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Don’t underestimate work productivity credentials of consumer tablets

Tablets are almost always a supplemental device for SMBs, helping employees stay more closely connected to work issues. The downside is that few companies protect tablets adequately.

The use case for supporting tablet computers within a small or midsize business is increasingly compelling from a productivity standpoint. I can say this with my gut because I rely on one myself to pare down my email frequently throughout the weekends and in the evenings, but I also happen to have backup evidence from two different surveys that I skimmed over the Labor Day weekend.

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It makes me wonder how many thousands of those Hewlett-Packard TouchPads that have been on fire sale for the past few weeks have been purchased by small businesses that — given the rock-bottom purchase price of $99 — don’t really care what happens when they break down. I don’t want to suggest that they are “disposable” but they sure are cheap at that price, so what do you have to lose?

Here’s the thing: Even though the latest generation of tablets have been around roughly 18 months since the introduction of the Apple iPad, almost 40 percent of small and midsize businesses have begun to adopt them, according to annual research on technology adoption trends by CompTIA, a technology trade organization. The research, which was released in July 2011, listed the following as the Top 6 uses:

Light work while traveling (68 percent)
Capture notes during meetings (54 percent)
Making presentations, in lieu of laptop (52 percent)
Point of sale transactions (50 percent)
Demo a product (47 percent)
Communications, in lieu of a smartphone (44 percent)

The base for the CompTIA data is interviews with 390 small and midsize businesses planning to use tablets.
The CompTIA research dovetails with data from Staples Advantage (which sells technology to business accounts) showing that approximately 80 percent of tablet users report having a better “work/life balance” as a result of using a table. There were approximately 200 tablet users surveyed for these results. Here are the primary purchase motivators:

Increased productivity (60 percent)
Staying connected to colleagues or clients (40 percent)
Easy to use because of its portability (90 percent)

Almost all of those surveyed are using tablets in conjunction with another device, not as the primary device.
The downside of tablets, of course, is security. When I chatted with Ed Ludwigson, vice president and general manager of Staples Technology Solutions, he said only about one-third percent of tablet users apparently are taking adequate steps to back up the data on the device. Fewer than 15 percent of them have either encryption or antivirus software on the device, he said.
SMBs need to pay more attention to tablet access control; Staples advocates using cloud-based applications so that data actually isn’t downloaded to the device itself. That way, if it is lost, the potential damage is minimized, Ludwigson said.
The other downside to tablets, in my mind, is that you wind up working around the clock instead of during predefined hours. Then again, that’s probably what most SMBs hope. As someone who MUST keep up with email, I am willing to live what that tradeoff.
See also:

The 10 hottest tablets of 2011
Lenovo to launch the IdeaPad A1, a 7-inch Android tablet for $199
Has HP done a “New Coke” with WebOS and tablets?
HP TouchPad: The calm before… a really long calm
Here come the ultrabooks: Evolution or revolution?
When disaster strikes your PC
Technology is the ultimate SMB leveler and enabler

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Samsung, Nvidia to demo quad-core Windows 8 tablet

Samsung, Nvidia and Microsoft are on tap to show off a Windows 8 quad core tablet next week.

Nvidia has been bubbling with optimism this week and there may be a good reason for it: The company next week is on tap to demonstrate its quad-core Kal-El chip on a Microsoft Windows 8 tablet.

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We’re hearing in multiple places that a Windows 8 tablet run by Kal-El will make an appearance at the Build conference next week. Samsung, Nvidia and Microsoft will introduce the Windows 8 tablet in a demo. These sources also indicate that a Samsung tablet will be the first Microsoft device with Kal-El. The demonstration would also indicate that Samsung plans to make a Windows 8 tablet. Reports surfaced in the Korea Economic Daily.

What’s unclear is when this Windows 8-Kal-El creation will be publicly available. Our sources are touting the first Microsoft tablet with Kal-El, but the timing doesn’t quite add up. Kal-El will be released in the third quarter, but Windows 8 won’t be released to manufacturing until April 2012 at the earliest.

