Luceno has written several novels set in the Star Wars universe, and his latest tracks the rise of Darth Sidious, known to most as Senator Palpatine of Naboo and ultimately The Emperor. Young Palpatine is discovered as it were by Sith Lord Darth Plagueis, known publicly as Hego Damask of the galactic banking clan. Born to well-off parents with powerful political ties, young Palpatine (who denounces his given name and goes by his surname only) rebels by opposing his father’s politics. Damask recognizes him as an especially “Force-full” being and fosters the resentment he feels towards his parents. As their relationship grows, Damask uses Palpatine to fulfill his own personal and political agendas, eventually introducing him to the dark side of The Force.

At first, Luceno seems hung up on the politics of pre-empire Naboo, having his characters discuss elections, taxation, trade routes and all manner of back-handed political maneuvering at length. Initially I found it off-putting and feared that Star Wars: Darth Plagueis would succumb to the same mind-numbing political drivel that made The Phantom Menace such a bore. However, as the story progressed, I saw the ingenious trick Luceno had pulled.

The events in his story are set within a few decades of those depicted in The Phantom Menace. In fact, the final act of the book overlaps much of the first prequel. Luceno provides believable backstory and fills the huge gaps in the The Phantom Menace’s screenplay so well that I wish Lucas’ movie contained several scenes from Luceno’s book. For example, Amidala‘s unlikely ascension to the throne as a teenager, Darth Maul‘s motivation and reason for existing, Count Dooku‘s questionable allegiance and Nute Gunray‘s insignificance all make sense after reading Luceno’s book. Heck, he even explains away Amidala’s deadpan speech and vacant eyes.

Of course, Star Wars: Darth Plagueis does more than repair The Phantom Menace. It offers an entertaining, lively and likely backstory for one of science fiction’s greatest villains, The Emperor. It’s ultimately a short, fun title that Star Wars fans will enjoy, with enough “Oh, cool!” moments to make up for Jar Jar.

Well, almost.

I spoke with the school’s Vice Principal, David Cleland – a recognized Apple Distinguished Educator – about the program’s inception, adoption and progress. In short, Cleland says the 1:1 program is going “better than expected.” Staff, students and administration have embraced the iPad and iBooks Author is a big hit. Here’s my conversation with Wallace High School Vice Principal David Cleland.

52 Tiger: Tell me about the start of the program at Wallace High School.

David: It’s the very first 1:1 iPad initiative in Northern Ireland. We had a conference in December where we invited other schools in to look at what we were doing. We had over 100 delegates from each school. So that was probably 50 or 60 schools.

When I look at where we were last year, I see our teaching staff trying to teach students who have an HP laptop in the back, an Apple Mac with Tiger on one side of the room, one with Lion, someone might have an iPad, someone has a netbook…all the variety of personal devices that you have. If we actually allowed that to happen, it gets very difficult to teach. You keep saying, for instance, “If you’re on a Mac, open Pages. If you’re on a PC, open Word,” and so on. The teacher had to devise a lesson for every single platform instead of teaching to each student.

We started to receive letters from parents recommending the [iPad].

52 Tiger: Oh, really?

David: Well the parents were getting requests from their 11-year-olds saying they want a 17” MacBook Pro that costs £3,000. Many parents saw the iPad as a potential low-cost alternative. So they were looking to the school for guidance. That was a dangerous and difficult thing to do. Because if the device wasn’t right, we were going to hear about it.

We asked ourselves, what if we had a uniform platform? So, we had two boys who had iPads in my class and they developed Penguin Slider. We invited the department heads to examine the project and we found that it benefited the students across all subjects equally. And we saw what a plus that was.

Next we looked at the cost of the device, the battery life, how mobile it is, the average price of apps and so on and thought, if our teachers had that device and it was uniform across the school, learning and teaching could develop at a much faster rate. A year of exploration and research followed, in which we worked with Apple – we put them through the mill and they put us through the mill – on every fine detail until we got there.

52 Tiger: Now you’re now six months into the program, is that right?

David: Six months, yes. There was a lot of meeting with Apple and research before we started. I think it paid off. We had staff training at the end of the school year before we started. Apple distinguished educators supported the staff in their getting to know the devices, and then they had two months off. So the teachers had two months off to get to know the devices. We built in units of work they had to have done and they all returned leaps and bounds ahead of what we expected. What the teachers and students have been able to do has exceeded our expectations.

