For Your Reading Pleasure
Tuesday, November 29, 2005 at 3:30PM 
There have been a few short articles on TechLearning.com this month about handhelds. TechLearning's PDQ (Professional Development QuickTips) has a page for setting up your handhelds. Since it is a QuickTip, there isn't much detail, but the page does offer good delimitations of freeware, shareware, and commercial software for handhelds. Another TechLearning PDQ is PDAs in the Classroom. This QuickTip discusses handhelds as a solution to one-to-one computing. It specifically mentions one of my favorite learning applications, Quizzler. Check out three years worth of QuickTips on the Archive page.
The IT Guy is another regularly updated section of TechLearning.com. The most current The IT Guy is by Wesley Fryer called iPods in the Classroom? It gives reasons why iPods are a viable platform for content delivery and creation in schools. iPods in the Classroom? is also a short article and gets its point across quickly.
Also published this month is Smart Technologies' Interactive Educator. Like Edutopia and Technology & Learning Magazine, The Interactive Educator is a free publication that can be snail mailed to your home or school. Check out pages 38 and 39 for an article written by gadget guru Kathy Schrock. "All the Rage for a Reason" gives reasons why handhelds are a great solution for education. This article may give you some helpful talking points (as if you didn't have enough already) for convincing others to fund putting handhelds in your school. Kathy suggests top-of-the-line handheld hardware like the Palm LifeDrive or HP's iPAQ rx3715. (Unfortunately, my school could never afford such luxuries--and we like our Tungsten Es just fine.)
Happy Reading!
Reader Comments (2)
Dear Tony,
Thanks for the mention of the article I wrote in i.e. Of course, I have since revised my opinion of the Lifedrive and, based on Palm's new product line, much prefer the T|X. A bit pricier than the E, but I like the WLAN and BT ability. However, the E still has a much brighter, nicer display!
Kathy Schrock
Hi Kathy!
I agree about the TX. I think it is perfect for education. It's my favorite handheld that I have ever owned! It's crazy to think that its $299 price is the same as what my school paid for Palm m505s in 2001 (dim low-res screen, 8MB of memory, 33mhz processor, no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi networking). The TX is better in every way.
...that's technology for you!