Windows 8 bits are expected to be handed out to developers next week.

Given those moving parts, it’s likely that Kal-El will power the demo Windows 8 unit to be claimed as a first. But Nvidia’s quad core chip will run on Android in a tablet you can actually buy later this year. As Mary Jo Foley noted, Microsoft showed off a quad-core Windows slate at TechEd New Zealand last month.

Another option is that a Windows 7 tablet will be handed to developers at Build, but it can be upgraded to Windows 8.

Add it up and Nvidia’s optimism this week—the company upped its fiscal 2013 outlook and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has been confident—may be warranted because it’s betting on two tablet horses in Android and Windows 8.

A few points to note:

If Samsung is on the Windows 8 tablet bandwagon it offer some serious Android diversification. Given Samsung’s patent lawsuits with Apple, a Microsoft option could deliver returns just based on legal costs.
Nvidia’s plan to trump Qualcomm on quad-core market share may rest with Microsoft. Analysts have been skeptical about Nvidia’s optimism largely because Android tablets haven’t become consumer hits. If Nvidia has all of its non-iPad bases covered its goal to have 70 percent market share in non-Apple tablets looks more realistic.

TechRepublic’s Jason Hiner, Mary Jo Foley and ZDNet UK’s Rupert Goodwins contributed to this report.

More Nvidia:

Nvidia’s Tegra weak spot: An assumption Android tablets take off
CNET: Nvidia CEO sees tenfold growth in mobile-chip biz

Build previews:

Let’s help Microsoft name Windows 8
Hyper-V to be in Windows 8 client, Microsoft acknowledges officially
Ten watchwords for Microsoft’s Windows 8 conference
Microsoft’s Windows chief: Media Center will be part of Windows 8
Intel: We’ll win our fair share vs. ARM even with Windows 8
CNET: Samsung to show off Windows 8 tablet, report says

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Measuring the success of Ed Tech: Not all about test scores

Sometimes, technology gets thrown at struggling schools as a panacea for a variety of ills with predictably bad results. How should we be measuring those results, though, in the schools that are doing it right?

The New York Times ran a feature on Saturday called “In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores”. The article is part of a series called “Grading the Digital School” and asked some tough questions about whether technology in schools can actually improve student achievement. Most significantly, it pointed to the lack of hard data around the quantifiable success of investing in technology-rich schools. While we have a responsibility to ensure that technology is adding value in schools, I’m inclined to believe that the lack of supporting data is the result of poor measures rather than poor results.

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As noted in the article,

Since 2005, scores in reading and math have stagnated in Kyrene [the Arizona school district featured as an example of a technology-rich environment], even as statewide scores have risen.

To be sure, test scores can go up or down for many reasons. But to many education experts, something is not adding up — here and across the country. In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning.

Let me start by saying that I’ve seen too many technology implementations in schools that add no real educational value, but take a nice dent out of taxpayer wallets. There are plenty of ways to go about making a school “technology-rich” that actually take away from the real business of learning. When rollouts are half-hearted, teachers and parents don’t completely embrace the approach, students and teachers lack accountability, and teachers aren’t provided with the right training and coaching, then schools end up buying a lot of expensive toys. eSchool News recently highlighted schools in New Mexico that are saddled with hefty repair bills and failing, aging, abused computers from their 1:1 efforts.

I am not in the give-everyone-computers-and-watch-them-succeed camp.

However, I wouldn’t be in the business of Ed Tech if I didn’t think that the potential existed for kids to learn in new, engaging ways that prepared them for real-world challenges and managed to better differentiate instruction so that every student could be better served in our public schools. What’s happening in a district like Kyrene where everything seems to be happening the way educational technologists believe it should? Kyrene has solid community investment, good teacher buy-in, and progressive techniques. Why aren’t standardized test scores following?

On counterpoint in the article sounded fairly familiar:

Karen Cator, director of the office of educational technology in the United States Department of Education, said standardized test scores were an inadequate measure of the value of technology in schools. Ms. Cator, a former executive at Apple Computer, said that better measurement tools were needed but, in the meantime, schools knew what students needed.

