Soft Reset #10: Researching Handheld Computing

Soft Reset Show #10 features Dr. Mark van 't Hooft from Kent State's Research Center for Educational Technology. Mark joins Tony and Mike to discuss the new ISTE Special Interest Group for Handheld Computing and his work researching the use handhelds in education.

Show Notes:

• Tony's Tip: Visit learninginhand's Web Links section for Research. You'll find links to much of the research cited by Mark.
• Mike's Tip: Consider conducting your own mini-research project or just share stories from your classroom with others. The Discussion Forum is a great place to share.
• Research Center for Educational Technology.
• Join the International Society for Technology in Education's Handheld Computing SIG. If you are already an ISTE member and want to join the SIG, call the number on this page.
• SRI Research Findings.
• Michigan Handheld Computers in Education Conference & the mLearn Conference are just a couple of the conferences for handheld computing.
• There are many discussion boards to connect handheld-using educators.
• Mark's upcoming book will be out in August 2006 with the title Ubiquitous Computing in Education: Invisible Technology, Visible Impact.
• Contact Mark van 't Hooft: mvanthoo@kent.edu.
• Visit Soft Reset's Discussion Forum to discuss this show!
• Leave a voicemail for us to play on the show! 206-333-1942
• Email Tony and Mike at softresetpodcast@gmail.com.

Enjoy the show! Click an icon below to listen or subscribe.

For Your Listening Pleasure

Want to listen to something while you anxiously await the next episode of Soft Reset? If that's the case, then you may want to listen to some podcasts I have recently paid visits to:

I was interviewed by Josh Butcher from Western Illinois University for their first TechKnowCast. You gotta love that title! I educate Josh and his audience on handheld computing. Listen for me to get on my soapbox about what to call these devices. (Recorded February 2006 - 23 minutes)

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I joined Chris Essex for Episode 7 of the Teach With Tech podcast, which is presented by Indiana University School of Education Instructional Consulting Office. I focus on my elementary school's experiences with podcasting. I manage to share several tips and hints for recording your own podcast. (Recorded February 2006 - 29 minutes)

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Kelly Dumont from The Educational Mac podcast and I recorded a conversation, which turned out to be more of an interview than a conversation. We focus on how Macs are used at my school, including our very cool Mac OS X server. We get into podcasting and other digital products students produce. (Recorded September 2005 - 36 minutes)

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InflationMaster

More money is needed to buy the same goods over time and that's called inflation. The freeware Palm program InflationMaster uses the inflation rate for any given year to calculate either forwards or backwards. John Mayo-Smith has updated InflationMaster to version 2.8. This newest version, released February 19, 2006, has data to include years 1810 through 2006. InflationMaster uses official data from the United States Federal Reserve, and the data for 2006 is based on the Federal Reserve's estimates. In fact, included in the download for InflationMaster is InflationStats.txt. This file contains the rates of inflation used in the software. This is handy if you wish to have students "go behind the scenes" to analyze how InflationMaster does its calculations.

Here's how InflationMaster works: I input 1810 for Year 1. Then I tap the button for Amount 1 and input 10 for $10. Next, I tap the Year 2 button and input 2006. After tapping the Calculate Amount 2 button, InflationMaster displays 126.211. This number means that $10 in 1810 would be worth $126.21 in today's dollars.

I have some problems for you (or your students) to solve using InflationMaster:

• Babe Ruth’s salary was $75,000 in 1930. How much would that be today?
• A new car in 2004 was $16,900. How much would you expect to pay for a new car in 1962?
• If your grandparents paid $21,400 for their house in 1949, what is the very minimum amount you would expect it to be worth in 2000 when they sold it?
• Besides somewhat straight-forward problems, students can experiment with InflationMaster to find periods of time when inflation was at a higher rate or when deflation occurred, like during the Great Depression. Use InflationStats.txt to help you out.

Here are some discussion questions you may pose to students when talking about inflation:

• What are some factors that cause prices to go up or down?
• How do price increases affect different parts of society?
• What things appreciate at different rates?

