Floozy Speak!

Its a bit windy out.. i just about wrote that as "wendy...". I've had a rough week. Yesterday I endured a long 12 hour day talking to consumers about insurance. Its hard to get excited about insurance really. Being in the midwest we seem to have a lot of insurance companies and they spend oooodles attempting to get inside the minds of their consumers.

ya, so not the the sexist thing to research really, but it is primal in many ways. Ya got money on one side the room, protection on the other, honesty in the middle and then the deal and lastly.. the red tape. So ya, its an endurance test at times.

Tablet PC Education...

Aside from the mayhem of research I still make time to chase down bit projects. Today I attended a presentation at Bishop Harley High School here in columbus. In the past 5 years BHS has been on the edge of technology implementing its tablet pc education program to junior and senior high school students. They were the first school in the country to arm 300 students with tablet pcs, construct a system to teach all classes with them and more. Ken Collura the tech head behind the project is amazing guy.

I arrived on the scene about 2 years ago when I met Ken at a local tech conference. I was immediate intrigued with his program. To me its like the grand experiment unfolding. In the past I've done some early adopter studies, and BHS is a prime piece of material for that kind of work. 300 students are given, yes thats given, a tablet pc. They use them in tablet pc enabled classes, take them home, lug them around instead of books. Is it the future? Well from what I've seen its damn near close. Collaborative software has come a long way, and it still has plenty of room to grow.

What really amazes me about the BHS project is the absence of major player interest on the part of Apple and Microsoft. I'm seeing mass adoption to a handful of applications that these kids will no doubt take with them into college and beyond and none of the major players are in the scene, aside from an OS stand point for Microsoft. I mean they're in the biz of tablet software with onenote, and all their efforts yet in the classroom its not being used. I suppose k12 isn't their audience but regardless of that, adoption to other apps that blow onenote outa the way is on. And thats just one application, what about the innovations, the bootstrapping happening in the background with server apps, administrative back-end programs and more. Its really odd to see this huge experiment go down and nada interest from the big MS.

Apple on the other hand could learn alot about what BHS has done in the 4 years to kick this kind project off the ground.

Today I watched student interaction with the tablets in 4 classes. The first two classes we're italian and french. Just a few students had tablets and were taking notes. After the Sopranos lesson we checked out a social studies class where the students we're engaged in a global game. Several high schools around the country and even a few overseas we're all part of one massive simulation- Arab Israeli Conflict. Students split up into teams, each team represents a country and they all have to get along. Everyone had their tablet pc out and was working a way, connecting online, interacting with students from afar etc. Pretty slick. We saw alot of smart board technology being implemented and used as well, especially handy in some classes.

After the class walkthroughs we had lunch with a select group of students. I quickly proceeded to put my researcher cap on and started asking questions drilling down into user habits on campus and at home. It was fun to poke around things like social networks, mobile phones, digital cameras, wifi access and more. A few of these kids we're up on ajax as well. I asked all the standard research questions but my style quickly broke into more progressive interests once i started seeing that glazed over participant look. Then we got into some fun conversations about their behaviors and patterns they themselves saw in their adoption of the tablet.

Kids are great subjects when you tap into them. The minute you start to get their space, they just let go and the faucet is on. Sure these the occasional ego trip but in general I feel once you get them to see you as someone that keep up with their world, the gloves are off and they really spill it. Throw some jokes in there too, that always help. One girl had 500+ buddies in her instant messagener, that led to a conversation about MySpace and from there we got where mobile phones, tablet pcs, the home pc and more all either worked together or didn't.

One thing I thought was interesting was that the students really didn't want the tablets to evolve into superior hardware pcs like their home pcs. Enabling tech like GPS, wifi, etc, thats all good, but please whatever you do, dont improve the core graphics abilities. It's like pimping out yer notebook.. hey i use that to learn man, my pc is for pimping. Heh. Good stuff. I hope to do more studies with the kids someday. Again just an incredible scene unfolding there, soooo much to learned.

And the winner is...

The results for Project Runway 2 are in... and its Chloe! Surprise win and probably not picked for her line as much as she carried herself thru the challenges. That and I think she got the win for her biz sense. Daniel V was my favorite, I think his designs were excellent, but I also think he had an amazing model to display them. Rebecca wasn't hot, she just had the look, the right look for Daniel V's clothes and the two made an unstoppable pair there for awhile. Santino, well I loved his in yer face energy, but the broke him, the pounced on his spirit and threw Tim in there to basically tell him to calm it down.. so he did, he still cranked out an amazing collection but it was tame Santino and not the same Santino we all got to know thru the episodes. I bet her returns next season. Either him, Nick, or Andre will return for season 3.

In all a great show, totally hooked me, love it. I love the design process, the challenges and the sheer innovation you get to witness as crazy challenges get tossed at designers. I even p2p'd the english version of the show. :P

Books

Reading Getting Real from 37 signals...considering Lifetime Growth, looks very cool... keep hearing about Shaping Things from Bruce Sterling, so i need to read that. Another excellent PDF...

Sexy Beast

I've been working on a new video blog idea...

Want to see!!

Scanner Darkly.. must see.. Google's open source innovation... and this thing... hmmm, this is cool too, hmm need to translate. I keep finding videos. Maybe a listen or two as well.

Blogwatch...

Some good bits on Solution Watch on 2.0 vibes on gettin back to business.

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