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How PDAs Intersect With School
An Anonymous Coward writes: "It's never too young to be a yuppie. An engineering professor at the University of Michigan is studying how handheld technology can be incorporated in elementary and high schools. His theory is that PDAs can provide students with a much more interactive and cheaper means of learning than desktop computers. The professor has created a number of interesting applications for using PDAs in school, including a 'cooties' simulator, where students beam around a virus from Palm to Palm and then figure out how it propagated. The New York Times covers the use of PDAs in classrooms here, and Wired News has an article here talking about schools who ban students from carrying PDAs." Both articles focus on Palm OS devices at a school in Ann Arbor, but only the Wired piece points out that the devices were banned there last year.
Ann Arbor Open's policy isn't unique: Several schools around the country are banning handheld devices.
Damn. Busted for carrying an automatic pencil.
Schools really are getting out of hand.
Where I come from, PDA stands for "Public Display of Affection"...
------
Sig
This sounds kind of like SELain, how all the kids had portable Navis.
Nothing more.
Just that.
I think he meant "Code Red". :)
..do you really need a $150 device to spread cooties?
air and light and time and space
All these schools seem to be afraid of change. whether people will admit it or not PDA's are the future notebooks and pencils. In 10-20 years they will most likely replace all notebooks, text books, and writing devices.
"Free your mind and your OS shall follow"
An engineering professor at the University of Michigan is studying how handheld technology can be incorporated in elementary and high schools
Damn it, those elitist college folk are always discriminating against middle schools.
Why? Because they can. Damn tinpot bureaucrats.
sulli
RTFJ.
It is an interesting idea, the savings over desktops could then go to other activities other than computers. I happen to agree with Leo Laporte that computer labs shouldn't be the primary concern of schools. Computers are very useful tools, but one kids are very often exposed to at home. I think that many schools that are lacking in Art/Music or Athletic departments should consider putting the money into that. Art and health is just as important as technology.
Maybe by using cheap palmtop devices we can have our cake and eat it too.
Isn't this what Calculator Based Laboratories (CBL) and CBR's are for? I don't see the difference except for more of a display with the Palms. Besides, PDA's (and laptops) have no place in elementary schools, and probably middle schools as well. There's so much more you can learn from a teacher than from a monochrome 300x200 screen, no matter what software it's running.
Teachers in lower education are not there just to get students to learn, they're there to teach life. They're there to teach what type of behavior is acceptable (thus the punishments), to give you an appreciation for music and the fine arts, and encourage you to dream about the future (my elementary school had huge areas for "make believe", quite separate from recess).
We don't need to add to the already macintosh corrupted elementary schools another little gadget for students to drop and/or lose, just because another company wants to get more exposure. Besides, in my experience, most things up to certain point--about college--can't take advantage of PDA's as planners because that scale of planning just plain isn't needed that young.
Why is the current trend in education that more technology earlier leads to better results?
Obligitory Non-login stop making me sign up for everysingle web page I access link..
So there.
air and light and time and space
i'm a high school senior and have been using a palm pilot for the last two years. it has done nothing but help me with my studies. how can schools actually BAN such usefull devices??? i understand not allowing games (i have wasted many an hour playing dope wars myself) and making you shut the things up (none of my teachers want it beeping in class) but they also offer such a great educational value that they should not be banned, but instead encouraged.
where students beam around a virus from Palm to Palm and then figure out how it propagated
Back in seventh grade life science, we did this exact same thing, but without pdas. Basically, the teacher gave each person a small jar with either plain water, or water spiked with some chemical. Then we went around "squirting" water into each other's jars, according to certain rules. Then, with an indicator, we found out who had the "virus", and we traced the origin down to two people: the teacher and me. It turned out to be the teacher.
What will happen to gadget computing when people refuse to adjust their lives around an eight ounce hunk of hot-syncable plastic? The threat to the larger economy is palpable.
A program like this will help assure that gadget companies like this will have a fresh supply of suckers- uh, customers for decades to come.
The low resolution grayscale screen will prevent childrens from watching porn.
(I really do always make the same jokes...)
Je t'aime Stéphanie
to be mass marketed was the eMate. The marketing included a teacher mode, networking via IR, and a rugged case with long battery life.
Many studies were done and a few schools bought them.
In fact, at a national educators conference on March 3rd, Apple reps said "The Newton is an important part of our product line" Someone pointed out that Apple dropped the line 4 days early on the 27th of Feb, as so the rep had to remove some egg from his face.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
You wouldn't believe how many teachers complain about students playing those games in class. I mean, uhm, they're doing critical math equations, right? Sure, everyone will use the PDAs enough to show "Hey! I'm using it! It makes my grades better!" when everyone will just be trying to beat their high tetris score.