It would be nice to think that schools know what kids need, but we also need to find ways to measure the more intangible skills that students acquire using technology in relevant and (I believe) powerful ways. We see technology breaking down barriers to collaboration, improving writing and criticism, providing software that differentiates instruction and gives real-time feedback to teachers on student strengths and weaknesses, and allowing teachers to guide students through rich and varied resources. Standardized tests, all too often, measure students’ abilities to take tests.

Some of the best standardized tests get at students’ critical reasoning skills and their ability to tease out abstract concepts from real-world problems. Even these, though, may not be aligned with the way students are learning, particularly in more constructivist settings where technology enables a different kind of creativity. And even in states with tests widely acknowledged as “good”, most students will see short-term bumps when schools teach to the test.

Real learning, the sort that many hope will happen in technology-rich environments, is rare when curricula are closely aligned with test materials. Don’t get me wrong – Alignment is the name of the game and tests should assess what students are learning. Too frequently, though, schools tweak and rework their curricula based on minute analyses of yearly test items. Those schools that delve deeply into subjects may find their scores for the year distinctly lacking, even if their students are richer for the deep dive. Imagine, for example, a school-wide, year-long focus on statistics and data analysis, where students use spreadsheets, scientific probes, online surveys and other tools to really explore the world around them. Invariably, scores relating to measurement, statistics, expository writing, and reporting will improve overall. However, there won’t be time that year to teach 27 other standards in English and math, no matter how many important skills and concepts students take with them.

The tests will also not measure the ability of students to manage projects independently or search the web for research materials, both of which would have been key outcomes of the project-oriented learning I described above.

Yes, we need better tests. And we need data about the real value of tech in the classroom. But more than that, we need research into pedagogy that supports the use of tech in the classroom. We need students to focus on developing portfolios rather than racking up test scores. We need students to know how to tackle a project when they encounter one (and not just Google “statistics” but really manage resources and develop and implement a plan). And we need teachers to not just have a day of professional development before school starts on how to have kids use Google Docs; they need ongoing coaching from experts in the field to ensure that all of these technology investments are adding real value, even if the tests left over from NCLB don’t have the chops to assess that value.

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Detangling the Windows Phone Tango talk

There is a new report about features and markets that will be the target of Microsoft’s Windows Phone Tango, the successor to Mango. Here’s my take.

Even though the Windows Phone Mango operating system is still not in consumers’ hands or phones, talk has turned to the next version of the OS, codenamed “Tango.”

I blogged earlier this month about what I was hearing from my sources about Tango. In short, my contacts said that Tango would be a minor release (or two) that would target lower-cost phones and be geared, in particular, to address the Asian market. I heard that Nokia would be heavily involved in Tango — not surprising, given Nokia’s focus on broadening the smartphone market to include current feature phone users. Tango would hit some time before Apollo, the Windows Phone 8 release, my contacts said. (Apollo, last I heard, is due in late 2012.)

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This week, a report about Tango originating from the “We Love Windows Phone” site in Hong Kong — which I saw via The Next Web — echoed this same information. The original site claimed to have attended an MSDN Hong Kong seminar about the next generation in development where this information allegedly was disclosed.

The translated version of the Hong Kong site’s Tango information:

1. Tango is not a major update.
2. Tango Mango will be included as one of the updates.
3. Apollo will be the next major update.
4. Tango primarily for and developing countries such as China, India and other markets use, these are ignored in the market to have more exposure to Bing services.
5. Manufacturers of these developing countries will launch a cheap version of Tango preloaded Windows Phone.

The “Tango Mango” bit is definitely confusing. But I think I can help detangle it a bit, based on some additional Tango information I’ve gleaned from my contacts.

I’ve heard there are, indeed, two Tango releases on tap. One of these is simply a minor update to Mango. (I’m betting this is the “Tango Mango” reference above.) This minor update, Tango1, is the release aimed at expanding the Windows Phone footprint into new markets that are not going to be addressed right off the bat by Mango.

