Glasgow schools are finding success with a pilot project that has seen hundreds of students receive their own handheld computers.
Three high schools and one primary are involved in the Glasgow City Council initiative, which is using Hewlett Packard’s Jornada range of handheld devices. They have many advantages over conventional laptops, being smaller, lighter, cheaper and less battery-hungry, and have proved very versatile and popular among students.
Willy Hamilton, assistant head of All Saints secondary school, said that there was “complete disbelief” when a rumour that 170 S1 (13-year-old) pupils would be given a Jornada 720, worth about pound;600 each. He added that children have been very protective of their devices, which he said have had “astonishing motivational effects”.
The prime aim at All Saints was using the Jornadas to improve pupils’ writing attainment, a difficult task that technology made easier, according to Hamilton.
The writing frames loaded on to each device meant that students were not “faced with a blank sheet of paper” and had some guidance on how to get going. They are part of a package of support material called “My Handbook”. Pupils can use the infra-red capability to beam their work wirelessly to a printer and teachers can zap notes to pupils. The Jornadas, which use the Windows CE operating system, also offer email and Internet access.
Hamilton said final-year students at one of the school’s feeder primaries will be given a unit, opening the door to a range of collaborative opportunities.
Heidi Forcett of St Mary’s primary said the handhelds were being used in many innovative ways at her school and hoped a wireless local area network would soon be installed to provide easy Internet access to pupils. She said they helped children to become independent learners who “were not always teacher-fed” and encouraged them to collaborate more with each other.
As pupils take the Jornadas home, parents without a computer often use them and experiment with email or the Net. “This is what bridging the digital divide is about,” Forcett said.
Likewise, Isabelle Taggart of Notre Dame High said the aim was to break down learning barriers between school and home. The units had been particularly useful for pupils at the school who come from carnival families.
Glasgow City Council is looking at ways to provide Jornadas to more schools and students and setting up an e-learning foundation could be one option.
The three schools presented a seminar at the SETT exhibition in Glasgow last month.
www.hp.comjornada
