I want to tell you about another wonderful school site that features students' use of handheld computers. Patti Weeg, computer teacher at Delmar Elementary School in Wicomico County, Maryland, has put together web pages that should prove useful to other handheld-using educators. Delmar's students in grades 2 through 5 began using Palm handhelds in the 2003-2004 school year, so there's plenty of resources to share. You can find applications and activities. There's also quizzes for Quizzler you can download and use with students. In addition, you can read eBooks written by students (however, they are not in a format you can readily download and install on a handheld). Oh, and another cool thing: there's plenty of photos of happy students with their palm-sized computers! Thanks Patti for sharing these resources on the web!

You can find more schools on the web that share information about handhelds right here.

Brighthand, a web site for “nothing but handhelds,” has a story about Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, Illinois. It’s a private school that has given each student and teacher a Zire 72 handheld and a wireless keyboard. Lucky dogs!

Anyhow, the story’s last paragraph is about the operating license that students are required to earn before taking handhelds home:

Before they can take their handhelds home, students must earn a "palmOne Operating License" by mastering a set of skills and demonstrating them to their teachers. To get a license, students must be able to enter characters using the handheld's built-in Graffiti 2 software, beam, manage a To Do list, schedule tasks, operate the handheld's camera, change preferences, and sign a contract confirming their understanding of how to take care of their handheld and keep it safe. Most kids get their license in three weeks, and so far, not one handheld has been lost.

What a great idea!

Read more about Avery Coonley School's deployment of handhelds here and here.

Salisbury University, in conjunction with Seaford School District and Wicomico County Public Schools, will be hosting the Mid-Atlantic Handheld Conference this summer! Consider traveling to Salisbury, Maryland and presenting a session on July 18, 2005. Click here to submit a proposal for the conference.

If you don’t want to present, you should at least attend the conference. I’ll be the keynote speaker and presenting sessions. Visit the conference website for more information: www.seaford.k12.de.us/mahc

Managing a classroom full of handhelds can be done in a number of ways. How you manage hardware, software, and learning is an individual decision based on available materials, personal preference, management style, and students' level of responsibility. Here are some links to web pages that share classroom management information:

NW Handheld Project
Classroom tips from an Oregon middle school teacher that uses 30 handhelds with six classrooms

Studio Four - Guided Tour
A Missouri fourth grade teacher explains hardware management issues

Mr. Cring's Classroom
Learn about management from a New York high school special education teacher

K12 Handhelds Classroom Solutions
Great advice based on experience from the many classrooms K12 Handhelds has helped

Handhelds in the Classroom: Management
Specific information from Willard School District in Missouri

These links have been added to learninginhand's Management section.

You’ve probably heard about Quizzler from Pocket Mobility, Inc:

Quizzler is the ultimate quiz and trivia application, designed to be easy-to-use yet packed with features unmatched in any other software. You can download hundreds of quizzes or easily make your own. Since Quizzler is cross platform, you can run the same quiz on Windows, Macintosh, Palm OS, or Pocket PC! Oh yeah, and the basic version of Quizzler is FREE!

There are dozens of free quizzes available for Quizzler. Also, the new Quizzler Maker software works with Mac or Windows and allows you to create multiple choice quizzes on a desktop computer. These quizzes can be beamed to handhelds for use by students.

Not only teachers can make Quizzler quizzes, but so can students! My fifth graders enjoyed making their own quizzes right on their handhelds and it was a helpful study aid. Following the Quizzler format (Palm OS only) in Memos or Memo Pad, students can easily write a quiz to be imported into the free version of Quizzler Reader--no extra software required! I’ve created a new “Make Your Own Quizzer Quiz” handout for teachers and students. It is much more specific than the older one-page handout I used to use. The new three-page handout goes through the creation of a quiz step-by-step with screenshots. Download the PDF file for the new handout here.

Handhelds tend to have very large plug adapters that can really interfere with using all of the outlets on your average power strip. Even being creative and turning some power adpaters around, I can never seem to use all outlets on most power strips. Florida's Jeanne Rogers (see the previous post) found a power strip designed by people who are actually smart! The outlets are spaced extra-wide so that you don't waste them by plugging in large adapters! Jeanne sent me a photo and writes about the Kensington SmartSocket:

I purchased the attached for the handhelds.  I figure I'll have it along with the set of 6 handhelds and the teacher can have a mini charging center.  Ordered from HighSmith.

Now that's good thinking, both on Jeanne's part and on the part of the makers of the SmartSocket!

You can also find many other brands of power strips with extra-wide spaces between outlets. It's a good thing to look for when ordering handheld accessories or to include in grants.

Update: Larry in Fort Wayne, Indiana notes that a seller on eBay is selling the SmartSocket Surge Protector for $6.99 plus $7.00 shipping and has a very high eBay rating (99+%). And this isn't an auction, it's a fixed price through the eBay Store! Check it out! Thanks Larry!

