I upgraded to AirPort Express for the new house, but because we had some friends over last night, I decided to beta-test it last night so we could try the wireless iTunes feature — unbelievably cool. It couldn’t have been easier for me to set up — to the point where I think it took me longer to figure out where I was going to run the wires than it did to set up the internet connectivity on the computer. And iTunes just immediately recognized the new Airport and gave me the option to play through it.
I loaded a few dozen songs into a playlist and we had music all night long. Of course, all my friends called me a Class-A geek, but that was not a surprise to anyone in the room. And right now, I’ve got an amazing zydeco version of "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher" playing from the computer to the living room speakers. Good stuff.
And Apple is smart because each Express is its own music zone. I think we’ll probably only need two stations to cover the entire new rowhome, but for only $129 (plus extra for the stereo cables, sure), I’d be willing to get more just so we can have four or five different music zones in the house. When I get the whole thing set up in the new house, I’ll be able to figure out if you can have iTunes play to more than one zone at a time, which would only make sense.
I’ve read that TiVo can be controlled remotely via computer as well, and honestly, why not? It just makes sense. If TiVo could actually do what the TimeWarner DVR can do with recording one show and watching another, I’d switch in a heartbeat. I’d love to be able to do what the latest generation of TiVo does, where I could load a TiVoed show wirelessly onto my laptop and watch it on my train ride down to Philly.
Does anyone doubt that ten years from now the notion of separate computer / TV / stereo machines will be a thing of the past? My Treo is already one of the most important devices in my life — and I don’t even use it as an MP3 player because it’s a pain to do through my Mac, and I love my iPod too much to switch. And even though the ROKR has all the problems that a first-generation device would have, does anyone really doubt that we’ll all have our music playing, email reading, Palm devices soon? As a principal, I can’t imagine only having a cell-phone. I’m not at a desk very often, and the ability to receive calls, check my schedule and read my emails on the go changes the way I work. (And yes, I am thinking about how all these things I’m writing about could change our classrooms too…)
Convergence of multi-media apparatus really does make sense. Kat just told me that this post is very "five years ago," but that’s coming from someone who works in the media industry where they’ve been talking about this for years now. For the rest of us, this stuff still feels pretty cutting edge, especially in the education world where we still have to explain why it might be important to run extra power to classrooms so kids can recharge their devices without having to swap batteries.
This is a lot like what David writes about in the first chapter of Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century, (and if you haven’t read it yet, why not?) and it’s not hard to see where it could all go. What could our teachers do with a flatscreen monitor in the classroom that was controlled by their laptops and could play music, film, show their notes / lesson plans, and then could be turned over to students with the click of a mouse to show their projects, homeworks, ideas, etc… Why shouldn’t we be able to have teleconferences with a practioner in a field of student — or another classroom across the world — using technology like this? Why should a student who is sick ever miss a moment of class?
And the funny thing is — we can do all this now. It’s still cost-prohibitive for most of our schools, but we’re there. How long do we think it will take schools to catch up to what’s possible?
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