For example, we had one girl typing on her iPad in front of 900 parents and teachers. People were saying, “I can’t believe she can type that fast.” We watch our young people present and we can’t believe how far they’ve come. How confident.

52 Tiger: I want to talk about the program in general, but earlier you said something that intrigued me. When the boys built Penguin Slider, you said you saw academic benefits across all subject areas. Tell me about that, and has it been the case on a school-wide scale?

David: Here’s a good example starting in a science class. Previously, when the students did an experiment, they would have to set it all up, draw the specifics of the experiment and apparatus in their notebook and then write up the process so that they had some material they could go back and revise.

Now what they do is they use iMovie. They’re recording the experiment and adding a voice-over. So later, instead of reading notes, they just watch the experiment again with their pointers on the iPad. That’s completely changed the way the learn from experiments but it also speeds the whole process up. Students were spending 10-15 minutes drawing when there wasn’t really a need.

In Modern Languages class, students have produced Numbers documents with all of the vocab words. They’re updated as they learn more. Drama students had a homework assignment that required them to use FaceTime to discuss a piece of drama that was coming up later on.

Math students use Show Me. When you have an equation on a piece of paper it can be difficult. With Show Me, students can move objects around. There’s a certain amount of visual learning there. I heard a 12 year-old student say, “If you’re a visual learner…” It was the first time I heard a student talk the way teachers talk. They have an appreciation of learning now that I don’t think they had before.

52 Tiger: It’s interesting to me that students don’t have to spend time, for example, drawing an apparatus anymore. Or teachers don’t have to explain how to do something on various computers. Are the teachers finding they have more instructional time now that there’s less time spent explaining things and so on?

David: One good example of that is in Spanish class. The students have a two-week project where they have to imagine the President of Spain is coming to live in Northern Ireland and they have to make a brochure. Traditionally, they would spend the lesson gathering up all of the information and then the teacher would book a one-hour session in a computer suite so the students could get all of those assets together and produce the brochure.

So, it’s two weeks’ work and then they have one hour to put it together. With the iPads, the teachers found that that two-week scheme became a two-day task. What was six hours became two hours. The teacher would say, “You need to get a picture of your house.” The students would go home and use the iPad to take a picture of their house. Then they would add a description, build the brochure and everything with the iPad.

52 Tiger: And no need to wait for your precious hour in the computer suite.

David: Right. The Information and Communication Technology [ICT] is embedded in the scheme now much more than a build-on. With finite resources, we had five computer suites in the school. Even with that, the demand for them meant that pupils weren’t getting in. Now with the iPad, the ICT is embedded and invisible. Basically, they go to the iPad when they need to.

52 Tiger: It’s like they’ve got access to the computer lab in their bag whenever they need it.

David: When people think of a one-to-one program, they sometimes think that we’re taking everything that we’ve done to date and putting it to the side. There will be no more jotters and no more textbooks. The reality is that what we’re doing is replacing a visit to the computer suite with a computer suite they have with them all the time. We’re enhancing the learning and supporting it a lot better.

The same lessons and the same learning is happening, but ICT is now much stronger throughout that learning.

52 Tiger: Another nice benefit of a one-to-one program is you’re able to avoid the divide between students who do have an iPad and those who don’t. Here in the US, a lot of schools are strapped with tight budgets.

David: The parents pay for the iPads. We lease it off Apple and they lease it off us. It’s £14 per month. Built into that is gap insurance, damage insurance…so they’re getting a package, not just the iPad.

It’s made a difference in my house as well. We were running multiple devices and my son just uses the iPad now. Many parents find they don’t need a second computer anymore or even games consoles. In English classes, a lot of the books the pupils need are free in iBooks. One thing a lot of people don’t see in education is that if you give out 172 books that cost maybe £10 each, you have to get 172 back or you’re going to lose money. Now you can say, download the free book and you don’t have to worry about getting it back later.

52 Tiger: Have you had a chance to play with iBooks Author?

David: We love it. We got it on the night it was launched. Within two days, our head of biology had a biology textbook done. A chemistry teacher had a chemistry textbook done. They love it. It offers exactly what we had hoped for. A lot of our teachers had their teaching materials already in Pages, so they were able to bring them into iBooks Author easily.

The chemistry one is fantastic. There’s a video of a student demonstrating it on YouTube.

We have a lot of pupils who use flash cards, and the built-in flash cards are great.