-Daniel
..Uh-huh.. Yeah Mom, I'm keeping track of my grades
air and light and time and space
OK, first let me say that banning a PDA is just stupid. Don't punish the many students who use them in a good way just because a few misuse them. On the other hand, I don't think schools should require laptops or PDA's for studies. Realistically, we don't need that much technology for each student in a high school. We need to focus money on getting teachers who don't say things like "ewww, math is hard, I hate math." The problem with education is the educators and the problem with the educators is that smart people don't want to go to college and come out with a job that pays less than a garbage man's salary. Anyway, my point is that PDA's can be good but instead of mounting an initiative to get every kid a PDA, why don't we focus on getting better, higher paid teachers.
~ now you know
I own a Palm IIIxe myself, and use it extensively in college for keeping track of phone numbers and assignments. Many of the points raised as to why Palms are distractions (which were also refuted) are in fact not very true. The main point -- games -- is laughable if you've ever played a Palm game. Despite the fact that the graphics aren't good at all, they're just not exciting when you're controlling them though stylus strokes. I have a couple, and they are absolutely last resort -- if your students play PDA games, you're *really* boring them.
And it's true that beaming shouldn't be a fear at all... if the teachers would actually look into it, they'd realize that Palms can only beam when they're pointed right at each other, and are within (I think) 3 feet. Not to mention the beeping. That would make it kind of tough to beam answers without being blatantly obvious.
Palms are great for organization -- but for cheating and entertainment, not so much.
Preface: My wife and I are planning to home school.
I picked up some fourth and fifth grade readers at an antique store about a year ago, all of which readers dating from the thirties and forties. All of them have the student reading literature and doing composition the likes of which I didn't reach with my 1980's public education until high school.
It's debates like this drivel-- whether high tech better facilitates the pathetic education that we're giving kids-- that make me really happy that we're home schooling.
The Chicago Schools have been an (unwilling) testing ground for a wireless, 'viral' handheld game called Pox. Basically it's a variation of the old Pokemon thing, except that it's wireless and electronic. The NYTimes article points out that the secrecy factor is part of what makes it popular - you can play it across the room w/o anyone else knowing. More amusing in the context of this article is the ways that the toymaker and kids try to justify the 'educational' value of the game.
When I think back to my days in elementary school and the classmates I had, I would say that >85% of them would just monkey around with this for a few minutes, maybe think it was cool, and then move on without learning a damn thing. Gimmicks are not the right way to pursue education of young children, or old ones either for that matter.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Why don't they just bite the bullet and replace students with computers? They'd behave perfectly, learn at 100% efficiancy, and never skip class to smoke in the playground.
.. well, staying alive, in this case.
.. they're so not used to it, they think it's disgusting. They might admit that they know milk is good for you, but that doesn't outweigh the initial uncomfortability of getting used to milk (again).
On a more serious note, the easier you make learning, the less learning remains as a primary goal of the human psyche. The goal should be to make learning difficult things personally rewarding, not fun and easy. Fun and comfort is being luaded as the primary experience for any activity, over personal gratification after hard, unpleasant work. It's akin to making your vitamins sugary; if for some reason the sugar isn't there some day, you're likely to pick the comfort of not tasting those nasty vitamins over taking the vitamins, because you just wouldn't appreciate the experience of doing something difficult in order to achieve the goal of
Thanks to iced cappuccinnos, I have friends who've totally recinded any consumption of milk
"Old man yells at systemd"
my math teacher in high school came up with a program that did this on Ti-82's. Sure you couldn't do it via infra-red, but it was a great demo of probability and propigation. all on a device that is much cheaper than a palm.
...because when thrown, PDAs can be considered a deadly weapon.
And have you seen that stylus? You'll put your eye out, kid.
Okay, when I went to school people brought NES carts to trade/loan with others and just to generally show off. One day some kid beats up another kid to steal his cart. What is the school's reaction? Just ban the possession of NES carts at school. Ignore the problem - it will go away.
So when the advent of the pager and cell phone come around, they ban those as well. At my school the line was that pagers and cell phones could be used by drug dealers, so rather than crack down on the drugs, just ban the pagers so at least they can ignore the issue (my school also banned hats - they can be "gang related"). Granted, the class interruption notion is pretty legitimate - simply put, there shouldn't be anything in a high school student's life that's worth being paged or called in the middle of the day about - these are school children, for Christ's sake.
Therefore, the next logical move is to ban PDA's as well. They're kinda like pagers. They're kinda like games. They're gonna get stolen, so just ban them. Kinda like when your ISP bans you from running a web server - they're only going to go after you if it becomes a problem. You can have a PDA at these schools, just keep it hidden.
These schools will un-ban PDA's when they can be used usefully - which is why the first bit of this story is good. Why would you need to know appointments in shcool? Your appointment is school. Period. But of course you could keep homework assignments in there and so forth.
This will of course lead to the "my dog ate my batteries" defense.
Schnapple
Schnapple
Beam me up Scotty, Ioman is entering your PDA!
This is along the same lines as the folks who thought Sesame Street, by combining mildly educational material with highly visual and dynamic entertaining material, could increase a childs desire to learn. Studies have shown the opposite to be true. Sesame Street teaches children to love learning only if it is presented like Sesame Street. It's also along the same lines as the teacher who combined rap music in his classroom to help his students learn the gettysburg address, or the teacher who used rock music to teach his students about our founding fathers. Its rubbish, not to mention very expensive.
