Dont take the `P` out of PDAs, a story of cars, houses, breakfast and PDAs

Jocelyn

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Dont take the `P` out of PDAs, a story of cars, houses, breakfast and PDAs

« on: February 01, 2006, 10:37:24 AM »

http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=1

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“ Let's remember that the ‘P’ in PDA, stands for PERSONAL, not portable

I can second Jon's point abiut the importance of the PERSONAL in PDA - teacher training students who were successful with PDAs for teaching and learning were by and large those who used them personally - taking photo's of a newborn niece, online shopping, as an alarm clock, as a remote control etc


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Mark van 't Hooft

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Re: Dont take the `P` out of PDAs, a story of cars, houses, breakfast and PDAs

« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2006, 04:58:13 AM »

Here's another interesting thought related to the P in PDA. Having worked with literally hundreds of kids and handhelds it is always interesting to see how one of the first things that kids do is personalize their handhelds by changing backgrounds and color schemes, reprogramming the hard buttons, etc. I've also seen that in classes where students use handhelds for an entire year, they often decorate the outside of the handheld with stickers they like. This serves two purposes, personalizing the handheld as if to say "it's mine", and also to be able to distinguish it from the other ones in the same classroom.

I agree with Jon's idea that students should be able to bring in their own handheld devices and have choices in how they use them and what they use them for. The trick is to get all the different devices to work together somehow. I know this is easier said than done, esp. in the US where stuff seems to be more proprietary (e.g. cell phones).

Mark


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Mark van 't Hooft
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Kent State University
Research Center for Educational Technology
Kent, OH
USA

jont

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Re: Dont take the `P` out of PDAs, a story of cars, houses, breakfast and PDAs

« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2006, 09:46:19 AM »

Hello both, phew, glad to find I am not alone :-)

I was interested that some students decorated the cases of their PDAs!

Also Jocelyns comment about those that used devices most being those who found a use for the PDA for themselves...
Some of the difficulty we expereinced with some of our students was giving them an initial reason to carry their PDAs.

We must also accept that for some people a PDA is just not for them (like some people hate fountain pens).....

Quite how we are going to get all these devices compatible is another matter....Though you have to wonder if we'll all be running some version of Windows Mobile (or whatever they are calling it today) before too long.

<slightly off topic thought...>

I do wonder if we'll end up with PDAs or some similar future mobile device being as disposable as a ball point pen where you end up not worrying where you left it, unless its your really good gold plated pen with the nice case....rather like digital watches where its the case is more expensive than the mechanism inside :-), and the biggest buying decision is whether you like how the device looks....

<>

Jon


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Graham

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Re: Dont take the `P` out of PDAs, a story of cars, houses, breakfast and PDAs

« Reply #3 on: February 03, 2006, 10:45:42 AM »

Quote from: jont on February 03, 2006, 09:46:19 AM

<slightly off topic thought...>

I do wonder if we'll end up with PDAs or some similar future mobile device being as disposable as a ball point pen where you end up not worrying where you left it, unless its your really good gold plated pen with the nice case....rather like digital watches where its the case is more expensive than the mechanism inside :-), and the biggest buying decision is whether you like how the device looks....

<>

Jon

I'm with you on this point Jon. Although the notion of thin-client technology has been muted for the past 20 years to the extent people gave up on it as a fantasy (like speech recognition or A.I.) I believe it's all about timing. We're rapidly facing a world of hyperfast long distance wireless connectivity and super-low-cost online storage. As these key technology enablers converge we won't really need too much in the way of any local storage, we'll just need input, output and local processing facilities.

We already have the disposable mobile phone (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2162075.stm) so disposable PDA type or other ubiquitous computing device being purchase perhaps via vending machines is not too much of a stretch in imagination.

Ultimately, it's the personal digital stuff or the data that's has the value and not the device. For example, when you loose a mobile phone it's the loss of the numbers that is the real problem. It would be nice to know that all my digital stuff is backed up somewhere safe and secure (assuming it's not being spied on Wink

)


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James Clay

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Re: Dont take the `P` out of PDAs, a story of cars, houses, breakfast and PDAs

« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2006, 11:45:57 AM »

My maxim is always, if you only have one copy of a computer file then it doesn't exist.

This is fine usually for me with regards to typical computer files (word processing, presentations etc...).

With a PDA a 1GB storage card is more than sufficient to make a backup of the PDA.

Problems arise with storage especially with video files on my main computer, how many 1TB external drives can one have!