Thursday 1/29/04 Reported & Photographed by Sheila

Class Log

We all entered the classroom with anticipation for “Digging Deeper” into the basic applications on our handhelds. I watched jealously as other class members had their Giraffe scores recorded – my handheld will not hold the scores. Several class members shared their success with learning Graffiti. They now understand how it can actually be faster to use Graffiti than using the onscreen keyboard. Some are using their handhelds while on hall duty etc. to play games…I mean practice their skills! Dan shared his more of his saga with purchase, return, and repurchase of his collection of handhelds. A certain retailer did not honor its rebate plan (hiss, boo!) We all now have negative feelings about that store! Tony got us started on our topics for this week’s class by telling us how much he enjoyed the discussions in class last week. We didn’t cover quite as much as he had planned…but he had a delightful attitude about all of us learning from each other. Apparently, we are one of “those chatty classes”… Tony also shared Jim Wolfe's email address as a contact at UNO that can schedule their loaner class set of handhelds to be borrowed a week at a time. Digging Deeper into the Address Book Since one or two students missed this class, I will try to write the directions for each feature so that the writing is strong in ideas and content, but lacking word choice! Tony helped us learn to select our own entry in our Address Book program and use the menu to find “Select Business Card” below “Record”. A positive of having this selected is the ease with which we can now beam our business card to other handheld owners. Normally – what you see is what you beam – but the business card can be beamed without opening your own entry. As long as the address book is open, there is a choice under the “record” menu to “Beam business card”. As cool as beaming is…it is important to pay attention to what you are beaming, as well as what you accept from others. It is possible to beam your whole address book rather than just one entry. We also discussed the “auto complete” feature in Address Book as well as how to add a note to an entry. The auto complete will try to help you by completing common words. Careful…it might be happy to change an address to NY if you start to type NE! The note can be added to help you remember children’s names, directions to an address etc. This can be accomplished by opening the entry, tapping “details” and the “note”. The faster method is to find the “hot spot” along the right hand side of the list view. This method will take you directly to the notepad for the name you selected. The custom fields can be changed too. In the list view, tap options then Rename custom fields. This can have handy implications for classroom use. The various entries in Address Book can placed into categories by tapping at he top right hand corner of the screen. You may choose form those categories listed, or select “edit categories”. If you choose to edit, you may name your own grouping. The “unfiled” and “all” all always present. You may have eleven categories in addition to "unfiled" and "all". One other way to customize your address book is to select the way the entries are viewed – perhaps by first name, last name etc. This can be changed in the “options” menu when the address book is open. You would then select “preferences” and use the dialog box to make changes. Date Book If an appointment changes, but stays in the same week, while in the week view, a handheld user may simply drag the appointment to the new day and time. (Stephanie would be shaking her head “no” at this point…sorry Stephanie!) To edit an entry already in the Date Book, you may tap to get the cursor and then change the wording. To make further changes, open the entry by tapping “edit”, then tap “details” and you can change the date, times, set a repeat, or an alarm. The repeat can be set for daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly times and you may select the end date. The alarm feature seemed a bit confusing. The times that appear after you tap the alarm box are for how long before the set time the alarm will sound. You may select minutes, hours or days and put in any number you wish. At the bottom of this “details” screen, there is also a place to tap “note” and you may add a note just as you could in the address book. I couldn’t help but notice that since we had begun “digging deeper”, Tony would be talking and all the class members were looking down with an occasional glance up at him. We were silent and completely engaged with our new learning. What a great atmosphere…I’d like to try it with my students! We were nearly ready to break for dinner. Tim brought awesome meatless lasagna. We thank both Mr. and Mrs. Stednitz! I had been somewhat distracted through the first hour worrying about it cooling off – only to find out that Tim had this covered! The microwave is a magical machine! Our short after dinner video was focused on a school district in Clark County, Washington. A Technology Support Center (perhaps like Nebraska's ESU’s) provided handhelds to four classrooms. The video showed very similar enthusiasm and comments to what we have heard from Tony’s students and staff members. An interesting point made in the video was that these students have grown up with electronic games as toddlers and then moved on to Gameboys etc. so they are very comfortable with a handheld computer. Our after-video discussion brought out the point that there is often unintended learning in a classroom using handhelds because the students end up talking about their learning experiences while using the new methods and strategies that a handheld allows. We also had some discussion about memory cards, card readers and pin drives. To simply summarize…there are many kinds that work in many different ways – they are all a wonderful addition to our technological world. The “Find” Button The soft button with the magnifying glass on most handhelds is a “find” feature. We experimented with this feature and learned that it will not find parts of words or groups of letters in the middle of words, but will locate the second or third word in an entry in one of the basic applications on the handheld. Example: I entered the word orientation and the find feature immediately located an appointment entered as 8th grade orientation. Calculator This is usually a basic application…although as of the end of class, Tim had not located a calculator on his new handheld. Shoppers be aware! I am certainly glad my handhand has a calculator! I learned that I can change it to nine different formats – far more than my mathematically challenged brain will EVER need! Prefs We also learned about the “Prefs” listed in the home directory. We entered our name as the Owner, learned how to use the digitizer, and turn off the sound (important with a whole class working!) These options can all be found in the drop down menu on the top right hand part of the screen. The choices include: Buttons, Connection, Digitizer, Formats, General, Network, Owner, and Shortcuts. So many choices…so little time! To turn off the sound, the user needs to find “General” in this menu. There is also a setting under “General” that says “Beam Receive”. Sometimes, these little handhands decide on their own to change this to “off”. Tony advises that if your handheld doesn’t seem to be able to accept something that is being beamed to you, check this setting immediately. Synchronizing If you use the term “HotSync”, you are really using a trademark name that is an adjective. We learned that when you synch with your desktop software, you have choices that that customize process. Memo Pad This is a simplified word processing program that allows the handheld user to use a keyboard or Graffiti to enter short documents that can be saved. These memos can be placed in categories similar to the address book's entries. Masked or Hidden Records Entries into any of the basic applications can be masked or hidden. I know that we went into the security settings to learn about doing this. I know that you have to set a system password – that you CAN’T forget (and at my age that is scary) – so I didn’t do it. If you need to remember more about this feature, you may want to check in with Tony! After our warm, friendly class, we headed out into the most horrendous cold that I may have ever experienced! My car was still cold after the 15 minute drive home and the temperature gauge in my car told me it was –8 the whole way home. Surely, the weather will improve by our next class! Until then, happy personal computing. Back