Handhelds in the Classroom

Formerly only for busy executives, handheld computers -- also known as handheld devices or portable digital assistants (PDAs) -- are making a transition from briefcase to backpack. Education World looks at the experiences of four schools experimenting with integrating handhelds into the classroom. Included: School technologists share their take on the uses of handhelds in schools plus links to other great resources!

"This is what we've been looking for in education," Darrell Walery, technology director of Consolidated High School District 230, tells Education World. District 230, in Orland Park, Illinois, outside Chicago, is participating in what is probably the largest of several programs exploring the use of handheld devices in education.

Handhelds -- also called handheld computers or personal digital assistants (PDAs) -- are small enough to hold in one hand and lightweight enough to carry in a pocket, purse, or briefcase. Several well-known companies, including Palm, Handspring, Sony, Casio, and Hewlett-Packard, manufacture the devices, originally designed to help businesspeople keep track of their contacts and appointments. Educators are beginning to see that the handy little gadgets can benefit students too, and handhelds are turning up in backpacks as well as briefcases.

ONE-TO-ONE TECHNOLOGY RATIO

PDAs provide the one-to-one ratio -- one student to one electronic
device -- that is necessary for true technological innovation in education, Walery says. School computer labs, even laptop computers, offer students only limited access. "Students need to use technology just as you and I do, not just one hour a day," he tells Education World.

"Inexpensive handhelds are one way of achieving that," Walery continues. "By using handhelds, we can get technology to the point of learning, such as on the bus or on the athletic field."

In Walery's district, about 65 teachers and 1,800 students use the devices in a number of ways. Through special software, some students track their nutritional intake and their physical activity to see whether they're meeting their fitness goals. Students in science classes use special probes connected to the handhelds to measure the amount of dissolved oxygen in a pond. The devices can also store and graph data from other science experiments and function as graphing calculators in math class. English students record their journal entries on their devices. Foreign language students no longer have to lug around heavy dictionaries because they can install them on their handheld devices.

The District 230 program uses Palm Pilots. The district bought the devices, then sold or leased them to students. The district also provides extra Palm Pilots that students who did not buy or lease their own devices can use in the classroom. The biggest drawback, Walery says, is the glass screens on the handhelds, which crack easily in students' backpacks and are expensive to repair. Palm has agreed to use plastic screens in the future, he adds.

BUSINESS USE VS. CLASSROOM USE

Most PDAs come with a cradle that attaches to a desktop computer. A user can "sync" (short for synchronize) data between the computer and the handheld by placing the handheld in the cradle and pushing the cradle's "hot sync" button. The user can also install programs on the device by following the same procedure. The process works well for individuals who need to coordinate PDAs and home or office computers.

Although connecting one handheld device to a computer is easy, trying to set up many individual devices for an entire class is far more difficult. "We knew it would be a rough first year," Walery says. "Just getting the [software] applications on the Palms is not a typical hot sync situation." Walery's department has experimented with several ways around the problems and offers suggestions for other technology departments on the district's Palm Program FAQ Web page.

'AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT' IN SEATTLE

Ballard High School in Seattle, Washington, is conducting what principal Dr. David Engle calls "an action research project" with handheld devices. Students in one ninth-grade language arts class use handheld devices for organizing personal information, such as assignment calendars, contacts, and to-do lists. They can access language arts curriculum materials on the school Web site and develop "innovative uses of handhelds to help them be successful in high school," Engle tells Education World.

"We are measuring for personal organization, academic improvement, and technological fluency," Engle explains. "I took data measures at the beginning of the project and will take measures at the end of the project." The project also has "a quasi-control group," he points out. A similar ninth-grade language arts class uses the same curriculum but does not have handhelds. "Although this is not an optimal control group," Engle says, "it does give us a similar comparison group to look at."