Technology is really neat, it has tons of wonderful applications... but, you can't just throw technology at a problem for the sake of using technology.
When I first got a TI-85 in 8th grade, it was a really neat toy. I found that I could load all sorts of games on it, like Tetris and Galaxian. That calculator got used for games far more than it got used for schoolwork. Did it ever help me learn more about math, or get better at math? Nope. In fact, it probably hurt my skills at arithmetic.
Then, I went off to college. Classes were more intense and interesting, so I had less cause to play games and daydream. You don't have so much busywork, so even in math and science classes there is rarely a need for a calculator at all; you do all your work, and then sometimes at the end of a problem you'll plug a few numbers in the calculator to get a final answer.
Kids in school should be learning to think, not how to play with shiny toys.
I think that would be a much better question. The reality seems to be that we have a totally disfunctional group running the educational system with little or no effort made to coordinate the various levels together to provide a comprehensive education.
1. Interactive (but not-computer) devices being banned from preschool/Kindergarden/grade school children.
2. Middleschool/Highschools banning HP-type calculators and handheld-type devices.
3. Universities that claim to be intellectual bastions of free-thinking; but then go out of their way to lock students into proprietary and expensive software.
Wasn't the whole promise of the "Information Age" and the digital revolution to begin the process of seeding ideas *before* the kids get set in their ways? It's only when the inventions of the previous generation become the *standards* for the next generation that real breakthrough bubble up.
Refusing to integrate these potentially educationally-rich technologies is a huge failure.
It seems that it's these supposed "educators" who need to learn a thing or two.
"My dog ate my PDA"
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
"Mrs. Doe,
We regret to inform you that your daughter Jane flushed a classmate's PDA down the toliet at school today. If you will refer to the fine print at the bottom of the permission form you signed allowing little Jane to use PDA services in class, you will see a clause that puts a child's guardian or parent in a position of liablity for any and all damages caused by the aformentioned child. you will recieve a bill shortly of approximately 200$ for the product plus labor costs. Failure to pay this in a timely fashion will result in little Jane being put in a PDA-Free special-ed classroom. thanks so much for your cooperation.
sincerely, board of education, Podunk USA"
i know for a fact that if the school system issued Palm devices in local highschools, the pawn shops around here would get flooded in about a week with dozens of the gadgest...screw the new toys, sell 'em and buy me a better calculus teacher =)
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Handheld computers have an advantage over desktop PCs or laptops in that they are small enough to be carried anywhere and relatively inexpensive -- "the cost of a pair of tennis shoes," Soloway said
What kind of tennis shoes do these school kids use?
Gork!
Gorkman
The same way that televisions have
My high school banned anything that seemed like technology, and they had very good reasons for doing it. The main reasons were what the articles mentions: theft and disruptiveness.
Image if many students carried palms around...hardly any would be paying attention. Even without pda's, if you walk into a math class, half the class is playing games on calculators.
However, I do think that schools should use technology like pda's to help students learn. Schools can ban students from bringing their own, but still allow students to use pda's at times appropriate to the lessons.
That's why English was so tough. I never remembered to bring my thermometer! :)
This seems to be a popular topic recently, UCSD is researching uses for student PDAs on a wide scale. I believe several hundred UCSD freshman in CS are going to be semi-permanently "loaned" HP Journada PDAs in order to participate in this experiment on a wider scale.. cool stuff check here for more info: http://www.calit2.net/education/activeweb.html
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
I don't quite understand the problem with kids having games on their PDAs. If Jenny sits in the back the class playing Quake on her Linux-running iPAQ and "misses out" on the lecture, isn't that just her problem? Sure, it's disruptive if she moves with the character and grunts and stuff, but it's not like "disruptive behavior" is particularly new. Frankly, beaming notes around seems a lot less annoying than the old "PSSST! Pass this on!" method.
I thought the kid who turned on the class TV with IR program was pretty cool until I realized he got caught. How the hell did he let that happen?
RC
(posted as AC because this no doubt violates the DMCA)
/etc/hosts:
/. are free of registration.
archives.nytimes.com is a mirror of www.nytimes.com and for some reason doesn't need registration. The simple way is to take a URL like www.nytimes.com/stroyurl/whatever and change www to archives. A cleaner way to do it is drop this in
208.48.26.212 www.nytimes.com
and all NYtimes stories on
My parents are both teachers in a local British boys school, and they both think computers are the biggest waste of resources possible.
Both work in the 'Information Resource Centre' (i.e. the library) where sixteen PCs are networked together as an 'information resource', according to President Tony Blair's grand new view of 'A computer on every child's desk' (hmmm, reminds me of another megalomaniac....). The theory is that the kids learn about the computers and how to use them in order to prepare them for the real world which (apparently) has computers everywhere. The truth of the matter is that the boys download tons of porn and set it up to appear as backgrounds on other users' accounts. The school ran out of money for a competent sysadmin and the current poor soul doesn't know how to manage his own arse, never mind the pitted ingenuity of dozens of horny teenagers.
