Handsprings for Kids?

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?

Comments

What do the kids need?

[BoBaBrain]

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?

Free Software from HICE

[sysadmn]

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.

programming

[medcalf]

One thing that you could do is have a class or classes on programming the handsprings. Get ideas from the class for something simple and of use to them, then teach them how to make it on the PDA. (Even a game would be fine.) It both gets them something they need, and teaches them a useful skill.

what ever you do...

[paradesign]

do not let them install this

dopewars

its addictive

Tech isn't necessarily the answer

[R2.0]

A handspring runs what, $100 wholesale? For that money you could get the entire library of Heinlein juveniles - for each kid.

www.abebooks.com

"Tunnel in the Sky": teaches about self reliance and teamwork. 110 copies, $2-$5 a piece

"Starship Troopers": Honor, courage, and a case history in how Holleywood can really screw up a good story. 159 copies, $2-$6 a piece.

"Rocket Ship Galileo": Teach history by looking at what we thought the future would be like over 50 years ago, i.e WHY don't we have nuclear powered rockets piloted by teenage kids. 39 copies, $3-$10 (make them share)

Buy a few copies per kid - make them swap.

Just have to have tech? Find e-book versions of them.

And the list goes on.

Check USight for Curriculum Ideas

[Paul Burney]

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

Tech Too Early

[CiceroLove]

I love technology as much as the next guy but let's get real. Putting Handsprings within reach of the average at-risk kid is simply foolish. If you all remember the principle of GIGO, these kids do not have the large skill set to be able to use these things to the PDA's potential. Give them books to read, better classrooms to study in, pay the teachers to sit around with the kids more. At-risk kids need to have the fundamental education we all got when we were kids. They won't get it by using a Handspring.

Re:Tech Too Early

[MrResistor]

I wish I had mod points to mod you up, because that is exactly what I was going to say.

There seems to be a misconception in the US that money and technology will solve all problems. While they can certainly help, they are not the solution, but rather the tools used to affect it. The thing we forget is that tools are often interchangable, and the most technologically advanced is not always the best for the job.

A pencil and a peice of paper are the best tools around for teaching concepts of math, for example. A calculator is more high-tech, and possibly more impressive to the casual observer, but the student will learn far less using one, and it's a lot more expensive.

I have to give the article credit, though, in that this is the first time I've seen any suggestions for using tech in primary education that I consider legitimate, helpful, or even non-counterproductive to the ultimate goal of education. Maybe a class project to map the migrations of transients using local maps and GPS. Political Correctness issues aside, I would have been way into something like that as a kid. Maybe marking locations and descriptions of plants around the school would be more appropriate...

Anyway, technology can be good for education, but all too often it does more harm than good as our boundless enthusiasm leads to its misuse. All things considered, the money would be much better spent on higher quality books, both fiction and nonfiction, or even just making sure the kids all have basic school supplies like pencils and paper and maybe a binder to keep it all organized.

Time Management?

[pheonix]

How about teaching them to use time/task/project management software to complete projects and assigments for their various classes. I suppose it's reasonably safe to assume that some of these kids aren't completing assignments solely because they aren't organized, and that's what a handheld does best.

Programming for the handheld. Teach them to make games, software, whatever gets them into it.

Well, my $0.02, and that's probably over priced.

This is pointless

[Mr. Shiny And New]

I'm sure that the one thing that will make those disadvantaged children break out of their ruts and become the model citizens we want them to be is for them to be well organized with their shiny new handsprings.

Come on, as if a PDA is what a school-child (in any socio-economic condition) needs. What ever happend to reading books? and doing math by hand? I was in a stationery store the other day and noticed that the math sets (compass, dividers, rulers, triangles, etc) now include a calculator. Sheesh! As if people weren't already bad enough at math!

I'm all for having a computer in the classroom. Heck, I think learning to program a computer is a useful activity because it encourages problem solving and creativity. However, teaching students to use a Handspring seems a little pointless. Students need to learn concepts, not tools. They need to learn English and grammar, not how to run the spell-checker.

There is one exception to my anti-Handspring stance. If the school had some learning activity that could only realistically be done on a set of Handsprings, and that wasn't technology related, then I'd agree that having a class set, that must be signed-in/out for each class, might be a good idea. Just like how my school had microscopes, not so that we could learn optics, but so that we could learn about cells, it would be acceptable for the school to use computing devices (of any nature) to achieve some other goal. However, if it's just data collection, I'd say it's not really worth it.

There needs to be a focus on learning the principles. For example, when teaching a student about navigation and maps and orienteering, don't give them a GPS. Give them a compass and teach them how to pace out a path. When teaching students about graphing weather trends, make them graph it on paper. They won't have so much data that they need a computer to do it. If they WANT to use a computer, maybe it's ok if they learn it on their own, but don't make it the objective.

Computers are a tool; a means, not an end.