Personal Digital Assistants in School
David Hildebrand teaches business education and software applications at Garden Valley Collegiate in Winkler, Manitoba. He once heard an educational futurist mention in passing that personal digital assistants (PDA) - small, fully functional hand-held computers that can receive and process information and communicate with other computers and PDAs - would revolutionize education. Even though the speaker did not give any specifics on how, when or why this would happen, Hildebrand was inspired to help develop and institute the Mobile Learning (M-Learning) project at his school.
The project began in the 2000-2001 school year through a corporate partnership that provided the school with 35 PDAs. Hildebrand started very simply. "I just handed them out in the classroom and let the students begin to develop their own ways of using the units," he explains. He wanted to allow the students to discover the potential of PDAs themselves rather than possibly limiting them to what he, as one teacher, could imagine.
"There are literally tens of thousands of software programs available for PDAs," Hildebrand notes, "many of which can be adapted to an educational use." Note-taking software, calendar and scheduling programs, and software that permits the transfer of information from a PDA to a computer or another PDA via an infrared beam are only a few examples.
Quite quickly, students were planning and managing joint assignments, sharing information, and taking notes in class and transferring them directly to their home computers. This last application is especially significant, Hildebrand notes. It allows students to spend more time taking notes - knowing that they are not going to have to retype them - and assessing and integrating the knowledge. PDAs have been used in French, mathematics and business education courses, and are now being used by many teachers and students at the school.
The M-Learning project has integrated information and communications technology (ICT) seamlessly into the curriculum at a reduced cost to the school (buying enough PDAs for a class is much cheaper than buying and maintaining large desktop computer labs), reports Hildebrand, and has brought new corporate and educational partnerships into the school.
Interestingly, the project has attracted girls - typically reluctant to enrol in technology-based courses - to ICT learning as well. This may prove to be a critical element in opening the high tech field to girls.
Beaming and synching technology creates new and interesting ways for students to collaborate and makes instant feedback from teachers possible. Assignments can be quickly delivered, evaluated and returned. Learning is no longer tied to the classroom. Students can conduct field research using the PDA and scientific probes, access content on the Internet and manage files in all their courses through a wireless network.
"The verdict seems to be that the project is a success," Hildebrand comments. "It definitely has created excitement and interest in learning that wasn't there before, and has also proven to be a cost-effective method of computing and communicating between teachers and students."