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The following article is based on work being carried out by Dewsbury College in West Yorkshire - into the use of PDAs in Outreach Centres. One childcare tutor is using PDAs in her delivery of NVQ Level 3 Early Years Care and Education at two centres: one an Islamic Centre with predominantly Asian women who choose to be educated in a single sex environment and the other a Sure Start centre with mixed clientele. In both cases, technology (other than a TV and VCR) is non existent.
A Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) is essentially, a small handheld computer which can allow access to video clips, text documents, slideshows, spreadsheets, image viewers and web pages etc. They were initially referred to as a ‘Palmtops’ in recognition of their size and as acknowledgment of the predominant operating system, Palm. They may also be called ‘handhelds’. The reason for using generic terms such as these is that the Palm operating system has a very strong competitor called Pocket PC, by Microsoft. Whilst the discussion below concerns our experiences with Pocket PC PDAs, much of the technique and usage is similar, across both platforms.
PDAs are not appropriate for everyone. The biggest drawback is their screen size and there is no practical way of overcoming this. At about 9cm - 10 cm, the screen can seem quite small and impossible to use by those with anything more than mild sight impairments. PDAs may also be problematic for anyone with mobility problems as there is no easy way to use sound control. Ideally, to operate the device, the user must hold it one hand while tapping the screen with a stylus held in the other. This method is used to access menus, execute commands and to enter text or numbers (via a tiny pop-up keyboard).
However, these set backs aside, the PDA has the potential to bring technology into the most unfriendly and out of reach learning environments.
"The most obvious advantages of PDAs are their compact size and portability. They require minimal storage space, and students and teachers can take them almost anywhere - to the library, on field trips, and so on. PDAs are easier to operate than more complex computers, and many students are already familiar with handheld-computer games and consoles." [http://metmagazine.com/mag/pocketsize_powerhouses ] downloaded April 3rd 2005.
We certainly found that our users were happy to be given the opportunity to learn in ways similar to their main-campus contemporaries.
The childcare tutor had previously supported her teaching by developing interactive webs and placing these on the intranet for use as and when needed. As this was impossible for her Outreach learners, we converted the webs so they worked on the PDA.
Using such a hypermedia environment allowed the users as much freedom as possible whilst following their course objectives. With no, or very limited access to the Internet, these web pages provided access to a variety of media (such as those being listed here) so that interest could be maintained and different learning styles accommodated.
The use of video clips on a PDA is one of their better functions. The sound and image quality is excellent - what’s more they can add quality to a lesson;
'During a recent lesson, I decided to show a video-taped five minute excerpt from an educational T.V. programme. I asked for comments and the lesson moved on. Later, PDAs were used to show three further clips each no longer than one minute in length. Once again, I asked for comment. The PDA clips were more effective. I think this was because they were able to view pairs or alone and this fostered wider debate. Users were also able to rewind and repeat the clips until the message was better understood'. Childcare tutor.
Our work with this software is reported elsewhere. For more details please see http://www.techdis.ac.uk.
Our first use of images was tentative, we really had no idea how they would work within our newly written web pages. However, they worked just as well on the PDA as they did on the PC. As all the web authoring had to be carried out on a PC, it became a simple matter of configuring the image for use on the PDA (no wider than 220 pixels).
There is no ‘real’ version of PowerPoint so all work had to be converted. We used a product called Margi Presenter to go.
It should be noted here that text sizes used in this environment are crucial. Simply converting old slide shows will not work as very often there is too much and too small text on the original slides. The general recommendation must be that text is kept to a minimum (which is good practice anyway) and that size 32 should be the absolute smallest size used. These slideshows can be opened independent of the web page or hyperlinked to in the normal way.
A cut down version of 'Word' appears on the Pocket PC and this is quite versatile, with a reasonable spell check facility, formatting that includes colour, text size and attributes as well as basic paragraph rules.
The cut down version of 'Excel' is quite adequate for most basic number needs. With formatting facilities similar to the above Pocket Excel also automates some of the basic spreadsheet commands and formulas.
In both cases, when synchronised with a PC the files are converted to standard Microsoft ‘Office’ documents.
All of the above are available in some form for use on PALM based systems.
We feel that our experiment has been worthwhile and given the time we will attempt to apply it more widely. It has shown us that there is great potential in the use of PDAs in a number of fields. Although our courses are predominantly traditional ‘college’ courses, the Adult and Community Learning (ACL) and Work Based Learning (WBL) sectors could benefit tremendously from this technology[h1]. The PDA, like other technologies, should not be the main source of input to any form of learning, but it does show tremendous potential for supporting hard to reach, non-traditional learners.
David Sugden
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