To install InflationMaster or to update your version, simply download iflm.zip, unzip the file, and double-click the iflm.prc file. This will queue it up to be installed the next time you synchronize your handheld (you must have Palm Desktop installed). However, once it's on a handheld, it can easily be beamed to others. If InflationMaster is already installed, the receiving handheld will ask if you want to replace InflationMaster with the newer version. Just tap Yes and you're good to go. If you're a Windows Mobile user, InflationMaster works just fine using the Palm OS emulator StyleTap ($30).

Gadgets Galore

Discovery Education has launched a free webinar series called EdTechConnect. Kathy Schrock presented a session yesterday titled "The Magic of Technology Gadgets for Educators" on EdTechConnect. Here's a description:

The "gadget queen" will present the must-have technology gadgets for educators. Framing it with "the way it was" and "the way it is now", participants will explore everything from storage devices to tablet PC's and everything in between! Teachers will come away with an idea of how technology can "magically" help them both in the classroom and in their personal lives.

So you missed Kathy's presentation about dozens of interesting gadgets? You're in luck because the webinar is archived on this page. It's an hour long slide show, complete with audio and participants' questions. Kathy also provides links to each gadget she speaks about.

Annoucing Our City Podcast!

Yesterday's blog entry was all about how much we love podcasting at my school. Today I want to tell you about a way you can easily participate in a podcast!

Our City Podcast is an audio program for kids and by kids. Students from around the globe are invited to submit a recording all about the city they live in (with the help of their teachers or parents). Our City Podcast is hosted at learninginhand.com, which means teachers don't need to worry about uploading, posting, RSS, and promoting the show because I'll do all of that for them.

Third grade students at Willowdale Elementary produced the very first edition of Our City Podcast titled Outstanding Omaha. Hosted by Sophie, the podcast is paced with a variety of segments all about Omaha, Nebraska. It should serve as a great example for future editions. And, while you listen, there are links you can click to learn more about Omaha. You can subscribe to Our City Podcast in iTunes by clicking here.

I invite you to not only listen to Our City Podcast, I invite you to participate! In fact, I've tried to do as much as I can for teachers. There's plenty of Teacher Resources for Our City Podcast, including the script for the Omaha example (in PDF and eReader formats), a complete planning packet, and a discussion forum. Soon I'll record a podcast for students that gives them tips for researching, writing, and recording a podcast. I know these resources will evolve as participating teachers and I work with them, so supply me with feedback on what you'd like to see. I'm hoping that by providing these resources and publishing the podcasts, we get many classrooms participating in Our City Podcast!

Whether you're just getting your feet wet or you're a podcasting pro, consider contributing to Our City Podcast--students will have a real audience and a genuine purpose. Our City Podcast is a great way for students to participate in podcasting! Please spread the word!

We [Heart] Podcasting

Today marks the one year anniversary of the publication of Willowdale’s first podcast. Radio WillowWeb has been so much fun for all students and teachers involved. Now that Radio WillowWeb has shows covering such varied topics as the U.S. Constitution, electricity, American Indians, and the Revolutionary War, I hope there is at least one episode of Radio WillowWeb that you can play for your students if you are a teacher.

In fact, I just posted our newest podcast, Willowcast #16, which is about the six writing traits. This show features skits by fifth graders to help others remember the traits of writing. Although kids tend to get pretty silly when making skits, these fifth graders struck a good balance between humor and information.

If you’d like more insight into how we create podcasts for Radio WillowWeb, check out the Create Podcasts section of learninginhand. You can even download a PDF version of the planning guide used for each Willowcast. Willowdale students are proud that Radio WillowWeb has served as an inspiration for other school podcasts. Teachers in California, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Saskatchewan have started podcasting using Radio WillowWeb as an example. How cool is that?

