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  • An iPad 2 LMS Fantasy

    By Joshua Kim March 2, 2011 10:45 pm EST

    Sending shockwaves through the ed tech establishment, Apple unveiled the iPad LMS at the March 2nd iPad 2 event.

    The iPad LMS, and corresponding Mac/PC and web Apps, was the third major iPad 2 software announced, alongside the new iPad 2 versions of iMovie and GarageBand.

    Taking advantage of the new A5 dual-core processor and dual cameras, the iPad LMS offers the following authoring, collaboration, and learning features:

    Integrated Speech-to-Text Authoring: Students and professors can create discussion board posts, blog or wiki entries simply by speaking. The iPad converts speech-to-text on the fly, populating the Apple LMS collaboration tools.

    Integrated Video Authoring: Asynchronous communication can switch between text and video, with the integrated video recording and publishing directly into the LMS collaboration areas. Students and faculty can create and post video from the iPad 2 directly into the Apple LMS.

    Voice-Over Presentation Capture and Sharing: Faculty can quickly create voice-over learning objects within the Apple LMS, calling up presentations and documents either authored on the iPad or imported from productivity applications such as Office. Students can work individually or collaboratively on voice-over presentations, sharing their work within the Apple LMS or publishing up to YouTube or iTunesU.

    Synchronous Class Discussions and Virtual Office Hours: Utilizing the expanded academic FaceTime applications, class members can video chat with each other from within the Apple LMS. Groups of students can meet, with up to 24 simultaneous group video discussions. Virtual office hours and video tutoring services are easily accessible. The academic FaceTime discussions can be recorded and seamlessly placed in the Apple LMS as learning objects.

    Deep Integration with iTunesU: The Apple LMS can easily pull in lectures and other learning objects from iTunesU. Faculty and students can choose to publish individual class videos, voice-over presentations, or entire courses to iTunesU from the iPad 2. Test banks, animations, and simulations are now shared through iTunesU, with authoring tools to create these objects built directly in to the Apple LMS.

    Steve Jobs also announced that Apple is developing an initial set of 10 core courses, to be designed by Apple and academic partners to highlight best practices in pedagogy and the power of the iPad 2 and the Apple LMS. These courses will be free to all students as self-paced learning environments, and be available to any institution of higher learning to offer for credit as an instructor led course. Jobs called these new Apple Courses, combined with the Apple LMS, the best expression yet of Apple's commitment to marry technology with the liberal arts.

    Speculation is that Apple will eventually move into producing full educational programs, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees through the new Apple University application.

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Comments on An iPad 2 LMS Fantasy

  • Link Please!!
  • Posted by Aaron Silvers , Community Manager at Advanced Distributed Leanrng on March 3, 2011 at 11:15am EST
  • Is there a link from Apple where we can find out more about this announcement?
  • lol
  • Posted by tlj on March 3, 2011 at 11:15am EST
  • awesome, josh. that is my fantasy, too. but won't stop me from getting an iPad2. want to check out the camera(s)...
  • Posted by Steve Foerster , an adjunct IT instructor at a Midwestern community college on March 3, 2011 at 12:30pm EST
  • Sorry Josh, but I'm not with you on this one. It would be a terrible idea to select an LMS that forced institutions and students to buy a particular brand of device, especially one that many think is overhyped, and overpriced.

    Now, a Google LMS, on the other hand....
  • What a nightmare
  • Posted by bg on March 3, 2011 at 1:00pm EST

  • Thank goodness this is just a fantasy. If it were real it would be hugely distracting and an epic waste of time/attention for those serious about improving student learning.

    Why is the Apple fan-base so irrational in their enthusiasm of for such misguided market/solution configurations? Perhaps because Jobs sometimes has the hubris to try such ill-conceived overreaching plays.

    Why would institutions/faculty/students want an LMS bound to proprietary hardware? It only makes sense if you own Apple stock (30% cut of tuition sure boosts shareholder value) or otherwise believe the myth that only Apple design can get things right. Either of those makes it seem OK or preferable for Apple to lock everyone in a vertical pipeline (like they do with music, books, and lately magazines & newspapers) to control the experience and reap a cut of all revenue.

    This vision for the future should be avoided at all costs.
  • It's the Google LMS I'm expecting
  • Posted by David Stack , Deputy CIO at UW-Milwaukee on March 3, 2011 at 4:45pm EST
  • I keep wondering how soon we'll see the Google LMS.

    We (speaking generally) have already outsourced our email to Google and we're sharing our documents with them and they've already digitized all our books. The LMS will make it a clean sweep.

    How are we going to say no to a free LMS?

    ;-)
  • free LMS
  • Posted by Heather Munro Prescott , Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University on March 4, 2011 at 8:45am EST
  • There already is an free, open source LMS -- it's called Moodle and faculty at my university have been using it for several years now. We're trying to convince our university to get rid of Vista/Blackboard and accept this across the board.
  • Why can't we all (Adobe/Apple/Google) just get along?
  • Posted by Brandon Williams , Business Development at The Educe Group on March 4, 2011 at 1:00pm EST
  • Re: Google LMS
    At ASTD TechKnowledge someone working at a hospital indicated they were managing roughly 115 learners using a Google product named CloudCourse, a course scheduling system, (http://code.google.com/p/cloudcourse/) which from a cursory glance doesn't seem like it would suit needs of a medium - large sized business (then again there are always exceptions to the rule). As you mention, there are other open source LMS products like Moodle.

    For me, the debate boils down to this: if you start looking for the cheapest solution, you'll get what you pay for; instead, each business needs to evaluate specific needs (note - plural - price could be a chief need). If you have compliance/regulatory requirements and end up having to hire programmers or consultants to customize your LMS or lock down an open source product, then your once free solution begins to cost as much as purchasing a license.

    Conversely to looking for the cheapest solution, if you purchase an expensive high-power product that isn't configured to meet your needs, you'd be in a similar world of "needs-not-met" hurt.

    I think we'll see lots of activity throughout 2011 on this - as a Mac/iTouch lover, Android phone user, and LMS solution consultant I'm 150% divided.

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