Review by: Reichert, Raimond (2004-07-28)

Cathleen Norris and Elliot Soloway present their vision of a handheld-centric K-12 classroom in this article. As there is some debate on mobile learning in higher education but few concrete projects, this article is reviewed here to illustrate how mobile devices are used in contexts other than higher education. The authors introduce the idea of a handheld-centric classroom to focus attention on the range of devices that could be made available in classrooms (e. g. digital cameras, scanners, projectors). While hardware is considered a solved problem, innovative, usable, and affordable software remains the greatest challenge.

The authors argue that handhelds support project-based learning because the handheld-centric classroom as envisioned provides support for: Artefact creation and easy revision; collaboration by sharing documents; learning in context, that is, using the handheld as an integral part of a learning activity; distributing the teachers’ documents; ongoing assessment and teacher-student feedback.

Teachers must be provided with an evolutionary entry path to a new technology; they often recoil at the idea of revolutional changes of their curricula. Learning activities using handhelds can be gradually introduced so there is no need for immediate change in the teachers’ way of teaching. As an example, the authors report that 87% of teachers used a handheld-based simulation in the first year in which they were introduced to it whereas it took the authors four years to get 50% of teachers to use a web-based digital arts library.

One of the main challenges impeding widespread adoption of handhelds is pedagogy. In a handheld-centric classroom, students’ documents should play a central role which implies major changes in curriculum, instructional practices, and assessment. In their concluding remarks, the authors argue that technology will change education this time, even though they acknowledge that such claims have rarely manifested themselves in the past.

While handhelds provide support for the organizational changes necessary, it remains to be seen whether the pedagogical benefits convince enough teachers and schools to adopt this new technology.