There are some fun ways for students to use flashcard applications like MathCard:

• Time yourself to figure out how many problems you can do in five minutes.

• See if you can reach a score of 100 out of 100. If you miss a problem, reset your score and try again.

• Play with a friend by taking turns answering questions on the same handheld.

• Use two handhelds and race against a friend. See who can get the highest score in five minutes.

Most handhelds come with software for viewing, editing, and creating spreadsheets. Many Palm OS-based handhelds include Documents To Go and all Pocket PC handhelds include Pocket Excel.

There are uses for spreadsheets in all curriculcum areas. They can be used for making calculations, keeping lists, and organizing information. They can even be used to practice spelling words!

ABCs to Excel is an excellent web site that is filled with innovative ways to use spreadsheets. "Be creative and use Excel in a variety of ways to enhance your curriculum. Excel can be a tool for students to produce quality work." ABCs to Excel includes example documents to download and how-tos! The activities are designed for Microsoft Excel for desktop computers. However, most ideas can be used with Documents To Go or Pocket Excel!

The update to a new server and new look is complete! Since I no longer have a fifth grade classroom of my own, Planet 5th is no longer being updated. Learning in Hand used to be part of Planet 5th, and I really hated to separate it from my class's web site. However, now I'll be able to update the site more frequently. In fact, take a look around the new learninginhand.com. I've added more software links that cover a variety of grade levels instead of just fifth grade. It's easier to see which software is free and which software costs money. There's even icons that indicate for which grade levels the software is appropriate.

To help pay for the hosting services, you may see some advertisements on learninginhand.com. There are actually some really good deals that can be found with these ads--check them out!

I hope you like the changes I've made. If you find links that don't work, discover missing information, or have suggestions for content, please email me.

I've been working with third graders who are learning about ecosystems, populations, habitats, extinction, and balance. For two different 45-minute sessions, the third graders and I have worked with a simulation for Palm handhelds: Big Fish, Little Fish from MIT. During the simulation, each student's handheld represents a school of little fish or a school of big fish.

The little fish eat plants from the pond, so they always have a source of food. The little fish population always increases until there are 99 fish in a school.

The schools of big fish eat tasty little fish. If there aren't little fish around, the big fish will starve and die out. That means the big fish can't eat all of the little fish at once. The big fish population always decreases, only increasing when they eat some of those delicious little fish.

To introduce the simulation to the third graders, half of the class are big fish and half of the class are little fish. Students walk around the room, either eating or being eaten. To eat, handhelds set as big fish have a large “Eat” button on their screens. By aligning beaming windows, a big fish handheld tells a little fish handheld how many fish are eaten. With the default settings, for every one big fish in a school, four little fish are eaten. To give little fish a fighting chance, big fish cannot feed on the same school of little fish two times in a row. Because of this, in order for a school of big fish to survive, there needs to be at least two schools of little fish to feed upon!

As students participate in the simulation, they can see a graph of their populations of fish, which is updated every three seconds. After the simulation is complete (it only took about five minutes the first time around for all of the third graders’ fish to die), students can analyze their graphs and discuss what they noticed about the simulation.

There’s a lot to notice about the simulation. The third graders noted that the little fish tried to avoid the big fish and hide. They also noticed that the big fish ate different numbers of little fish each time.

Of course, the students wanted to continue the game. Again, we proceeded with the simulation with the whole class. The classroom was bursting with excitement because the students loved this Palm activity!

For the next session, I broke the class into groups of five, consisting of two schools of big fish and three schools of little fish. The groups’ task was to keep all of their fish alive for as long as they could. After about four minutes, all of the big fish had died in the room. Following a short discussion and strategy brainstorming, the students tried again (switching roles of course). The groups lasted longer this time, but we still had lots of dead fish. Another discussion was held about following a pattern to help keep all of the schools of fish alive.

There are so many educational possibilities with Big Fish, Little Fish! The third graders had so much fun, and they’ll never forget the science concepts that our handheld simulation demonstrated.

Participating in a simulation with Big Fish, Little Fish is easy for students. However, setting up the simulation can be challenging for the teacher. Here’s a few hints:

• Enter “?!?” in the name area in Big Fish, Little Fish to gain access to the settings.

• Each handheld must be on the same mode (A, B, C, etc), otherwise students will receive error messages. This keeps students from cheating by restarting their game.

• Each handheld must have the same settings. Rates of decay, ratio, etc. must be the set the same for the whole class.

• Beam students the settings for the simulation from the setting screen. Students must be on the opening screen (where they input their names) to receive the new settings.

• Read tips about using Big Fish, Little Fish in palmOne's Handheld Educator (V3, P21, 04).

• Find instructions from MIT here: http://education.mit.edu/pda/instructions.htm

• Try some of the other participatory simulation from MIT.

I'd say that Big Fish, Little Fish could be used with third through eighth grades. Try it out--it's free software! Happy fishing!

I'm using software called KidzLog to publish my blog (which is short for "web log"). KidzLog runs on Mac or Windows computers, and it's a really easy way to students and teachers to publish text and images to the web. The KidzLog documentation explains blogs well:

"A weblog is a journal or diary on the web. It usually consists of individual posts where each post has a title, a publish date, and some text. Weblogs also have archives of previous posts, so that not all of the posts have to be on the main page. Usually there is also a place to put your favorite links, sometimes called a blogroll. Finally, most weblog publishing tools provide support for something called syndication, which is the ability to subscribe to a weblog from an outside tool. Syndication is made possible by the presence of a special file that contains information about the most recent updates to the weblog."

My blog's syndication (RSS) URL is http://learninginhand.com/blog/index.rss. Using this address, you can subscribe to my blog's headlines and have them updated instantly using an RSS reader or even your Yahoo! homepage.

I've been blogging with students for several years, though I didn't use blogging software until recently (which would have made it MUCH easier than generating the web pages myself). We called our web log The Daily Planet. I'm working with students and teachers at Willowdale Elementary to blog. Sanborn Super Students Blog uses KidzLog for publishing to the Web. The typing, however, is done at home using a handheld computer. At school the handheld is synched to a desktop computer. The text is copied and pasted into KidsLog for publishing.

New software for Palm handhelds generates verbal logic problems like, "Who plays the cello?" Providing a table where students can record information, newly released Rebus models an effective way to solve these kinds of logic problems. The table can be filled with "X" to indicate a match, "O" to indicate no match, and "-" to indicate an uncertain match.

Solving Rebus story problems is challenging, even for adults. It's certainly too difficult for some students, especially those under fourth grade.

Students should never get the same logic problem twice since the handheld generates the problems. The best part? Rebus is freeware!

Not at all a big deal but between problems, Rebus sometimes displays an advertisement for the programming services of Blue Crab, Rebus' developer.

Download Rebus from www.freewarepalm.com/games/rebus.shtml.