Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Hey, I am Wendy Gallagher a Technology Integration Specialist @ Lexington School District One in Lexington South Carolina. I assist teachers in grades k-12 to integrate technology that will engage student learning. I just had the opportunity to attend the Michigan Handheld conference where I spent several hours in Mike Curtis's training sessions.(Hi Mike!) He loaned me his book and it is a fabulous resource. I am using it as part of a handheld graduate course that I am teaching in our school district. My experience with handhelds first begin at NECC where I sat in a session from Wireless Generations and I saw what their software could do for a student who is struggling to learn how to read. Thanks to this company and Andy Mann who sat behind me with 10 hh in his bag, I was hooked! Since that session, our teachers in grades 1-3 have been using mClass reading software for completing running records on their handhelds. This assessment provides the teachers with instant data that allows them to change instruction for that child's specific need. Very impressive stuff!

So, my experience with handhelds is just in the beginning stages for classroom use by students. But Wow! The students and the teachers get so excited about using this mobile technology. I hope to learn a lot this year and I will be glad to share about our mClass implementation.

Wendy

Thanks to Mark van' t Hooft for letting the folks on his list serve know about this new forum. 

My name is Scott.  I am an Educational Technology Consultant / Technology Coordinator / duties as assigned    for the Madison County Regional Office of Education in Illinois (just east of St. Louis, MO).  I became a school district tech. coordinator in 1998 after teaching for 4 years.  I received my 1st handheld in 2001 (iPAQ  3650).  Since that time I have trained over 200 teachers and school district administrators in my area on using Pocket PCs in the classroom as well as to collect data for our NCLB grant.  We have schools using them for mobile student management access, graphing calculators, collecting real world science data (through DataHarvest probes), and the obvious PIM uses as well.  I am always looking for resources and examples of folks using handhelds (particularly Pocket PCs) in education, especially at the K-12 level.

Member profile

I’m now a semi-retired Assistant Head (large secondary comprehensive school) and Faculty Leader of Design Technology in the UK.  In July 2003 I shook off the people management and paperwork that involved and took early retirement, but am now teaching part-time (no admin, no paperwork, and a mostly  empty mail slot / pigeon hole in the staff room !!!).

I’ve been involved with computers since 1974, when the only machines available were 200 miles away and accessed by teletypewriters with a 1/2 second delay between pressing a key and seeing it type (in duplex mode, that is – in simplex you didn’t see it type – just hoped !).  The first micocomputer I used was a plain rectangular box about 10in x 6in x3in with a row of 8 toggle switches, a push button and a 7 sector LED display – it took 3 hours to program in the loader (in switched binary) and you prayer for no power cuts, as it was all volatile memory. 

Having braved the RML 380Z (I suspected it of having been built on Clydeside, such were the dimensions of its rivetted construction !), the Apple 2e was pure luxury, with its built in BASIC and a whole 16k bytes RAM – enough for anyone !  In 1984 I was on the point of buying a BBC “B” when Sir Clive Sinclair announced the Sinclair QL – fantastic machine (I still have 2 in the loft), on which I ran department, faculty, and some school admin for several years.  It was only the improved screen resolution that drew me away to the world of the PC especially as they had just ported the software across, so I could use the same applications.

Over 3 years ago I had the opportunity of a new Palm Vx at a good price and started using that mostly for diary, addresses, & notes/memos.  Last June I upgraded to  Palm T3 and now use Excel on it for registration, as well as the photos facility for pictures of particularly good projects kids have made.  I’m presently looking for a database to replace / be compatible with the Paradox application I had extensively developed for pupil records, assessments, and automatic reporting.  Most I’ve seen so far seem very primitive in comparison.  Most seem to synchronise only with Excel which is not what I expect of a proper relational database.

I get VERY steamed up about all those (we) teaching professionals re-inventing the **** wheel when we sit in our study writing workschemes and lesson plans from the same nationally imposed curricula, and abhor duplication of effort.  I look to the intelligent use of ICT to reduce that.  Unfortunately it seems that the main use has been for educational management to see it as a means of requiring yet more (mostly unread) documentation from those at the chalk-face (or whiteboard-face, if you want to be more health conscious).     End of rant.       Possibly.

Any ideas ?

Thankyou Graham. Super idea.  I was put onto this by Laura Naismith who is researching educational technology at Brum University.
I am an ordinary teacher working in Scotland at primary and secondary level and totally frustrated at what is going on here.  Together with my primary school aged daughter I am hoping to spend next academic year trying out different mobile technologies in practice as we travel in the States and India.
Not being a nerd college in 2000 having given me NO IT training, (and having received none from my own authority since despite running a suite of networked computers for a year) I will have to spend the next 6 months or so before we leave getting myself a little more knowledgeable about what is going on and about how to use some of the best and latest . . I will be following this forum closely.
Thanks in advance for any tips.

Hi everyone,
Hello from Melbourne Australia.  I met a number of you at the NO NECC last June.  It was my first and hopefully not last time at NECC and I came back with a stack of ideas - alphasmarts, Visual Ranking, IWB and pda use in schools to name a few. 

I'm Faculty Head of IT for our school of 2000 students over 3 campuses but I'm based in the middle school and have an interest in curriculum development with ICT, especially video use in course material and giving students opportunities to use video editing in their responses.  I regular run professional learning for teachers on innovative uses of video editing in the curriculum.

Our school is Apple based to 8th grade on two separate campuses.  From there, students go the Senior Campus.  Each student from the 9th grade has their PC laptop.

Having used my own pda for 4 years, I'm keen to learn the ins and outs of running a class set.  As some of you may know, Australian schools (and Melbourne schools especially) have been at the forefront of laptop learning.  However pda use for students is still very much in its infancy here.

I'm just about to buy a class set of pdas as a trial for 6th grade students.  I've settled on a Palm pda but my burning question is:  how important is Documents to Go?  These pdas will have to last 3 years so I'm looking at a portable keyboard for each.  Initiallly I'd settled on the Zire 31 but that doesn't have DTGo.  I'm looking now at a Zire 72.  Is that too good for kids?  There's a good deal on with a portable keyboard included but is it worth the extra dollars.

 Any help gratefully received.

Phil Callil

We are  students at Mogadore school  in Ohio. I  think we should use the technology in school it makes kids want to respond more to the problem or work that they are assigned. I like the idea better with hands-on things than I do sitting and watching the teacher. It makes me want to work harder on what I might be doing.

Hello To All,
   We are a group of fifth grade students who use palm pilots to learn with. It does not disrupt the educational process it assists it. We use them to take notes with, we have Venn Diagrams, we have KWL charts. I's amazing to have so much programing in a palm size mechanism. We have a program that allows us to download websites so we can veiw them on your palms. It is very easy to learn in other places in the room instead of sitting in front  of the computer. We are vey happy to have palms becasue of the conveinence of them being so small and portable. There are cameras that conect to the palm and we can do assignments including use to take pictures of things. it is very amusing to have palms and very appropriate for the learning process and we are happy to have them too.
                                                                      Sincerely,
                                                                2 students
                                                             

Hello, I am a 5th grade student at in the US. I love using the technology in my classroom. We get to use palms, danas, and hands on stuff during science. It makes kids feel like they can be trusted with technology. We love to have the freedom in our classroom and our school. People always say " children can never be trusted because of their lack of intelligence", but in this classroom I know it's total opposite. My teacher actual trusts me. I'm glad I have my liberty. This is probably the best year ever thanks to my teacher and my classmates.