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Handhelds for Students?
OmegaGeek writes "Wired is reporting from NECC 2002 that one solution to achieving universal computer access advocated by teachers (and marketing departments too, no doubt) is the use of handheld computers instead of laptops or desktop PCs. Is this a reasonable solution? Does it offer anything for the students other than the ability to beam notes instead of passing a piece of paper? I've also posted a commentary at LearningTech."
The idea looks nice, but the blocking factor would be the speed at which notes could be taken, I'm afraid. I grafitti much slower than I type, but I type slower than I can take notes on paper. So what you'd be left with would be an expensive replacement for textbooks.
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
doesn't anyone else recall the Apple eMate 300?
That was classic intercourse!
It takes just as long to learn how to program one of those things (in my day it was the hp 48) than it does to simply upload the material to your brain using a little IO device called "studying."
Just my $.02 YMMV
You slap one of these into their hands and the first thing they'll do is install a game into it and start playing. While this may not be that far from what adults would do, it certainly wouldn't help education.
Computers don't belong in the classroom. They belong in the library or at home.
Giving kids expensive gadgets is an even worse idea than teaching kids in front of computers.
At least I know I can always mug a kid in the school parking lot and get myself a PDA and a hot piece of ass.
I have been pwned because my
My school in illinois has palm IIIxe's for studens.. i think its the most useless thing any student can have.. i just bring my linuxtop to school and use that.. and i got it for about the price as one of them pda's with the keyboards.. laptops are better.. pda's.. laff
PDA's and other hand-held devices can be a huge boon to anyone who has the capacity to use them. Sure, students who already know how to use a computer and _type_ will benefit from the technology. However, what about students who lack that. We haven't reached the point where all students in all public schools have computer access or even a relevant amount of computer knowledge. To a certain extent; this is overkill. I don't quite think this will turn into glorified note passing; Given the chance to roll their own apps, I think this could result in a number of great projects. I know that if I had been handed some form of PDA with wireless capability in high school, my friends and I would have developed some form of networked app/network game. (Ahh, the joys of having time to code in homeroom) However, the amount of experimentation that would be allowed with the device would be called into question; You'd need a really progressive school system to allow that type of innovation.
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
I'm a college student. I bought a PDA the summer before I entered, preparing for what I thought I would need for the University. Spent 299 USD on the PDA.
/. typing speed (110 wpm), I type far faster then I write... so, I take very complete notes, I can pay attention to the professor (since I'm not busily writing), and my grades have improved.
... never spent a better 299 ever. Also picked up a targus keyboard, and I use it to take notes. As someone with an average
PDAs for gradeschoolers? I'm all for it. Just make sure you still have desktops in the classroom
--- Ãther SPOON!
I think educators are basically being tapped out for their budget, so they are being marketed (or "marked") by poeple who have computers and want to sell it.
But before we step in to the "can we do it?" phase, we need to step into the "Why?" phase:
What advantage is this going to confer to kids?
A radically changed lesson plan to incorporate whiz-bang gizmos, where neither the lesson plan nor the gizmos have had all their bugs wrinkled out?
No, this is a bottom up approach and you end up having the tail wag the dog. Lets look at computers in some schools- in the late 80's my grammar school had a couple of Commodore PETs (literally 2), it was wheeled out for special occaisions (once a year) and wheeled back into its closet. It was obvious that they bought the hype that "computers are our future, so simply by having one near a classroom it will enrich the students!"
We need a top down approach: what are we trying to teach? How best to implement the lesson plan?
And if you want to teach "computers" (ugh, who'd want to take that class?!) figure out what you want to do- maybe instead of a hand held device one of those microprocessor lab trainers (a computer on a board with a led read out and hex keypad input), or a unix system, or just a plain ol' windows box with Word on it (hey, typing is a skill!)
I hate when people just throw tech at a problem without thinking it through.
This guy,
is doomed.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
From the article: "It gives all kids an opportunity to use technology," he said.
That's a pretty pointless statement to make. When the kids ride a schoolbus to school, they're using technology. When they use a toaster to toast their pop-tarts in the morning, they're using technology. When they change the channel on their TV with a remote control, they're using technology. If they have a wristwatch, they're using technology!
It sounds to me like whoever wrote this article is getting kickbacks from the handheld manufacturers.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I'm glad a don't live in San Antonio and have to fund this with my tax dollars. It is a stupid and clueless waste, and a cop out for real education. A computer lab should be enough. We have such a freaking gadget fetish, and now we're shoving it onto kids? So they are not allowed to carry cell phones and pages, but handhelds are now mandatory? These will largely just be used for games and various other bullshit and time wasting. The most valuable part of education will come from teachers and books - not the technological gadget of the day. Imagine a teacher having to compete for attention with the handhelds of each student. Hey, I have a really cool handheld: a notepad and a freakin pencil.
The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Why don't they phase in support for handhelds and see how effective they are? The kids that have enought money to get handhelds can be the testers of the system. If it catches on and teachers and kids seem to benefit, they can progress from there. We can discuss what we think are pros and cons all day, but until they actually do a study or run a pilot program no one really knows the impact handhelds will have on learning.
While the use of a PDA for note taking can be a waste of time, I imagine the possibilities of mathematics software is limitless. Considering many parents are still shelling out $100 for the same TI-81 I purchased 10 years ago in high school, this may relieve them of that burden.
Perhaps our future math students will be able to better understand more complex complex systems when they can see them rendered in a more realistic fashion (how about 3-D graphs???) Not only that, modern programming languages can be utilized on PDA, where the TI-81 crew is stuck with basic.
Perhaps good old Steve Wolfram can port Mathematica to the PocketPC platform.
I have no doubt PDAs are useless for anything not science related, and I would guess that if a kid was diligently poking away during english class his professor would be rightly dismayed.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
My wife has a slim little toshiba laptop and she types much faster ( not to mention much neater) than she can scrawl with a pen or pencil.
