If you are curious about using the surface RT for teaching, take a look at this great blog: http://eiuitc.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/surface-rt-for-teachers-glass-half.html
Click on the home button and take a look at some of Tom's past posts, as he also covers the surface pro.
Friday, 20 September 2013
Video editing sucks
My previous laptop (an aging DELL that was high spec when first purchased) seemed to take forever when editing videos. Unfortunately the surface makes it look speedy by comparison. Video editing is a good way to max out the RAM and the hard disk access at the same time (CPU doesn't seem to max out as much though).
I know exporting and saving video is notoriously expensive computationally but waiting tens of minutes is frustrating.
This is the first instance where I've been really frustrated with the surface performance. Usually it trucks along fairly well with its 4 Gb of RAM but video editors should opt for using something with more grunt.
I know exporting and saving video is notoriously expensive computationally but waiting tens of minutes is frustrating.
This is the first instance where I've been really frustrated with the surface performance. Usually it trucks along fairly well with its 4 Gb of RAM but video editors should opt for using something with more grunt.
Experiments with screen casting and powerpoint
This week I put my surface through its paces as a presentation machine (partly because the screen on my dell died that day, so it was my only option!). Unfortunately not everything went according to plan (in fact just about nothing did). Fortunately every cloud has a silver lining!
On Tuesday I ran an information evening for prospective mathematics students which included talks from seven different people (using five separate power point presentations). I was curious to see how the surface would go as a presentation computer, where rapidly switching between different power point presentations was required,. I also needed to record the entire event (both video and audio).
I decided to install bb flashback to record the audio and video, as I have a little experience with it and know several colleagues who use it. It turned out that bb flashback comes in three different versions (express, standard and pro). The express version is free and you can trial the other two for a month, free of charge. If you are fortunate your institution may well have a site license for the pro version (which I since discovered was the case for us). I know from past experience that bb flashback is capable of creating much smaller recordings, while still maintaining adequate quality. As a back up I also used the university's own recording facilities but this generates very large files (approx 200Mb for an hour of recording). Obviously large files can be painful if you have to download the recording over a slow connection (or you have a limited amount of data included in your broadband plan).
The results were less than stellar. I had plugged the projector in via a vga adapter and opted to duplicate the displays. Powerpoint 2013 had different ideas though and when I started the full screen slide show, I wasn't given a duplicate view on the surface and the projector. Instead the surface showed a control panel with a smaller view of the slide (allowing you to navigate easily through slides) and only the projector showed the full screen slide view. This normally wouldn't be a problem but I was using bb flashback to capture the screen and unfortunately it captured the surface screen, not the projector screen. Even worse it didn't capture the whole screen (that would have been salvageable). Instead it only captured a portion of it, leaving me with not quite usable video.
The good news is that I got pretty reasonable audio quality via plugging in an external microphone into the single line in/line out port on the surface. I was worried that audio quality might have been an issue but the mic did a pretty good job. The mic I used was a pretty simple one that would normally be worn on a lapel, however I attached it to the e-lectern mic. It was fairly good at picking up audio from all directions, which was helpful as some of the presenters roamed a bit. The downside was you picked up a lot of noise from the audience too, resulting in a fair bit of low background noise. Fortunately the pro version of bb flashback includes functionality to remove background noise (although you end up with a slight echo on the recorded voice at times).
Later experiments with bb flashback seem to indicate there are bugs when capturing regions and windows on the surface. Even with no projector plugged in, it does not capture regions and windows correctly. Instead it grabs a slightly offset area from the region or window selected (it captures most of what you want but the area captured is to the left of the one indicated in red when you set up the area to record). Fortunately full screen capture works (but only if you avoid powerpoint run using a projector).
BB flashback also seems to have a buggy save dialogue, as several times when I went to save a file I got a busy icon that lasted for a minute or two, before I was able to enter a filename to save the recording as. This is NOT a good look when you are in the middle of a presentation, so after the first hang took several minutes to recover from I decided to ditch my original plan of making separate recordings for each speaker. I figured I would be able to split things up in post processing (which turned out to be doable with the pro version).
