TeacherTabletPC

Steve Myers is piloting 1:1 computing in his grad-level Econometrics class:

… I asked how many [students] expressed at the end of the survey that they wanted to have a Tablet PC for their own use in this class. Over half the hands went up immediately. Shortly after that we passed out the contractual loaner agreement for their signature and gave them exclusive use of a new Gateway M285-E Convertible Tablet PC for the remaining weeks of the term.

…

From this point forward the students will be able to use their Tablets in class as I use DyKnow Vision to complete the lectures and lead the discussion this term.

…

I want to know three things from this trial. (1) Does access to digital pen technology and supportive software enhance the students perception of learning. (2) Does this enhancement depend on the digital ink, or might laptops do just as well, and (3) should we continue offering Tablet PCs to students in class. In the last case, is it sufficient to have a cart of Tablet PCs to borrow during class or do the students have to have ownership of their Tablets?

I am particularly intrigued because he has this list of specific questions he wants to answer with this pilot, because he does not seem to be the type that always jumps on the latest tech bandwagon, and because of his earlier published works on technology use in teaching.

Gary Dietz from Elluminate posted an online interview with Dr. J. Ricky Cox of Murray State (who I’ve previously mentioned), an HP Technology for Teaching grant recipient (as noted by Jim Vanides).

Lucky for me, at Elluminate we have customers and partners like Dr. J Ricky Cox at Murray State University in Kentucky, USA. I got on a web conference with him, hoping to get a few anecdotes about either pen computing or interactive whiteboards and his use of them with real time collaboration for a presentation I am working on.

I literally asked Dr. Cox one question, and here was his answer. (The content pretty is much unedited except to make it shorter.)

Dr. Cox talks about the advantages of using Elluminate for “Real-time Office Hours”—that is, for interacting with groups of students online in much the same way that he otherwise would in person during office hours. Specifically, he notes the ability to use audio, to “application-share” Journal to pull up class notes and to annotate and diagram, and to actually interact with the students rather than re-lecture.

(Unfortunately, it appears that edublogs.org is having some issues at the moment, but hopefully it will be back up soon. edublogs.org is back up)

The Bolles School in Jacksonville, FL is hosting Tablet PC Institute 2007, April 18-20, 2007. Though it appears that the registration deadline has passed, the site does have a number of examples of Tablet PC use in the classroom:

Faculty Tablet PC Program All of our 150 faculty members have been using the Toshiba Tablet PC in their classrooms. Click here to download a journal viewer and then pick any of the following examples to see what they’ve done. Journal Viewer download Since most of our Tablet software is Microsoft based the examples may not view properly in Netscape. Please switch to Internet Explorer if you find that problem.
What the teachers are saying	Lower School English Review
Document Mark-up	4th grade fractions
Note: The links below are quite large and may take some time to download
Lower School Tablet Movie	Tablet PC in Action
Tablet Case Study	Take a look at the Tablet Features

(as seen in The Tablet PC Education Blog)

Next week in the HP Online Speaker Series: “Using Tablet PCs and Pen-based Technologies for Mapping; Teaching Earth Science applications throughout an undergraduate curriculum”

I am pleased to announce our next online webinar!

Please join us on Wednesday, 28 March, 10:00am – 11:00am Pacific Daylight Savings Time for a live presentation and discussion featuring Mark Manone, HP Technology for Teaching grant recipient and Research Associate/Instructor at the College of Engineering and Natural Sciences Geospatial Research and Information Laboratory, Northern Arizona University.

(Another quick post, this time at the last second—trying to maintain my promise to post every day despite this weekend’s marathon of grading.)

Both Robert Heiny and Lora Heiny mentioned America’s Digital Schools: A Five Year Forecast – Mobilizing the Curriculum (ADS 2006), in which a 78% growth of Tablet PC use in schools is projected.  It’s an interesting read.

