In which Apple-gate is debated and discussed
Posted By Kevin Gaugler on January 31, 2010
The other day Wesley Fryer had some wonderful comments on his blog about my thoughts on the iPad. I figured I would repost his ideas here along with my response. How do you feel about Apple’s gated model of distribution? Will it ultimately imped access to information and consequently teaching and learning?
Wesley Fryer:
I hope you’re right about the iPad and Apple’s emerging role as disruptors of the textbook industry, and I’ve shared similar hopes/predictions on my blog too. I think Apple’s view of DRM is key to this question, however. Timothy Lee’s post yesterday, “The case against the iPad,” is a good read on this topic since he takes issue with Apple’s vision of sharing in our web 2.0 world. At this point, I don’t think we see Apple truly embracing the disruptive power of Open Educational Resources. I do acknowledge that Apple is a corporation naturally focused on quarterly profits, just like every other corporation, but as a company it has historically stood for values far bigger than “just” profits. I’d love to see Apple officially embrace technologies which support OER. I’m concerned that most the Apple advocacy I’ve seen in the past year for iTunesU is done because as a company Apple wants everyone to get an iTunes account with a credit card. That was something Steve Jobs mentioned in his presentation this week. That comment was significant, as well as the opening comments about how many billions a year Apple makes. I think Apple stands at an important crossroads when the textbook industry COULD be constructively disrupted, and OER could play a HUGE role in that process. Hopefully this will happen, but I think Apple will need to place emphasis on OER formally and not just promote the iBooks store.
My response (Kevin Gaugler):
As I write this response to your thoughtful comments about the iPad, the Grammy’s are being shown on CBS. I’m struck by the iPhoneOSque design of the special effects. It’s remarkable that in less than a decade the iPod and it’s OS has become synonymous with mainstream music.
One certainly does wonder if the iPad will do the same for the publishing industry and I certainly share fears about one company such as Apple filtering all media from music to games to movies to books and magazines. Perhaps Google’s open Android platform and devices such as the newly announced MSI tablet that run on it will prove to be competitive alternatives to Apple’s product-line.
However, I cannot help but think about how essential my iPod has become to my own learning since I listen to podcasts every day during my commute or through my AppleTV. The iPod has led to the birth of podcasting and world of free audio and video content that has flattened mass-media as we know it giving rise to Web 2.0 superstars such as Kevin Rose and Leo Leporte.
Similarly, the iPhone was released without an AppStore and it appeared that it might remain a completely closed system. However, indpendent developers can now make a living selling their work on this new platform. Many simply give their creations away.
One can perhaps expect that the iPad, similarly, will constitute a new publishing platform for unknown authors and their work including open texbooks. It is conceivable that within a few years a student, with one $500 purchase, could have the remainder of their academic content “padcasted” to them at no cost. Remember, it was Apple’s gated system that changed the music forever only because the music INDUSTRY saw the platform as a profitable endeavor. So too must publishers see profit in the iPad in order to for the disruption to take place. Only then will they embrace and make such a delivery system commonplace. Since Apple now sells DRM-free music, I suspect so too will the long arch of reason bend toward a more open publishing paradigm and the gated-learning system of which we all currently belong will some day truly be democratized via really simple syndication.
Frankly, I’m excited by the possibility of rethinking learning materials beyond the book to more interactive, more multi-faceted learning products that are so simple to use that few teachers will be too intimidated to use them. This is what Apple does best: it simplifies and beautifies complex technology so that anyone can use it and so that everyone wants it. Only that Apple-gated combination can cause such a disruption in the education industry. Once it occurs, there’s no turning back.