Even as an 'information resource' (gak - horrible phrase!) the Web is basically shit for any reasonably detailed material. Yes it's fun to surf, but when I *really* need to check facts, I go off to a library and get it out of a dead tree tome. Books are critically reviewed, the web is not. GIGO en masse, and most importantly:
1 computer == 50 books.
Palms will only be used for playing games/gossiping/switching the TV on and off when the lesson gets boring, and there are always times when playing *any* game, no matter how crappy and pixellated, will be preferable to listening to a lesson.
Grr, I need a cup of coffee.
Just what kids need... another excuse to not pay attention to class.
<rant>
Maybe education researchers should get off their collective asses and encourage real teaching instead of promoting "Let's watch a film now class." teaching abdication to mass-media and tech wiz-bang nonsense. Having computers solves nothing, in fact, some studies show computers take valuable teaching time away from teachers. I guess they want an open-source teacher-emulation hologram in all the schools, so they don't have to pay those under-paid and under-respected teachers. Poo on them! Academics of the world unite!
</rant>
SkewlD00d
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
They even forgot to mention that the hardware is already there. Every single high school student has his own PDA to help him (and surprise, even her) to cheat on school tests. Actually these little machines help students immensely already.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
This guy sounds like one of the pie-in-the-sky technologists that loves tech for the sake of tech, and is unwilling to recognize reality. Now, it that because he is, or because Wired is so pro-tech that everything that passes by their editors sounds that way?
To pick apart his statements:
No, kids won't read more just because it is on a handheld computer. Some kids read with their spare time, others do other things. If I was a kid with a handheld computer, I might read, but more likely I would be installing games or other fun apps. I might even have fun writing games for others to play. But reading? Given the book or the e-book, I'll take the book, until e-book tech gets a bit better.
One advantage, though, is that "Penthouse Forum" looks the same as "Tom Saywer", at least from 10 ft away. Maybe kids will read more...
Soloway then says that if all kids had one, and if all the teachers knew how to use them effectively, and if the parents were behind the curiculum, then they would be useful in the classroom. Well, the same could be said for gym equipment, musical instruments, textbooks, lab equipment, or computers. The fact that this isn't the case for a majority of students is why education is in so much trouble - hand-held computers might just make it worse.
Handheld computers are as cheap as a pair of shoes? Maybe, but not any I wore as a kid... My family had to save money, so I got other kid's hand-me-downs, wore shoes til they fell apart (and were already well out of fashion), and generally wore clothes that kept me from being naked. I was aware of the kids who had the newest and most expensive clothes, and that is was a status symbol. Handheld computers would have to be the same across the board (All Visors, for instance, instead of some Visors, some Visor Prisms, and some Visor Edges), and the parents would bitch and moan - "If Johnny wants the orange one with 16MB rather than the ugly black one with 8MB, then why can't he have it? It interacts with the cheaper ones!!!" Just like in the workplace, hand-helds are a status symbol, just a more expensive one.
Please, let's not put a computer in every classroom. Please, put them down the hall. I have never met a computer program that could teach better than a teacher. Mathematica and Matlab are no substitute for a good math teacher. Shockwave Shakespeare is no substitute for a good English Teacher. Dance Dance Revolution is no substitute for a good Phys. Ed. teacher. Axis and Allies is no substitute for a good history teacher. Hell, even Microsoft Visual Studio and gcc are no substitute for a good programming teacher. Computers are tools, but they are limited tools, and the programs are expensive, and can't replace a good teacher. Let's keep the computers down the hall, where they belong, irrevlevant to education.
No, not because of most school's idiocy of, "ONLY DRUG DEALERS HAVE PAGERS AND CELLPHONES!" (Yesss. Come my children, the first cup's free! *deals some coffee*)..
:)
Have you ever sat in a movie theatre, watching, in almost dead silence, none of the audience making any sound, in anticipation, on the edge of your seat, watching a young Russian soldier lining up a German in his sites.. Closer.. Closer.. The screen fades onto his trigger finger.. and...
(Some stupid ass top-40 crap ringtone sounds from someone's cellphone.)
Argh. Though more annoying while trying to watch Enemy at the Gates, I'm sure it'd be damned annoying in a classroom.
But PDA's? The hell is that about?
Jeez. You'd think the schools would *want* to teach organization skills and such.
Then again, maybe that's why most colleges put freshman through one of those anal seminars where they teach you how to be organized.
I tell you, though, my kids will be homeschooled until college. Primary to secondary education in this country is turning into a haven of idiocy.
Then again.. What can one expect from the people who brought you the DMCA(tm)?
As someone who went to school during the transition between calculators being banned and calculators being required, this is interesting. If nothing else at least making the "wrong" OS choice for my child on a PDA is cheaper than on a notebook computer!
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
Sorry to be so blatant.
