November 2003 — Features
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Portable Technology Comes of Age
Experience with technology (see Table 1 below). All 26 of the participants were either juniors or seniors and had completed a minimum of two years of general studies courses and some requirements for the content they intended to teach. Students indicated that they all used a computer on a weekly basis for school-related work, while 92% used e-mail regularly and 88% used word-processing software regularly. Computers were also frequently used for fun by 83% of the students on a weekly basis, but by only 54% of students for schoolwork on a daily basis. During their previous college-level courses, 85% of the students had taken a course that required the use of technology, which, in most cases, involved accessing a course or course material through the Blackboard online system.
Although it may appear that the students were technologically literate and experienced, this may only apply to a narrow band of technology. Only one of the students owned or regularly used a PDA, none of the students had their own personal Web pages or sites, and 72% never or rarely used a cellular telephone. Percentages were also low for use of multimedia software, experience with online chat rooms, electronic organizers and virtual environments.
Use of the iPAQ (see Table 2 below). Logs were kept on the daily use of the devices over a four week period. The students were not required or held responsible for how they used the devices or how often they used them. The PDA was presented as a learning tool that they could use for course purposes as well as personal needs. In addition, their logs were not graded or factored into their final grades.
Overall, the most frequently used functions of the iPAQs (in terms of minutes spent by each student per week) were for note-taking, tasks and games. A closer look at the average use per function by week shows some dramatic changes. As expected during the first week, considerable time was spent familiarizing and setting up the iPAQ (35 minutes), setting up tasks (104 minutes), downloading and beaming software (40 minutes), setting up the calendar (30 minutes), and playing games (60 minutes). However, after the first week, all of these functions decreased significantly.
What increased drastically after the first week was the use of e-mail and creation of documents. E-mailing was a function that students already were familiar with and used regularly; they just needed to understand how to do it on the iPAQ. But, the creation of documents using the word-processing and spreadsheet software increased considerably once the expanded keyboards were made available during the third week of the course. The students found the function of note-taking and document creation valuable because of the portability of the PDAs and the ease with which they could synchronize with a computer and printer.
Best student experiences. At the conclusion of the six-week course, the students were asked to report on the most positive experiences they had using the iPAQ. The most frequently mentioned functions included the calendar (54%), e-reading (46%), games (38%) and taking notes (38%).
