A Quick Review of the Apple Watch

Since acquiring an Apple Watch last April, I routinely get asked how I like it. The simple response is: “It’s just okay.”

Wearing the watch is not a big game changer for me. Instead of reaching into my pocket for my phone for many activities, I am glancing down at my wrist. I suspect that this is saving me dozens of seconds every day. Certainly not a big deal.

On a few rare occasions, I find that responding to the watch is a bit better than the phone. Mostly these deal with messages or other notifications that come to my attention while I am driving or otherwise engaged. But, the watch is very limited as a tool to get much of anything done. You can’t enter full text responses. You can use the voice-to-text feature which is great, but doesn’t always work. I’m usually better off by pulling out my phone to respond.

There are some clever features that I like. For example, once I was on my way to meet a colleague for lunch when I received this text from him: “Shall I get a table inside or outside?” My watch smartly provided response options of “Inside” and “Outside”. Features that I dislike include force-touch. I find that I am pushing harder than I like to enact the change. It just doesn’t work for me to be pushing down with my index finger while pushing back up my other arm. Half of the time, I feel like I am fighting myself to get a stupid menu to appear. I also find that my digital crown sometimes sticks.

Overall, I find the watch a convenience for many things, but conveniences that I could easily do without.

Educational Implications for Smart Watches

The watch, like Google Glass and other “wearables”, take us further into the realm of digital assistants augmenting our individual intelligence. I’ve heard from some that this is a concern. It becomes even more difficult to control an environment for testing of knowledge. I see this only as a short-term problem — we should be moving away from classroom-based testing procedures anyway. Perhaps the ubiquity of digital assistants will force our hand into creating more embedded and authentic assessments.

Additionally, this increase in the use of digital assistant requires us to rethink the outcomes needed from education. Therefore, continuous instructional redesign is necessary.