And yes, podcasting has a cool factor. How else can students have their work listed just two clicks away from celebrities like Beyoncé and Kelly Clarkson in iTunes? But podcasting has so many more benefits--giving students a real audience and a genuine purpose really empowers them. We've found that podcasting is a great vehicle to address so many of the ideas in Willowdale’s philosophy statement for technology. I think the words in bold particularly address podcasting:

As an innovator and leader in educational technology, Willowdale Elementary School uses technology to enhance teaching and learning. We provide students access to the tools that are shaping our global society in order to match their learning needs, give students an authentic audience, and support learning and achievement. Willowdale teachers use technology as a communication tool to connect to families, the community, and the world. Teachers strive to infuse technology into each subject area and grade level. Teachers craft lessons that have students use technology and information for a genuine purpose as technology is not introduced for its own sake. Use of technology is part of the daily work for all employees to increase productivity, communication, and management and to model life skills for students. Willowdale’s thoughtful and productive use of technology makes our school a better place to teach and learn while preparing students to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Putting audio on the Web is certainly not fluff; one listen to Radio WillowWeb and there are no doubts that students are learning and loving it. There’s just so much to love about podcasting!

And just for you, here are five links to articles and sites I recently found:

• Here's a page crammed full of information about podcasting by Shaun Else, a fifth grade teacher in Ontario, Canada.
• Here's a PowerPoint slide show about podcasting from K12 Handhelds given at the 2006 NCCE conference.
• Here's an article about the right and wrong ways of podcasting in education by Rob Reynolds. If you don't feel like reading it, you can listen to it by clicking the Play button on the top of the page.
• Here's a article from the New York Times featuring podcasting middle schools students in Wisconsin.
• Here's a page full of articles, software, and example of podcasting by Marsha Burmeister from Florida. She suggest that the "pod" in podcasting stands for "personal on demand" audio.

Word Clouds

The above graphic is a word cloud. A word cloud is a representation of words and their frequency of use. Words used more frequently are bigger and bolder. Above is a word cloud of the last dozen posts on this blog. It's very interesting to see what words I use the most. (It looks like I focused on podcasting a lot lately.) You can generate a word cloud for any blog by entering the address of the blog's RSS feed into the Interesting Words page. Pretty slick, eh? I've been showing teachers and students word clouds of their blogs at Willowdale as a way to analyze their writing.

If you are really digging word clouds, you could purchase a t-shirt printed with a word cloud from the blog feed of your choice from Snap Shirts.

Resistance to New Learning Tools

People have always resisted new technologies in education. Here are some interesting quotes from the past:

“Students today can’t prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend on their slates, which are more expensive. What will they do when the slate is dropped and it breaks? They will not be able to write.” (Teachers Conference, 1703)

“Students today depend upon paper too much. They don't know how to write on slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can't clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?" (Principal's Association, 1815)

“Students today depend on these expensive fountain pens. They can no longer write with a straight pen and nib. We parents must not allow them to wallow in such luxury to the detriment of learning how to cope in the real business world which is not so extravagant.” (PTA Gazette, 1914)

"Students today depend upon store bought ink. They don't know how to make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words or ciphers until their next trip to the settlement. This is a sad commentary on modern education." (The Rural American Teacher, 1929)

"Ballpoint pens will be the ruin of education in our country. Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American virtues of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Business and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries." (Federal Teacher, 1950)

Like the technologies above, detractors have also pooh-pooh the idea of handhelds in classrooms because students will drop, lose, or abuse them. Students might cheat with them, forget to charge them, be distracted by them, or depend upon them too much.

Doug Johnson wrote an editorial for February's Leading & Learning with Technology. A Proposal for Banning Pencils makes the case to rid an important educational technology, the pencil. Doug then notes the absurdity of the argument to ban pencils from schools and relates it to how crazy it is to ban items like blogs, laptops, and handhelds. The abuse of a thing is no arguement against its use. He writes:

My experience is that the more familiar educators are with a new technology, the less likely they are to restrict its use by students. When we old-timers experience a technology’s benefit ourselves, the more we understand its benefit to students.

Besides resistance to simply allowing the technology in the school building, there's resistance to changing teaching practice to use new learning tools. TechLearning's Professional Development QuickTip Changing Teaching Practice presents stages of concern. Teachers pass through seven phases in their journeys to improve their teaching. The QuickTip explains how to support teachers in each of the stages:

Awareness > Informational > Personal > Management > Consequence > Collaboration > Refocusing

Despite an array of excuses for not using handhelds, understanding these stages may help you or others you know put today's digital tools to good use instead of banning them.