I've seen people do so many silly things, make so many foolish arguments, all for the sake of their beloved status symbol, the Palm Pilot.
Don't you on with your "Luddite" name-calling! I happen to be a software developer, with hoards of languages behind me, and I'm young (25). I know all about what technology can and can't do, and I Love nothing more than to see good tech advance..
And I'm saying that this here PDA thing is a load of CRAP. Give it 10-15 years, and I'll look at it again. But right now, there's no good reason to shell out $150 for something that's going to pull you backwards in your education.
I had a student once who insisted on spending hoards of time loading his books for class into his Palm Pilot. He copiously took notes into his Palm- a couple sentances by the end of a four hour lecture, and we'd have to hold up class so that he could cram them in there with his stylus. He'd go on and on about the amazing advantages and all the things it could do. While I Love this guy, and he's a good friend- What a fruitcake! He bought the whole Tech=Good thing hook, line, and sinker. Held up class, and held up his own learning. All over a technology fetish.
PDA's are a fad, for the most part. Sure, there are valid uses, and they can really help out in certain areas in our life. But for the most part, it's a fruity fad.
Want to advance your education? Buy your books, and then write in them.
Want to advance your education? Learn, and then think about the things you learned.
TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED YEARS ago, Confucius had all the technology he needed to wisely note that studying without thinking is a waste, and thinking without study is a disaster.
If you can so much as get students to think about what they learn and connect it with the world they live in, you'll be far better off than you will by having them nonsensically scribbling on a palm, and they'll learn far more.
Thank you Slashdot once again for reminding me why I'm home schooling my daughter.
You have a right to your opinion and i think that in the example you mention you are justified.
:) )
However there is the other side to the coin - i work as an IS manager and have half a dozen remote sites to support. I use my palm Vx extensively and so do my staff - they are admittedly not the most practical thing for taking notes with (yuck) but they have a great many good uses.
I have the follwing stuff i use every day in mine (and my staff have most of it too)
- Database of file extensions (usefull as hell)
- Database of cable / termination / cable maps
- Netork database with all site info
- Database of common fault types in our environment
- All hone and contact numbers for all offices
- Patch panel diagrams for all sites
- Router configs for sites
- We can download current calls from our call database and take them with us
- Various database on applications etc
I also have a few games and half a dozen books (1984, Brave newq world, etc - what i feel like reading) and can download my mail and jot small qucik notes when onsite - as well as syncing with my out look
The best thing is that all of this software we use is freeware (bar one database program we bought licenses for) we can convert anything into a PDB file by using isoloweb (www.isilo.com) and we use a number of database aps to create smalll database for them - its quick and easy and bloody usefull - and the best thing is with all of it in my palm including meg launcher, a dozen hacks and games i still have 4mb of the 8mb memory free.
My staff dont lug notebooks out to sites unless they have to (and thats very seldom, and i dont need to lug my notebook home each nght (i have my latest emails on it and all my contacts)
In short i think the palm is incredily usefull - and i am a person who thought they were over priced toys - dont forget that just because you meet one moron that all the other people are neccesarily morons (otherwise i would never have used linux - you should have met the first guy i knew with that
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
As an example:
The math 12 cirriculum here in British Columbia requires students to use graphing calculators for their work. However, I believe that these actually impeded the learning process.
In my grade 12 math class last school year, the students who did best on the government (final) exam were those who used their calculator the least. The reason for this being is those that did not use their calculators except when absolutely necessary actually learned the thought processes and fundamental concepts that were required to solve the problems. The ones who used calculators the most just got used to punching in numbers in to the calculator and getting an answer, the concepts did not really sink in.
Come exam time, many of the questions tested the students' understanding of the concepts. Those who relied on their calculators did poorly.
I thinkt that using these PDA's in the classrom, while being a cool gimmick, will do little to help the kids actually learn the concepts they are there to learn. Sure beaming around a virtual virus is fun, but will kids actually learn about how viruses spread? or will they just learn to punch buttons on their PDA?
i've got
WARM BAWLS
Why the heck should I be bothered to memorize a bunch of stupid polyatomic ions for a stupid high school chem class??? I ended up with an A in chemistry , so I obviously knew what to do with them when I saw them.
God bless the TI-82.
Then: Tag! Your it.
Now: I logged 38 tag attempts today, and successfully evaded becoming "it" 17 times.
Then: When I grow up, I want to be a banker like my father.
Now: Stop pulling my hair, Bobby! You almost screwed up my limit price.
Then: You've got cooties.
Now: I've got cooties? Is it cooties 3.0, or cooties 3.1?
Then: Evel Kneivel jumped the Grand Canyon! Pass it on.
