Log on education: Handheld devices are ready-at-hand

Reviewer: Cynthia S. Fish

The authors make an elegant, if finally unconvincing argument in favor of the adoption of handhelds as an alternative/substitute/addition to the K-12 computer arsenal. It is elegant in as much as their basic argument is sound—desktops are expensive and there is increasingly conclusive research that the benefits of computing in education are only realized when the ratio of machine to learner is 1:1. Handhelds could be a temporary or permanent answer to the problem of access, since they are accessible and less expensive. The paper outlines the research and presents a few potentially exciting/useful programs, but in the end stops short of addressing the issues of those who control the purse strings. Having already shelled out a little more or less than a thousand dollars each for desktops, and having seen little if any real change in the children’s performance, we are being told that there is still more to be done. Now the children who put gum in the keyboard, toss baseballs at the screens, and put crayons in the CD Rom reader are about to be entrusted with yet another machine, this one mobile! Handhelds might be ready-at-hand, but with the slender software “pickings,” and the fear of entrusting children with still-expensive machinery, the authors have are not persuasive enough to convince a jaded PTA or school board who have already heard the brave promises, and are still awaiting the return on their last investment. Online Computing Reviews Service