Soft Reset #9: Installing Lots of Files

Having 30, 60, or hundreds of handheld can sure be a lot of work! Can you image having to routinely sync each of them to a desktop computer each time you wish to install applications and documents? Soft Reset Show #9 features technical strategies that experienced handheld-using educators use to make handhelds a bit more manageable. As a bonus, listen for Mike's manipulative way to convince students to delete applications.

Show Notes:

• Judy from Ten Sleep, Wyoming introduces the show. She works at Ten Sleep's school and is learning to use her Palm LifeDrive, along with the rest of the school's staff.
• Tony's Tip: Don't put an expansion card upside down or backwards. Never force the card in. Remember that card slots are spring-loaded, so you actually push the card down to get it to pop out.
• Mike's Tip: Check help menus and websites for help, tips, and instructions for using software.
• FileZ for Palm.
• FlyZip for Palm & LightNZip for Palm.
• BeamPro for Palm.
• Stability Test for Palm.
• Grant Street Software's SD Deploy for Palm, SD Deploy for Windows Mobile and SD Express for Palm.
• Mike's Pocket PC Alternative for SD Express.
• Visit Soft Reset's Discussion Forum to discuss this show!
• Leave a voicemail for us to play on the show! 206-333-1942
• Email Tony and Mike at softresetpodcast@gmail.com.

Enjoy the show! Click an icon below to listen or subscribe.

Podcasts from the World Conference on Mobile Learning

mLearn 2005 was the fourth world conference on mobile learning. It was held October 25 to 28, 2005 in Cape Town, South Africa. The event shares research and provides networking opportunities for educators, technologists, and researchers from around the globe. The conference organizers have posted podcasts from the keynote and invited speakers. I've listed the individual presentations below.

I particularly enjoyed listening to the recording of Elliot Soloway and Cathleen Norris' presentation. These two energetic speakers give the case for using handhelds in education. Then they share examples from GoKnow's Handheld Learning Environment. The audio is very clear and and I have recorded some notable quotes from their podcast.

Elliot Soloway & Cathleen Norris - 53 minutes - Listen
Using handheld computers in the classroom: Concrete Visions

"Do you share your computer with five other people?" -Soloway

"We have to pay for excessive functionality. What we need for students is task-appropriate technology." -Norris

"For students, what we are looking for is the simplest device to accomplish the tasks they need." -Norris

"The keyboard is absolutely essential. Children will use a keyboard and a stylus exactly the way an adult uses a keyboard and mouse." -Norris

"Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow did some research and they discovered that it took between three and five years for teachers to become comfortable with technology. What we're seeing with handhelds is that it takes half the time. Actually, in the second year, they're ok, they get it. The questions is why." -Soloway (Listen to the podcast to hear Elliot's explanation.)

"Forget that you are trying to mimic the desktop on a cell phone or handheld. Think about education differently. That's the challenge." -Soloway

Desmond Keegan - 40 minutes - Listen
The incorporation of mobile learning into mainstream education and training

Stan Trollip - 47 minutes- Listen
The giant leap towards mLearning innovations vs the small steps of lessons learnt

To subscribe in iTunes, copy the address of the RSS feed: http://www.5thdigit.net/mLrn.xml. Next, click Subscribe to Podcast from iTunes' Advanced menu. Paste the address and click OK.

January Forum Digest

Another month has passed, and we've almost doubled the number of discussion forum members since last month. In case you haven't read all 65 posts in January, allow me to summarize some of the activity on learninginhand's Discussion Forums.

