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Handsprings for Kids?

Posted by Cliff on from the providing-better-tools-for-their-education dept.

matt conway asks: "I'm working in an alternative school for 'at-risk' kids: Inner-city, economically disadvantaged, K-8, in a midwestern rust-belt city. Seems Handspring has a program to provide their hardware for these kids. I'm looking for suggestions on how to use their products to give these kids a leg up in life. Obvious uses are collaborative class projects beamed back and forth, GPS to map out neighborhoods and incidental environmental data, digital photography and writing to produce a school paper. I'm not a CS major, so I wondered if ./ readers had more suggestions for turning hardware into better brains." If Handsprings aren't ideal for this sort of thing, what handhelds might be a decent replacement?

4 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. What do the kids need? by BoBaBrain · · Score: 3, Informative

    Clearly this project is resource lead: "We've got this gear, now what?"
    Although instead of asking "What can we do with Handsprings?" it may be better to ask "What do these kids need?" Once we have this long list we can then look at which elements a PDA can help with.

    Unfortunately I am not of much help to you on this point, but I imagine some things they may need are:
    - Local Map
    - important phone numbers
    - Bus/train timetables?
    - Class information (Timetable, diary etc.)

    Also, it may be an idea to capitalise on the initial novelty value. The kids will be playing with these things quite a bit, so why not include some educational games?

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  2. Free Software from HICE by sysadmn · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education at the University of Michigan offers a suite of free applications for Palm-Based PDA's. Even better, they've done a good job developing instructions and related curriculum. There's also a message board for trading ideas and tips.

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  3. Check USight for Curriculum Ideas by Paul+Burney · · Score: 3, Informative

    USight is a website dedicated to promoting ubiquitous computing in education. There is a curriculum page offerring curriculum ideas at:

    http://usight.concord.org/curriculum/

    You can also find more information about handhelds in education on the Concord Consortium site at:

    http://www.concord.org/themes/handhelds.html

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  4. its not a bad idea by chill182 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Coming from a family of teachers and being a tech person, I think giving kids access to technology is essential. However I don't know if Handspring would be the right choice for this age group. I have one myself and even though I like it I just think they would be too easily broken or lost. For K-8 I think getting them to use desktop computers is much more important than handhelds. If there is no way to give them access to desktop computers we may be back to square one and Handspring may be better than nothing.