So how did I get around the problem of not quite usable video? Fortunately I had used the university recording system as a backup and it DID record the video from the projector feed (plus audio). Interestingly the audio recorded through the e-lectern mic was much more directional, which meant less background noise. It also meant that if the speaker wasn't talking to the mic the sound was significantly attenuated (and hence hard to hear). Between the bb flashback recording and the university recording system I had good audio and acceptable video for all speakers but needed some way of combining the two and still producing a small file.
For the one speaker who roamed a lot, I ended up using bb flashback player to play back the captured audio (since my external mic tracked him pretty well). I simultaneously used bb flashback recorder to capture the played audio and new video (a fullscreen view of the powerpoint, which I manually navigated through to sync up with the audio). This worked surprisingly well. I ended up with very acceptable video and audio once I had trimmed unnecessary material from either end (and filtered the noise from the audio track).
For the remaining speakers (who had talked to the mic) I initially tried played the university recording in full screen mode (with audio) and set bb flashback to record the entire thing. This wasn't a particularly elegant solution, as it took an hour to run through. Fortunately it was the kind of thing that you could just set up and leave running. At the end I was left with a HUGE bb flashback file (over 7 Gb) which contained adequate audio and video. Note the video was NOT as good quality as would have been obtained if bb flashback had captured the correct screen in the first place (as the recorded video from the university system is downsampled somewhat). I suspect the HUGE size was due to the display continually changing just a little bit, as the video played. This means that the recorded wasn't just grabbing frames when the powerpoint slides were changed, it was continuously grabbing frames. This left me with the option of going with the slides that were cut off or redoing it manually. After several hours of playing with software in the wee hours of the morning I decided to go with the first option (sleep was starting to appeal).
I definitely want to be able to use powerpoint coupled with screen casting software, so need to find a workaround for bb flashback or need something more reliable (I'll take a look at camtasia, in case that works better).
There were plenty of other bugs on the night too. Powerpoint crashed and starting a full screen powerpoint presentation always generated an exception on the e-lectern computer (as it was accepting the display signal from my surface). I suspect this was due to powerpoint overriding the duplicated display mode.
The silver lining to all this was that I had anticipated the possibility of difficulty in transitioning between powerpoint presentations, so had prepared several discussion points to throw out to the audience. At the close of each presentation I simply gave the audience the next discussion point, before setting to work on working around the bugs and setting up the next presentation. This meant it didn't matter if it took me two to three minutes to get things working again (their focus was on the conversation rathe than on me dealing with the technical issues). It also had the unexpected side effect of keeping the audience more alert and engaged throughout the entire evening Incorporating some discusison points or "active learning" exercises could be a REALLY useful strategy to have up your sleave if you think there might be technical hitches.
On Tuesday I ran an information evening for prospective mathematics students which included talks from seven different people (using five separate power point presentations). I was curious to see how the surface would go as a presentation computer, where rapidly switching between different power point presentations was required,. I also needed to record the entire event (both video and audio).
I decided to install bb flashback to record the audio and video, as I have a little experience with it and know several colleagues who use it. It turned out that bb flashback comes in three different versions (express, standard and pro). The express version is free and you can trial the other two for a month, free of charge. If you are fortunate your institution may well have a site license for the pro version (which I since discovered was the case for us). I know from past experience that bb flashback is capable of creating much smaller recordings, while still maintaining adequate quality. As a back up I also used the university's own recording facilities but this generates very large files (approx 200Mb for an hour of recording). Obviously large files can be painful if you have to download the recording over a slow connection (or you have a limited amount of data included in your broadband plan).
The results were less than stellar. I had plugged the projector in via a vga adapter and opted to duplicate the displays. Powerpoint 2013 had different ideas though and when I started the full screen slide show, I wasn't given a duplicate view on the surface and the projector. Instead the surface showed a control panel with a smaller view of the slide (allowing you to navigate easily through slides) and only the projector showed the full screen slide view. This normally wouldn't be a problem but I was using bb flashback to capture the screen and unfortunately it captured the surface screen, not the projector screen. Even worse it didn't capture the whole screen (that would have been salvageable). Instead it only captured a portion of it, leaving me with not quite usable video.
