Handhelds in the Classroom

To provide middle school students with access to digital tools on a daily basis is a challenging endeavor. If one looks at the number of computers available, their location on a school campus and the amount of time need by teachers to structure the use of technology, you will come up with the conclusion that getting students to use technology might not be worth all the effort. To try to make access to technology greater for their middle school students, Newport Mesa Unified School District in Orange County, California, focused the money that they are receiving from their Enhancing Education Through Technology grant from the state on purchasing handheld computers for the seventh grade students at Ensign and Tewinkle Middle Schools.

The project is initially focusing on the handhelds impact on writing and reading skills. Having access to a digital tool like a handheld computer can enable a student to be able to produce writing in a digital form that can be quickly shared with their teacher and their classmates. Convincing students to begin using the devices has not been a problem. The generation of students in classrooms now have been raised with digital technology and have minimal fear and resistance to using it for learning. The teachers were given time to get acquainted with the handhelds a few months prior to student deployment, which has allowed them to become personally acquainted with them before they began thinking about how they might use them with students..

Newport Mesa has partnered with K-12 Handhelds to help facilitate the program. Mark Wagner, the project manager, has been kept very busy with overseeing the many tasks that need to be done in order for the program to run smoothly. Many hours have been spent with rudimentary tasks like charging the units and figuring out a system to identify each student to their handheld. Probably the biggest stumbling block initially was the problem of getting teachers access to the content on all their students' handheld computers. Anyone familiar with how a handheld synchronizes with a computer will tell you that on the surface this could be something that would cripple the program. Having 500+ students synching to various computers on the campus would be nearly impossible to manage, especially for teachers who already have an overburdened job schedule. Enter HI-CE or the Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education with the solution. Realizing that this was a problem that would restrict the use of handheld technology in schools, they came up with a solution that just very well be the one that acts as the foundation of success for the Newport Mesa project. HI-CE, under its company name Go Know, created PAAM to make it easy for teachers to have instant access to all the content on a student's handheld. PAAM uses an Internet based synchronization that enables teachers to access each student's content through a web browser. Teachers can organize each of their student accounts into class folders and can even search by documents to quickly locate individual assignments. Teachers also can have an open window on any non-education related content or software on each handheld and can remove it from the student's handheld if necessary. The system also allows teachers to send feedback to students who will receive it on their handhelds the next time they sync it. It also allows them to easily send out assignment documents and templates to all students in their classes. Newport Mesa has also called on for the support of their area's SBC Education Advocate to assist in the program as well.

The teachers are already taking advantage of some of the benefits of the handhelds. Accessing the large collection of literature works in the public domain, teachers are distributing works of literature to their students that would normally come from the textbook budget. They are also taking advantage of the many educational games that are available to students to reinforce or extend upon the learning in their classrooms. Walking around the campuses you can already see the visibility of the handhelds as students walk with their heads tilted downward, actively interacting with their new learning devices.

With all the pieces in place Newport Mesa is moving forward this year and hopes by the beginning of the next school year to have a stable system in place that the teachers are comfortable with. They will still have their bumps, but with the support they are receiving from outside sources like SBC, Go Know and K-12 Handhelds, they will be blazing a trek into the future of learning that few others have been brave enough to venture into.