Every child in K-12 needs to be provided with a Palm computer, just as they are provided with pencils and notebooks. While it is too early to have data to support this claim, there is a clear prima facie rationale for why Palm computers will indeed support the academic mission of K-12 education:

Support for students:

Palms are the K-12 "personal computer:" All the evidence suggests that routine, daily, pervasive use of computing leads to increased productivity and effectiveness. K-12 children do not have success access:

Laptop computers are too expensive for each and every child to have one.

Desktop computers are used by a different group of children each of the 8 class periods in the day. Typically, a child will have use a computer an hour a week in school.

And, while some children have computers at home, there is still a significant percentage of children who have no access to computation outside of the school.

A Palm computer, outfitted with suitable software, can provide K-12 personal, pervasive access to networked, computational resources to support their learning.

Palms support cycles of doing and reflecting: It is well known that when children revise their written documents, the quality of the documents improve. Similarly, during a multi-week science investigation, students need support for returning and reflecting on what they are doing. A computer lab that provides access for children once a week for an hour is not an effective way to support the development of deep understandings. In contrast, a Palm computer can be used for 15 minutes, put back into the desk, hauled out in the afternoon for further work, and finally can be used at home in the evening to further review and refine a student's artifact.

Palms support collaboration and sharing: It is also well known that the sharing and commenting by peers on each other's documents leads to higher quality artifacts. Sharing of artifacts engenders substantive conversations in the classroom and helps children develop into a community of learners. Palm computers make sharing of artifacts just one tap away. Moreover, the immediacy of beaming addresses children's wavering motivation and focus. "Here, please read this and help me make it better..." BEAM. Laptops and desktops simply do not support such direct and immediate collaboration.

Support for teachers: A truly effective learning tool supports teachers as well as students. Here too Palm computers provide can provide value-added.

• Palms support teachers evaluating students' progress: Drawing on end-of-day backup of Palm-produced documents, a teacher can quickly review what each child has accomplished that day. Moreover, a child can easily show his/her parents what they did in school that day.
• Palms support teachers in managing class assignments: "PalmSheets" dynamic, interactive cousins to paper worksheets can be readily distributed to a class and then collected via beaming/hotsynching.
• Palms support teachers creating student-specific instruction: Teachers can produce Palm-based assignments that are customized to meet the diversity of needs and learning styles in a classroom.

Educational Software for Palm Computers: The Cool Half-Dozen

In order to justify the purchase of one Palm computer per student, we feel that there needs to be a range of applications that students can routinely use. To that end, we have the notion of the Cool Half-Dozen --- having 6 applications creates a critical mass of educational software that rationalizes the purchase of a Palm per child. Currently, we have 3 applications ready to roll in the Fall for our classroom deployment:

• PicoMap: Concept mapping graphically-oriented outlining is routinely used across subject matters in classrooms today. PicoMap enables children to create, edit and share concept maps in Palm computers (see PicoMap). PicoMaps can be uploaded, via our conduit, to PCs and Macs and imported into such applications as IE, Netscape, Visio and soon, Inspiration.
• Cooties: How do germs spread? Using a socio-kinesthetic simulation on Palm computers, children "meet" each other by walking around a classroom with a Palm computer and beaming each other either a digital-germ-free or a digital-germ-laden message. After the spread of the digital-infection, students can study the transmission pattern of the "meetings" by viewing a PicoMap that depicts the history of the meetings. (see statler.eecs.umich.edu/cooties.tv)
• PalmSheet Constructor: Paper-based worksheets are pervasive in classrooms. However, using the teachers can create customized, interactive worksheets -PalmSheets -- as web pages and have their students download them to their Palm computers; after they are filled in, PalmSheets can be uploaded back to the teacher's computer and automatically analyzed. (See Palmsheets.org) We are currently using AvantGo.com as the mechanism for transferring PalmSheets.

Reprinted with permission from Education Week on the Web

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