As the State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA) points out in their recent recommendations, students need to use their computers "continuously and seamlessly" for all their school work. Paper-based materials round out students' learning environment, of course - but just as in the workplace outside of school where the computer is the hub around which all activity takes place, students too need to use their computers to create concept maps, view videos, integrate pictures into written reports, access search engines and applications such as Google Earth, create and share podcasts, etc., etc. If we want children to develop 21st century skills, we need them to use 21st century tools.

And those 21st century tools must be designed from the ground up to support the needs of teachers and students. Repurposing business applications only goes so far. K-12 has unique needs that must be explicitly addressed.

Harness the Power of Mobile Computing with GoKnow!

Towards providing teachers and students with a supportive, easy-to-use, computer-based 21st century learning environment, GoKnow - and its university-based founders - have spent over 15 years in classrooms gaining the knowledge and know-how that underlies the design of GoKnow's Mobile Learning Environment (MLE). MLE has steadily evolved and matured based on the feedback from over 40,000 teachers and students using it over the past 5 years.

It is with great pride, then, that we announce the availability of GoKnow's Mobile Learning Environment (MLE) for M&A Technology's Companion PC with Windows XP^®. MLE enables teachers to easily create complete and comprehensive lessons that employ a broad range of media and third-party applications - and MLE enables students to enact those lessons in an easy-to-use learning environment. MLE turns a computer into a tool for learning. Students enjoy using MLE and teachers tell us that it saves them time!

GoKnow's Mobile Learning Environment includes:

• MyProjects runs on the teacher's and their students' computers. MyProjects serves a dual purpose: it enables teachers to easily create lessons and it enables students to carry out the learning activities specified in the lessons.
• GoManage runs on the web. Teachers post lessons to GoManage; when their students sync their computers over the Internet to GoManage, the lessons are distributed and the students' work is backed up to the GoManage database. Teachers - and parents - can then review the work produced by the students. GoManage makes it easy for teachers to carry out differentiated instruction.
• Integrated software tools.
• Curriculum integration support.
• Quality professional development services.
• Excellent customer support along the way!

In MyProjects, teachers, through an easy-to-use click-and-drag, visually-supportive interface, create complete and comprehensive lessons that include learning activities that employ multiple media (e.g., text documents, spreadsheet documents, images, video, sounds) and third-party applications (e.g., Inspiration, Google Earth, Windows Media Player, Adobe PDF Reader, Microsoft eBook Reader). Students, using the same easy-to-use click-and-drag, visually-supportive interface, perform the learning activities defined by their teacher in the lesson.

The image below (Figure 1) depict a middle-school lesson on the "Water Cycle." The icons all the way to the right are applications that can be used in a lesson, e.g., Microsoft Word, Excel, IE, GoKnow's PiCoMap (concept mapping). MLE includes all the applications available on a user's computer in that list. In the Water Cycle lesson we see two columns of tiles. The tiles on the left of the lesson screen are resources identified and provided by the teacher. For example, clicking on the "Instructions" tile opens a Word document that contains the set of instructions for the Water Cycle lesson. The tiles to the right specify student-performed learning activities. For example, clicking on the tile "MyWater Cycle" opens Sketchy, GoKnow's animation program. Here a student has described the water cycle from the perspective of a droplet of water.

There are several important pedagogical issues motivating the design of MLE.

• Supporting Multiple Entry Points: The teacher typically specifies a range of learning activities; the student is free to chose where he/she will start - and what he/she will do next. Some students will start by designing a concept map in PiCoMap or Inspiration for the water cycle, while others will start with the animation in Sketchy. This feature of MLE supports diverse learning styles.
• Supporting Autonomous Learners: Teachers have told us that students who use MyProjects become "autonomous learners." When a student finishes one activity they no longer have to find the teacher and ask: "what do I do next?" Rather, MyProjects visually organizes all the activities in the lesson so a student can move easily from one to another in a multi- activity lesson - and in so doing, develop very important self-monitoring and organizing skills.
• Supporting Multiple Modalities: MLE enables teachers and students to use all the third party applications that are available on the teacher's/student's computer. Thus, a student might be asked to create/manipulate a text document, a spreadsheet, an image, a video, a concept map, etc. Research has shown that creating artifacts using multiple media is a powerful learning technique.

Figure 1: MLE
Clicking on the Instructions tile opens a Word document that contains instructions for the lesson. Clicking on the My Water Cycle tile opens a Sketchy document where a student has created an animation of the Water Cycle, using the perspective of a droplet of water.

The GoKnow! Mobile Learning Environment for M&A Technology's Companion PC with Windows XP provides classroom-tested and approved software in a learner-centered suite of productivity applications for mobile devices - including classroom ready, ultra-mobile laptops. Using the integrated suite of GoKnow! and third-party software tools, teachers and students cover the full range of the K-12 curriculum.

Key Features for M&A Technology's Companion PC with Windows XP:

• Easy to learn and simple to use
• Enables learners to create multimedia documents on the Companion PC
• Enables collaborative learning through the easy exchange and sharing of documents
• Enables offline viewing of Web pages
• Works with many bundled software titles

Using the MLE through MyProjects, Companion PC users can create multiform projects made up of resources from any software tool installed on the mobile computer. For example, from a single screen the user can quickly navigate between a Sketchy animation, a word processing document, or even Web pages with rich research content.

The GoKnow! Software Tools shown below are included with every MLE for M&A Technology's Companion PC with Windows XP license.

GoManage

While MyProjects supports teachers and students in creating and doing curricular lessons, GoManage is the backend system that helps teachers manage the process of distributing lessons and the process of reviewing student work.

Teachers upload a lesson to the GoManage web-hosted database and, with 2-3 mouse clicks set the lesson up for class distribution. When students use GoSync to sync their computers to GoManage over the Internet, wirelessly, two actions occur: (1) the student's work is retrieved from their computer and shipped up to the GoManage web-hosted database where it is securely stored, and (2) lessons are distributed to the student from the GoManage database. A teacher can review and grade their students' work from their kitchen table since students' work is available from any networked computer. Indeed, a parent can view their child's work from their Internet-connected home computer.

GoManage makes it easy to carry out differentiated instruction. By breaking a class into groups, e.g., high achieving students, low achieving students, and moderate achieving students, a teacher can easily upload and distribute a different lesson for each group.

A school may elect to have GoKnow host their student accounts on GoKnow's GoManage website. Or, a school may purchase a license to the GoManage server/database and host GoManage locally.

Key Features of GoManage:

• Easily distribute assignments to students
• Create differentiated assignments for struggling learners, talented and gifted learners, etc.
• View student documents in the GoKnow! MLE
• Assess student work
• Back up student work automatically onto the GoKnow! secure web site
• Send feedback to students
• Print documents
• Maintain electronic portfolios of individual student work
• Build the home-school connection via parental access to student portfolios
• Install and delete applications
• Students use GoManage to communicate with their teachers and classmates and to back up their work, ensuring that their assignments are never lost!
• IT staff can easily delete inappropriate applications or files from student devices, as well as centralize software licensing, installation, and upgrades.

GoSync allows students to wirelessly synchronize their work to the GoManage Server, saving time and efficiency in the classroom.

Figure 2: Sample Page from the GoManage Website

For ordering information, please call (877) 482-3439 or use our sales information request form.

MLE is supported by extensive Professional Development materials and services.