An article on the Meeting News website describes how some professional conferences are replacing paper packets of information with handhelds loaded with the electronic versions of all documents. The PDAs are either given for free, or rented out for a small charge. You can read about it at http://www.meetingnews.com/ .
Feel free to use the attached show in any way you please. You will need to make a new path to the Elliot Soloway video found at his learningathand website.
http://www.psesd.org/weblogs/edtech/archives/Palm%20presentation.ppt
Most activities with handhelds use a low bandwidth form of wireless connectivity (IR). But now there are Radio Frequency (RF) add-ons that allow you to connect handhelds to a Wireless LAN (WLAN). When connected to a WLAN, students and teachers have uninterrupted Internet access as they move around campus with a PDA in hand.
Use of a large number of Palms in the classroom is causing some teachers to voice concern over how much energy they must put into keeping them charged up. Here are a few tips on extending the battery life of a Palm ?
1. Turn off the sound
2. Don?t use the back-light
3. Reduce the contrast for the screen
4. Limit game use
5. Set the Auto-Off in Preferences to 30 seconds
Just a short unrelated side note ? a good way to protect the Palms when they are being moved from one place to another is to place them in padded envelopes. These envelopes are not very expensive and they last a long time
If you want to use your Palm to make PowerPoint presentations, consider Cutting Edge’s new Quickpoint program. With it; you can view, edit and present PowerPoint shows. This software is part of Cutting Edge’s Quickoffice Pro suite.You can record PDA-annotated notes right onto PowerPoint slides. You can also zoom in and out on slides, as well as display them as thumbnails and four other slide-view modes. The price of Quickpoint is $30.00. You can get the entire suite for $50.00. The URL is www.mobilityelectronics.com. The phone number is 480.596.0061.
More from Conn:
Here’s some interesting info on wireless options for handhelds from the Consumer Electronics Show last week:
http://www.brighthand.com/article/CES_Wireless_Cards
http://www.brighthand.com/article/CES_SanDisk
And a few other odds and ends, including turning your handheld into an FM radio!
http://www.brighthand.com/article/CES_Jan9
Conn McQuinn passed this information along. I thought it might be of interest to handheld enthusiasts.
Conn says:
The article referenced below, while being mainly focused on wireless networking, has several interesting sections on wireless handhelds with technologies I hadn’t heard of.
Check out the article on wireless technologies in education “Cutting the Cord: Wireless Computing Comes of Age ” published by CoSN (Consortium for School Networking). This article is part of a new print publication of CoSN which will soon be released called the CoSN Compendium. This article, the second article in a suite of eight, is currently openly available in the public area of the CoSN website http://www.cosn.org/. I thought you might enjoy reading this material that is now published on the public area and look for the new articles as they become available. The wireless article will be replaced by an article on Data Driven Decision-making soon called “No More Flying Blind: Using Data-Driven Decision-Making to Guide Student Learning”.
If you wish to comment on items that were created in previous months, go to the particular article and click on the time the item was created. This moves you to a screen that allows you to enter a response. I am looking for responses from all posted items relating to the use of handhelds in education. Please do look at items posted in previous months and make comments.
NSF is preparing a new report surveying research on the impact of different educational technology methods on math and sciecnce achievement:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryalert.cfm?ArticleID=4192
Apparently the researchers found strong evidence that tutorials and the like have a positive impact on student learning, but little or no evidence that simulations or computer-based labs do. That might be more of a reflection of the kind of research that’s been done to date, or maybe not!
Conn
Online searching is a skill that will be necessary to survive in our information-rich society. With new information rapidly outpacing any one person’s ability to keep up with it, we need to teach our students how to find what they need when they need it. Each search engine has its own distinct and defining features, but with a few simple rules under their belts, students can be comfortable using any one of them when searching for information.
This discussion will focus primarily on strategies for teaching students how to think about and implement their search plan. Concepts, tips and tricks, and resources to support the teaching of these skills will also be shared and debated. An open dialog on preferred features and favorite uses of some of the major search engines and directories (Google, AltaVista, HotBot, Vivisimo and Yahoo) will also take place.
Please join us at PBS TeacherLine for an online conversation* with Kathy Schrock.
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7:30 p.m., ET
January 15th, 2003
Transcripts will be available the day after the chat in the Community Center
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To join the chat go to http://www.pbs.org/teacherline
Additional resources on searching and researching on the Internet are available in the Community Center.
For more information contact: Terra Fretwell at tfretwell@pbs.org
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*Please check your browser software to make sure that it is Java and JavaScript enabled. Visit the TeacherLine Help pages (browser settings) at http://teacherline.pbs.org/teacherline/help/help_browsers.cfm#java for quick, easy instructions