Lightning in a Bottle

It’s spring, the time when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love. But how to know if it’s true love or merely an infatuation?
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GoKnow’s Handheld Learning Environment for Palm OS (HLE) provides K-12 teachers with a unique classroom management program and integrated educational software tools to allow for the pedagogically-effective use of handhelds with students. Backed by scientific classroom research at the University of Michigan, HLE delivers the full benefits of technology for education.

GoKnow’s Handheld Learning Environment includes
* For Teachers:
PAAM - Palm OS Archive and Application Manager
The classroom synchronization manager that allows teachers to easily manage, assess, and back-up student handheld work.

* For Students:
HLE Tools - Integrated Software for Learning
Productivity applications expressly designed for K-12.

Lessons - Activities that Engage Students
With each classroom purchase of HLE, GoKnow provides 50 standards-based lessons for middle grades (4-9) to help teachers effectively integrate the technology and software into ongoing curriculum.

HLE is available for $19.95 per handheld as a yearly subscription. Discounts apply for multi-year and multi-classroom purchases. For more information visit www.goknow.com/Products/ or call 800-203-3412.

From a teacher in Omaha really using handhelds well as he integrates their use into a fifth grade curriculum.

“The educational program “Teaching NOW!” visited my school (Willowdale) last spring. They have produced a half-hour program about the use of handhelds in my classroom and in my school titled “Handhelds in Omaha.” It will air on public television. Also, it is available for viewing online at” http://teachingnow.org./tn101.php

The Tom Snyder company has just released a new entry in their “Workshop Book” series called Handhelds for Teachers and Administrators. The contains many classroom activities and comes with a CD containing a variety of programs for integration into classroom instruction.
The software and lessons are designed for both Palm and PocketPC devices.

I haven’t seen the book yet, but the Tom Snyder materials are consistently of high quality, so it’s definitely worth a look. The book description is at www.tomsnyder.com/products/product.asp?SKU=JANHAN, and a press release with more info is at www.eschoolnews.com/resources/businessbriefs/showrelease.cfm?ReleaseID=433.

Toshiba announced their e805 Pocket PC handheld today, the first such device to have a 640 by 480 resolution screen. (Typical Pocket PC resolution is 320 by 240). This could potentially mean that they will be easier to read and use; the drawback is that very little software is currently able to use the new screen display. We’ll have to wait and see if software makers see enough of an opportunity to re-write their programs to take advantage of this opportunity.

I sure hope so - I think it will make for a much more usable device.

There is an overview of the e805 and the new e405 at www.brighthand.com/article/RumorMill_Toshiba_e805_e405_Later_Today.

CNN has a special report on the use of handhelds in schools. While not dreadfully informative at times (did you know a lot of teenagers have cellphones?), it does profile some of the issues that schools are struggling with. How do you monitor to make sure kids aren’t using them to play games, or chat, or cheat?

One issue they don’t discuss is the definition of cheating. If a child can carry an abbreviated version of the Encyclopedia Britannica in their Palm ($39.95 at the Palm Store), and they will use that kind of resource every day in their personal and professional life, is it cheating to use it in school? When is memorization an important skill, and when is it just a traditional holdover of what expect for school?

I remember very clearly the day my chemistry professor told us that all tests would be open book, because “When you graduate and get a chemistry job, your boss isn’t going to come up to you, give you a work assignment, then grab up all your books and walk away.” If we can resonably expect that current schoolkids will live in a world where they will have the equivalent of an entire reference library in their pocket at all times, should we be re-thinking what skills we need to emphasize, and more importantly, what tools they can use when we test them?

The CNN article is at www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/09/21/sprj.sch.classroom.gadgets.ap/index.html.

Several universities are using wireless response devices to provide more feedback and interaction between lecturers and their large classes. An article from the online version of the Boston Glove describes the experiences of students and professors at www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/09/13/on_campuses_handhelds_replacing_raised_hands.

Professors put up multiple choice questions during the course of the lecture, and then can monitor the results on their computer in the front. Students are required to buy the $36 devices, and because they each have unique codes, the professors can track the responses of individuals as well as the class as a whole. This allows the instructor to alter the content of the class if the whole group is not doing well, or respond to the needs of only those that are not answering correctly. (It also acts a de facto attendance mechanism, much to some students consternation.)

These devices have been gaining in popularity for K-12 classrooms. The informal , ongoing assessment of how the students are picking up information can provide the teacher with valuable information to use in pacing or adapting their instruction.

Palm announced some new peripherals today, including a new, infra-red keyboard that does away with needing to connect the Palm directly to the device. It is compatible with virtually all Palms, instead of having to have a different model for each different kind of connector port. You can read about it, the new SD card camera and the spiffy Executive Stylus that is a combined stylus, pen, laser pointer and flashlight at
http://www.brighthand.com/article/palmOne_Announces_Keyboard_Camera

From an article by Ed Hardy, Editor-in-Chief, Bighthand.com - September 8th, 2003

In Japan, Sony has just announced a small device that can record TV programs onto a Memory Stick in a format suitable for playing on one of its handhelds. It is called a PEGA-VR100K. It acts somewhat like a VCR. Therefore, the images it records are only 320 by 240 pixels. Still, they can also be played on a regular TV. At the highest image quality level, a 1 GB Memory Stick can hold a bit over four hours of video. At the lowest quality, even a 128 MB Memory Stick can hold over two hours of video.

eSchoolNews has an extensive article on the challenges to Texas Instruments in the graphing calculator market (www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=4629). Hewlett-Packard is making a push back into the market, and Casio continues to try and get attention for its products. In addition, handhelds and graphing calculator software are beginning to make their way into classrooms.

It’s a complicated choice. Much math curriculum is specifically built around the TI calculator line. On the other hand, the other manufacturers’ devices have might have additional functions like Reverse Polish Notation (I’m not making that up) or lower costs. Handhelds have much more functionality, but higher cost.