Given the extremes, it seems silly to "mandate" such a thing into existence- let the typers type, let the writers write, and let the kids who sleep in the back use a tape recorder!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This would cost a small fortune, those lil' computers ain't cheap. Not to mention, they are very easy to loose! It's hard to loose a laptop down the back of a sofa :)
Being a grown-up, and being as careful as you are with YOUR hand-held that you care deeply about, how much attention do you pay to where you put it? Ever put it in your pocket and walk into the corner of a desk, thusly crushing the screen? Ever put it in your bookbag and then plop the bag down on the floor? I've broken the touch-sensitive surface of my IIIxe at least twice in the years I've had it, and although it's easy to replace, it's still a hassle. I got a bumper case for it, but it's a pain to take out to dock...
Anyway does anybody really think a bunch of school kids (given some of them are tech-saavy, but...) are going to be able to keep their expensive (it's still more than a bottom of the line TI graphing calculator) PDA's in one piece? I think that has always been part of the argument against giving students laptops too.
I think it's fine and dandy to have a centralized system where a kid can go to a computer in the library and see when his homework is due and look at notes from class, but anything else is just fodder for either breakage or game-playing.
-S
Ok, we know how frequently Laptop computers get stolen in schools... Can you imagine how many of these things could, nay, WILL, get stolen? All you gotta do is shove it in your pocket.. a laptop at least requires a *little* bit of planning ...
...
The schools had better have good replacement policies, otherwise there's going to be a lot of kids that are SOL when their PDA gets stolen on the 2nd day of school... And I'm sure that it's going to cost a pretty penny to replace all these things.
Maybe each of the PDA's should have the owners name inscribed in them in such a way that to remove the name would require a very noticable degree of damage to the device... that might serve as a deterrent.
In any case, I'm not saying that giving all the kids PDA's is necessarily a bad thing, just that there's going to be lots of social and financial implications for the schools and students involved
ìì!
I work (as a contractor) at a Board of Ed. We've had three different laptop programs, and the first two were dismal failures. Now with the 3rd one, kids won't be taking them home. The problem with laptops and kids is the same as palmtops and kids.
The problem is that children aren't adults, and are (generally) less responsible and tend to throw their bags/coats etc. In short, things get broken. Never mind "I left it at home" excuse derailing a project and wasting time in the classroom. Wired workstations are still the way to go, not only for speed, but also for reliability.
Before asking "can we", the question is "should we"?
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Yet another expensive item kids can lose, steal, beat to death.
And for what? So they have another avenue to play Tetris.
I remember when I was in HS I had one ofthe early palm pilots (I worked at a store and got em cheap). I used to take it into exams as my calculator. The teachers had never seen one, so I showed them how I could just touch the screen on the calc and how great it was, so easy to use and had big numbers for my bad eyes ...
... but the opportuntity is there for some serious cheating on exams etc.
but really, once the exam started, I just flipped to my formula page so I didn't have to remember the damned things. I never had the patience to put more info than formulas
I believe handhelds deserve to become ubiquitous more than PCs do. Most people use their desktop PCs for appointment and contact books, email and web - getting this functionality off their desk and into their pocket would be incredible. A widespread accessible wireless network will be the killer-app that move handhelds off shelves and into pockets in droves.
We're beginning to see a convergence of handheld computers and mobile phones. Nokia tried it a few years back before the technology was capable, Handspring is now trying to do the same thing and having a little more success. But I don't think the (expensive) mobile network will endear itself to customers as a means of sending data. We really need a ubiquitous accessible wireless network, and it so happens that right about now we have several wireless networks starting to gather steam. In fact, this might lead to an interesting clash between mobile networks and VoIP ... but I'm digresing ...
By the time the network is up and commercial grade, handhelds will acceptably cheap (they're still too expensive right now for most people). Cheap and functional is always a winning combination.
The idea which began with the Newton has waited a long time to come to fruition.
why must we spend all this money? I didnt have computers when I went to school.
with the exception of computer class they arent needed.
children need to learn math in their heads they need to know why math works the way it does.
history is history, the events of 1776 will not change, so a nice hard copy book that will last 5 years will be cheaper than a computer that is obsolite in 2.
english/writing classes, have you seen the hand writing of people lately?
computers are just a waste of taxpayers money, how about giving "good" teachers a raise instead?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
All I can say is this is just the slippery slope. They start out getting their hands held, and the next thing you know they're pregnant. When will you people learn that an abstinence based sex education program that promotes ZERO PHYSICAL CONTACT before marriage is the only valid response to the creeping moral decline in this country?!
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
At this time, we need to be focussing on Equality of Opportunity by making sure every citizen is literate, understands at least enough Math to balance a checkbook and understand how to save money, and understands enough science to know snake oil salesmen when they show up. If a person knows that much, they can take their destiny into their own hands and learn the rest from books, the Net, whatever.
That is not to say we should not strive to make computers available to everyone - internet computers in libraries are a great idea. But first things first.
Try teaching kids how to learn without power. The old way. This push for non-needed techno-toys in the classroom will only cloud the issues. The main issue being that "teachers" do not know the subject they are teaching. They have degrees in
"Teaching", but do not know anything about any subject in particular. My son has had many teachers of this type, and it is painfully obvious in my parent/teacher conferences. These are lamoids pretending to teach. I would be willing to bet that I test better than 95 percent of these jokers. I have been out of school for over 40 years. Shazaam!
I currently use my PDA all the time (PalmIII, cauze that's all my OSAP poor ass can afford). It holds contact info, appointments, SCHEDULES MY CLASSES (its really important not to forget to go to a class). Now that's what it was ment for. Nothing too fancy, we aren't talking about 2 Gig's of data and an on board compiler (I couldn't imagine programing on one of those, a compile would take for ever).
I do keep the prof's lecture notes (PDF), but I don't take notes on it.
