent that I reboot my desktop right then and there). Chances are that if you’ve been keeping up with your software updates, you’ll be fine. Just in case, here’s a link to Microsoft’s DST Support Center. (And if like me, you’re multi-platform, here’s Apple’s Support Article and the OpenBSD4.0 Errata Page with a patch and a page from Rutgers University with lots of different platform-specific info.)

Maybe it’s more of a small ripple than a wave, but in perusing the few dozen blogs I’ve plugged into Google Reader I found a number recent Tablet PC reviews. Then it turned out to just be two reviews, each blogged about repeatedly (for instance here, here, here, and here), so I figured I’d jump on the bandwagon. (And it doesn’t hurt that the Lenovo X60 is in here…)

Business Week reviewed the X60 and said:

The Good: Extremely portable; Active Rotate feature automatically adjusts screen

The Bad: Lacks an internal CD drive; relatively expensive

The Bottom Line: It’s not much to look at, but it is a capable and easy-to-transport tablet doubling as a laptop

CRN looked at the HP TC4400, the ThinkPad X60, and the Toshiba M400 and said:

All three convertible tablet computers impressed Test Center engineers with above-average quality and similar feature sets. Price/performance came out roughly equal, as performance ratings were similar and the difference in list prices varied by only $112 between the lowest- and highest-priced units.

Lenovo garnered points for being the smallest and lightest unit tested here (excluding its expansion base), giving it a boost for ease of use. But by leaving out a built-in optical drive, that win came at the expense of features. Toshiba’s choice to include a built-in optical drive—a key decision that in the eyes of Test Center engineers creates a more versatile tablet PC—made it heavier than Lenovo’s X60 but on par with the weight of the HP unit, giving the M400 the advantage on features.

Users seeking the combined functionality of a notebook computer and tablet PC in a single unit will prefer the Toshiba Portg M400-S4032 over the HP Compaq tc4400 and Lenovo’s ThinkPad X60, which affords the lowest estimated partner margins among the three. But if low weight is a priority, then Lenovo is the way to go.

All in all, I think if I were buying a machine right now, I’d go with the Lenovo ThinkPad X60, but as I’ve said before size and weight are critical to me and battery life is a close second and I don’t really need an optical drive built in.

Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Technology on Education (WIPTE) at Purdue University, June 11-12, 2007:

WIPTE is open to anyone with an interest in instructional technology. A wide variety of disciplines are embracing Tablet PC’s and similar pen-based devices as tools for the radical enhancement of teaching and learning. This conference is intended to leverage this shared passion and to identify best practices in the educational use of pen-based computing so that all educators may benefit from this next generation of technology.

I’m thinking this might be really interesting and Purdue is pretty close to Chicago. I think I’ll have to order the monograph from last year’s WIPTE and see what it’s all about.

From Rob at GottaBeMobile.com earlier this week, OneNote Extensibility & More by Daniel Escapa is a blog all about OneNote, with goodies like How to create outlines with ink. Rob also says:

Post your thoughts on OneNote here and OneNote Mobile here. Microsoft will be watching those threads, so make your voices heard.

Jim Vanides (see this comment), a program manager for HP Corporate Philanthropy, has an interesting ed tech blog (you might also be interested in information about the HP Technology for Teaching grant program). Jim has posted about the same Dr. Cox that I mentioned last week:

One example comes from an HP Technology for Teaching grant recipient team at Murray State University, in Murray, Kentucky (USA). Dr. Terry Derting (Bio Sciences) and Dr. Ricky Cox (Chemistry) have been using HP Tablet PCs since 2004, and were recently awarded an HP Technology for Teaching Leadership award to continue and expand their work.

He also has good list of reasons why teachers should pay attention to the idea of Tablet PCs in the classroom in which he says:

Even one Tablet PC in a classroom can make a difference.