Kansas School District Purchases 2,300 Palm TX Handhelds

Posted By: Ryan Monday, July 17, 2006 2:31:41 PM

Olathe Unified School District in Olathe, Kan., added 2,300 Palm TX handhelds and an equal number of keyboards to its high schools, Palm today announced. The purchase nearly doubles the district's investment in Palm handhelds. Considered one of the most technologically progressive school districts in the state, Olathe is providing 1,400 Palm TX handhelds to Olathe Northwest High School, the first school in the district to get Palm handhelds three years ago. Nine hundred more will go to Olathe East High School.

"Olathe Unified School District is a perfect example of a district that continues to successfully integrate Palm handhelds into mainstream teaching and learning," said Eric Johnson, director of public sector sales for Palm. "This district is determined to give all students easy access to information and provide engaging learning opportunities. The Palm TX is the perfect choice because it offers traditional Palm handheld ease of use along with integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth(R) wireless technologies, which gives teachers and students greater flexibility to access and manage information inside or outside of the classroom."

Integrated wireless technologies also give administrators, teachers and students the access they need to the web, email, school networks and connection to other compatible Bluetooth-enabled devices, such as phones, PCs and printers.

"Olathe Northwest was a brand-new school when we started our handheld program, and we wanted to provide some kind of one-to-one access to technology," said Rita Lyon, executive director of technology for the district. "The cost of laptops was out of our reach, but Palm's handhelds justified the cost. We will continue to expand the program in order to provide either one-to-one access or classroom sets of handhelds to all four high schools in the district."

Palm TX"We are planning to have Wi-Fi access throughout our campuses, so it won't be too long until students have access to information anytime, anywhere in the buildings," said Lyon. "Most other Wi-Fi enabled products are out of our price range, but the Palm TX plus the keyboards purchased under Palm's Education Purchase Plan offer us an affordable solution and a way to place the technology into more classrooms and into the hands of many more students."

The district's goal is to bridge the digital divide and make sure all students have equal access to technology. "We have a very strong community of parents and patrons who want students to have the access to the technology they need and the skills they will need after graduation, in college or in the workplace. Our board of education and administrators are dedicated to providing the best technology we can afford," said Lyon.

Lyon acknowledges that access alone is not enough, so the district has an aggressive staff development program in place. "Staff development is critical to the success of the program," she said. "Each teacher has 15 hours of training on handhelds and how to use them effectively in classroom instruction. They can also repeat the training. In addition, we have instructional technology resource teachers in each building on a daily basis to assist teachers, model lessons, find applications and troubleshoot. Our goal is to have 100 percent of the staff well prepared."

Lyons said some students are given access to the handhelds 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while others use classroom sets. In all cases, one of the most used functions is writing compositions using word processing applications, spreadsheets (math, graphing in science, social sciences, charting data, and so forth) and presentation tools to present projects or assignments. In language arts, all literature books are in eBook format so students can read the books, highlight text, bookmark pages, make notes and look up words in the dictionary. Other high-value applications, according to Lyon, include new test and assessment programs. Students also use handhelds in the math curriculum, probeware for science, graphic software in the arts program and a plethora of freeware found online.

This coming school year, the Palm TX handhelds will replace older models at Olathe Northwest. Some will also filter down into junior high and elementary schools. The handhelds also have a home in Olathe's special-education program, where students in the Life Skills class take them on field trips and learn to buy and pay for groceries and practice other independent-living skills, such as managing homework and staying organized.

Source: Palm PR

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How do you keep kids from cheating?

RLFox124 @ 7/17/2006 8:18:39 PM # Q
I love the use of the technology and it interests me because my local school district just proposed laptops for every 6th, 7th, and 8th grader which was shot down by the voters. The cost was prohibitive and laptops seem less than economical in comparison to other options.

So how do you keep the kids from cheating and are they as productive as laptops when combined with a keyboard? Seems to me kids can still do presentations, word processing, spreadsheets, access networks, etc.

RE: How do you keep kids from cheating?
freakout @ 7/17/2006 11:11:12 PM # Q
With mobile data becoming ever more prevalent, people cheating in tests and quizzes is going to become a much bigger problem.

Last year, I was playing pub trivia a lot and must confess that I would often use my Treo to Google the answers that stumped everyone. The temptation was too great - it's just so damn easy to find answers nowadays. Eventually I stopped 'cause I felt too guilty. Also because some dude on one of the opposing teams seemed to be catching on.

The only solution is to completely ban handheld devices. Which sorta defeats the purpose of this rather cool project. My school never gave me a Palm! [pout]

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650

RE: How do you keep kids from cheating?
pmjoe @ 7/18/2006 9:02:01 AM # Q
Well, there's no easy answer, but I suspect an advantage of the school providing the devices is that they can then (at least try to) control what the device can access (though I wouldn't assume they're doing it in this case). A testing program could take control of the device and not allow access to other applications. It could randomize questions so that students can't share answers as easy. You could deactivate wireless access to the outside Internet by a set of devices in a particular classroom.

One also has to wonder if you might be able to save enough just by using eBooks in place of paper text books for this to pay for itself. I'm sure many of the students are glad not to have to carry all those books around.

RE: How do you keep kids from cheating?
RLFox124 @ 7/20/2006 2:31:58 PM # Q
I love the idea of an electronic text book...not only will the kids not have back problems from carrying around backpacks but the books could be updated electronically for less money (hopefully), the kids could highlight important information more easily, and it would be so much better for the environment to save all that paper!

As for your school not giving you Palms, I got my first PC when I was a Senior in college...an early graduation present from my grandmother. A Zeos 386SX...a supercharged 286 processor with 8 MB Ram (IIRC), a 5.25 floppy drive, 13" B&W monitor, DOS, Lotus 1-2-3, and Wordperfect.

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Good news.

VampireLestat @ 7/18/2006 2:41:43 AM # Q
Staying organized is a good habit that must start young.
And Palm OS offers many educational and scientific programs.

Teens who get used to Palm OS early then tend to buy Palm's when they are older.

RE: Good news.
KultiVator @ 7/18/2006 3:19:30 AM # Q
Yeah, like how I got used to them at age 25 and have been buying them ever since... now aged 35!

Despite a few niggles... I am beginning to love the TX. I just hope Palm continue to develop this line (more dbCache for sure) and work on ways to improve Blazer, which is serviceable but not especially fantastic.

Versamail seems to be really stable and the TX works well with my Nokia cellphone over Bluetooth.

Being left-handed, the major niggle is that after a reset the Palm prefs forgets the left-handed setting (for screen rotation) and defaults back to right-handed mode. This is a "feature" that has been with Palm devices since the T5 and has not yet been addressed.

Palm, if you're listening... please issue an update for TX to fix the handedness bug for us lefties!


KultiVator

RE: Good news.
VampireLestat @ 7/19/2006 12:17:59 AM # Q
I am left handed also. It is odd that Palm has left this bug go on for years.

There are 3rd party programs out there to force the TX to remember the settings after a reset. Google it.

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