• Brian introduces himself. He's a fifth grade teacher in Indiana who was fortunate enough to find funding for every fifth grader in his school to have a handheld and keyboard.
• Mark encourages everyone to join ISTE's Special Interest Group on Handheld Computer. This SIG will promote the use of handheld computing in education.
• Elaine requests quick advice about being on the local news. Her North Carolina students use handhelds and Tony, Dale, Wendy, and Marc gave her some great advice. Elaine later informs the forum readers that she survived the invasion into her classroom and the television segment turned out very well!
• Wendy is trying a new form of professional development using podcasting. She's asking teachers in her building to listen to a podcast and then meet in a relaxed setting to discuss it.
• Dale invites readers to visit his new blogging site: http://dalesmediaexperiments.blogspot.com/ .
• Stephen wants to know others' opinions on the Palm Z22. George informs him that administrators in his district do not like using the Z22s because the screen is so small. However, kids might have a different opinion about the screen size.
• Rob asks about printing by infrared beaming. He's given some advice by Rob and Tony.
• Tony and Brian seek feedback on a new piece of Palm freeware called LCM-GCF. Unfortunately, no one has given any feedback yet.
• Rob gives a follow-up to his question about Palm handhelds' wireless security. It turns out his Palm TX cannot be used at school because it doesn't follow WPA-Enterprise authentication.
• chintson is curious about programming for handhelds. Brian is kind enough to explain ways of programming for the Palm Operating System.
• Dale gives an alternative URL to download the Palm game Summing. It appears the link on Freewarepalm.com isn't working.
• Wendy is kind enough to share what she learned from an Apple podcasting and blogging workshop she recently attended.

And as I will do each month, I've drawn a name of a forum member who posted during the month of January. Member millerb has been randomly chosen to receive two very-orange stylus-pens! Brian, please email me with a mailing address and the stylus-pens will be on their way. Congratulations!

Questioning Palm's Future

Ken from Wisconsin writes:

What are your thoughts about the Palm handhelds?? I like the OS a bit better than the WinMobile. But, there are so many rumors abounding that Palm is going to start using Windows Mobile with their handhelds (i.e. - the Treo 700 being the catalyst). So, I don't know if going with Palms is a great idea

If they stay with Palm OS, is the Zire 31 a decent handheld to use with students?? There is no SD slot and I'm not sure if you can use a keyboard with them.

Have you had much experience with WinMobile? Isn't this OS a bit more unstable and apt to crash with students?

I'm in the process of writing a grant for NEA Innovation and am looking to use handhelds. So, in the grant proposal I want to have an equipment budget submitted too.

Let me know your thoughts. Thanks.

I don't want to start the old debate about Palm vs. Pocket PC, but I want others to know that I have absolutely no reservations about purchasing Palm-based handhelds. I thought others might be interested in my response to Ken:

Your question reminds me of what people were saying about Apple in the late 90's. "Schools shouldn't buy Macs because Apple is going away." Today, Apple's market cap is higher than even Dell's. Anyhow, the Palm OS will be around for years. Will it continue to outsell Windows Mobile? Probably not. However, since you teach 5th grade, you will be so much happier with the software (almost all free) available for Palm. AND, even IF Palm went out of business, there are millions of Palm devices out there and 30,000 applications--the Palm community will be around much longer than the handhelds you buy with the grant funds.

I do use Windows Mobile and there are some nice things about it. I tend to recommend Windows Mobile for secondary students who mostly use it for Word and Excel. I strongly recommend Palm for elementary students, again, because of the ease-of-use and the vast amounts of software available. Plus, there's lots more educational resources (i.e. lesson plans) for Palm handhelds in elementary.

At my school, we recently outfitted a fifth grade classroom with Zire 31s. It's done pretty well for us. It was $120 and does have an SD slot. However, the 31 has been discontinued and replaced with the Z22. The Z22 has no SD slot, which isn't a big deal unless you choose to use the SD Express or SD Deploy products from Grant Street Software which require a card slot. I personally would not let my school purchase a handheld without the slot because it really limits its ability. You can, by the way, use a wireless keyboard with the Z22. Most schools are purchasing Tungsten E2 handhelds. They are really, really nice handhelds and come with word processing and spreadsheet software. They're double the price of the Z22, but I think it's worth it. Good luck with your grant!

You should know that Palm has said it is committed to the Palm Operating System for years to come. And for those may be worried about Palm, Inc., read Who says Palm was dead, the stats say we are doing very well from PalmAddict. Although I tend to prefer Palm over Windows Mobile, your students won't really care which platform you choose, as long as they have access to mobile learning tools.