52 Tiger: And how do you distribute the textbooks to the students?

David: Because we have our own intranet and because of the licensing, as long as you’re not selling it, you can distribute it internally. One concern was video as they can be so big. We have 16 GB iPads. But with iTunes Match, we’ve found that not a lot of those have to live on the iPads.

52 Tiger: So do you see a revolution in the process of developing a lesson plan?

David: Definitely. With iBooks Author you don’t need to know how to program an app. You can actually use an intuitive piece of software to create your own textbook really, really quickly. What I can possibly see happening is, instead of creating a year’s-worth textbook, you can create unit textbooks. A department might say, we’ve got five teachers here, we’ve got five units, so they divide it out amongst themselves and share those.

Plus, at the end of the year, they can say this worked, that didn’t, let’s make a change. Opposed to when you buy an ebook, if there’s a part that doesn’t work, you’re stuck with it.

52 Tiger: Six months in, what’s been the most surprising thing?

David: The speed at which things have developed. We did think that we were going to say that every department had to have one iPad-specific task within their scheme of work. We didn’t expect that the iPad would be embedded across subjects as easily as it was. There were a couple of guys in from Apple the other week to see how it was working. I said, we’ll walk down the corridor and find two or three classrooms using the iPad. The very first one we walked to, students were showing homework they had done on the iPad.

We thought that teachers would have to drastically change their scheme of work, but that’s not the case. Also, it allows the pupils to manage their work in the way they feel most comfortable. Some take notes, some create a mind map…it’s a catalyst to more learning happening.

We also see a huge boost in pupils’ confidence. We had one girl who was presenting the fact that Pages documents can have video in them. She held up her iPad, it was connected to the projector so that everyone could see, shot some video of the audience of 900 and added it to her document. I never could have done that at her age.

Another girl was trying to embed some media and it didn’t work. She tapped the media button and for some reason it didn’t display her media. She said no problem, I can just do it another way. Students are learning to problem solve and become very comfortable with IT. People were thinking, what’s going wrong? This poor girl is 13…She wasn’t flustered at all and just got on with it.

Me: What has the most challenging thing been?

Dave [hesitates]

Me: [laughs] It’s funny that you have to think to come up with a negative experience.

Dave: Probably breakages. We thought that if an iPad was in a case, it would be safe. But we’ve learned that if an iPad is in a portfolio case, it might as well not be in a case at all. There is a Griffin one with a plastic shell that we’re looking at. It’s heavier but still an ultra-portable device. A colleague said he’d rather have his iPad slightly heavier than lose it for a couple of days. The challenges aren’t half as big as the benefit of things.

Me: Are there any final thoughts you’d like to share?

Dave: The success of the program really comes down to people. If any credit comes down it comes down to the people and how well they’re taking it to the next level and taking opportunities to use it. Our IT coordinator Dr. Jane McMath is brilliant. She looks after the day-to-day running of the program.

Phraseology also features several export options and a unique set of accessory keys on the keyboard. The more I dove into what this app could do, the more I liked it. Simple typing is only the beginning; this is one informative text editor. Here’s my look at Phraseology for iPad.

UI

Phraseology’s color palette is beige and off-white, which I like. When I read a book in iBooks, I use  the sepia theme, as the white is too intense. It’s nice that Phraseology isn’t retina-searing white either.

The app keeps your words front-and-center, as the majority of its window is dedicated to the writing area. At the top is the current document’s title as well as live character and word counts. A thin toolbar runs along the left-hand side (in both orientations), which can be dismissed with a tap if you like to type distraction free. The toolbar’s seven icons are self-explanitory, except for the Arrange Menu, which is represented by three parallel bars. But that’s such a unique feature, I can forgive the cryptic icon.

The other interesting design element is the accessory keys. These 14 keys perform a variety of functions (see “Keyboard” below), and appear either above the software keyboard or at the bottom of the screen if you’ve got a Bluetooth keyboard connected. Again, the purpose of each is clear at a glance, for the most part.

I’ve got one gripe about the UI. The default font is American Typewriter. Fortunately, it’s easy to change. Which brings me to using the app.

Use

There’s not much to say about the actual typing. Place your cursor and get to it. Like I said, the toolbar can be dismissed. The character count and word count update with each keystroke, so if perseveration is your thing, enjoy that. You can re-name a document at any time by double-tapping its title and typing a new one. Now let’s move on to the toolbar.

