Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Like Christmas...almost

First post from an excited Head teacher.
 
After what seems like forever out shiny new EDAs have arrived from F-S. Well done to all those who have helped develop them, as first impressions are good. They appear robust, although I have yet to try a drop test! 

Out of 36 units 35 were packed correctly. Some were charged, others not. Some began to do stuff when plugged in to charge, others didnt.

The fun will start in the morning when we start to network them, I suspect.

The best bit was seeing the look on the kids faces; a few dragged Mam/dad/carer into School to see them....hope they are still there in the morning!

Carl

todays update

cameras dont work...no comment!

we will get a software update in the near future, apparently

thought that the kids would be p@&&ed of by this, so we have told them the feature is disabbled till further notice

scary how easy the lies flow from my lips


we are one of three schools in the LA starting the use of handhelds this year

the ict techies didnt make it to my school as they started the install at our neighbours just up the road, hope they make it here tommorrow

the children have had a go with the machines however

they have already twigged neat handwriting equals fast input and have made more progress in 2 hours than in the last year with their presentation/handwritting skills

carl

Sorry to hear of these problems when others appear to be running well.

It's true that RedHalo needs network connectivity (either wirelessly or via a PC) to work, so that would be an obstacle if your devices were having problems in this department.

What have Fujitsu Siemens proposed to do to help sort things out?

Hi Carl

I'm sure you realise that I wasn't suggesting that you were "eejits" nor was I suggesting your problems weren't real, only that my understanding was that thousands of EDA devices have been shipped and presumeably not all of them are exhibiting these problems. I believe that Learning2Go in Wolverhampton are making good use of their EDAs and there was also the review by Merlin John where EDAs were being used in a primary school in Birmingham, I've also heard some great reports from projects using WildKey.

I can't speak for Fujitsu Siemens Computers with regards to the quality or reliability of the EDA ( I don't have access to the stats ) but do hope that your current problems are resolved and that you will let us know what did the trick.

Cheers

Graham 

We are just unpacking and testing a set of 18 EDA's for a mediascape project (among other projects). I have been testing one for a while.

My first impressions are quite poor I am afraid to say, especially when we are talking about a £400+ bit of kit.

General design comments:
- The cover is pretty useless. You have to partially take it off to put it in the cradle. With it open you can't get the stylus out. Although it does protect the screen it doesn't weather protect it at all, I can't really see the point of it to be honest. I would think it should either protect the whole unit and prevent it being turned on (whilst in a bag for example), or protect the screen but allow the control/arrow buttons to be used (though not the stylus) to allow some functionally (such as the camera) with the cover on. It does none of these.
- There is no charging indicator, so you have to turn them all on to find out if these are fully charged.
- The battery claims 12hrs life however using the GPS this is reduced to less than 2 hours.
- It's a shame the only option is to charge from the cradle, unlike our other set of (much cheaper!) FS PDA's that came with both a cradle and lead charging options. Potentially this is useful for whole set charging whilst still in a case.

Some specifics points:
One of the cradles was mis-manufactured so that it was impossible to charge the EDA, and two SD cards were missing, but hopefully these will be sorted shortly.

I realise they are quite different products, but in comparison, now RM are supplying sub-£200 laptops aimed directly at education, FS needs to try quite a bit harder if they expect schools to continue to invest £400 in their EDA.

Hi Graham,

There are some known issues with screen alignment on the EDA. May I suggest that you contact FS direclty on this as it is not something that you can solve.

We advise our learners not to use a password as when they forget it.... it takes a great deal of work to unlock the device.

As for the EDA running sluggishly... Do you have the processor speed set to turbo mode?

Do you get the learners to close unwanted programmes? this is standard practice with any PDA / Mobile project. Any open porgrammes will also alter charging times.

As far as charging is concerned... we in Learning2Go have always taken the people route to solving the problem by setting up a Mobile learning awards scheme to change the habits of learners and reward them for having the device in school and charged.... In my opinion this is getting the learners ready for their e-life!

If you must charge the devices for them then try a device called power monkey.

I dont think F-S ever gave the device long enough to iron out the problems. The fact such a device even made it to market is a credit to somebody. After  all other manufacturers had shunned the education market in the UK.

The machine it was based on was a good PDA, that seemed to work well. The built in GPS could have been used to enhance so many applications.

The aspect of such a project that always worried me was the aging of the device. Within 12 months or so the device would seem "old hat" to students and you can be certain that any device that followed it would not fit into the rugged-ised case :-). Sealing the case was a bad idea, I wonder how much of the screen alignment problem is due to the case putting pressure on to the digitiser.

Your observations on battery life reflect my comments about PDA designs in general on one of the other forum threads today.
 
But these are pioneer times to an extent, dont be put off by bad experiences with one family of device.



 

Nicely put Jon

Without question the EDA was a flawed device yet it was one of the first of a kind and where a manufacturer listened to the demands and requirements of the education sector, to deliver a product that it was expressly developed for, within the realms of what was commercially viable at the time. In English it means that when the product was being conceived, with people who had experience of running successful mobile learning projects, there were no orders in hand that would cover development costs. The consequence was that an existing PDA, the fairly respected FSC Pocket Loox N560 that had already been customised for rugged and out-doors requirement by a 3rd party in Germany for use in applications from mountaineering to motorcycle couriers was further customised to include a camera.

The issues over buried charging lights etc were a by product of the fact that the ruggedised nature of the device where it was intended to be waterproof to the point where you could just about jet wash it without water entering the system. The device was slightly downgraded in this regard for the EDA version to allow for sound to exit the system which in prototype versions was inaudible due to the waterproofing.

Clearly there was a manufacturing issue when these devices went into large volume production perhaps caused by the method of ensuring the seal on the covering which in some cases distorted the screen alignment. There were also reports in some cases of wireless failure.

But as Jon eloquently puts it, these are pioneering days and these were some of the first steps. I'm not an apologist for FSC but I do think they deserve some credit for being a pioneering supporter of mobile learning in the UK, I understand that they went to some lengths to remedy as many problems as were brought to their attention despite a period when it was simply fashionable to slate them.

In spite of all of this there are many projects in this country using EDA's successfully which I think proves that, given time, FSC would have ironed out the glitches but the plug was pulled when the PDA market collapsed and their German HQ exited the PDA market and therefore left the EDA without it's insides.

A lot of development happened in a short space of time with EDA not just at FSC but the supply network, practitioners, software developers and learners. I would say that it hasn't all been wasted.