Hand Held Computers

The high school students in Orland, Illinois are engaged in an exciting technology pilot program. The Consolidated High School District 230 made use of handheld computers. These devices were bought by the district, then sold and leased to students for use throughout their classrooms. The district also provided these handheld computers to all students who could not afford to purchase one. The handhelds are small enough to hold in one hand and they provide a one to one technology ratio between teachers and each student. The computers have been used for fitness and nutrition to compute fitness goals that measure nutritional intake and physical activity. In Biology classes students compute ecological footprints in relation to the ecosystem. English classes use handhleds to create journal entries. Earth Science students use the computers to measure the speed of sound by measuring strikes of lightening and claps of thunder. I found this to be an innovative way of connecting education and technology.


My search for a technology article lead me to


http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech083.shtml


Education World led me to this interesting article at http://pdaed.com/features/district230.xml

Students and Technology

I was very surprised by some of the responses that I got from my students about the way that they use technology. One of the students had a lot of opportunities, experience, and confidence with technology. His experience included creating his own web page and spending hours at a time to surf the web and find out information on his favorite subject.....computers. He visits surplus stores to purchase used computers so that he can use various computer parts to create his own computers. He also volunteered to "fix" one of my classroom computers that was having difficulties. Imagine that. The other students basically only used technology such as the computer when it was required. They complete homework assignments and projects using the districts connect2school system. One of them has a digital video camera which is used to record family events. She is taking video production because she would like to learn to edit her home movies. The students' main interest also included computer game systems, burning cd's, downloading music and the use of the handy dandy ipod.