Now: Oh no, not the Evel Kneivel spam again!!!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The articles talk about how they are worried that borred students will use the Palm Pilots to play games and pass notes. I think we are looking to shallow, here is a news flash, borred students have passed notes and found other ways to stay awake (doodling) since the beginnings of school.What we need to do is figure out Why are our students borred in the first place! Don't take away all the things students can do besides class, make class more interesting so students want to be involved. We need to look into getting students more involved in there studies, make them actually enjoy class and want to go. I know everyone has had atleast one teacher in there life who you couldn't get them to skip there class for anything... telling your mom you can't go to the doctors on tuesdays because that is your fun Science (Math, English, etc...) class. We need to strive to make all classes more exciting, ask students what they think of their teachers... and actually do something about it... If a teacher gets 3 years in a row of students saying he is borring then FIRE HIM OR HER! Give bonuses to teachers who students give high scores to. is this unfair? I don't think so... the only teachers who will complain are the ones the students hate anyways. Consider students as customers, any company who has an employee repeatedly fail to make the customer happy is going to fire that employee. Why not schools too?
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
There is currently a technology centered project under way at ECU, called Online Wireless Learning Solutions (OWLS), which attempts to integrate PDA's and interactive cdroms into the curriculum.
http://tf2.digitaljedi.com
My son has a requirement, as in requirement to get a TI-83Plus. If students can get that functionality plus any other PDA benefit such as their own Avantgo channel then why not. What are you complaining about? If they beam a list of the weeks assignments to it or a list of resources for where to get information I figure its paid for itself then and there.
Myself and a friend used Psion 5's in A-level classes just over a year ago, to take the usual notes.
;) We used to run down to the library (which had the IRDA-capable printers) if anything needed printing.
The teachers didn't mind at all (in fact they were quite amused at the two of us tapping away in the corner whilst everyone else was scribbling with a pen and paper!)
It was *great* for some subjects (and we could play IRDA games during the boring bits.. heh heh) but it kinda sucked for others. It was ideal in Computer Studies (mostly copying from a textbook - we would have loved one of those handheld OCR scanners!) and the occasional flowchart which could be done either in Sketch or an addon program. It wasn't always great in Physics or Maths though (too many complex formulae that couldn't be typed, and were too difficult to sketch at the same pace as everyone else). In which case we resorted to good old pen and paper.
I mainly liked it for coursework, which I always used to end up copying from written work to a word processor. This way, it would start typed from the beginning, and the spreadsheet came in very handy along the way!
It'd be interesting if a PDA (or at least a package for one) would be developed specifically for schools. My main complaint with the Psion, which I believe has very sadly been discontinued, was the lack of any easy way to input long formulae. If there's a way around that yet, we're almost there.
It'd obviously help if the teacher has one so you can beam your work over for marking
The market is most definitely there.
Okay... and what is the point? If students can just "look up the answer" during test time, shouldn't they be able to do the same in real life? If you can't remember an equation what difference does that make, remembering is a bad idea. You should be learning concepts not intake/output facts.
Trust me our public education system has much larger problems than "Some kids might beam information."
--Joey
I've just got to comment on this one. I'm a math/science teacher starting my first year in about two weeks. PDA's have got to be the worst idea ever. Calculators are the worst idea ever. Some specific points to make:
Number 1:
How many students can actually add/subtract/multiply/divide without having to turn to a calculator? Very few, and sticking more computers and PDA's into the classroom won't solve anything.
I've taught math classes using graphing calculators. Yes, they can do things nice and pretty and quick. There are two problems. The first is a practical one -- every single class the students have to be shown over again how to use the calculator. Second, they may know how to produce a box-and-whisker plot by pressing the right buttons, but do they have any deeper understanding of what they're doing and why they're doing it? Not really.
Number 2:
It's a whole lot easier for administrators to get their picture taken in a brand new computer lab with lots of stuff to show off, than it is for them to get their picture taken next to a brand new, innovative, and ground-breaking curriculum. We can't really expect the public to demand anything else. People are a lot more content when money is spent on something tangible that they can see.
Number 3:
Suppose we've got every student plugging away at their PDAs. Where's the collaboration? Group learning? Student-led learning? All I can see are a bunch of solitary students going through the motions on a device.
There's no disadvantage to having students work with (gasp!) pencil and paper and to work in groups, without depending on these external devices. Confidence (and academic performance) increases when students realize that they have knowledge and ability beyond a device.
Number 4:
Computers are tools; they're good tools. But we have to remember that they're just that. They don't "make" students learn. They may help develop understanding, but they certainly don't cause students to learn.
We have to require teachers to stick to their chalk. If we don't, it's all downhill from here.
Still, there are a few decent games available for the Palm platform. Back when I had a Palm (before I bought my HP Jornada) I wasted a lot of time playing Miles Borne (had a different name for the Palm, though).
If that's not enough I'm sure the students will find ways to kill time. Don't underestimate the ability and resourcefulness of students trying to avoid schoolwork.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
Compare how many different languages are spoken in an urban public school today, as opposed to 70 years ago. It's a lot easier to teach reading when all (or the vast majority) of your students speak English. Also I suspect that students were a lot less transitory back then -- same students came up through elementary, intermediate and high school together and were at roughly the same level.
