Learning Innovation

Have you ever had an A/V (audio / visual) failure during a conference presentation? You are all ready to go with your talk and the projector will not work, the slides will not load, the audio is on the blink, your multimedia refuses to play?

This past Friday was the 5th anniversary of the launch of the iPhone. Over at the NYTimes Bits blog Brian Chen, author of Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything-Anytime-Anywhere Future -- and Locked Us In, has some observations about how the iPhone changed phone and software industries.

I'm trying to decide if the mounting evidence of our irrationality, poor decision making, and now even dishonesty is depressing or liberating. Reading Ariely's previous books meant accepting the fact that we will make bad decisions, and what we learn from his latest book is that given half a chance we will also lie about our actions.

Dear Google. Congratulations on your release of the Nexus 7 tablet. At $199 bucks at launch you have done the first important thing - keep the costs down. The hardware specs seem reasonable, and I expect that the Nexus 7 will work really well as a media consumption and gaming device. My question to you, Google, is if you have thought about the Nexus 7 as an educational device?

A quick show of hands. Does your employer prohibit you from talking to the media?

Why would anyone spend over $2,000 bucks on a new laptop, only to use it like a $500 Chromebook?

This weekend the NYTimes ran a story headlined "Apple’s Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay". We learn that of the 43,000 U.S. Apple employees, 30,000 are relatively low-paid store employees. Apple's 327 stores sold $16 billion in merchandise, and have per square foot earnings that are higher than any other retailer (next is Tiffany's).

What do you think are the most important attributes for a successful career in educational technology?