Palm has a little keyboard attachemnt that folds up. It seems pretty quiet, a classmate has one, but you have to be a fast typer. =)
At my work, this summer we will require all High School students to buy a Thinkpad, iBook or Powerbook G4.
Already, the English department requires everything to be done on a computer, we offer classes on photography without a darkroom (Photoshop/Gimp) and there is a huge amount of digital photography and video.
Our campus is 90% covered in 802.11b and we have a flexable attitude towards study locations and learning, so we think that laptops will be a great boon to education at this level.
but HANDJOBS for EVERYONE!!!
(Forward, never backward,
upward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling...)
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I just graduated from a high school where we had a good 450 of those iPaq things floating around. I went to River Hill High School in Clarksville, MD (AKA Rich White Boy School).
The handheld program has been nothing but a failure.
First year, they tried giving them all to the 9th graders. All they did was download porn over the 802.11b (I'm not kidding), and play games. Forget actually using them for anything. The 'school' software we had never worked, and was served off crappy Compaq Armada laptops that never stayed on for very long. Not to mention how often the kids broke them and refused to pay.
After that mess, they tried making 5 or 6 classrooms digital. The most we ever used it for was to browse the web, except when we were showing off for the newspapers and TV. Given the fact that a full unit cost $700 (color IPaq, expansion sleeve, keyboard, case, Cisco 802.11b card), I'd just as soon see the money into buying eMacs or Dells instead of this. Then at least, we could see what we're browsing on the web.
I have seen it more common recently for people to use Slashdot as a vehicle for self-publishing (which is the actual Russian definition of 'samizdat', by the way, no connotation implied). The usual quote is: "I posted my {article/white paper/dissertation/legal brief} here, what do people think about it?" Thus advertised, it begins generating web hits. Don't first-person posts lose a little bit of objectivity? I'm not being disdainful, just wondering.
I do agree with the idea, though, that all students should have ready access to the data world. I hate to see such a potent tool of empowerment not being available to the disadvantaged.
I am a 2nd year college student (or will be in a few months) and I bought a palm vx with the foldable keyboard. This is great for typing up letters and etc. Of course as an organizer it is also better than paper which I used to use. $299 is alot more affordable than $1299
While I believe you can make this an adequate and cheaper alternative to laptops, it should only be done on the high school level. As a first grader I would have beaten the thing to death.
However, if palm or someone makes a school version of lets say the m100, something sturdy, I bet the repl cost could be incredibly cheap.
--Joey
Here at the University of South Dakota (yes we have a university) all incomming freshmen get a palm m500, which they pay for over a few semesters. This was a huge publicity opportunity for the university, but all in all, I don't think the students have found the devices all that useful. They refer to them as $400 gameboys. Some have even sold theirs. I would say that very few students use them for school. Having said that, I have a palm and I use it all the time, but more for work than school. that is all.
This is a sad state of affair. This is just the beginning with no end in sight. When I was in school I had just one Computer class. Most of that time was spent me hacking the system because I had a computer at home and no one else had a clue what it did besides play Duke Nuke'em. Now we are going to give these kids something that will allow them to hack other kids PDAs while the teacher is not looking? Is this a new for of bullying? Now the nerds will have the upperhand in school when they can steal everyone's home work and make the school bully give them there lunch money for it back.
If managers knew IT they would not be managers. They would be on the helpdesk.
At USD, thats University of South Dakota for those who live outside the Mt. Rushmore State, the administration has completed the first year of a 3 year "pilot" program where all incomming students receive a PALM M500, assorted software, USB cradle (That I still cannot get to work with linux) and access to Infrared ports scattered through most of the buildings on campus. These provide access to the internet for email, news, upgrades, assignments, and anything else you might want.
After the first year, adoption or use by the student population runs around 50%. The other half either collect dust or sell them on E-bay. Professors like them, because it makes producing a handout or study guide easier, beaming to a few students who then "pass it on" and saving paper. The biggest problem has been classes where only 1/2 to 1/3 of students have either been issued a PALM (freshmen only) or have bothered to bring it. The next plan is to have certain sections of popular classes be listed "PALM Only" so professors and students so inclined actually CAN take advantage of the devicecs.
Students who use them most often take advantage of the handheld news options, email, and the like. My personal favorite was to transfer my notes to the PALM so I could study for finals while I'm out fishing.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
I agree.
... but when you exchanged the ir send diode in the hp48 against a more powerful one, you could pass notes, results, formulas over 15 meters during exams.
Saved me more than one time.
Frankly I just don't get it. There are two good ways to learn about something: do it or discuss it. Hands-on learning is really only useful in some subjects (chemistry, CS, etc.) so that leaves discussion for most school subjects. The best discussions occur in small classrooms where everyone has done the reading. I don't see where computers fit in here. Sure, it's nice to have access for online articles etc. but usually computer projects in highschool involve making a webpage or powerpoint presentation, neither of which have *anything to do with the subject at hand* I dislike the idea that schools are corporate training. I don't want my tax dollars teaching tenth graders to be entry level HTML authors.
Don't get me wrong. I love computers. But I've yet to see an application in the classroom beyond simple word-processing and document search that makes them anything more that $1000 time wasting devices. Computers are the worksheets and posters of a new generation, a busywork tool for lazy teachers. I'd rather see that money going to increased teacher salaries, building new schools, or buying more textbooks.
My highschool started purchasing laptops for the students (and increasing tuition by fifteen hundred dollars) the year after I graduated. My sister's still there though and she tells me the laptops do nothing but help students not pay attention. The class sits, computers open, not listening because they're talking on AIM and someone will post the notes online anyway. Every once in a while they'll do a "research" project online that involves little more than cutting and pasting from online encyclopedias.