The good news is that I got pretty reasonable audio quality via plugging in an external microphone into the single line in/line out port on the surface. I was worried that audio quality might have been an issue but the mic did a pretty good job. The mic I used was a pretty simple one that would normally be worn on a lapel, however I attached it to the e-lectern mic. It was fairly good at picking up audio from all directions, which was helpful as some of the presenters roamed a bit. The downside was you picked up a lot of noise from the audience too, resulting in a fair bit of low background noise. Fortunately the pro version of bb flashback includes functionality to remove background noise (although you end up with a slight echo on the recorded voice at times).
Later experiments with bb flashback seem to indicate there are bugs when capturing regions and windows on the surface. Even with no projector plugged in, it does not capture regions and windows correctly. Instead it grabs a slightly offset area from the region or window selected (it captures most of what you want but the area captured is to the left of the one indicated in red when you set up the area to record). Fortunately full screen capture works (but only if you avoid powerpoint run using a projector).
BB flashback also seems to have a buggy save dialogue, as several times when I went to save a file I got a busy icon that lasted for a minute or two, before I was able to enter a filename to save the recording as. This is NOT a good look when you are in the middle of a presentation, so after the first hang took several minutes to recover from I decided to ditch my original plan of making separate recordings for each speaker. I figured I would be able to split things up in post processing (which turned out to be doable with the pro version).
So how did I get around the problem of not quite usable video? Fortunately I had used the university recording system as a backup and it DID record the video from the projector feed (plus audio). Interestingly the audio recorded through the e-lectern mic was much more directional, which meant less background noise. It also meant that if the speaker wasn't talking to the mic the sound was significantly attenuated (and hence hard to hear). Between the bb flashback recording and the university recording system I had good audio and acceptable video for all speakers but needed some way of combining the two and still producing a small file.
For the one speaker who roamed a lot, I ended up using bb flashback player to play back the captured audio (since my external mic tracked him pretty well). I simultaneously used bb flashback recorder to capture the played audio and new video (a fullscreen view of the powerpoint, which I manually navigated through to sync up with the audio). This worked surprisingly well. I ended up with very acceptable video and audio once I had trimmed unnecessary material from either end (and filtered the noise from the audio track).
For the remaining speakers (who had talked to the mic) I initially tried played the university recording in full screen mode (with audio) and set bb flashback to record the entire thing. This wasn't a particularly elegant solution, as it took an hour to run through. Fortunately it was the kind of thing that you could just set up and leave running. At the end I was left with a HUGE bb flashback file (over 7 Gb) which contained adequate audio and video. Note the video was NOT as good quality as would have been obtained if bb flashback had captured the correct screen in the first place (as the recorded video from the university system is downsampled somewhat). I suspect the HUGE size was due to the display continually changing just a little bit, as the video played. This means that the recorded wasn't just grabbing frames when the powerpoint slides were changed, it was continuously grabbing frames. This left me with the option of going with the slides that were cut off or redoing it manually. After several hours of playing with software in the wee hours of the morning I decided to go with the first option (sleep was starting to appeal).
I definitely want to be able to use powerpoint coupled with screen casting software, so need to find a workaround for bb flashback or need something more reliable (I'll take a look at camtasia, in case that works better).
There were plenty of other bugs on the night too. Powerpoint crashed and starting a full screen powerpoint presentation always generated an exception on the e-lectern computer (as it was accepting the display signal from my surface). I suspect this was due to powerpoint overriding the duplicated display mode.
The silver lining to all this was that I had anticipated the possibility of difficulty in transitioning between powerpoint presentations, so had prepared several discussion points to throw out to the audience. At the close of each presentation I simply gave the audience the next discussion point, before setting to work on working around the bugs and setting up the next presentation. This meant it didn't matter if it took me two to three minutes to get things working again (their focus was on the conversation rathe than on me dealing with the technical issues). It also had the unexpected side effect of keeping the audience more alert and engaged throughout the entire evening Incorporating some discusison points or "active learning" exercises could be a REALLY useful strategy to have up your sleave if you think there might be technical hitches.
