Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

This could be some kind of extremely well self-restrained expression of frustration of invective !

Showing your age, jont ! only we wrinklies remember the latin american bandleader, Edmundo Ross ;-)

My T3 came with Botzam Backup Plus, which seems pretty reliable (up till now, that is ! ).  It does total, PIM only, or selective backups to SD card.

The alternative is Card Export by Softick, which (when invoked with the T3 on the cradle) makes the PC regard the SD card in the T3 as another drive, so you can manage files from the PC, including copy, delete, etc.

Success today at finding some useful sites. I've had time to listen to two of them whilst tidying the workshop (the joys of semi-retirement and part-time = day off today!).  I've sent them to Andy's podcast collection.  One is USA based, the other UK based.  How much I've remembered from them is debatable, but I've suddenly heard of Moodle (Virtual Learning Environment) - free, and sounds interesting / useful.

Maybe podcasts could have a use as instructional, step-by-step / staged instruction on the things that used to be in text books (remember them ?), so that pupils could listen as they do it (frequent use of pause button !)

As there is no specific link between entries in the cells of one spreadsheet and another (unless you create such a link - simple enough for one or two, but to do it for all pupils in a school {perhaps} of 1500 = unrealistic, especially with an annual turnover of maybe 450), there is nothingto stop you (or the admin staff) putting a child's name on two parallel spreadsheets (eg: y9 set 2, and y9 set 3).  We certainly have some pupils who try to avoid some lessons by turning up to others for which they are not allocate - the school's central pupil & timetable information system is best described as "shot through" but I'm not responsible for that !

I thought I'd shaken off spreadsheets for pupil registration & assessment records in 1984/5 when I switched them to a relational database (on the much under-rated Sinclair QL).  The intervening 20 years have indeed produced the handheld computer, supercomputers, and "bloatware", but the database software still hasn't caught up with what I could do then.  With the "day job" and refurbishment of our house as priorities, I haven't had time to learn the intricacies of SQL on the Palm platform, otherwise I might have cracked this one by now.

Also, I have experienced "programming" difficulties / irritations setting up, for example, a single registration form / report design that I wish to use on all classes, in that the form can't be replicated easily to other tables (classes).  Furthermore, when presented with a form showing (for example) a class list, trying to enter a present mark on one pupil brings up that pupil's individual record, and replacing the whole-class view; where the entry of that one mark involves multiple keystrokes / stylus taps, this does not help a slick start to a lesson.  These remarks apply also to MobileDB.

Instabilities:
Over the past few months, there have been many messages on handbase@yahoogroups.com relating problems with Hotsync'ing, that cause "Fatal Error" messages that require soft resets to reclaim the system, and many seem to relate to updates of HandBase, especially the 3.41 version.  This mirrors my own experiences, albeit with earlier version 3.xx series, on my T3. 

There may be a solution in Filemaker Pro, which I know is used by one of the most prestigious "public" (ie: private) schools in the UK (I know because I taught there for a while).  This has a mobile version that marries perfectly into the PC/Mac version.  But at approx £300 a shot ... I'd need a sponsor to develop on that !

WHilst I completely agree with Andy's comments, particularly about sharing good ideas / practice and in the context of using handhelds, I have been disappointed with all the database programs available for Palm (no experience of PPC). 

Databases have the clear advantage that a chld cannot be in two groups at once, whereas on a spreadsheet they can.  However, in the classroom I need a form that looks like a spreadhsset, so I can see their attendance (and other issues) in one swep of the class (patterns such as who is away with whom, how often and when may be more visible).  No database program does this (that I have found so far, anyway).

Reviewing the mailings on the HanDbase forum suggests there is still a stability problem so far unresolved, which reflects the problems I had with it when I tried it previously.

Keeping looking ...!

Is it for real ?

Looking at their web site "product photos" it looks more like an (fairly good) exercise on Pro-DeskTop (3D CAD program) - the surface textures don't look real, but do look like the rendering I can apply to PDT sketches.

I've looked at several, but keep coming back to the layout I have on Excel, which has the benefit that it transfers to the school's PCs without fuss.  (That's until I have time to put together on Palm the database approach that I developed for PC about 20 years ago !).