Windows Phone 7s currently support English (US and UK), French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The Mango release is adding support for 17 more languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish. So Tango1 will likely add support for additional languages beyond this group.

Tango2, my tipsters say, is the version that will be targeted at low-cost devices and include fixes and new features, as well as services and language support for markets that still won’t have been addressed after the Tango1 release.

Is Tango1 a 2011 deliverable? Early 2012? I have no information on dates yet. (Anyone else?)

One more thing: I’ve seen some Microsoft watchers speculating that Tango will result in a fragmented Windows Phone market because it will offer users a stripped-down feature set. I don’t believe this necessarily will be the case. Lower cost devices in this case will still be smartphones — not feature phones — I believe. Remember: Microsoft’s original Windows Phone plan called for the company winning over feature phone users to smartphones for growth.

I’ve asked Microsoft for comment on the latest Tango report, but am thinking it’s unlikely there will be anything beyond a no comment. In any case, I’ll update if and when I hear back….

Meanwhile, what else are you hearing/wishing for with Windows Phone Tango?

Updates:

1. As anticipated, Microsoft is not willing to talk Tango. A spokesperson sent me the following response to my query: “There is a lot to be excited about and we look forward to sharing more information soon.”

2. The MSDN seminar in Hong Kong cited by the original source of this week’s Tango information looks legit. Here’s a link to it.

3. I’m wondering if Tango1 is already part of Mango (or will be added seamlessly to Mango as phones roll out this year. When I used Bing Translator on the original post, instead of “Tango Mango,” I got “Tango will include Mango, one of the update.”  Hmmm.

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How to Become CompTIA A+ Certified

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The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) created A plus certification online to provide technicians with an industry-recognized and valued credential. Due to its acceptance as an industry-wide credential, it offers technicians an edge in a highly competitive computer job market. Additionally, it lets others know your achievement level and that you have the ability to do the job right. Prospective employers may use the CompTIA A+ Certification as a condition of employment or as a means to a bonus or job promotion.

Earning CompTIA A+ Certification means that you have the knowledge and the technical skills necessary to be a successful entry-level IT Professional in today’s environment. The recently revised exam objectives test your knowledge and skills in all the areas that today’s computing environment require. More then 5000 CompTIA A+ Certified Professionals and Employers participated in validating the revised exam’s objectives. Although the tests cover a broad range of computer software and hardware, they are not vendor specific.

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With the 2006 exams, CompTIA introduced an entirely new structure to the exams. You will still need two exams to achieve your CompTIA A+ Certification. However, where previously the two exams were easily divided into a hardware exam and a software exam, the new exams are organized very differently, and each tests knowledge in a variety of areas. The first exam is the CompTIA A+ Essentials 220-701 test cost, which every candidate must pass. This exam measures the competencies required for an entry-level IT Professional in a wide range of responsibilities.

Beyond the Essentials Exam, you can select your second exam from among three exam choices-each of which carefully targets specific job titles. For instance, the CompTIA 220-602 Exam tests competencies required for such job titles as IT technician, enterprise technician, IT administrator, field service technician, and PC technician. The CompTIA 220-603 Exam targets the following job titles: remote support technician, help desk technician, call center technician, specialist, and representative. Finally, the CompTIA 220-604 Exam tests skills expected for such job titles as depot technician and bench technician.

CompTIA recognizes that soft skills are an important part of most jobs, so the exams for job titles that require interaction with customers include a domain called communication and professionalism, which deals with human interaction. This is the first time these skills are being measured in the CompTIA Exams. The Exams can be taken at any Thomson Prometric or Pearson VUE testing center. If you pass both exams, you will get a certificate in the mail form from free CompTIA practice tests saying that you have passed, and you will also receive a label pin and business card.

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How to pass you’re Comptia A+ Information Technology Certification Exam

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About The Author

Anne Barker is a professional Educational Consultant and helping the students to accomplish their home of over 100 free certification exam tutorials, including Cisco CCNA certification, MCITP, a+ certification, MCSE test prep articles. His exclusive Cisco CCNA study guide and Cisco CCNA training is also available.