Last Saturday, I wrote about how the University of South Dakota is distributing Palm handhelds to every member of the student population. I think people can get their minds around how incredible it is for college students to be using these, but how about fifth graders?
Tony Vincent, a teacher at Willowdale Elementary School of Omaha, Nebraska, is using handhelds in every subject he teaches – math, spelling, science, social studies, and more. Each student is issued their own personal handheld, which they use to read virtual handouts and web sites, write papers and interactive fiction, and figure out strategies to solve puzzle games.
The best part about the Learning in Hand curriculum for open-source geeks like myself is that not only are the techniques he uses well documented on his site, but also that most of the programs installed in the handhelds are free for the download. Teachers, pay attention – this could be your classroom!
While it might be fun to play with PDAs all day long in school, Vincent is quick to point out that while the Palm is often the best learning tool, “other times it’s good, old fashioned paper!”
Planet 5th‘s web site is on hiatus for the summer, but you can read the pages from the 2002-2003 school year by clicking here.
(Photo courtesy Tony Vincent.)
UPDATE 5/27 8:42 PM – Bene Diction points out via comment that fellow blogger Christopher Wright is also doing this with his third graders. Incredible.
Check out What In Tarnation. He had his grade 3 kids doing this stuff. Cool eh? Blog on!