Toolbar

Here’s where it gets good. Phraseology is packed useful features, some of which I haven’t seen in an iOS text editor before.

The Documents Menu

The Documents menu is at the top of the toolbar (either orientation). Tap it for three options: new document, list of existing documents and archive. To move a document to the archive, tap the trash can while viewing the document list. Two buttons appear, Archive and Delete. Tap Archive to keep the document but remove it from the main list. Archived documents can be viewed by tapping the folder icon. Agile Tortoise says you can store an “unlimited” number of documents, and based on the small size of most of them, that certainly feels true.

The Arrange Menu

Here’s Phraseology’s first killer feature. The Arrange Menu offers drag-and-drop control over the body of your document. Specifically, you can rearrange paragraphs, sentences and line breaks with a swipe. Just grab the handle next to each and drag that element to its new home. The Arrange Menu even shows the word count and character count for every paragraph and sentence. Deleting elements is just as easy; tap the red delete button and they’re gone.

Rearranging paragraphs and sentences like this is so much faster than drag-and-drop it’s silly.

The Inspector

As cool as the Arrange Menu is, it’s nothing when compared to the Inspector. This tool is packed with useful information. You’ll find typical stats like character count, word count and number of sentences. You also get the average words per sentence and syllables per word.

Phraseology also lists the number of root words that appear in your document, as well as the Flesch Kincaid grade level and reading ease, which is a measure of a document’s comprehension difficulty. You’ll also find your file’s Gunning Fog Index score (another measure of the readability of English writing) and SMOG index rating, which estimates the years of education needed to understand a piece of writing. How cool is that?

There’s more.

The app also reports the number of times five parts of speech occur: nouns, verbs, determiners, prepositions and pronouns. Tap any one in the list (I’ve chosen “determiner” and “your” above) to see how many times that particular word occurs, as well as the sentence(s) that contains it. What’s better still is that you can jump directly to that sentence from the Inspector.

That’s above and beyond what I’ve seen in the myriad of iPad text editors I’ve tried. Well done, Agile Tortoise.

Font Menu

You can change the font size and and type. And please do. You should not be staring at American Typewriter all day.

Markdown

Phraseology supports Markdown, which is another huge plus. While it doesn’t provide a special set of keys with common character extensions like some other apps do, it does provide a preview of what your marked-up will look like.

Sharing

There are four sharing options. You can tweet the first 140 characters of a document (which is odd), email a file, export to another compatible installed app or copy the lot to the clipboard.

Finally, printing is supported if you’ve got an AirPrint-compaitible printer (or software like Printopia installed).

Keyboard

Like I said, you won’t find special Markdown-specific keys but Phraseology does offer special keys. The “accessory keys” are mostly about navigation. Use them to move your cursor through a document word-by-word or letter-by-letter. You can also select a word as you would with a double tap and move the selection handles along letter-by-letter or word-by-word, both left and right. Finally, four shortcut keys let you place an apostrophe, quote, colon or semicolon where ever you like.

Conclusion

You haven’t bought it yet? What’s wrong with you? There’s a lot to like about Phraseology. The Inspector and Arrange Menu set it apart, providing a wealth of ease and useful information. Those who spend a lot of time typing on the iPad ought to seriously consider Phraseology. I’m happy to recommend it.

Update: I neglected to mention Terminology before. It’s a dictionary app for the iPad, also from Agile Tortoise. When installed, it works with Phraseology for one-tap lookup and word replacement options. Very cool.

9to5 Mac points out that Siri now lists Japanese among its supported languages. I got a similar message (above) by asking Siri, “What languages do you speak?” Apple’s site still lists English (United States, United Kingdom, Australia), French and German as the officially supported languages.

I don’t speak Japanese outside of a few words, so I can’t test it out. Are there any Japanese speakers out there how can tell me what you find?

Photo credit: iPhoneclub.nl

When I saw these photos of the forthcoming Apple Store in Amsterdam, I noticed how great the construction barriers look. Typically barriers like this are erected simply to discourage prying eyes, but Apple often uses them as a marketing opportunity. This practice isn’t unique to Apple, of course, nor does the company always make such an effort. But when it does, the results are often charming. Here’s a look at some clever barriers Apple has used.

Reader Tom Klaver notes that the 3 Apple logos on top of each other are inspired by the Amsterdam coat of arms, and orange is the national Dutch color.