The Ballard High program uses Handspring Visor Deluxe devices made available through Handspring, Inc., and through a grant from the Ballard High School Foundation. Engle describes the foundation as "a group of committed community supporters who have provided start-up capital for a number of exciting initiatives" at the school. Another partner in the project is PDA Verticals Network, a Seattle-area company that provides handhelds with pre-installed software.

"Students will be able to purchase their handhelds at the end of the school year at a heavily discounted price," Engle says. "Each participating student made a $50 deposit at the beginning of the project. This seems to have assisted the careful use of the handhelds by students." Engle adds that the results of the study would be posted on the school Web site at the end of the school year.

Although the Ballard project will measure student achievement in adapting to the technology, Engle says that he and other school personnel also use the devices. "Our security personnel use handhelds in their work," he explains. "They carry data about every student's schedule. In addition, I use a handheld device in the course of my workday. Several members of my administrative team use them as well. We are finding them to be very useful and supportive of higher productivity."

A MIDDLE SCHOOL EXPERIMENT

During the last half of the 1999-2000 school year, Northstar Middle School in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, experimented with Palm Pilots donated by Palm, Inc. Northstar has several computers and encourages students and families to make use of technology. Students have e-mail accounts and electronic assignment folders on the school network.

For the Palm program, the devices were loaned to five eighth-grade students at a time for a nine-week period. The students were allowed to keep the devices and take them home. "It was an experiment to have a small number of students use the machines in any way they desired," Northstar principal Tom Fiedler tells Education World.

Students used the Palm Pilot's built-in software: address book, calculator, calendar, and to-do list. Through Palm's infrared beaming technology, they were able to access their electronic assignment folders and share data with other students using the Palm Pilots.

The school is no longer participating in the project. "I truly feel it was a worthwhile project," Fiedler says. "We learned a lot, but there is a lot more to examine in the area of student use of handheld computers."

THE QUESTION OF SOFTWARE

The biggest drawback to more widespread educational use of handheld devices, experts agree, is the lack of appropriate software. Most of the third-party software developed for PDAs is primarily for business. Some business applications -- such as word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software -- are directly transferable to the classroom. Developers have been quick to provide other basic educational programs, such as grade books and assignment organizers. Educators are still waiting, however, for programs that allow students to brainstorm, to record a lot of separate ideas and then connect and interrelate them.

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY FOR MOBILE STUDENTS

The Kentucky Migrant Technology Project (KMTP), sponsored through its parent agency, the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative, serves public school children of migrant workers in more than 19 districts in the west-central part of Kentucky. The children's frequent moves cause discontinuity in their education. KMTP provides services and technology to help students overcome this discontinuity.

One of KMTP's newest services, project coordinator Mike Abell tells Education World, is the use of handheld computers. "Our goal is to provide portable technology students can use even if they don't have an Internet connection at home or at school," Abell explains.

Using a collapsible portable keyboard that opens up to about the size of a laptop computer's keyboard, migrant students can write short essays and homework assignments on their PDAs, Abell said. The students then use the built-in infrared communications capability to beam their completed assignments to a teacher's PDA. Once teachers have collected all their students' assignments, they can dock their PDAs to a desktop computer and upload all the assignments at once.

The devices also enable students to carry educational content around with them easily. Abell says students can store such resources as a Spanish-English dictionary, e-books, and content from an online course that they download to a school computer and transfer to the device.

Abell says the handheld device is an "affordable, portable appliance" that's "easier to use, more affordable, and more reliable" than a laptop. He calls the KMTP program "one of the first efforts to merge education and technology into an affordable package that can demonstrate results."