Monday, 19 August 2013
First Use in Class
Here are my thoughts from the first time I tried teaching from the surface, using it in place of the
document camera. It plugged into the vga
cable (with the supplied adaptor) without any issues, although the screen on
the surface became letterboxed, which meant you lost a fair bit of the already
small screen real estate (not as much space for writing). I didn’t have time to experiment with
different orientations or the hdmi adaptor (no hdmi support in the theatre I
tried but I know some other theatres are different).
- if you shut off the display without saving your work you
lose everything (i.e. if the device goes to sleep all the annotations
disappear).
- if you save your work and then re-open the document it is
rendered unreadable on modern reader (but is still fine on other pdf viewers
such as acrobat
- the file sizes are very large
While the modern reader app is not suitable in its current
form (they may resolve the bugs in the future, especially as the annotation
issue is a known problem) there are a myriad of other pdf annotation products,
so I feel hopeful that something appropriate exists. The problem is not with the stylus, rather
with the software.
Also it remains to be seen whether I can set it up using virtual terminal to allow roving. I tried annotating while walking around in the corridor and was able to do so, so assuming a connection could be established to the e-lectern over wifi then it would be possible to move around the room while annotating (which is my aim). When holding the surface in the hand you notice that it is much less pleasant to hold than an ipad. It runs very hot and is quite heavy. It is still possible to carry it around though.
Memory
The 64GB version is nowhere near big enough if you plan on using the Surface as a laptop replacement (although it might be ok for use as a tablet). Part of the reason 64GB is not enough, is that
you lose more than 30 GB of that just on the OS. You
can gain back around 6-7GB by moving the restore partition to USB but even so, that doesn't leave you with much room. I recommend going for the 128GB version of the Surface Pro, plus as much additional memory as
possible in the form of an SDXC card. I've got the largest possible SDXC card (currently
64GB), which gives you a total of around 164GB of usable space (although I'm not sure if the SDXC card will have speed issues and whether you can install applications to it - I'm planning on just using it for data). If you need more storage space then grab a 1 or 2 TB external drive, such as the seagate passport or
similar (usb 3, powered off the port and portable so you can easily take it with
you).
I currently have all the apps installed that I use on a day to day basis (including Office and Matlab which both take up a bit of space). I've still got over 50 GB free on the internal memory but 10GB of that will disappear when I bring the rest of my data over from my laptop.
I/O devices
Keyboards
Stylus
Touch Screen
Easy to use, although unlike the iPad not all applications are optimised for touch, which was a real pain when you didn’t have the keyboard docked. Definitely worth using apps that are touch optimised when possible (e.g. IE was far easy to use than chrome, since it has been optimised for touch). Interestingly when I used splashtop to set up my ipad as a second display, I could happily use touch on that as well to control the cursor position. When using an external 24” monitor I found I was still using touch sometimes, particularly to navigate around through some of the windows 8 stuff (e.g. closing a charm app can be done quickly by swiping a finger from the top to the bottom of the screen), so you want to set up the surface so it can be easily accessed.
Mouse
The
virtual keyboard is similar to the iPad’s.
The physical keyboard is surprisingly usable (I have the black keyboard model, which offers some key action, as opposed to the thinner touch only model).
Despite the small action, the black keyboard (which also functions as a protective case) is very close to
full size keyboard, which means touch typing is much easier than on the virtual
keyboard. The only real issue was that using
cursor keys is a pain, as they have squashed the up and down keys into the
space of one key. This means for fast
data entry (such as exam mark processing) a full size external keyboard is better (and also more ergonomic). On the plus side the trackpad that comes as part of the keyboard is of surprisingly good quality, which means you can get away without plugging in a mouse and still navigate easily.