Jeanne Rogers is the technology specialist at Deer Park Elementary School in New Port Richey. She has discovered how much fun it is to teach with handhelds. She has just finished setting up her school's new set of Tungsten Es and used them with students. She send me this email:

We did well!  Introduced the term stylus, went over rules for use, and used the notepad to write words, sentences, and numbers.  Taught them how to erase an error.  We had fun!  Kids said, "Are you coming back next week?"  Thanks for all of your suggestions and assistance!
Jeanne

The best part of her email was the picture she included. Look how excited she is and how engaged the students are! Now that's what teaching and learning are all about!

Fifth graders at Loma Prieta Elementary School in Los Gatos, California have begun to make videos about educational Palm software. Currently their website has videos about using Divisible and Quizzler. Watch as fifth graders demonstrate how to use the software! This is a great way to introduce teachers and students to the software. Think about showing these videos to your students who use handhelds—it’s always more fun to learn from another kid (especially one in another state)! If you or your students enjoy the video, go ahead and send their teacher an email to pass along to the students in the movies!

Also on Loma Prieta’s Fifth Grade page, find links to educational Palm software and a Sketchy animation showing the parts of a plant cell.

Okay, so you might have recently learned what a blog is. It’s time to learn another kind of web-based publishing, and that’s a wiki. A wiki is a special kind of website where anyone can add to or edit its pages. Classrooms are beginning to use wikis to put together units of study. It’s great when students discover new information and can add it to their class’ wiki!

By now you are wondering why it’s called a wiki (pronounced like “wicky”). I wondered the same thing and found this: Wiki comes from the Hawaiian term for "quick" or "super-fast.” So a wiki is a website that can be created and modified very quickly. Just as a blog allows instant publishing, so does a wiki. However, instead of having just one author or set of authors like a blog, anyone who views a wiki can edit the page (wikis can be set up to require a password for editing).

The largest and best example of a wiki is Wikipedia. It’s a free online encyclopedia designed to be read and changed by anyone. Just type what you’re looking for in Wikipedia’s search box to see if the site has information about what you’re looking for. Most Wikipedia entries are cross-referenced to other Wikipedia entries and to other websites. Many entries include diagrams, images, or photos. Furthermore, because Wikipedia is scrutinized and can be modified by everyone who reads it, the information tends to be very accurate.

Take Wikipedia for a test drive by diving into its vast information on the Palm Operating System. You’ll learn about each of the built-in applications and a little history of the Palm OS. Also, check out what it has to say about Pocket PC. And remember, if you have something to add or modify on the page… You can because it’s a wiki!

There's a new article online at The Register titled Schools Look Beyond the Electronic Whiteboard. The article explains a very exciting simluation:

"The children's PDAs simulate a virtual savannah mapped onto their school playing grounds. This environment comes complete with charging elephants and other prides competing for the space. As well as the savannah, there is a den, where children can plan their strategies, and think about how they will survive as lions.

"A Nesta representative explained: 'When the kids are confronted by an elephant, the system asks them what they would like to do. The immediate answer is always that they, as lions, will attack and eat the elephant. They learn very quickly that a lion won't win a fight with an elephant.'"

This looks like an exciting project, and I just blogged about NESTA's Literature Review in Mobile Technogies in Learning. However, I could not find out what kind of handhelds were used for the Savannah project. It would be fantastic if this was made publicly available for the Palm and/or Pocket PC operating systems!

Read more about Savannah here.

Mobile technology use in education is taking off in the UK! There’s a brand new literature review from the U.K.'s National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts. It’s available for free as a web site or as a 25 page PDF brochure. It includes more mobile technology than just handhelds: cell phones, laptops, students response systems, and more. As a teacher, I found the report to have much more theory than practical ideas. However, I think that information in this report may help with grant writing, especially its extensive bibliography. Click here to download NESTA Futurelab’s Report 11: Literature Review in Mobile Technologies and Learning. Click here for the website.

There’s also an older free report from the British government, Handheld Computers in Schools by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency. Published in March 2003, this 32 page report by David Perry looks at handheld programs in 30 different U.K. schools. Through surveys and interviews, you can read about how teachers and students view handheld use. My favorite part of the report are quotes of handheld-using students. Here are a few:
• “I just play the SIMS on the computer, I do more on these [PDAs].”
• “People don’t always bring their homework planner, but no one every forgets their PDA.”
• “I wanted to be an actress. Now I want to be a teacher and use PDAs.”
Could the motivation and engagement of using handhelds in the classroom actually recruit future teachers? I think so! Click here to download the “Handheld Computers in Schools” report.

As you know, there are two major operating systems for handheld computers: PalmSource’s Palm OS and Microsoft’s Pocket PC. Despite the brand recognition, Microsoft wants to phase out the name Pocket PC. Instead, they will be calling their new operating system for handhelds “Windows Mobile 2005” (Currently, the handheld operating system is called “Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC”—which has a cute rhyme to it). According this article at Brighthand, Microsoft is going to ask manufactures to stop putting the term “Pocket PC” in their product names. Will we be calling future handheld computers with Microsoft’s operating system “Windows Mobile Devices?” (We probably won’t be calling these handhelds WMD for short.) I have the feeling the name Pocket PC will be used for a long time. I mean, it’s been seven years since the “Palm Pilot” has been on the market, and people continue to use that name today!