[Via MacRumors]

Boston

Photo credit: Chad Barraford via Flickr

I’m biased as a former Bostonian, but my favorite example graced the Boylston Street Store. Made to resemble Fenway Park’s Green Monster, Apple successfully pandered to Red Sox Nation.

Shanghai

Photo credit: Bloginfor.com

The Shanghai Apple Store, China’s largest, was covered with a barrier that resembled a red curtain. A front section appeared to be pulled back, revealing a hidden Apple logo.

New York City

Photo credit: MacTrast

The Grand Central Terminal Apple Store opened just in time for the 2011 holiday shopping season. Its construction barrier got customers ready with lettering that resembled old-time train station announcement boards. As @Ignignokt notes, the barrier display consisted of 58 individual $999 Thunderbolt displays.

London

Photo credit: App Freak

London’s Covent Garden store also received the red curtain treatment in July of 2010. It started drawing camera-wielding onlookers well before it opened for business.

Chicago

Photo credit: Chicago Real Estate Local

Not as ornate as the others, the Lincoln Park Apple Store in Chicago featured autumn leaves blowing around. Appropriate for the windy city, no?

I’m sure there have been others, and if you know of any, please let me know. I’ll add them here.

Fantastic.

[Via Coudal]

The cards are coated with a special ”conductive paint” developed by Volumique (NFC or RFID are not used). Once the companion app is installed on the iPhone or iPod touch, each card is “tapped” against the device to register the transaction and free players from the burden of simple arithmetic. Progress!

Expect Monopoly zAPPed to hit stores this fall for $25 (the iOS app will be free).

Of course, other developers offer similar functionality. Camera+ from Tap Tap Tap features Clarity. Apple’s own app, Camera, features HDR mode. How do they compare? I shot several photos to find out. Here’s a comparison of Instagram Lux, Camera + Clarity and Camera HDR.

I was looking for a subject with lots of strong shadows and found it at the Chatham Fish Pier. Specifically, the monument at the foot of the parking lot. I arrived in the afternoon as shadows were stretching across the sculpture, and took two shots with each app: one filtered and one not. Here are the results.

Note that all photos were taken with my iPhone mounted on a tripod with a Glif and within seconds of each other, in an attempt to keep variables constant. It was also a cloudless day, so the lighting was nearly identical between exposures.

Apple’s Camera

Apple Camera - original

Apple Camera - HDR

You can see the results. Contrast was sharpened on areas that were previously washed out. The lobster looks much better. However, dark areas on the far right became darker and detail was lost.

Apple Camera original - detail

Apple Camera HDR - detail

Camera+

Here’s the same shot taken with Tap Tap Tap’s Camera +, with and without the Clarity filter applied. The app did a great job; the washed out areas (like the lobster) were enhanced and, more importantly, the dark areas didn’t get lost. Note the base of the monument, which became much more pronounced with the Clarity filter applied.

Camera Plus original

Camera Plus Clarity

What’s unfortunate is that a purpleish hue pervades the filtered image.

Camera Plus original detail

Camera Plus Clarity detail

Instagram

Instagram Lux did a great job with the image. The light areas were sharpened and the dark areas retained detail. Unlike Camera+, the color remained truer to the original. It’s also notable that Instagram formats all images as a square, so keep that in mind when composing a shot.

Instagram original

Instagram Lux

The Instagram shots are smaller than the others, so I can’t highlight a section of detail. Still, look at the scallop shell on the left. What a nice improvement.

All of the apps performed best with close-ups. In the following shots, the grass (albeit, dead grass) looks too sharp, ¹ for lack of a better term. As with the monument images, the effect is most pronounced in the Instagram images. Apple’s Camera app performed best here, as its more subtle filter didn’t result in an artificial result like the others.

Camera lighthouse HDR

Camera Plus Clarity

Instagram Lux

Conclusion

Thoughtful planning can produce a nice image. If you’re shooting a harshly lit subject that will likely result in an underexposed image at close range, go for Instagram Lux. Camera+ is another option, though watch for discoloration.

Apple’s understated HDR filter is best for far-off subjects and harsh sunlight. In my testing, these shots treated with Clarity and Lux produced images that obviously had filters applied.

Happy shooting, and please share your own experiments with this fun tech.

Lasercut cardboard iPad stand. Excellent.

Alternatively, connect the iPad to a TV and use the iPhone to control playback of your videos. No Apple TV required! Tango Remote Control Media Player HD ($4.99) is available in the App Store now.