I do approve of Computer Science (if taught well and not just as job training) in the schools, and I do think that computers can be useful in the classroom, even if they aren't often put to good use. But with the sad state of American education being as it is, I think we're a *long* way away from the point that a laptop is the best way to spend $1500 of the education budget (not to mention additional hires and resources)
I've no experience with Pocket PC devices in the classroom, but I'd imagine it would be worse. The Pocket PC fails in the two areas that school computers are actually worthwhile - word processing and internet search. They're totally inadequate for word processing and not quite there on internet search (small (lo-res) screen doesn't support many pages, awkward interface, wireless concerns). So this initiative seems to only make classroom technology more useless.
I guess they make school more fun, but unless you're the type of student for whom learning really is a pleasure, in which case you'll do just fine regardless, school being more fun probably means you're learning less.
in 1900 you weren't considered educated without fluency in Greek, Latin, French and German...
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
How the PDAs are handled by these kids (including being broken, stolen, etc.) is besides the point. If we know PDAs will help them manage the information that they're bombarded with daily then they should be used. Working out the logisitics is really secondary.
--I found this famous reference. Note: questions apply to the year 1895, so take that into account. This is an 8th grade graduation final exam from 1895, but the complexity and thoroughness is still relevant, along with a lot of the questions.
http://www.rense.com/general/1865.htm
The school system in the county where I live implemented a huge technology program last year. They signed a deal with Apple, and now every high school and middle school student in the district has an iBook loaned to them for their years in school. It has turned out to be somewhat nightmarish. The school system was in such a rush to be the first to do a tech initiative on this scale that they didn't consider a lot of the logistic problems that would come up:
1) They didn't upgrade the network before adding 30,000 or so new people to it, which led to a lot of connection problems.
2) A lot of the teachers weren't tech-minded enough to be able to use the iBooks effectively in the classroom.
3) The students tended to use the iBooks for things like IM, IRC, and online games while in class. Some more industrious kids downloaded full-length porn movies. The amount of firewalling and filtering that the district had to put in place to counteract "unauthorized usage" is unreal.
4) Because of the pressure from the district to have paper-free classrooms, a lot of teachers had to switch to different texts solely because they were offered on CD-ROM. In most cases, the CD-ROM texts have either been not as well-written as the actual books, or are filled with errors.
Now, I like computers. However, I don't think an all-encompassing program like either the above-mentioned iBook fiasco or the PDA program in the article is appropriate. If the schools want to teach kids how to use computers, that's wonderful. The place for doing that, however, shouldn't be a math class. The main focus in any academic class should be the subject, NOT the nifty gadgets the school has. Our county school district here has made it quite clear that the technology being used is FAR more important than the subjects that the students are supposed to be learning, and I have to have a problem with that.
You want to teach computer skills to students in high school? Have a computer skills class. You feel that computer skills should be as important as other main subjects like English and math? Heck, make computers a part of the main curriculum. Just leave it out of the other classes, and let those teachers teach what they need to teach without wondering if they're effectively using the district-mandated tech stuff.
Sickening....
Didn't you try to talk reason to the people who decided this? I know I would have tried.
Back when I was at school we didn't have computers at school and it was perfectly reasonable to return your assignment written by hand. Of course, I didn't do that for I had a computer... but that were the good old days when Macs, Amiga's and DOS-based PC's roamed the world.
Laptops or tablets are a better option. I am an avid Palm fan/user however I also take a tablet (paper kind) to meetings. The limitations of writing and size are too great given the current level of technology. I read ebooks on my palm but I don't think a set of textbooks would be practical.
On the other hand, many people are going too high end. Forget gaming or graphics, etc. This is school. Text editing, note taking, paper writing, math solving (3 R's type work). How about new "older" versions of machines. Under-powered for today's executives but more than enough for this type of work. Even a "skinny" Linux capable of running KDE/GNOME and Open Office would give them a heck of a boost. (I said Linux because of the legal issues of attempting to outfit them with win98 and cost)
Too often I see these fail because everyone wants to supply a machine for the minority (1ghz+ processor, 256meg of ram and 40 gig hard drive. If the kids want to learn to code, or extend the power of what they are doing, that is fine, but we need a product for the masses. How about a 333mhx, 128 meg of memory, 4 gig hard drive, and modem/Ethernet card running at 800x600. It would seem someone could produce such a laptop that was shock resistant for under $500 a piece and still make money. This is so far off bleeding edge, offices are probably using them for door stops.
By the way, I used my laptop as this example(IBM 1400I) which does 80% of what I need to do as a developer (mail, documentation, notes, etc). I even manage a couple of games. These kids would be hard pressed to use this to its potential.
Come on laptop producers. Step up and take the challenge. How about making $12 on 10,000 machines instead of $100 on a 1000?
But beyond just providing an instant reference the laptops provided a way to communicate with the professor during lecture without disrupting class and without fear of embarrasment. The professor set up an IM account that he left logged on during lecture. Anyone at any time could IM the prof questions, comments, or links to reference material anonymously and the professor could then answer them at a convenient point in the lecture. Some might argue that anonymity may not allow the professor to get to know about their students, but I feel that in large lectures, alot of questions go unasked because people feel too embarrassed to ask them. In our class the professor knew exactly when something he said needed clarification. I think the students benefitted greatly from what the technology allowed.
No brain, no pain!
i live in a school district where, by the end of the decade, every student at every school will be issued a laptop computer and every school will have wifi access. i did some observations at the one school where it has already been set up this past semester. here, in brief, are my observations.
THE GOOD:
1) no more handouts--i always disliked the fact that about 3 or 4 trees a day die to supply a school with enough paper for handouts. teachers can just email documents or have students retrieve them from a shared folder on the network.
2) speeds up the grading/correcting process--i saw one teacher in particular who would have her students e-mail her their essays. she would open them in word, type her comments in parentheses, in bold face, in red, and email them back to the students. this also helps with the reduction in wasted paper.
3) allows a greater flexibility in projects--one teacher assigned a mock-newspaper assignment, so they used a desktop publishing program. in another class, some students who were doing projects on commercials as propaganda used powerpoint to create a parody nike commercial. sure you could have done these projects before the computers, but the computers helped to facillitate those projects.
