Rumor has it that Apple is going to announce a tablet com­puter, which may well become a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new way for users to read and expe­ri­ence all kinds of edu­ca­tional content.

Will it sup­port or hin­der our Cog­ni­tive  Fitness?

In this arti­cle, I describe the cri­te­ria that a tablet com­puter and its tech­no­log­i­cal ecosys­tem must meet in order for the solu­tion to make users more knowl­edge­able and smarter. To achieve these lofty goals, the tablet must be much more than an reader. The offer­ing must be an inte­grated learn­ing envi­ron­ment with which users trans­form the infor­ma­tion that they read, hear and view on the tablet into their own knowledge.

The key con­sid­er­a­tion in design­ing such a sys­tem is that pro­duc­tive read­ing is active read­ing. In other words, learn­ing involves a lot of think­ing, writ­ing, draw­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing. Learn­ing involves antic­i­pat­ing what the author will say, set­ting learn­ing objec­tives, detect­ing knowl­edge gaps, writ­ing com­ments on the doc­u­ment, draw­ing diagrams.

Unfor­tu­nately, today’s com­put­ers do not make this an easy task. Most browsers, for exam­ple, do not inher­ently allow you to anno­tate text (e.g., to make a note of what is impor­tant or you don’t under­stand). Anno­tat­ing requires an add-on, and the anno­ta­tions are usu­ally just text or high­lights that are trapped in soft­ware; they can­not be linked to other doc­u­ments, email or diagrams.

In order to be a suc­cess­ful learn­ing envi­ron­ment, the Apple tablet must match the incum­bent (paper) and also address the cri­te­ria listed below.

Beat The Incum­bent Com­peti­tor — Paper

First, Apple must take into account the major strengths of a tablet’s main com­peti­tor: paper. Despite its many draw­backs com­pared to com­put­ers, paper cur­rently has many advan­tages. Spencer (2006), for exam­ple, has found that her dis­tance edu­ca­tion stu­dents find paper to be more depend­able, flex­i­ble, and ergonomic. Spencer’s stu­dents pre­ferred to print com­plex arti­cles than to read them online.

Paper has a pre­dictable struc­ture and lay­out. It is easy to use and it has a def­i­nite start and end point. Most read­ers can very rapidly access any page of a book, use the table of con­tents, index to quickly nav­i­gate. Read­ers don’t have to wait for a page to load, they can turn it. Also, paper is less busy and less dis­tract­ing: it does not beep while you are concentrating.

More­over, users can write on their own paper to their heart’s content.

These fea­tures present chal­lenges to read­ing and learn­ing technology.

Check­list for a Tablet Com­puter to Make us Smarter

In this sec­tion I focus on some of the fea­tures that can make a tablet a use­ful learn­ing envi­ron­ment. This goes beyond hard­ware, and deals with cog­ni­tive soft­ware and ser­vices. Read the rest of this entry »

From the web­site of the invest­ing ven­ture cap­i­tal firm, Milk Capital:

Milk Cap­i­tal invests USD 5 mil­lion in CogniFit

–July 31st, 2008. “Milk Cap­i­tal invest USD 5M in Cog­nifit, a com­pany spe­cial­ized in cog­ni­tive and brain soft­ware The solu­tions devel­oped by Cog­niFit are designed to be applied to a large num­ber of fields, such as health­care, dri­ving, edu­ca­tion, sport and many oth­ers. The field of appli­ca­tions is almost unlim­ited as it is only restricted by the capac­i­ties of the brain.”

-“Since its estab­lish­ment in 1999, as a start-up in the Ofer Group’s Incu­ba­tor, Naiot, Cog­niFit attracted 4.2M$. The com­pany has grown sig­nif­i­cantly and today, its soft­ware is dis­trib­uted in a large num­ber of coun­tries, from the United States through France to New Zealand, and has been trans­lated into ten lan­guages. This 5M$ invest­ment of MILK CAPITAL should drive the devel­op­ment of Cog­niFit all the more than the com­pany intends to con­quer new mar­kets by means of new prod­ucts and appli­ca­tions all over the world.”

Pre­vi­ous post on one of CogniFit’s prod­ucts, Dri­ve­Fit: Dri­ve­Fit; Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Dri­ving.

Other recent ven­ture rounds in the brain fit­ness soft­ware space:

- Feb­ru­ary 2008: Dakim raises $10,6 mil­lion
– June 2008: Lumos Labs (Lumos­ity) raises $3 millions

I spoke at the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia in Feb­ru­ary to pro­vide an overview of the fas­ci­nat­ing land­scape. The write-up: Brain Train­ing Games: Con­text, Trends, Ques­tions.

For in-depth infor­ma­tion on the whole cat­e­gory –size, cus­tomer seg­ments, player land­scape, clin­i­cal val­i­da­tion, trends– you may enjoy our Mar­ket Report.