I tested the Surface with my apple bluetooth keyboard, which tended to work well most of the time, although occasionally a keypress would result in multiple letters coming through.
I typically use an external keyboard via my Targus USB 3 docking station. This works perfectly.
I was
very impressed with the stylus, it worked well with no problems and allowed for
writing at the same resolution I use on paper (plus the rubber mode on the
other end was very handy). It supports
pressure sensitivity too (if the app does).
It was very nice how when the stylus was close to the screen it cut off
the touch input so you could lean your hand against the screen. Best stylus input I’ve ever seen and just
what I was looking for on that front. I’m not sure how robust the included
stylus would be over long term use. If it dies I'll look for other compatible options,
although I would want one with the eraser on the end.
The hand-writing recognition built into windows 8 was
extremely good (no problems reading my writing whatsoever, although I don’t
rely heavily on cursive letters). You
could easily use handwriting as a viable input mode with this device (and it
was nice how you could configure the virtual keyboard to default to
handwriting input mode, meaning hand-writing could be used to input text into any application
whatsoever).
Easy to use, although unlike the iPad not all applications are optimised for touch, which was a real pain when you didn’t have the keyboard docked. Definitely worth using apps that are touch optimised when possible (e.g. IE was far easy to use than chrome, since it has been optimised for touch). Interestingly when I used splashtop to set up my ipad as a second display, I could happily use touch on that as well to control the cursor position. When using an external 24” monitor I found I was still using touch sometimes, particularly to navigate around through some of the windows 8 stuff (e.g. closing a charm app can be done quickly by swiping a finger from the top to the bottom of the screen), so you want to set up the surface so it can be easily accessed.
I hooked
up a wired mouse with no problems. For lecturing I just plug a usb mouse straight into the usb port and when in my office I run the mouse through the Targus docking station. When
travelling a bluetooth mouse could be a good option, so that you don’t tie up
the one usb port. Alternatively a small portable USB hub would allow you to plug in a mouse and a few other things.
Display Thoughts
I am now in possession of a shiny new 128GB model of the
Surface. Here are my initial thoughts with regards to the display.
For reference purposes, the current devices I use include a Dell Precision
M4400 (with matt screen) a first generation iPad and a macbook. I am NOT
a fan of shiny, reflective screens and much prefer a matt screen.
The Surface screen is not as easy on the eyes as the iPad, although it doesn’t have any noticeable flicker and the resolution is very good. It does not work well for outside use (glare is a problem as the screen is very reflective). , If you don't have reflective light sources it works very well indeed and due to the letter box format it is a pleasure to use for wide screen video (cue watching a feature length film in a darkened room). I tested the video by watching Oblivion in SD. I still need to try an HD video to see whether there is any noticeable difference when watching high def material on the tiny screen. Although I really like the small, portable nature of the surface, I do find myself wishing for a slightly larger display, something the size of an A4 piece of paper would be about right for me.
VGA
VGA support is critical for me, as this is still the only option in many lecture theatres (although HDMI cables are becoming more common).
When hooking up the surface to a VGA cable you need to make sure you have the right adapter (mini-display port to VGA). Microsoft sell a Surface Pro specific vga adapter, NOT to be confused with the adaptor for the surface RT. The first time I went to hook up my Surface Pro in a lecturer theatre I discovered I had been supplied with the RT adapter, which isn't compatible (the RT uses a different display port). There are third party adapters available, so you don't have to go with the Microsoft one (although it does look nice and reduces the chances of putting in the adapter the wrong way around).
The surface connected fine to my 24” dell external monitor using a third party vga adaptor and the MS specific one. It also connected fine to a lecture theatre projector using both a third party and MS vga adaptor.
DVI
In my office I work with two external monitors connected to my Surface, both via DVI. One is connected directly to the mini-display port via a third party adapter (you can also get a MS specific one) and the other is connected via a DVI cable to the Targus USB 3 powered docking station (an essential accessory in my opinion - more on this in another post). Connecting directly via the mini-display adapter seems to be pretty much fool proof.
