School planners, grant application writers, and individuals interested in uses of mobile PCs in schools may find this excerpt useful. Some consider this as an annotation on a checklist about uses of mobile PCs in their schools. (Also, use the Checklist item in Post Categories in column on right to review other checklists.)

What's possible?

It’s possible to join other teachers and students who use Tablet PCs and other mobile PCs in schools. They use them for reasons ranging from solo instruction to solo learning to collaborative instruction and learning to one-on-one learning as well as for learning-on-demand anywhere, anytime, anyplace. Teachers instruct from home students in classrooms as well as students at home learn with classmates in classrooms.

Lesson: The Tablet PC neatly fits between the single technology initiatives dominating the eLearning landscape and the spontaneous, social learning environments familiar at chalkboards and in schoolyards. (LomasBy, C. & Rauch, U, 2003).

Mobile PCs have the potential to free your mind and activities from many mundane regular classroom tasks, so you can pursue bigger ideas and develop them more efficiently.

Example: Mobile devices are gradually converging into individual information centers, making global mobile learning and impromptu information gathering for problem solving viable to fit today’s living style (International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organization, 200?).

Think of these tools as a giant canvas you can hold in your hand and on which you, as artist, can paint the most magnificent image your mind creates.

Tip: Mobile PCs provide a ubiquitous Swiss-Army-Knife of tools for a learner to complete research and other learning tasks (Low, March 23, 2007).

Is this hyperbole? Not really.

Lesson: Educators and students who use mobile PCs in schools have in common the human factor of optimistic risk-taking about learning with tools that appear to reduce failure.


Source of excerpt: Heiny, R., et al. (2007). Mobile PCs in Schools. (Released soon on TabletPCPost.com) (Yes, it needs editing before release.)

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