Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

One of my (many) annoyances over the ways some organisations are adopting handhelds is deciding to force the same platform onto everyone. I know there are practical reasons for it, but the PDA IS (or is intended to be) a Personal device so one "thing" wont suit everyone, even if it does make like easier for management,support and purchasing departments :-)

.... PamOne have hinted at producing non Palm based machine before

I think theres still a lot of confusion caused by Palm splitting into PalmOne and PalmSource.
(for those who are unaware of the subtleties, PalmOne make hardware, PalmSource make the operating system)
they have lost the big advantage of being able to make tradeoffs between hardware and software.

My own belief is the early Palms were so responsive because one company had been responsible for the whole device and the "vision" for that device was largely down to their "leader" at the time Jeff Hawkins.

Later machines I suspect are more committee designs.....

I am still sorry Sony dropped out the market (except back in Japan).

This could make for interesting times ahead for Palm. ....
http://www.brighthand.com/article/palmOne-s_CEO_Resigning
http://www.brighthand.com/article/Ship_of_Palm_Looking_for_a_New_Captain

I think we all know people who this device would be suiitable for....

http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=2030

Theres a review at
http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=2258&review=Dell+Axim+X50

A useful site comparring speeds of various SDCARD
http://heller.ca/cgi-local/palm/cardspeed.cgi?device=ALL&card=ALL&size=ALL&detail=detailed#stats

Hi All,

We've run a few small projects with  PDAs and students at the University of Glasgow.

The initial phase of the project used 25 Clie SL10's. to deliver multichoice revision tests for engineering students. Some course texts were also  converted to Palm format. The Clie's were supplied with the standard built in applications along with two custom applications that were written for the project. One application is a simple quiz application that presents multichoice questions, the other is a logging application that records what applications are being used.

In November 2004 Palm Zire 72 PDAs were given to all first year technology students at the Robert Clark Centre for Technological education. So we have about 36 students at the moment. again we are using the built in applications, our logging application plus  Docs To Go, Quizzler and Repligo.

http://userweb.elec.gla.ac.uk/j/jont/projweb/

Good point Simone, but you dont use your exercise book as your diary. It depends how much control of the device the school has I suppose.  I'd love to hear how the Dudley project is coming along, I wonder if any of its particpants are lurking :-) It could be interesting to compare how thats coming along with some of Tony Vincents experiences.

btw Simone are you in the UK?

Its good theres some discussion going here.

J

Yup interoperability and content are important. I like tools like repligo for converting documents to PDA formats as viewer are available for Palm/PocketPC/Symbian etc.

I wish there was a cross platform equivalent to hypercard. Something relativley easy to  use to enable tutors/teachers etc top produce their own rich interactive materials. Then again cross-platform compatability is not made any easier by the variety of screen sizes and orientations.
I am sure JAVA is going to raise its head in here soon( and also pocket sized PCs.) Pity the IPOd is not a bit more "open" to developers....

Hi all,

For those of you using PocketPCs which makes/models are you using?
Do you have an recommendations for machines?

things are remarkably quiet here.......

Anyway to the question....

I think it depends on whether the device is owned and kept by students or just loaned to them. Loaning a device changes a PDA from a Personal Digital Assistant to a merely Portable Digital Assistant.

I believe the real benefit of a PDA for any purpose is realised when a user actually owns it, so they really "buy into" the device. Its then worth their while customising/personalising the device to suit their purpose. A PDA becomes truly useful when someone has at least one application on the device that they find useful:-) Hmm direct and indirect benefits...........

Hmm centralised control of PDAs.

The less institutional influence the better. Too many people talk in terms of deciding whether their organisation should use one platform or another, once again missing the point that these devices are personal, like the choice of car/breakfast/pen/wallet/.
Ive tried using monitoring/logging software on PDAs to evaluate their use and in spite of the minimal data logged. (application name and time it was launched) even that causes some paranoia. Actual centralised control could take away the "personalness" of the device. However the ability to possibly beam back results to the tutor, from simple quizzes/formative assessment etc can be useful.

Hello everyone.

I have similar tech nerd attributes to Graham as my computing goes back to the days of the Apple ][

I am now working on a research project at the Robert Clark Centre for Technological Education at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, investigating the educational benefits (or otherwise) of PDAs in higher education.
I am particularly interested in the potential of the PDA to be used as a portable Computer Aided Assessment platform  to deliver formative self-assessment questions to students where-ever they are.

www.ninelocks.com/projweb explains a bit about our project and how we are hoping to log when the PDAs are used.

By day I work in the dept of electronics at Glasgow as part of the computing support team and also help students with hardware and software projects.

I  develop shareware and custom software for www.ninelocks.com.  USA users familiar with http://learninginhand.com/ may have encountered the NineColors application which gets used in some science classes.  (I also noticed that Dudley get a mention on the learning in hand blog at http://learninginhand.com/blog/index.html it is good to see the UK catching up)

I've been a PDA user/developer for around 5 years, and worked in education for 10 years. Prior to that I worked in the computing and comms industry.

Anyway I am looking forward to some good discussion and hope we can get some good collaborations going! Though that can sometimes be tricky for both political and technical reasons ,as I know some of you already know!

There is also a mailing list for pda/mobile device users which can be found at
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/pda-edu. Which everyone here is welcome to join

best wishes

Jon
ps  (Hi Alistair hows the website     )

and for all the PocketPC users there is

www.freewareppc.com

Jon

Hi,

Bluetooths original purpose in life was to replace cables between devices. Suchs as between headsets and phones.
Its intended to be short distance and is not very fast. (750kbps ish)

WiFi comes in various flavours, most common is known as 802.11b and works at around 11Mbps, purpose to replace wired networks. Increasingly you will meet 802.11g which works ar around 54Mbps (in reality nearer 22Mbps).

Bluetooth and WiFi do operate around the same part of the frequency spectrum so can interfere, in practice Ive not had any problems myself but its worth knowing.

We mustnt forget good old reliable InfraRed, (aka IrDA), which uses light instead of radio frequency. Speeds up to around 16Mbps possible, but most commonly PDAs are 4mbps or most common 115Kbps. For a definitive explanation of flavours of infra red
see http://www.irda.org

IrDA and Bluetooth are somewhat similar in the use but each has advantages in different situtations
Theres a good article comparing Bluetooth and IrDA at
http://www.dpi.net.ir/pc/MobileComputing/articles/IrDA%20versus%20Bluetooth%20A%20Complementary%20Comparison.htm

Any of the above can be used to get internet access. I frequently use infra-red and bluetooth to connect to the internet using my phone and also via my desktop pc. Your internet enabled applications, mail/browsers/ftp etc dont care how the physical connection is made, so what works over one method eg WiFi should willl work over irDa/Bluetooth/Serial or whatever. (though some phones can be a bit weird and some networks restrict some services)

Out and about you are more likley to find WiFi access points in train stations, coffee shops etc.

For a more coherent and articulate comparison and explanation than mine take a look at
http://www.thetravelinsider.info/roadwarriorcontent/bluetooth.htm

I hope some of this helps....

best wishes

Jon.T

ps is there anyone else here?