Configuring the docking station took a little work (more on that later). I've now done it twice, first for the evaluation model and then on my personal one.
On the evaluation model things initially worked well but then I passed it on to someone else and when it came back, I ended up with a flickering problem when trying to connect via the docking station. I think something screwy was going on with the drivers but I had to return the evaluation model before I could resolve the problem. This flickering issue hasn't occurred on my personal Surface, so it remains a mystery as to what caused it and how it could be fixed.
Now that I have my personal Surface configured (with display drivers for the docking station installed) it seems to handle reconnecting to the display plugged into the adapter reasonably well, although sometimes I need to power the docking station on and off to pick up the display.
In theory it is possible to drive three external monitors (two via the docking station and one via the mini-display output port). Since I haven't got three monitors, I haven't tried this though.
I usually work with my laptop and an external monitor set up to extend (side by side). This
Scaling Issues
You can zoom in some apps although zooming in google chrome while editing docs does weird things to the cursor location (this is a known chrome issue). If you don't zoom in, you have to have pretty good eye sight to use the default text size when sitting back from the screen.
I tend to use firefox and chrome for browsing but on the Surface IE is the way to go, as it does a much better job of supporting touch screen browsing.
The Surface screen is not as easy on the eyes as the iPad, although it doesn’t have any noticeable flicker and the resolution is very good. It does not work well for outside use (glare is a problem as the screen is very reflective). , If you don't have reflective light sources it works very well indeed and due to the letter box format it is a pleasure to use for wide screen video (cue watching a feature length film in a darkened room). I tested the video by watching Oblivion in SD. I still need to try an HD video to see whether there is any noticeable difference when watching high def material on the tiny screen. Although I really like the small, portable nature of the surface, I do find myself wishing for a slightly larger display, something the size of an A4 piece of paper would be about right for me.
VGA
VGA support is critical for me, as this is still the only option in many lecture theatres (although HDMI cables are becoming more common).
When hooking up the surface to a VGA cable you need to make sure you have the right adapter (mini-display port to VGA). Microsoft sell a Surface Pro specific vga adapter, NOT to be confused with the adaptor for the surface RT. The first time I went to hook up my Surface Pro in a lecturer theatre I discovered I had been supplied with the RT adapter, which isn't compatible (the RT uses a different display port). There are third party adapters available, so you don't have to go with the Microsoft one (although it does look nice and reduces the chances of putting in the adapter the wrong way around).
The surface connected fine to my 24” dell external monitor using a third party vga adaptor and the MS specific one. It also connected fine to a lecture theatre projector using both a third party and MS vga adaptor.
DVI
In my office I work with two external monitors connected to my Surface, both via DVI. One is connected directly to the mini-display port via a third party adapter (you can also get a MS specific one) and the other is connected via a DVI cable to the Targus USB 3 powered docking station (an essential accessory in my opinion - more on this in another post). Connecting directly via the mini-display adapter seems to be pretty much fool proof.
Configuring the docking station took a little work (more on that later). I've now done it twice, first for the evaluation model and then on my personal one.
On the evaluation model things initially worked well but then I passed it on to someone else and when it came back, I ended up with a flickering problem when trying to connect via the docking station. I think something screwy was going on with the drivers but I had to return the evaluation model before I could resolve the problem. This flickering issue hasn't occurred on my personal Surface, so it remains a mystery as to what caused it and how it could be fixed.
Now that I have my personal Surface configured (with display drivers for the docking station installed) it seems to handle reconnecting to the display plugged into the adapter reasonably well, although sometimes I need to power the docking station on and off to pick up the display.
In theory it is possible to drive three external monitors (two via the docking station and one via the mini-display output port). Since I haven't got three monitors, I haven't tried this though.
I usually work with my laptop and an external monitor set up to extend (side by side). This
mode is not so natural for the surface because of the screen
size disparity. Instead it works far better having the external monitors
set up above the surface screen, allowing easy access to the touch
screen. Curently I have them configured in a triangle,with the two
external monitor side by side and the surface in the middle below them.