You're welcome to a copy of it, if you'd like. The (now ancient) thread "As an educator what do you use a PDA for?" had an explanation of what is included on the sheet.

HTH

I thought I'd look at the report before replying, but that led to a non-intuitive access path that had me creating a new blog user (I think) and still I couldn't track through to the report. 

I did gather that students were found to have a less than straight forward time downloading podcasts - they're not alone !  My recent thread on "how do I get podcasts" outlines some of my experiences.  I now can access podcasts - the difficulty is finding something interesting / useful I wish to subscribe to !

Found some of interest, but a further question...

When the chosen item comes up on the podcast list it has an icon - a green bubble with "play" written in it.   Clicking on this brings up a bland page that repeats the title, but has no links, and the chosen page does not "play". 

Is it playing into some internal part of the computer ? - there's no trace of it storing any files, so what's it for - and how do I get the podcast for future listening ?

Two things just happened.  Whilst I posted the previouos comments, I was also downloading .NET framework v2 - this took quite a while even on broadband. 

Having posted my comments here, I searched the net again, and came up with >>http://www.dopplerradio.net<< This led to a very simple download of the aggregator program, which, when unzipped and run said "You need ...v1.1.4322" - "Oh, good...", I said, and accepted the proffered option to go to the MS site and download it.

  It went straight to the appropriate version, which downloaded in seconds;  installing took not very long, and trying to install Doppler again SEEMS to have been successful.

So we'll see.

I'm just about to find a podcast or two to "subscribe" to.

I'll keep you posted 

Yes, all good stuff, but I'm still not able to make an aggregator actually function.

Having now surfed the net and found quite a few, I downloaded iPodder, and tried to get it going.  It came back with an error message saying it couldn't do it as I needed to install ".Net Framework v.1.14322 - would I like to go online and download it now ?" So I said, "Yes", and it took me to the MS Developer site and it has more versions of ".NET" than you can shake a stick at.  So I guess.  Broadly, there's versions 1, and 2,  so I go for v1, as that is nearest to what's being looked for.  Downloaded, installed, restarted. Try iPodder again. no joy.  Subsequently download, install, etc., etc., Service pack 2 (includes 1?) and 3, trying iPodder each time - no joy.  Each time "it couldn't find ..\Framework\v1.1.4322\mscorwks.dll", so I create a spurious folder and copy the mscorwks.dll from another folder to it.  No joy.

So I think, "stuff iPodder, try something else".  So there's "Sharpreader0906" - looks simple enough from the descritpion.  Download, install - can't - can't find v1.1.4322\mscorwks.dll....

I have a 5 month old 2.8GHz machine with XP Pro (inc SP2) and broadband.  If getting podcasting is this awkward for someone who was designing bits for computers in 1983, and has written commercial software (moonlighting from day-job of teaching!), how on earth can anyone else get it going ?  What's the secret ?

I see podcasting as having tremendous opportunities for education, and I can't get the damn thing to work.

Help!

I was excited by tha many potential avenues opened up to my concept of "mobile learning" at the conference /symposium in October, one of which was using podcasts.

I understand that this is broadcasting (ex-radio) to the Apple iPod format, and I know that I can access a large and growing supply of podcasts on a myriad of topics.

However, having decided to try it myself (listening at first) I spent an unenlightening hour or so trying to set up what is needed.  Unfortunately all the sites I found assumed that everyone knows what "RSS", "aggregater", and suchlike mean, and already have those facilities.  One said "click here to download your aggregater" and went off to a site with several dozen links some of which MAY have been an aggregater.

Please, can someone enlighten me on the exact facilities needed, the meaning of TLAs (three letter acronyms) and the steps needed to get it all set up, so I can Sync the podcasts to hear on my Palm T3.

Many thanks

Perhaps we should book him for next year's conference ! - Then tell him we said all that already!

That was rather the feeling given by the conference, I thought - "platform independence" (or irrelevance) - everything from "pda.s" to 3G mobile phones & psp.s = fair game for education - if it's where the kids are, we go there.