Educators often ask about usage agreements/contracts for parents and students. It’s a good idea to have something signed that indicates who is responsible if the handheld is lost, stolen, or broken. It’s also important for parents and students to understand the consequences for inappropriate use. One detail many contracts include is that students are to treat the handheld like a "$200 egg." When I tell this to students, they really get the picture on how to handle a handheld. Another tip I give includes always using the handheld above a desk or table so the computer has less distance to fall if accidentally dropped. Also, I suggest students keep their handhelds inside their desks while at school if they're not using them. I've seen too many handhelds fly off a desk on accident when they were not in use.


Here are some example user guidelines & agreements:

Conception Elementary uses Palm handheld computers with fifth graders in Michigan:
http://www.gtacs.org/circa5/Handheld%20Computers%20Guidelines.pdf

Plano, TX ISD Palm Usage Agreement:
http://k-12.pisd.edu/handhelds/Usage-Agreement.PDF

Barrien County Schools, MI seventh grade students use Palm handhelds: http://www.remc11.k12.mi.us/lwl/materials/p_usage.pdf

Amy Bebell in Watertown, MA uses Palm handhelds with middle school science students: http://wms.watertown.k12.ma.us/science/bebell/litmiss/FG_pdfs/Palm_agreement.pdf

Mayfield Middle Schools in Oklahoma City, OK:
http://goknow.com/GettingStarted/Documents/MayfieldMSContract.pdf

Putnam City West High School, in Oklahoma City, OK:
http://goknow.com/GettingStarted/Documents/PutnamCityHSContract.pdf

It seems I can’t turn on the news or surf the web without reading the word “blog.” Weblogs are becoming more and more popular everyday with 8 million Americans writing in their own blogs! There are also more and more teachers using blogs with their students, too. I share these blogs often, but students at my elementary school are blogging everyday. A first grade class has started to blog, which is turning out to be a great shared-writing experience! You can read the newest headlines from these blogs on WillowWeb. The fifth grade blogs were written on a handhelds and then put into a blog posting using KidzLog software (for Mac or PC).

Not only are blogs an easy way to get content on the web, they are also syndicated using RSS. RSS is code that is inserted into the blog that allows other websites and software to subscribe to blogs without actually visiting the sites through your web browser. So, I’m able to aggregate all of the blog headlines onto one page because those classroom blogs contain RSS code. I also use JPluck for Mac (Sunrise for Windows) to send RSS from blogs and websites on my PC or Mac to my Palm handheld (which can then be beamed to a class of students so they can read each other’s blog postings without a desktop computer). Don’t worry, almost all blogging software and services automatically put the RSS code there – you don’t have to know how to do it yourself. Read Will Richardson’s RSS Quickstart Guide for Educators for lots more on RSS. In you’re interested in subscribing to your favorite websites and blogs, try setting up a free Bloglines account. It will even tell you when your favorite blogs are updated!

There are blogs for about every subject imaginable because anyone can start a blog very easily (and free) through services like Blogger. I’ve added a page to learninginhand’s Web Links section that takes the RSS headlines from blogs about using handhelds. There are only a few people blogging about educational use of handhelds, but I am sure there are more to come! Of course, if you know of one, let me know. Visit learninginhand.com's Blog Headlines page here.

The December 2004 issue of District Administration's supplement, Education in Hand, is now available online. This publication is sponsored by palmOne™, Inc., so you'll find plenty of success stories about using palmOne™ handhelds in education.

The December issue has a story from a high school that uses a wireless network and all of the staff has Tungsten C handhelds. Another article highlights an Oklahoma high school where students use handhelds for class. I found it interesting that Shawnee High School wrote funding into a grant that paid for an "on-site handheld technician for 2.5 days per week to provide technical support and training." How nice and what a good idea! You can also read about sixth graders in California where a there is a "spin-off effect with parents buying handhelds so their children will have them when they move into the next grade." This "spin-off" effect also occurred with my fifth graders, where usually one-fourth of my students had a handheld purchased for them by the end of the school year.

We all know America’s renowned household advisor, Heloise, for her helpful, practical advice for all things domestic. I mean, who can beat this practical tip that’s currently on her web site: “Take out your checkbook and write 2005 on the next 10-15 checks. This will help remind you of the new year for those first checks when we tend to write the wrong year.” Now that’s a handy hint! Here’s one from me: Keep your checkbook balanced on your handheld. Use MyCheckbook for Palm handhelds (freeware!) or DMX Checkbook for Pocket PC ($10). There’re inexpensive, easy to use, and remember it’s 2005 for you.

I shared more hints for using handhelds in classrooms with Jerry Woodbridge in spring 2004 for a TechLEARNING article, and it’s finally published. You may not learn how to get chewing gum out of carpet, but teachers who are new to handheld technology may learn a thing or two.

Click here to read "Handheld Hints" at TechLEARNING.