Today you have immigrants foreign and domestic and a 9th grade teacher may have students who come from half a dozen different intermediate schools and even a few different countries. Finding a common ground to teach all of them from is difficult and, unfortunately, too often means dumbing down the curriculum to a level that all of them are ready for -- at the obvious expense of the more advanced students.
A student can excel in a public school setting but it almost always requires a home environment that values and emphasizes education. Those situations are all too rare these days.
I won't even get started on the respect and discipline aspects of a modern classroom.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
that PDA's only interaction with schools is clogging the hallways between classes and should therefore be banned. I mean, who really wants to watch some dude sticking his tongue down.. erh.. hUh? Oohhhhh.. THAT kind of PDA.. nevermind..
But for real, PDA's in their current state downright suck. I'll buy one when it runs all my usual open source software, has a bluetooth transmitter, and uses a power-efficient organic LED screen. Right now, they're just yuppie gizmos with no real purpose. A tiny pad of scratch paper in my back pocket does just as well with less weight, no batteries, and no clumsy graffiti language to learn. Then, I can just type in new contacts once I get home and print out a 3-point font list to put in my wallet.
Gah, Anonymous Coward should read the next article about education.
Palms are fine in their own way, but they are not immediately programmable (and graffiti is harder to use than a keyboard). Until Palms become as flexible as the (inferior, bulkier, slower) TI-85, Palms will retain the status of expensive yuppie toys.
>|<*:=
I use my Palm Pilot IIIc extensively in school, and at home. It's an invaluable tool for contacting parents as to the location of my sister...but that's off topic.
In school I use my Palm IIIc as a word processor and I have been for over a year. Using it with the Palm Portable Keyboard, I can easily fit both into my pockets, and yet have the ability to quickly take notes at over 100 wpm, and write rough drafts of essays on my palm, type Do-Nows, and type up labs.
I also use it as an interactive agenda that is much easier to use and access then the paper one handed out by the school.
Lastly I use it to remember all the phone numbers that I otherwise would forget. I have other uses but these are the ones that I use mainly in school.
As for games, I really don't play them in class unless I have a subsitute and have already completed my work. I do this because I know that using my Palm is a right, and not a privilage.
At first my teachers were speptical of its uses, but by the end of the year most students were in awe of it's usefullness (no need to write a rough draft, only to type it up at home), and teachers were also impressed with it's functionality compared to using pen & paper.
I can't use a laptop in my High School because it is prohibited until you become a senior, and I am entering my Jenior year in a few weeks.
I used QuickWord + doc files (purchased) last year with Windows 98, but this year I am using WordSmith and the memo format unless it goes over 4k at which time I'd use the doc format and do a backup of the palm (there is no easy to use two way conduit for linux).
Although this may be a slight setback, I think I will be able to do everything I did in Windows in Linux, and because of it's added stability & multi-user nature I can easily use VNC at school (in classes with computers for all students or the library).
Jason Cohen
Alot of people have been talking about calculators and how they used them in school, well I'm class of 2000, I had my scientific calculator all through Jr. High and High school. my senior year our Calculus teacher loaned us all a TI-83s, and guess what happend, well only one person in the class put any games on it, but he went wild, I honestly thought he was gonna steal his when it was time to give 'em back at the end of the year. I think that calculators are over used it schools, I personally am soo dependent on mine that I sometime do simple adding on, NO JOKE.
I am reminded of an anecdote in the biography of Richard Feyman, Adventures of a Curious Character, it's about him and an abacus sellsman, long story short they compete to see who can do math faster and he uses alot of shortcuts he learned to speed up the calculations. I think that when a student has a calculator in front of him/her they tend not to think about it and turn into zombies, I shure did, and do. but doing math without calculators has it's advantages, get the student to think more, I know were talking about public school but I still expect 'em to think sometimes. I know I got off the topic alot but, I'm just sorta ranting so it's okay :)
So long story short, PDAs are relativly new and everyone is thinking that they will be everywhere in the school of the future, but people said the samething about laptops. Technology will move into the classroom very slowly, and most likely it will be the students who bring it there, and eventually the schools will accept it. But I personally don't like PDA's, who wants to use a stylus, as soon as one comes along that I can use voice recognition software with, then I'll get one.
PDAs could bring about a whole new way of textbooks. School Districts spend so much money of a text, that becomes outdates long before they are able to get a new set of books. Why not go electronic?
---------------- dirksanders@home.com
If you're going to stick computers in the hands of every student in a school you better be teaching them to program the goddamned thing. I think it's pretty ridiculous that math classes now pretty much require a graphing calculator yet don't teach you to do anything useful with it. It is a tool, learn to use it. I'd like to see math teachers having kids write programs on their TI-85s to solve math problems for them. In order to write said programs the kids have to become well aqainted with the problem they're trying to solve and use basic logic to figure out HOW to write their programs. Same with chemistry and physics, if you want to teach motion of falling bodies or percent yield it is as easy as teaching someone to program a computer to figure out the actual values for them.
