PDAs and Schools - Bringing Windows Mobile to the classroom

llama_juice · Post by **llama_juice** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 6:51 am

I cant belive I just read all that, and my overall opinion of this whole thing is just

NO

you're saying that every teacher in the school would have to change their teaching style and how they have been doing things for several years to learn how to use a PDA and TEACH FROM IT?!

The "touchscreen" doesnt have the same feeling as paper and pencil and the tiny keyboard on them is just a joke. you can send stuff to other PDAs really easily (gasp.... send your test answers to another classmate?)

You brought up that huge list of things you need to buy for school which most of it isnt necesary....

I spent $60 this year on school supplies... my senior year of HS....

If you were going to switch to anything... it'd have to be desktop PCs in every room rather than having every kid having a PDA. In my Business Teacher's room she has a switch that cuts the power on all the monitors to the PCs so that if she wants to lecture without people being able to use their PCs she can. She has full controll over the situation rather than yelling at the kid untill he/she complies with the teacher.

Your situation here, you're only looking at the "positives" rather than the actual idea here. It's like an N-Gage... sure they can do soo much but they suck ass and are pointless.

FleetAdmiralBacon · Post by **FleetAdmiralBacon** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 7:20 am

Llama_Juice wrote:I cant belive I just read all that, and my overall opinion of this whole thing is just

NO

you're saying that every teacher in the school would have to change their teaching style and how they have been doing things for several years to learn how to use a PDA and TEACH FROM IT?!

The "touchscreen" doesnt have the same feeling as paper and pencil and the tiny keyboard on them is just a joke. you can send stuff to other PDAs really easily (gasp.... send your test answers to another classmate?)

You brought up that huge list of things you need to buy for school which most of it isnt necesary....

I spent $60 this year on school supplies... my senior year of HS....

If you were going to switch to anything... it'd have to be desktop PCs in every room rather than having every kid having a PDA. In my Business Teacher's room she has a switch that cuts the power on all the monitors to the PCs so that if she wants to lecture without people being able to use their PCs she can. She has full controll over the situation rather than yelling at the kid untill he/she complies with the teacher.

Your situation here, you're only looking at the "positives" rather than the actual idea here. It's like an N-Gage... sure they can do soo much but they suck ass and are pointless.

Um, it appears you didn't read any of it.
The teachers wouldn't have the PDAs, every teacher in my school has a Dell laptop at about the same level as my ThinkPad, and they've been using them for years. Every room with desktops would costs thousands more than every kid with a PDA. There a tons of control programs available that allow you to control all of them at the same time. Most importantly this has been done before in multiple schools and all the feedback was positive. They had no complaints. I don't know how the fuck yous pent $60 on school supplies because all youc an get with that is a few notebooks and a stack of paper, I went through the entire shopping list. And no, fucktard, you can't send squat to another PDA. You can't even access files on another PDA via a network.
"You brought up that huge list of things you need to buy for school which most of it isnt necesary...."
WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
EVERY THING I BROUGHT UP WAS NECESSARY, unless you don't need pencils, paper, notebooks and binders. The rest was one time, and it was all required at my school. We need to have a TI-83+ graphing calculator.

angry man · Post by **angry man** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 7:38 am

Shh Shh... clam down and get your sences back...

seeing as there is an average of ~25-30 people in each class , having desktop computers, say 1 for every 2 people would be a bit LESS then having PDA's. PDA's can infact send info to eachother quite easily w/o a nework by the sole use of bluetooth, dpepending on the PDA. For school, i spent a total of $112 (including the $70 in registration fees). You did bring up textbooks, which are not purchased every year, only if they get lost.

FleetAdmiralBacon · Post by **FleetAdmiralBacon** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 8:03 am

Angry Man wrote:Shh Shh... clam down and get your sences back...

seeing as there is an average of ~25-30 people in each class , having desktop computers, say 1 for every 2 people would be a bit LESS then having PDA's. PDA's can infact send info to eachother quite easily w/o a nework by the sole use of bluetooth, dpepending on the PDA. For school, i spent a total of $112 (including the $70 in registration fees). You did bring up textbooks, which are not purchased every year, only if they get lost.

No bluetooth, I've already picked out the perfect model and bluetooth is not on it. Adding bluetooth adds a lot of money, and we would have no use for bluetooth. We buy new textbooks in a cycle, so each year we buy new ones for some class or another. We have requirements for our school supplies that I did outline in my virtual shopping trip. There are people here you spend up to $800 on school supplies (I was like "wtf!?" when I heard that, but these are the kind of people who buy the good stuff.)
If you want to know what model I've chosen, take a look at the main post. It has a link.
Nevermind, just look here:
HP.com - rx1955
It's the cheapest there is with WiFi, and it's made by HP and the battery life in their Pocket PCs is amazing (mine will last 12 hours running constantly! That's 12x the battery life of my laptop XD)

And how would you do homework with a desktop? It's illogical. My plan encompasses all aspects of school. I'm currently testing out a few things of my own, just wish I had a wireless router to bring to school and connect to the network...

llama_juice · Post by **llama_juice** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 8:21 am

Bacon settle down....