HANDHELDS: ADDITIONAL ONLINE RESOURCES

• District 230 Students Make Use of Handheld Computers
  This article describes the many ways students in Consolidated High School District 230, Orland Park, Illinois, use handheld computers.
• Schools Get a Helping Handheld
  This Wired News story describes how Consolidated High School District 230, Orland Park, Illinois, uses handheld computers in every subject area.
• The Net Effect: Handheld Heaven
  This article from the January/February 2001 issue of Technology Review refers to the educational uses of handheld devices by Consolidated High School District 230, Orland Park, Illinois.
• High Tech High School: PDA Verticals, Handspring, and Ballard High Team Up to Introduce Handheld Computers into Curriculum This article on the PDA Verticals Web site describes a pilot program for ninth graders in a Seattle high school. It lists the software that students in the program use and provides articles, hardware and software reviews, and other resources for teachers, including a message board.
• Success Story: Northstar Middle
  Read about how this school in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, tested Palm Pilots.
• PEP: Palm Pioneer Education Pioneer Grants, from SRI
  This page describes a Palm grant program for research into innovative uses of Palm handheld computers in K-12 classrooms. The Idea Bank includes links to articles and software programs.
• Education@Palm
  This page contains information about Palm's work in education. It includes success stories about students' and teachers' use of Palms and information about Palm's teacher development program.
• Palm Pilots Software
  This page contains links to many kinds of software for Palm Pilots.
• Bookmarks on Mac, Office, and Palm
  Look near the bottom of the page for links to many Palm resources.
• Palm Reading Goes Educational
  This article in Wired (August 15, 2000) describes how students and teachers use personal digital assistants for educational applications.
• AvantGo
  This is the home page of a company that produces software to deliver Internet information to handheld devices.
• Ectaco
  This company offers language software (dictionaries and linguistic software) for several platforms of PDAs.
• Intellisync.com portal
  This site from PumaTech, Inc., offers a subscription service that allows retrieval of Web information and synchronization of data between PDAs, laptops, and desktop computers.
• A Powerful Learning Tool in the Palm of Their Hands
  This article from Education Week (November 8, 2000) describes the movement of handheld devices from the business world into classroom and includes links to several companies offering educational software.
• Palm Computers Moving from the Workplace to the Classroom
  This article from Education Week on the Web (October 27, 1999) is about the use of handheld computers in education, including the need to develop appropriate software.
• Scholastic Wireless: Education in Motion
  Academic publisher Scholastic offers downloadable information for teachers through the Web clipping service AvantGo.
• eHomeRoom.com
  This site offers schools a Web-based school calendar service that is accessible to teachers, students, and parents.
• Mindsurf Networks
  This company offers educational applications for handheld computers over wireless networks for schools. Sections for students, teachers, and administrators include Web links; a teaching exchange where teachers submit suggestions; and lesson plans for using handheld devices in the classroom.
• Teacher Puts Business Technology in Hands of Language Arts Class
  This article from the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader (November 2, 2000) details how seventh and eighth graders at Eminence Middle School, a small school in rural Kentucky, use PDAs.
• School in Front of Tech Effort
  This article from the Cincinnati Enquirer is about Eminence Middle School in Eminence, Kentucky, and its use of PDAs in the classroom.
• Dick Tracy Goes Digital: Educators Take to Personal Digital Assistants
  This article (January 1999) describes how teachers and school administrators use PDAs for work-related tasks.
• Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education
  This facility at the University of Michigan develops software and teaching methods for the use of handheld computers in schools.
• Palm OS Computers in Education
  This page from the Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education includes a link to the article Supporting Science Inquiry in K-12 Using Palm Computers: A Palm Manifesto, which details why every child in K-12 should have a Palm computer.
• Research Team Develops Free Ed Software for Handhelds
  This article from eSchool News (April 2, 2001) describes efforts by Elliot Soloway, professor of education and computer science at the University of Michigan, to create essential educational software programs for Palm Pilots. Soloway is working on developing the programs with Palm, Inc., and other software companies with funding from the National Science Foundation. The programs would allow students and teachers to do essential tasks, such as word processing; sketch; manipulate images; create time lines and family histories; graph equations, and print directly from their PDAs.

   

   

   

  Article by Mary Daniels Brown
  Education World®
  Copyright © 2001 Education World

   

  05/16/2001