As I’ve been getting more into podcasts (especially things like KQED’s “Writer’s Block”, which has nothing to do with tablets…), I stumbled into The TabletPC Show. Here’s their run-down on Tablet PC Show #56:

Welcome to episode 56 of the Tablet PC Show! Like the last episode, I don’t waste any time jumping into…

News Updates:

• Tim Heuer’s Foxit PDF Previewer lets you preview PDF files from within Outlook 2007 or Windows Vista Explorer. But it works only on Vista.
• The Canovo Dual-touch “Superslate” puts two screens on a clamshell device. No real keyboard, but a very cool idea.
• There’s yet another OneNote PowerToy, and this one lets you sort your notebook sections alphabetically.
• Amtek’s new UMPC is being called the “Vistagami” with good reason.
• Vulcan has finally released the FlipStart. But is it really a UMPC?
• Samsung’s is showing off the very slick Q1 Ultra (aka Q2). I want one!
• Samsung is also shipping ReadyDrive hybrid hard drives to OEMs. Just what every tablet needs.
• Bluetooth 2.1 will include an optional “near-field communications” feature.
• Another OneNote PowerToy: This one lets you set sections of your notebook as read-only.
• GottaBeMobile is giving away a DocuPen Scanner Executive Kit. I tell you how to win it.
• Engadget writes about EyePoint eye-tracking software which supposedly greatly improves on previous attempts at vision input, that is, controlling a computer with your eyes. Would this be a good input method for tablets?

San Jose Sharks assistant coach Tim Hunter uses a Tablet PC during each Sharks hockey game. I talk about how he uses it.

• InkLearn is a tool for learning to write in Chinese—this looks very cool; I wish I’d had something like this when I was learning Japanese (from “InkLearn has a Home”).
• Lenovo is offering a free tablet pen for doing a survey—I strongly recommend having a second pen available just in case, since without the pen the tablet isn’t terribly useful; I personally use a Wacom-Cross pen nearly all of the time and keep the OEM pen as a backup, but I did the survey to get another spare anyway (from “Got a Lenovo? Get a Free Tablet Pen!”).
• Tracy’s thoughts on moving back to OneNote and how she uses it with Journal, et al. (“Sliding over to OneNote…again”).

Since it’s the end of the quarter and I’m pressed for time (even more than usual), here’s some quick OneNote stuff (mostly ON2007), via Daniel Escapa’s OneNote Extensibility & More Blog:

• Sort Pages PowerToy
• Sort Sections PowerToy
• Note that using a 0.25 tip (new default in ON2007) means no pressure sensitivity
• List of 23 entries on various blogs all about OneNote

on10.net did a video intro to OneNote 2007 with Daniel Escapa of the OneNote Extensibility & More blog.

As with yesterday’s post, today’s come from Innovate. I do hope to keep to research-based or journal type sources for at least a good bit of my posts that are more in the realm of educational technology and less Tablet PC specific. “Ten Core Principles for Designing Effective Learning Environments: Insights from Brain Research and Pedagogical Theory” gives some guidelines, with justification, for constructing learning experiences:

The following ten learning principles illustrate how recent research integrated with traditional principles of pedagogy and instructional design can enrich our understanding of thinking and learning processes. The principles outlined here can serve as a guide to the design of learning experiences in both online environments and traditional campus classrooms.

And since I couldn’t tell you there were ten core principles without giving you the principles, here they are:

1. Every Structured Learning Experience Has Four Elements with the Learner at the Center
2. Every Learning Experience Includes the Environment in which the Learner Interacts
3. We Shape Our Tools and Our Tools Shape Us
4. Faculty are the Directors of the Learning Experience
5. Learners Bring Their Own Personalized Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes to the Learning Experience
6. Every Learner Has a Zone of Proximal Development That Defines the Space That a Learner is Ready to Develop into Useful Knowledge
7. Concepts are Not Words; Concepts are Organized and Intricate Knowledge Clusters
8. All Learners Do Not Need to Learn All Course Content; All Learners Do Need to Learn the Core Concepts
9. Different Instruction is Required for Different Learning Outcomes
10. Everything Else Being Equal, More Time-on-Task Equals More Learning

The article also carried a note that it was “adapted from a presentation at the League for Innovation Conference on Information Technology, November 9, 2004.”