4) puts the internet right there for research--this might not be such a great thing, considering some of the crap that is on the web, but over all, i think this is a good thing.
THE BAD:
1) new forms of note passing--i saw lots of kids chatting with each other on MSN, AIM, trillian, etc. there are obvious ways to stop this (disallowing access to certain ports leaps to mind) but for some reason they had not done anything to prevent it.
2) games--i also saw on one or two occasions kids playing games on the computers, not that i have a problem with games qua games, just games when they ought to be studying.
3) just simply playing with technology--i saw one particular occasion where these two guys were downloading pictures of various celebs off the web and were mutilating them in some very humorous ways using photoshop when they should have been working on something else (though i have to admit, i did laugh at what they did to britney spears).
4) file sharing--the school, as i heard from several teachers and administrators, is worried about being attacked by the RIAA/MPAA/whatever in the form of DMCA violations.
5) misc. illegal activities--though i didn't see any kids looking at pr0n or w4r3z sites, i imagine that at least a handful do when they're at lunch or something.
THE UGLY:
1)cost--it's not cheap to keep all those laptops running, and as M$ pushes out new "upgrades" the district will have to buy new software and new hardware to run it on. fortunately, the school district has a pretty strong source of revenue in lots of businesses paying property taxes, despite being a majority-minority school district.
overall, i think the pros outweigh the cons here. to properly implement a program like this takes lots of staff development, so that the teachers know how to properly integrate the technology into the classroom, as opposed to being overwhelmed by it.
my pet machine
"At least I know I can always mug a kid in the school parking lot and get myself a PDA and a hot piece of ass." uhh if thats what it comes down to what pedifiles really want...guess the schools should conform appropriately...thanks for tellin everyone how you really feel
-Alicia
Handing out technology is pretty much the mindset that has prevailed in the schools up to now, and it doesn't work. Teachers don't have the time or resources to effectively use the Macs/PCs they have, and most schools have no competent SysAdmin--they usually draft a teacher and they grudgingly do it for a year.
Talk to your local elem. school teachers, esp. ones with diverse classrooms, and get a feel for their challenges. Then tailor a technology approach that meets their needs; if you can find ways to improve the effectiveness of teaching, you will help more kids.
I think that the ideal device would be a PDA that is so ubiquitous and inexpensive that it is not worth stealing, and no great loss if damaged or misplaced. Now, design a classroom around that device-- the child carriers the PDA home or to school, but at either place it can be plugged into the desktop and become part of a more capable, flexible learning system, with a keyboard, mouse, or other input device depending on the child's need. No more text books-- all instructional media is electronic and licensed to the school system.
The main initial benefit of the EDA (let's call it) is to provide local storage of homework assignments, calandar, contact, basic reference information, and statistics on use. This ensures that kids can't forget their textbook, or homework assignment, or spelling list, or worksheet, because the teacher can synch every EDA in the class at the end of the day.
Unplugged, the EDA stores key imformation for homework, reading, and studies-- much like a handspring or palmpilot. Plugged into class net or a home PC, it is the front-end of a more powerful networked information device.
More ambitiously, use the EDA and the wired classroom to give teachers instantaneous feedback on student interaction, learning, participation. No more night spent grading papers, other than writing assignments. Basic skills tests are graded instantaneously, proving the teacher with immediate feedback on instructional effectiveness. Each kid can advance at his/her own pace--"leave no kid behind" would become a reality.
The Teacher's workstation would enable them to scan the entire class during a writing or reading assignment, enable or disable instant messaging or polling, and even measure the time use and interaction on a class assignment, realtime, or record statistics that can be analyzed later. This would also make standardized testing much more consistent across classrooms, schools, and school districts.
Stop with the "Apples for the Students" already. It is having little positive impact on learning, burdens teachers that are already overloaded, and amounts to little more than a toy that teachers use to distract students while they provide individual attention on handle admin duties.
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This reminds me of the article posted just a few days ago:
Video Games in Gym Class - DDR 101?
I think that is a more pratical application of technology being introduced in schools.
Actually, I just completed doing this. I took a sociolinguistics class as a postgrad, and took all my notes on my palmtop pc, a cassiopeia, because I was too lazy to . I found out a couple things:
1) The urge to play games was immense, because nobody (save the folks behind you) can tell what you're really doing on there.
2) Input is not that bad. I use the Fitaly keypad and was getting upwards of 20 wpm after a few days. Character recognition was terrible in the basic setup. But what really helps after a while is the word suggestion -- especially since a lot of the class was learning and applying new terms.
3) I didn't feel out of place or nerdy, except that I was taking notes and many others weren't. I was regarded as more of an outcast for not having a cell phone.
4) When my stylus broke, I was sort of fucked. Same with power outages -- once I played games for three hours before class and missed a day's worth of notes. I was late with a paper because I had totally drained the batteries and couldn't charge it fast enough to print.
5) The incompatibility with PalmOS made it impossilbe to "note pass" digitally. I understand there's a $30 program that lets you interchange, but it seems costly just to send "Prof's a goober" to another techno loser. I have seen people swap notes via palm to palm connections, but it often took so long to negociate that I wonder if copying by hand might be easier.
6) Because nobody knew how to use my pc, when I passed it around to get people's email addresses I would usually have to enter them myself. Everybody understands a pen.
For what it's worth, the palm made it so nice to study up for tonight's big test, post my notes online and print out flash cards (word macro to search for bolded text, copy out the text after it, repeat for each card).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
WOW! Instead of that annoying socratic method (Professor: "Mr Pithers! Please stand up and tell us WHY we should never invert the apex of a geometric nucleus?") to find out the students grasp of knowledge, have a "private" little quiz- almost anonymous, and the teacher gets a better "random sample" of what the class knows.
P.S.- that geometric nucleus question is hard.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
butt thancs to computers in the classroom, Im reelly good at Quake 3!