The teachers would still have to know how to use the PDAs and have to be able to show students how to do stuff. And the controll programs... put onto YOUR PERSONAL PDA... as if the students would leave them on there. You keep saying that the students would have to buy the PDA and then hand the thing to the school and say "Here make me not able to use this outside of school and put all these restrictions on it!".... yea right.... one kid finds out how to take it off... charges kids $20 to take it off of their PDA and eventually only the kids who lost theirs still have the protection on it.

There is a private school in the area that does this sort of thing and my brother went to it. He brought the thing home and he never really had to use it for school work. The way you are saying is to get rid of everything that people think of when someone says school shopping and replace it with 1 PDA. You took the costs over 4 years of HS and put it all together to come up with the cost of one PDA. A lot of families dont have the money to buy a PDA like that even if it is "economical" to spend what was it?... $360 all at once rather than the $60-100 a year?

Your plan can be as economical and egological as you want it to be, but your logic fails. You are way too bias twards your plan and you cant see past the fact that your plan just sucks. One person in this thread agreed with you....

There are schools out there where it worked..... and I'm sure there are schools where it didnt. It may have worked out there for some people.... if the students and teachers were willing to make the change. Most people dont like change. Even if it is more "ecological".

I would rather have paper and pencil. Most of the people in this thread thought the same way.

In a few years this might be the case, where PDAs will come into the school and take over. But right now, we're not ready for it.

a mammoth · Post by **a mammoth** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 9:45 am

I would rather have a PDA, but as the juice said it plainly doesn't work. Also IR can be used to send notes and play games remotely.

[cc]z@nd! · Post by **[cc]z@nd!** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 11:57 am

so what about sending notes and games? kids do it right now anyways, and PDAs aren't going to make it any easier. besides, if the kids want to play games and screw around, then it's their fault when they fail, right?

i agree it may not be economical for everyone, but it's waterproof as in saving the money you'll spend over 4 years. and everyone's forgot about when you need to restock on stuff, like pencils, pens, paper, etc..

my final decision on this is that it's perfect for private schools. if someone's kid is gonig to private school, chances are they're going to have an extra bit of cash to buy a PDA with. and then there's financing plans available. they don't have to pay the entire price up-front, but over the course of a year. Also, my school offers a loan program for kids that don't want to buy, or can't buy, a graphing calculator. $17 (about) for the whole year. a school can do something similar to this for PDAs, because it's obvious not everyone can afford it. because kids will play games and pass notes, then they get to have a chat with their parents about why they're using a $300 dollar PDA to screw around instead of get good grades. I'm all for it. not only will i not have to carry 4 books around, but i don't have to worry about losing them. of course, it's not like i'm going to just completely forget about good 'ole paper and pencil, but with a PDA, i can have a semester's worth of notes stored either on an sd card or on the pda as weightless bits, not a full notebook.

angry man · Post by **angry man** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:22 pm

Sorry to say i think this is going a bit to far. this is the last time i'm going to post in this.

all in all i think it wouldn't be a smart move. they are versitile but so are pen and paper. the screens are small and there would be a lack of pictures (in which i mean textbook pictures). i just don't think it would work very well.

Explosive American · Post by **Explosive American** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:39 pm

FleetAdmiralBacon wrote: And how would you do homework with a desktop? It's illogical.

I do my homework on a desktop...

JK-47 · Post by **JK-47** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:41 pm

I think the question is, how couldn't you do homework on a desktop... Its probably 10x faster than doing it on a PDA.

FleetAdmiralBacon · Post by **FleetAdmiralBacon** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:06 pm

How the hell would you do homework on a desktop that stays at school? is my question.

Explosive American · Post by **Explosive American** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:41 pm

You didn't specifically mention one that was at school.

llama_juice · Post by **llama_juice** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:56 pm

he's referring to my post I think...

Well, its simple really.

At my school we have a school email system set up. If you need to work on something at home... you just email it to yourself through the school's email system and check it at home. Or you could use a Flash Drive or any of those devices.

I would immagine that you would then end up e-mailing most assignments to your teachers (Some teachers prefer that now at my school anyhow).

Cuda · Post by **Cuda** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 6:28 pm

You honestly dont need some fancy shmancy piece of Equiptment for school like a PDA. My iPod seconds as a 2 gig Flash Drive. Teachers prefer it this way, So that throught the day, essays dont get smashed, presentations, booklets, pamphlets and text and images for group projects, like posters and such dont get folded or crinkled, but instead printed on the spot.

Its not logical to arm every student with a PDA. If one is lost, a kid will steal one from another student. Knowing high School kids, and being one myself, shit happens. you drop them. they break. thats a major hole in your pocket. you'd need a person to service them all the time. Schools will bunk off and not be responsible for theft of one. And besides, no one is going to be gunning for a calculator. the big and stupid kids wouldnt be in the higher classes to be in dire need of one.

Even if it's just you having a PDA, thats basicly like putting a target on your chest and running out on a shooting range. everyone is going to be gunning for you.