This is a short presentation on integrating handhelds into the classroom intended for teachers who have some familiarity with handhelds and want to use them more effectively with their students. It also features a list of some of the best freeware available.

Palm has announced that their Education Purchase program will end Oct. 31.

If you have recently purchased a volume of Palm handhelds, make sure to get your claim form in asap.

For months now, I’ve been writing about the curriculum for mobile devices we’ve been developing with school districts across the country.

We have put the best of this together into a cross-curricular ebook library. This is available on a classroom or school site license basis.

Here is another free resource from K12 Handhelds. This is a good example of the interactivity that Mobipocket provides that we like so much.

This ebook can be used on Palm or Pocket PC and includes problem sets for:

– integers (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative integers),

– algebra (simple one- and two-step problems), and

– fractions (simplifying, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions).

Enjoy.

Well, the workshop on “Using Mobile Technology to Differentiate Instruction” that I wrote about earlier is pretty well finished. I’m really happy with the content in it and think this is a great resource for schools using mobile tech and looking for resources.

I’ve structured this in a wiki, and it is intended to be used for either a face-to-face workshop or as an online self-guided learning experience.

This is licensed under a CC BY SA license, so you are free to use it for your own purposes as well.

This is my first attempt at using a wiki to facilitate both a F2F workshop and a self-guided experience. If you go through it, let me know what you think.

Constitution Day is Sept. 17. You can get free curriculum resources for studying the Constitution and its making here.

This unit includes an interactive ebook, an annotated copy of the Constitution and its amendments, a collection of web resources on the Constitution, a quiz, and recorded narrations of the Constitution and its amendments! These resources can be used on Palm or Windows Mobile handhelds or on desktop or laptop computers.

Other handheld curriculum units available from K12 Handhelds include a kindergarten animal alphabet ebook and video, a poetry unit, and a unit on African-American history.

We hope you enjoy these resources.

K12 Handhelds is offering Mobile Musings blog readers a back-to-school special on handheld curriculum books.

Integrating Handhelds into the Writing Curriculum and Integrating Handhelds Across the Curriculum* are available for $29.95 each. Or you can buy both for $49.95. This offer is good through Nov. 15. Reference code K12FALL07 when you order.

* No SD card included at this special price

Palm today announced the cancellation of the not-yet-released Foleo.

We had hoped that this was going to be a contender for the low-end laptop market (ala the OLPC), but apparently not. Others are entering this market, though, so stay tuned.

There is a brand new 2nd Edition now available of the popular book Handhelds for Teachers and Administrators by Tony Vincent and Janet Caughlin.

This new edition has a lot of new information, including a section on podcasting, which includes tips for using Audacity and information on publishing your podcast. Even if you already have the old edition of this book, it’s worth getting this update. It also includes a new CD with more lessons, software, podcasts, and movies!

After a few hours of reading more about the new Foleo and watching Palm’s video conference on it, here are a few more of my thoughts.

- The Foleo can be used as a standalone device (i.e. without a smartphone). It has built-in WiFi, a USB port, a VGA port, an audio-out jack, and slots for SD and compact flash cards. (There is no hard drive.) I think Palm is purposely under-selling the Foleo’s potential as a low-end laptop, but in fact, that seems to be what it is.

- The price is right. I was expecting more of a UMPC-type device, and at $1,500-2,000, these devices are way too expensive for what they are. However, at $500, the Foleo seems affordable. And you can bet the price will drop over time.

- A drawback of the Foleo is that it is one more device to carry around. How this works for you will probably depend on your personal preferences and how you use different devices now. Personally, for “real work,” a big screen is important to me, as is access to desktop applications. Currently, I use my phone as a wireless modem for my laptop. I have a very small notebook that I love. (For entertainment like music, reading, etc., I prefer mobile devices.) My laptop is 2.8 pounds and has a DVD player, a 40 GB hard drive, and a 1.6 GHz processor. It’s a “real computer” that can boot Windows or Linux, and it’s not a lot bigger than the Foleo. I do like the form factor of the Foleo, though I wish it had a tablet-style flip screen. I think for people who have been able to wean themselves from a laptop and are able to use their smartphone as their mobile computer, the Foleo is a great product. For people like me who still find a laptop indispensable, it’s probably not as relevant. (Maybe I’ll evolve though….:)

- I really like that Palm says they’ll support a variety of devices, including the iPhone. The whole idea of using Linux (although Palm has their own version, which could be a concern) should be to open the device up to developers. As they’ve done in the past, Palm is opening their device and encouraging lots of development. Apple has chosen not to make their devices accessible, and I think that’s a mistake.

- There is apparently no support for old Palm OS apps. (In fact, Palm is reaching out to developers to develop PIM apps.) While this is a little unfortunate, it probably makes sense.

- Is this device relevant to education? It’s hard to say. I’d guess not too much in its first release, but very possibly down the road. If the price comes down to under $300, the processor gets more robust, and some solid educational applications are developed — all of which seems likely — this could be a decent educational laptop. With all the new Web 2.0 apps (and the addition of offline syncing), this could be very powerful. In fact, it could be a step closer to the super-user-friendly, book-type form factor computing device we’ve dreamed of for schools. Of course, we’ll watch what happens with OLPC and the Classmate as well.

All in all, I think this is a good move for Palm.