- no continual film costs (ie, buying a roll of film for each student each class)
- no photo development costs (unless they choose to do so)
- encourages more picture taking (typically holds many more pictures than a roll of film, and a picture can be deleted to free up space)
The camera would have to be fairly rugged for grade/middle/high school students.And speaking of fun . . . everyone learns more when they're engaged and having fun. Surprise, surprise, kids are more likely to retain concepts and actually stay in school if they have enjoyable, relevant experiences. They see technology as relevant to their lives in ways that dry textbooks aren't.
For those concerned about price and durability, there are cheap, durable PDAs coming to market. Alphasmart's Dana was recently discussed here on Slashdot.
Sounds like school might actually become interesting again. Now I can do my hacking without skipping class! I'm just imagining all the fun I would have stalking WinCE-lusers with my almighty Linux-handheld! And wait till they introduce voice recognition as a solution to the crappy input systems!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Wireless laptops may have an advantage, but what is the point when the teachers don't know how to use the blackboard?
Palm's are great for what they do, but you really have to be invested in making use of it to see an advantage. Pocket PC's are half-way between a palm and a laptop, and it does neither well.
To give you an example, when I began working at the computer lab in college in '95, a majority of the problems I dealt with involved the students being unfamiliar with PCs in general, rather than an issue of the computer being broken. "How do I turn it on?", "How do I type a paper?", "What's the 'any' key?", and so forth were the main problems. Gradually, however, as more students entered college having used computers in high school to type papers and do research, my job has become less of "How do I use this infernal contraption?" to "Is the network broken?"
My point is that use of computer technology in grade and high schools is beneficial less for the overt "Kids will have new ways to learn" and more for the side effect of increased familiarity and comfort with technology in general. It's been years since I had to assist a student who was so afraid of breaking the computer that he or she wouldn't even touch the mouse.
So, while practically the PDA thing seems kind of like throwing technology at (what appears to be) a non-existent problem, the side benefit is wonderful. Kids become familiar with tech in general and lose some of their fear for it, which in my humble opinion is a good thing.
- Jonathan
I sure did try to reason with them.
I told them to either allow just Macs or if they had to buy IA laptops, make sure it was RedHat.
Want good eductation? All you need is a student who wants to learn and a teacher who wants to teach. If you have those two things everything else is irrelevant.
The problem is the one that has always plagued education, the prevelence of "students" who are not there to learn, and "teachers" who are glorified babysitters. Introducing a new tool into this situation isn't a solution to this problem, because there is no solution to this problem. You can hire better teachers, assuming you can find them, but that doesn't solve the problem of the "students" who aren't there to learn.
The reason I'm bringing this up is that for a very long time people have been bitching and moaning about how our schools are sub-par. Gadgets are for some strange reason seen as a solution to this problem. The truth is that the "problem" of poor schools is largely manufactured by political pundits in order to stir the emotions of the sheeple. There are areas where the schools are sub par. There are two reasons for this that are interrelated. First, the local culture of these areas is barbaric. The "students" are criminals in training, many of which won't live to see their 21st birthday, and even more of which will spend that birthday behind bars. Good teacher's are not going to want to work in such an environment. Needless to say computers and palm pilots aren't going to solve the problem.
A computer or any other information tool in the hands of an interested student will of course be of value. That same tool in the hands of someone who doesn't give a rat's ass is just going to be a waste of money.
If you want a better education for your children, teach them at home starting at the youngest age you possibly can. Send them off to first grade or kindergarten already knowing how to read. If you can afford to home school them, do so. If not then try your dead level best to ensure that they are in a school district where their fellow students are not going to be a bunch of thugs and where the teachers have faith in the future of the students they teach.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
there's this new technology called outlining! there are classes on using it, support groups, products (franklin planner...), and motivation for its use. but, so many people don't know how to use it effectively in learning situations.
it seems that a technology that requires training will not be successful because that is the first cost to be cut. ooh, perty computer!
Since the nazi's asleep: grammer [sic] is spelt: grammar :-) I'll decline to comment on the beginning of your sentence regarding immunity... Maybe Slashdot should incorporate a basic subject/verb agreement parsing utility into comment forms :-)
There's a lot to be said for the humble pencil and notepad...
...actually the handheld's killer app in education, once the notes can be passed globally.
I curate MedicalMnemonics.com which is a non-profit database of mnemonics for medical students, which includes a port to the PalmOS.
In the pre-handheld days, you could dream something up, and share it with someone nearby. Now a button click on the handheld shares your new studying technique to about 40,000 other students trying to learn the same thing as you are.
The implementation has received good feedback from the pretty much all the students who use it. Some buy their handhelds, others get them provided by the school. Laptops aren't nearly as popular as handhelds, since walking around all day on the wards in the clinical years--never really sitting down to be able to open up a laptop.
Since slashdot is a technology site, the mechanism of global sharing, used in the application, might prove interesting too: To avoid custom HotSync conduit problems on Linux and other platforms:
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
The vast majority of the handheld devices today are based on underpowered yesterday tech that require special software and is way overpriced. /.ers have played with these yet, but I have and it is a fact in my experience that if you write script at even a moderate pace on those little pieces of shit you will crash CE in no time. Total hang and all you have to do is write a few sentences, that's lame. If you treat it gingerly it works great, but if the user is supposed to treat it like a precious little toy that means it's not there yet. At the moment, these things are little more than expensive toys. Sure you can tell me that Palm is so stable but speaking of yesterday's tech. Adding names to a list is really important for certain people, but for most people it's not a huge sell. Expensive toys are great for expensive spoiled brats, but not for mandating in public schools.
For instance if they went with a StrongArm110 processor and 64Megs with GPRS wireless they'd probably be running CE. Dear God! I doubt most
Depite being fragile and nearly worthless for real world tasks like note taking, handhelds are mega bucks. The model I have sitting in front of me that runs CE with the GPRS built-in is about $600. Wow! That's like a fifth of per head ADA. (Average Daily Attendance, the rate by which schools are compensated by the government which has to be leveraged over all expenses including teacher salaries)
Now when we see them coming with CF modules over 512MB and running more intriguing software like that we see at handhelds.org perhaps it will beome more adviseable as a recommendation for students, but I doubt it even then. By the time they have WiFi and big memory, they'll be victims of their own success for classroom purposes.
