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Digital Handhelds:
The Future of Connected Teaching and Learning_
Twenty years ago, a few businesses were making the transition from electric typewriters to chunky desktop word processors. College students, swamped with term papers, soon followed. And so it went for ever-slimmer and more powerful laptop computers. Today, digital handheld computers are the must-have tool. Completely free of wires-and packing 200 times more memory capacity than the computer that guided Apollo 11 to the moon--these palm-sized wonders are becoming nearly essential for busy executives everywhere.
But what about busy teachers and students_ What if they didn't have to schedule time in a computer lab_ What if teachers could record grades with software that analyzes and compiles the data in real time_
The Grand Challenge
Convinced that so-called "handhelds" hold enormous potential to improve teaching and learning, several PT3 grantees are already examining how they work in classroom settings. "Handheld" projects are well underway at many schools including the University of Virginia (UVA), University of North Carolina-Wilmington (UNCW), and California State University-Bakersfield (CSUB). According to UVA project directors Glen Bull and Joe Garafolo, their collective learnings are urgently needed. "Portable wireless devices (PWDs) in schools will be widespread by the end of the decade," they wrote in a recent ISTE article. "The transition to pervasive computing will be a disruptive force that will have equally great potential for ill or good." The education community, they warn, had better begin to plan for the "grand challenge" of ubiquitous computing. http://www.citejournal.org/vol2/iss1/general/article2.cfm
In Virginia, North Carolina, and California, PT3 project teams are rising to the challenges ahead. They're putting handhelds to work inside-and outside-middle schools and high schools in three states. They're monitoring usage data and habits, listening to live feedback, and measuring change. And what they're finding is a sea change in the ways that students and teachers can work together.
Bull and Garafolo at UVA's Curry School of Education say it's entirely reasonable to expect that every student will someday have a portable computing device. Look at graphing calculators, they say. They became affordable for students and today they are basically standard equipment for high school algebra students to actively apply what they're learning. They are powerful tools with one major shortcoming: their use is limited to one subject. If that power could be applied to English and biology and geography and virtually any other subject, the results could be extraordinary. Cathy Barlow, dean of the Watson School of Education at UNCW, agrees: "Handhelds make every classroom a computer classroom."
Her school had a significant head start. UNCW was already "going wireless" when Barlow's team received its PT3 grant. "That upgrade plan was expedited by PT3," says Barlow. "Faculty had already committed to the principle that learning is not bound by facility, that we should get people away from a single computer in lab."
For students, real-time feedback improves skills
The UNCW team launched its first project at New Hanover High School in Wilmington. As 28 students began their senior-year projects, they learned online research techniques while sitting at their desks with their own Hewlett Packard Jornada handheld computers. They wrote drafts on their handhelds and beamed the documents to each other and to the teacher for review. With real-time feedback, teachers could issue an online quiz, immediately graph the results, and re-direct the module as necessary.
Word quickly got around UNCW. "I know change is hard, but it helps when the gadgets are fun," says Barlow. "Seventy more preservice teachers wanted training than we'd planned for. Nearly double the 69-member faculty showed up. We held 27 different sessions in the first year. People are excited about the potential and want to put these handhelds to work."
Meantime at UVA, Garafolo and his team also wanted to look more closely at the impact of handhelds in the classroom-a change from their original PT3 grant application. When the team was granted a change in the scope, members selected Walton Middle School near Charlottesville for their test site. For one quarter last year, a seventh grade English class worked with Palm M130 devices while Garafolo and his team looked on.
Why did they choose a language arts class_ "Revising your work is such an important component of learning to write," says Garafolo. "Before our project came along, those kids were getting into the computer lab only about three times a month. That's much too long between assignments for them to receive feedback and revise their work in fresh ways."
The class of 14 students and two teachers also received collapsible keyboards, two printers and two laptops. As students filed into class, they'd turn in their homework by beaming the documents from their handhelds to the teacher's. They'd also beam them to the printers and pass the hard copies around for peer review. "You just could never achieve that level of interaction before," says Garafolo. "We heard from the teachers that kids wrote more. Their compositions were longer, and they were better [than in longhand]. More homework was turned in on time. And the kids say it helped them add to a composition on the spur of the moment rather than waiting for a specific time slot on a specific computer."
The students were most enthusiastic about the portability of handhelds. Across the board, they say they would choose a Palm over a laptop computer. In fact, just a few weeks into the quarter, students began using their devices throughout the day. Seeing the potential for classes like science and math, they began asking Garafolo's team for additional program features.
