| GoKnow’s
Handheld Learning Environment
by Mitchell
Levine
Although,
thanks to the enormous technology initiative now underway in
the New York City schools, mobile technology in education has
been traditionally aassociated with laptop usage, in-class
deployment of mobile computers isn’t the only dimension of
the ongoing New York technology adoption process. Most recently,
convergent PDAs like the Palm Tungsten series or Sonic Blue’s
Frontpath have given ultra-portables a run for their money.
Unfortunately,
a great deal of effective enterprise software for education
has simply not been commercially available in the past. With
the introduction of their Handheld Learning Environment software
package, developer GoKnow has made an entry into the market
with dramatic promise. Almost like a secondary operating system
specifically designed for education, the software is in fact
the product of ten years of classroom research at the University
of Michigan.
The
first of the integrated utilities distributed with the suite,
PAAM, acts as a coordinated central management utility for
Palm OS, enabling teachers to manage and assess students’ documents
created on their handhelds. When students later sync them,
PAAM retrieves all the documents and sends them to a secure
server. Parent and teachers can then access the documents to
monitor progress and share ideas. After downloading the utility,
I was quite easily able to set up a small wireless network
of Tungsten Cs and Ws, and synchronize documents—an amazing
statement, as anyone who’s ever tried to create such a system
without the benefit of a tool like this can tell you. In addition
to simply managing documents, the PAAM component also backs
up student work automatically, and integrates it into an individual
student portfolio.
However,
the second component of the package, the Tool Suite for OS,
is probably just as much of a practical benefit for the average
classroom. It provides a series of applications for text editing,
drawing and animating, spreadsheets, and capturing web pages,
for those able to surf the wireless web. I had more difficulty
with these components, and didn’t find them quite as intuitive
as PAAM, but that’s partially due to the fact that I’ve been
conditioned by using commercial applications not designed for
education in particular. A new Palm user may very well find
that GoKnow’s reconceptualization of the functions these utilities
perform actually shortens their learning curve, due to the
organization that comes with being built from the ground up.
All
in all, I would highly recommend that any technology buyer
in the institutions considering the advantages of handhelds
for their technology implementation pay some serious attention
to this product. More information, including the details of
their license-share program, is available at the company’s
site, goknow.com.#
Education
Update, Inc., P.O. Box 1588, New York, NY 10159.
Tel: (212) 477-5600. Fax: (212) 477-5893. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of
the publisher. © 2003.
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