Once they become powerful enough to be worthwhile and useful tools, they will also become full-fledged entertaniment devices. Can you possibly imagine a conflict if groups of students decided they'd rather play QuakeIII tournament instead of participate in class? Or how about DIY porn, little Joey is using the camera on his PDA to look up little Cindy's skirt and is broadcasting the action to little Timmy in the third row. The class is quiet, but nobody seems to be concentrating on the assignments. What could possibly be occupying everyone's attention?
I have one of the latest version of one of these babies sitting right in front of me and I'm sure that it's a great, though fragile, toy and little else. Everyone I've let play with it agrees. The people that make them are going to be failing consistantly until they start marketing them as toys and entertainment devices. There is no way I buy this khaki pants, blue work shirt mentality that these things are essential tools that are the Next Big Thing(TM) in the here and now. If jotting down names and phone numbers is the essence of your life you already have a Palm. If you're looking for something more get a laptop. If you want a toy, get a handheld. But if you want an entertaining toy then wait a few years and get a handheld when you can stream videos and MP3s off your home server. Then they'll be rocking toys, but you aint going to be doing that with GPRS.
Students can no longer prepare bark to calculate problems. They depend instead on expensive slates. What will they do when the slate is dropped and breaks?
--Teacher's Conference, 1703.
... for anything to be used in school, it has to be either
1) Child-proof and able to take abuse any student would exert on it,
or
2) Cheap enough to replace constantly.
Which a PDA just doesn't meet. I can imagine, if you were to all use Palms and claim on the warrenty... well lets just say it's why Plam's splitting up and selling it's hardware devision.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I think a much better use of funds would be simply to pay for broadband and computers for the teachers at home.
I would much rather have teachers learning to use computers and have fast internet access *first* than spend $ on computers/pdas which they don't know how to use, nor which the teacher can teach them to use.
I got a Palm m100 a couple of months ago, and I am 100% pleased with it. It's a refurb, it cost me $50 at the Bad Place, (otherwise known as Fry's) and it hasn't disappointed me yet.
... it is just like KMahjongg and GNOME Mahjongg and just as addictive)
Yeah, it's slow, yeah it's got a black-and-white screen. No worries...it does what I need it to. I've got my addresses and phone numbers in it, I take notes with it (tap, tap, tap that onscreen keyboard...faster than Graffiti for me)and I have a few free-as-in-beer timesink games that are great for killing time. (Look for Mahjongg at www.palm.com
Basically the low-end Palm is like an old Mac Classic. Except this is a Mac Classic you can put in your pocket or your purse. Think Retro and you are in the right mindset to use a Palm.
One of these days when I'm in the chips I'll get a Zaurus, but until then my little Chibi-Palm-chan will do just fine for me.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I wouldn't advocate laptops in school universally for K-12 students, but I do think Palms and similar handhelds can be really good at what they were invented to do: assist people in organizing their activities.
Starting in middle school and especially in larger high schools, it seems to me a handheld-based scheduling application could reduce confusion and ease everyone's daily hassles.
Let's just not try to make more of these devices than they really are. They are certainly not a replacement, nor even much help, for good teachers, but as multifunction calculators, note-taking (assuming keyboards) and organizing aids, I believe they actually do have a useful if limited role to play.
and an hp-48sx and a ti-89 and a ti-92+ and a ti-86 and a ti-85 and a ti-83 and a ti-83+ and a ti-82 and another ti-82 and a ti-81 Those little things bring me back to my days as a kid(3rd grade) when the only machines I had to program on were commodores, apples, and an IBM XT. I would probably be on mac instead of Linux these days if macintosh had including a c++ compiler, a BASIC interpreter, and HyperCard(HyperCard lite doesn't count.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
#1 Busted component on a Palm busted by a Student? Probably the LCD, not covered by most PDA manufacturers... Even if there was some viable warrenty, the school would be up shit creek for that reason alone.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
And therein lies the tremendous success of home schooling. Remainder of your post snipped due to total agreement with all your points.
All you need is a student who wants to learn and a teacher who wants to teach. If you have those two things everything else is irrelevant. Its not just the ghettos that have sub-par schools with teachers who don't want to teach. Throughout my 4 years in high school I attended 3 different schools. The one thing that they all had in common was the majority of teacher just don't give a rats ass anymore. Note: all of these schools have been in upscale middleclass neighborhoods. Sure I had the occasional teacher who truly like to teach but most of them were happy just slapping A's and B's onto students papers and pushing them along to the next grade. Spend the money on GOOD teachers and, like lee said, everything else is irrelevant.
We've been working for the last year developing a handheld application to support student science investigation in schools. The idea is to have students do experiments, collect and analyze data using sensors connected to the handheld, and to be able to share the data among themselves and the teacher.
The computer is used to display, analyze, organize, and communicate data collected from the physical world around the student. A real-time display of sensor data in graphical form is an excellent science learning tool.
Here are some of the advantages of handhelds in this situation.
1) Portability. Many investigations do not take place on a lab bench but may instead be on the floor, out in the hallway, in the gym or outdoors. It is inconvenient to move a laptop around and completely impractical to move a desktop. It is tremendously powerful to have the display and analysis capacities of a computer while doing an investigation.
2) Cost. It is much cheaper to buy 15 handhelds rather than 15 laptops. It is also cheaper to replace a handheld when it is broken.
3) Collaboration. It is easy to beam data and text directly from one system to another.
There are many for advantages for using computers in these types of learning environments but since they are true for both handhelds and larger system I won't list them here.
To be more practical for kids and in schools handhelds need to be much more robust and synching a group of palms needs to be much easier. There are many practical classroom management issues.