This places the Surface close enough to use as an input device and I can drag
between all three displays.
iPad as an external monitor
When I was out and about I found myself wishing I
had some more screen real estate, so I used the splashtop app to set up my iPad as a
second monitor and that worked great. You'll need to install splashtop on
your Surface and your iPad. If you happen to have an iPad this gives you
a portable option for extending your display (which if you have an iPad case
that doubles as a stand looks very nifty.
Scaling Issues
One area where windows 8 is a little frustrating
is in the scaling of icons and the like. The Surface has
a very high res screen but the dimensions are small, which can make icons
and text hard to read (and even harder
to navigate using your finger). To get around this
you can scale icons/text to be 125% or 150% of usual size, however the
external monitors look better if using 100% scaling rather than 125% or 150%.
Unfortunately this presents a problem when using external monitors as the
scaling is universally applied to all displays and to make matters
worse to change the scaling you need to log out, so it is not convenient to
toggle this setting. Some apps (e.g. chrome) allow zooming of text.
A better fix may be to disable display scaling on high dpi based on a per app
basis, as described here:
Aside: to do this right click on the google chrome
icon, from properties select the compatibility tab check “disable display
scaling on high DPI settings” This seems to help a bit, although still
not a brilliant solution.
You can zoom in some apps although zooming in google chrome while editing docs does weird things to the cursor location (this is a known chrome issue). If you don't zoom in, you have to have pretty good eye sight to use the default text size when sitting back from the screen.
I tend to use firefox and chrome for browsing but on the Surface IE is the way to go, as it does a much better job of supporting touch screen browsing.
Initial Evaluation
After playing with the 64GB version of the surface pro for a couple of days, I was very impressed with the possibilities it presented. Here's a brief summary of my initial thoughts.
The surface pro appears to provide the necessary stylus
resolution to be able to use it as a presentation tool in lectures, replacing
the use of pen and paper on the document camera.
There is also every possibility that the surface pro could be used as a replacement laptop/workstation for people who are not “power users” (i.e. those who are not running software that requires a very fast CPU, large amounts of RAM, large hard drive or a fast graphics card). Within those caveats it seems to be a capable machine with a relatively speedy processor that ran Windows 8 smoothly.
In order to maximise productivity and function as a workstation quite a few peripherals need to be factored into the purchasing equation (e.g. external monitor(s), keyboard/case, full size external keyboard, mouse, external portable hard drive, 64 GB SDXC card, docking station, display adaptors etc). With these peripherals it would be a productive workstation that can also function as a tablet and an ultrabook, making it a very flexible machine indeed. I can see myself using it in all three modes often.
Origins
I am a teaching fellow at the University of Auckland, where I teach large undergraduate classes within the faculty of Engineering. I am always on the look out for tools which will allow deep learning and a strong level of engagement to occur within classes, even if there are over 500 students in the room. Tablet
technology is developing at a rapid rate and I believe there is the possibility
to use tablets devices as an extremely effective teaching tool.
I am particularly interested in using tablets
to replace the use of the document camera, which is my current lecturing tool of choice. My students have a strong preference for seeing problems worked by hand,
which the document camera allows, but this comes at the cost of being tied to
the lectern (and presents other workflow issues as well; during the lecture I need to remember to keep the paper in frame, in focus and oriented correctly while post lecture I have to scan all my notes to pdf before uploading them).
I would like to promote more engagement
within lectures by being able to move around the theatre, while working through
problems by hand. A wireless tablet
equipped with the right infrastructure could allow this to be done. I want a tool that will allow roaming and support high resolution writing
(with the hope that it could also run the Engineering software packages we use
in teaching). I've had some success using Doceri on the iPad but writing on the iPad (even with a stylus) is a bit like lecturing using a crayon. There is also no way of running packages like Matlab.
I am now trialing a
Microsoft Surface Pro and the initial results look
very promising, although further work is required to find the right mix of
hardware and software. This blog will outline my experiences with the surface as I investigate ways of using it to teach and promote deep learning.
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