I think providing students with some sort of electronic medium to store and access information is a good idea in some cases but I can only imagine how something like this would go over at my old high school. Half the students would probably sell something like this for weed or booze money. The main hurdle of any sort of electronic device being provided by schools also requires a sometimes extensive infrastructure to back it up. Paper books don't require this sort of infrastructure whereas a CD-ROM requires a fairly expensive computer in order to be of any use.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I have a palm m100 for school, it's nice for taking notes with the portable keyboard in class, and you can schedule your whole day, keep track of your homework, and also have something to keep your friends numbers. AND we must not forget games when you get bored in class. I say hooray for anyone else who uses a PDA for school puposes.
"punk is dead, look out for the new faction"
Actually, you are right on the "fruit" note. That word's been stuck in my head ever since a particular joke my girlfriend pulled over me... {;D}=
Actually you should learn logic thinking in school, adapting concepts ... not looking up standard solutions. Thats why I agree with banning electronic devices, they distract you from thinking on your own, you rather check if your little black box knows an answer.
.sigh
Just before my Finals I got a Palm m100 and a folding keyboard. The total cost was c. 170 UKP. I also got myself a copy of the Pedit editor for the palm.
I now had a full sized keyboard and word processor (although without a spell check, which would have been better) which I could take in a couple of pockets or a rucksack to lectures, libraries, the park, etc. and which added many, many times to my ability to study, cross reference and take notes. Not to mention other PDA functions I used.
But I would not have attempted to enter notes with the pen, any more than I would write this post using the mouse. Nor would I have written my thesis on my PDA, any more than I would write emails in LaTeX.
I was in Professor Soloway's software engineering class last semester, so I know quite a bit about his research/views on PDAs in education. From what I understand, he has two primary arguments:
1) Technology - computers in particular - can and should be used to increase the quality of education children are receiving.
It is by no means a substitute for skilled and creative teachers, curriculum, etc. (duh) However, the responsibility of the schools is to prepare students to function effectively in the world. With the world moving rapidly towards ubiquitous computing (how many people work at a desk without a computer these days?), children need to be exposed to them in schools as well. This ensures that even students from lower income families will have such exposure, and that the kids might actually do something with the technology other than playing games.
2) PDAs are more suited to the needs of an educational environment than full scale desktop or laptop computers.
There are good reasons for this. The big one is price. In order for computers to become an everyday part of the curriculum, every student must have easy access to one at any given time. For the price of one desktop machine, you can get 10 PDAs. Whether they are provided by the school or the student (or some combination) is irrelevent as long as they are easily accessible to the students. Size and portability are another big plus for PDAs. They are small enough that they can be incorporated into normal classrooms (not just special purpose labs). They can also be carried to other classes or home for homework assignments. The pencil has been one of the most successful educational hits of all time, but it's due for an upgrade.
The major problems are hardware limitations and the lack of good, innovative educational software for portable platforms. Hardware (processing power, memory, I/O functionality) will improve with time, and even the current versions are capable of doing some amazing things. Soloway is part of a large group of researchers (www.hice.org) who are trying to solve the software problem.
PDAs can do a lot of things we already do without tech: take notes, keep schedules and assignments, flashcards, books, cheating, dictionaries, calculators, etc. But that isn't really the point. What can technology do for us that we couldn't do before? That is the interesting question. Interactive maps, evolutionary simulations, digital dissections, production-rule based programming systems, interactive testing, statistics demonstrations. . . there are exciting possibilities for just about any age group and subject. This stuff isn't ready for prime time yet, but someone needs to develop it so that in five years it will be.
"where students beam around a virus from Palm to Palm and then figure out how it propagated"
We have this game at our school. It's very similar, but called "STDs"...
I'm thinking that handing my Newton to my 2nd grade daughter (or getting her one of her own) would do wonders for her handwriting. The handwriting recognition S/W and the "writing practice" tool (which I often use as a "game" since it provides reassuring feedback) may be a useful means of encouraging handwriting skills that are "open source" (readable to others who ain'r pharmacists)...
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
All the rage among younger students is the Cybiko, which is sort of a combo game system and PDA. The killer part of the Cybiko, however, is that it can become part of a wireless network made up of other Cybikos. Each can broadcast a signal up to 300 feet, but a school full of them creates a network that covers the entire school.
And the killer app: chatting! Well, that an wireless gaming. I can understand why teachers would want to get rid of these things. And they only cost $99 or so--with constant special offers--so they're easy to get. Neat hardware, though.
Big brother? School is about being big brother in the good sense - someone who watches out for your best interests, makes sure you know how to do important things (like read), tries to help you overcome obstacles ("gee, that's a hard problem, what about doing
right, because after all that great stuff happened, PROGRESS STOPPED.
idiot.
http://mgoblog.com
A co-worker told me that early on [perhaps Plato => 18th century, don't know] a 'course' at a University was a professor's 'work in progress' i.e. his next book.
Once he wrote the book, the course was never taught by him again.
Kind of the inverse of today.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I smell a market here ... can you say IR-Sniffer(tm)?
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Combining PhysEd & SexEd
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