I've played with two Palms with bluetooth cards and they communicated easily out to about 20 feet. When this is either built-in or a cheap add-on collaboration and synching will be much easier.
Our application CCProbe supports sensor-based visualization and analysis along with a Lab Notebook for saving and communicating probe data and views. Written in Waba and available under the GPL it runs on PalmOS, WinCE, PocketPC, Windows, MacOS Classic, MacOS X, and Linux. For more information about our software, interface and probes check out CCProbeware.
Page through the following site if you are interested in a middle school curriculum using handhelds for middle-school science investigations into force and motion and energy transformations Technology Enhanced Elementary and Middles School Science.
-stephen
We advocate computers in the schools, but nobody advocates manditory keyboarding. I'm 24, and I never even owned a computer until my last 2 years of highschool, and that was an obsolete 286. However, I did decide to take typing (on old IBM typewriters) in about 8th grade. The typing has served me well for my entire life. They delay in using computers hasn't seemed to hurt me, I'm currently employed as a computer technician, having been entirely self-taught in computers, which came from a lot of reading, and from upgrading that 286 to (eventually) a K7-1133mhz machine (going to a 386, 486, p100, k6-2 300, etc along the way).
The only technical skill you need is keyboarding. The only general skill you need is problem solving. That's it.
When I was in college I would upload chapter reviews I had typed up in Word to my HP Jornada, it was great for studying on the go. Being able to access each of these major reviews of classroom material while, say, on the subway or waiting in line did wonders for my GPA. Of course, it wouldn't have worked as my ONLY computer, but assuming kids can write up their assignments on a library/study hall computer and save it on their handhelds, this is a pretty good direction to go in. Individual classes could have their own AvantGo channels, or something like eroom (http://www.eroom.com). It would be cool to get automatic mp3 recordings of lecture, archives of blackboard snapshots (tho probably too small to display on a handheld)syllabus, assignments, etc. Plus kids being kids will find creative social uses for handhelds that will be innovative in their own right, that shouldn't be discouraged.
Other than a lab for writing/printing papers, what, exactly, is the benefit of having computers in school? Maybe a compsci lab, but any kid interested in that type of thing will learn more at home on his own (I certainly did).
If you want to give them computers, give them old TRS-80's and have them learn how to write stuff on them. Or better yet, an introductory analog, followed by digital electronics course.
Using computers for simulations doesn't do much good if the kids don't know how the computer performs its magic in the first place. Hell, even in college we would have to do numerical methods by hand with a calculator, even though in the real world, that stuff is done by computers. We had to know what the computer was doing (this was an engineering course, btw, not a compsci course).
...when personal computers in the grade schools had a 1 MHz processor, maybe a 64k of memory, and allowed students to do some simple text editing and also learn to program in Basic. A lot of programmers/engineers got our start on these things. The current generation of palmtops are far more powerful, one tenth the cost, and can still be used for simple text editing and programming in Basic (there's even an open source Basic interpreter for the PalmOS).
One of the bigest disadvantages for handhelds is the damn keyboard. The speed to input data, code or math functions is just to slow and painful with a stylus. I suggest that instead of a handheld a laptop replacement (see on designtechnica.com) would be the perfect tool for a student. Is not as expensive, bulky or huge as a laptop but also allows you to input data. Eightythree by Tiqit Computers
The JZA
I don't really understand what benefit a PDA or Laptop, for that matter, really provides to a student in elementary, junior, or high school? How does taking notes on a computer or being able to refer to sources on a PDA really improve the success rate of a student?
It looks to me like all it does is provide another buffer between the mind and the stuff your supposed to be learning...
if we sent men to space without calculators, and created doctors without giving them little apps that do most of the thinking (yeah, med students now use PDA's to calculate dosage--whoops I meant 100mg not 900 mg, damn Graffiti), I think kids can get through school without all these trinkets around them -- heck they may even come out better for it
Ever since I was younger I have watched the schools push technology down everyone's throats. The teachers, the substitute teachers, kids, parents, guardians, other employees, yada yada. I fell that the schools seem to be replacing the old way of teaching with computers. People will say that we can learn more from computers. Well, that is true and not true. In my home town there was a school for Junior high that was based entirely on computers. Sadly, their average GPAs were lower then the other junior highs in the area that were not based soley on computers. If the old way of teaching did not work, then how did we create all of these cool computer devices? Finally, technology should be taught in schools but not at the expense of other materials such as math, english, basic typing (I know we all hated that class, type aabbcc...), and sciences. All of these subjects are the basis for everything else that we learn in life. The wider base of knowledge that a person can start with the better. It allows them to make quicker and better decisions then someone who has only a very small base of basic knowledge. That is just my 3.3 cents.
The pilot has 1-8MB of RAM, 160x160 screen, 68000 CPU, and a serial port.
The Apple ][+ had 64kb, 140kb floppy, no serial port.
There's a basic available for the palm that runs faster then the one on the Apple ][+
Com'on! pda's are harder to use then laptops. I dont see how people think palms will help anyone. The only think a palm is good for is organizing, the rest is just a gameboy advance. I do agree in laptops for private schools where they can properly learn how to teach kids how to use the machines. But palms? teachers dont know what good palms are for let alone students. Damnit It seems like the would would add 20 years evolution if they could just set their priorities. Erm and maybe post to slashdot drunk... Cause hey! free dummy!
A year or two ago somebody wrote in to Ask Slashdot to get ideas for a project that involved giving handhelds to hundreds or maybe thousands of kids all over the world, and seeing what they did with them. Anybody know what happened to that?
Did it happen yet?
This is awesome, kids using handhelds to learn but also in their own environment that makes them feel comffortable for them to learn(personally)Amagine kids waking up and getting excited to use a cool computer that they like or accessing the internet for help. Although the costs may raise at least kids will like school and use their knowledge somewhat close to the maximum. ~Entaundo
~Entaundo