The Story
Like all good teachers, Amy Murray works very hard in her diverse classroom to meet the needs of her 91 fifth-graders. She strives to help each student reach their maximum potential on a day-by-day basis. Handhelds are one way Murray makes this happen. In Murray's classroom, only one of her four sections of students has handhelds. Murray works closely with Laurie Vondersaar, the Instructional Teacher Technologist assigned to support elementary teachers. Vondersaar, a former classroom teacher, pioneered handheld use in 2000, working within a research capacity with the University of Michigan. Today, the classroom integration baton has been passed to Murray, but Vondersaar stays active in her support with weekly visits to the classroom.

Challenge
It was paramount for Murray that the handhelds enhance the existing standards-based curriculum, not become the curriculum. Instead of sharing one device between multiple students each day, Murray and the researchers at Hi-CE (The Center for Highly Interactive Computing) at the University of Michigan thought it would be more interesting to provide a true 1:1 ratio, even allowing the students to take the handhelds home at night.

Whereas some teachers use handhelds for a particular program or lesson plan, or share the handhelds with other teachers and students, Murray had an interesting dilemma. How would she teach the same curriculum to different groups of students - some of whom had handhelds and some who did not? She thought she would have to spend a lot of time creating lesson plans - a "handheld" version, and a "normal" version. This proved not to be the case. According to Murray, "It turned out to be very easy to integrate the handheld into what I was already teaching. The problem I ran into was that it was hard for me to see and assess what the students did on their handhelds."

Murray goes on to explain an example. "In classes that used paper, I just collected stacks of paper and I could mark them. With the handheld, it was a little different because students had to beam their work or sync it somehow."

Solution
Key to the success of integrating handhelds into her existing curriculum was the flexible software tools from GoKnow. FreeWrite is a basic word-processor, useful for everything from note-taking, to essay-writing. FlingIt allowed Murray to provide her students with web-based content. This content served to supplement textbooks, magazines and other resources. PiCoMap and Sketchy also proved useful for concept mapping and animating concepts.

Having educational handheld software is important, but there was still the issue of knowing what the students were doing on their handhelds. Was their work of a higher quality than the students who did not use handhelds? Were the students more efficient? Undoubtedly, the students were more motivated and eager to stay on task, but documenting the student work, and sharing it with parents, was a struggle.

The solution that brought everything together was PAAM (The Archive and Application Manager). Vondersaar was the first to use PAAM, and describes the benefit. "Before PAAM, I never knew what my students were doing on their handheld computers unless I put in tremendous effort. Now, it's actually easy to view student work and provide feedback."

Once PAAM was installed, student handhelds could be synchronized to any computer and all work would end up in one place - on the secure PAAM webstie! "It was wonderful," Murray says, "because I could login to PAAM from home and pull up all the work easily. I could actually view and read what the students wrote and I didn't have to carry stacks of paper everywhere I went."

"As an extra benefit, students and their parents can login to PAAM, but they only see their individual handheld. Comments and grades I wrote for an assignment show up in PAAM, and parents can stay in the loop."

Murray and Vondersaar also stressed the importance of keyboards. While quite proficient in Graffiti, kids prefer typing and most would much rather type than use paper and pencil.

Benefits
Murray sites numerous benefits for the students who have used handhelds on a daily basis. First, there is no doubt that the students using handhelds generate more writing than those who do not. With paper, some students did not complete their assignments, or assignments were lost. In addition, revision on paper involved a great deal of re-writing and erasing. Integrating feedback from a peer reviewer or teacher meant time spent recopying. Fighting over the computer lab was even worse because if a student did not have their draft ready or was absent they were essentially a week behind the rest of the class. Handhelds make it easy for students to collaborate and edit their digital work right in the classroom, or at home. Another bonus? Students don't lose their work, and with instruction, they can save all their drafts.

A surprising benefit Murray shares involves overall classroom efficiency. "Using handhelds, I've been able to move through my curriculum faster than in years past, while probing deeper into the content. That's how much the handhelds have raised efficiency in learning."

Murray touts the handheld as having the advantage to meet students "where they are," meaning that no matter what the ability level or degree of knowledge about a topic, the software on the handheld allows the student to reach their maximum potential. With traditional worksheets and assignments, students are asked to write out answers or essays. With the handhelds, there are opportunities for expressing themselves with concept maps (PiCoMap) or even by creating animations using Sketchy.

Vondersaar and Murray hope that they can acquire enough handhelds so all students can use them in every subject area on a daily basis. Encouraged with their wonderful results in the writing area, Murray will focus more on looking at other ways her handhelds can impact student achievement in other areas.