Manufacturers are watching closely
Manufacturers are sure to appreciate Garafolo's findings. He has already developed advisory partnerships with several manufacturers who listen closely to student comments on screen size (too small) and features (the Palms need spellcheck).
Meantime, Randy Bell, a UVA science educator, is working closely with a software manufacturer on a pilot project to develop so-called "open source" software. "Open source" means simply that, once a product is developed and produced, it is released for use in perpetuity. In other words, production and supply can't cease-a frustrating situation that Bell and his colleagues faced involving an exciting new tool they'd been using in science classes.
Intel first launched its QX3 digital microscope for the 1999 Christmas season. It had no eyepiece or glass plate and clip. Instead, this digital-age version hooked up to a PC and you'd view the microscopic image on the monitor. Instant digital photos and videos were a hit with young users, but Bell saw enormous potential for his classes. In his hands, the time-lapse photography feature captured images of leaves and branches over the course of three days. Played at rapid speed, his students could see leaves growing. Similar projects showing the growth of crystals and protozoan captured imaginations.
When Intel ceased production of the microscopes, which it viewed as a toy, Bell secured funds to purchase 100 of them for his methods students. But that was a short-term fix. So he located a software company to develop similar capabilities in a digital camera. "Students shouldn't be left hanging when a product goes away," says Bell. "Open source software is a way to prevent that from happening. As technology becomes more and more integrated into classrooms, open sourcing will become more important, too."
For teachers, real-time assessment helps meet standards
In Bakersfield, Calif., three middle schools in the High Desert are putting handhelds to work in other ways. According to Penny Swenson, PT3 project director at California State University, the team is examining how the devices can help improve standards assessment and accountability. Put another way, her team is focusing on how teachers can use the devices to meet their own professional standards, rather than on how students can learn with them.
Last year, Swenson and her team held eight workshops to introduce teachers to handhelds and what they can do to help them document proficiencies and other standards. "All it took was one session," says Swenson. "They were amazed at how these little devices can do their work in real time. They couldn't believe that they can input data and instantly receive analysis and other functions that would normally take many tedious hours to develop. They leave these workshops so enthusiastic and ready to hit the classroom."
The CSUB program provided handhelds to working teachers who are sharing their learnings with preservice teachers in their classrooms. As predicted, they repeatedly cited one favorite benefit: the devices allow them to work in real time. For example, it is extremely difficult to accurately grade students working in a group. Now, with a Palm OS or Visor device in hand, the teacher can walk around the classroom, observe individual students and enter a numeric evaluation. A pre-programmed rubric computes and compiles that information in a number of ways: how is that student doing as compared to all the other students at that moment, how is that student doing today versus last week or last quarter, exactly when and on what task did the student improve - or begin to fall down_
The teacher can use trend reports to assess which students need assistance at a specific moment. Daily or weekly progress reports are beamed to the athletics coach who needs to know if a player's grades are up to par, and e-mailed to parents in advance of a meeting.
Swenson's team also looked at the role that handhelds can play in meeting standards. In a third-grade class working on a weekly writing assignment, they saw teachers move around the room with a simple rubric (positive, negative, neutral) that charted progress across the school year. The teachers felt it helped increase their accountability because it allows more objective and analytical assessment. "This allows you to focus strictly on a student's performance rather than his work habits or effort," says Swenson. They also felt it helped them form better instruction based on trends. "The handhelds allow them to gather multiple measures of a single teaching," says Swenson. "Real-time information helps teachers meet the challenge of making an experience new. It provides them more information for reflection and improvement."
Amazingly, all the devices held up to hard use by teenagers. Students in the North Carolina program left their handhelds in the classroom, while UVA kids were issued padded carrying cases that Garafolo bought at a sporting goods store. As for technical issues, he says, "we'd planned for tech support throughout the project but it was clear within two weeks that the kids themselves could solve any technical problems."
What's ahead
With the successful pilot project complete, Garafolo and his team are planning a more comprehensive rollout at UVA's School of Education. A dozen teacher educators have been issued handhelds, and the PT3 team is incorporating lessons learned into the methods classes. By spring, they hope to provide Palm devices to UVA's preservice teachers to use both as students themselves at the School of Education, and when they are student-teaching in the classroom.
At UNCW, Barlow and her team are moving the pilot program into six elementary school classrooms, beginning first with language arts and math classes for grades one through three. They'll use learnings from that project to develop an assessment tool for the State Department of Education. Meantime, back at the School of Education, handhelds are currently being worked into methods classes. Says Barlow, "By graduation, all of our students will have been trained. Of course we hope by that time that handhelds will have evolved in the classrooms, too. Then teaching and learning can really take off in new ways."
September 2002
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