Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Tony Vincent's Soft reset podcast #10 dealt with Research and Handhelds.  It had some information (as does Tony's site)about finding research, and where the research is in general.  Handhelds are fairly new and the initial first few years of research needs to be followed up.

http://learninginhand.com/softreset/index.html

David Perry's report on the first year of the Learning to Go initiative available from http://wgfl.wolverhampton.gov.uk/PDASite/index.html indicates clear increases in ICT capability however I am concerned about demands for evidence of increases in attainment. There is no clear evidence that ICT whether handheld or not raises attainment across the board for all pupils.Like any other educational tool, it works for some people all the time and for all people some of the time.  Also as with any educational intervention it is impossible to entirely control for outside variables.

There may be some info available from Chafford Hundred CAmpus school in Thurrock, they are now using PDAs and their last Ofsted indicates above average results.

Indications from a project I am running with teachers using handhelds are that PDAs are just one part of an ICT enabled environment with particular affordances for instant access to information, learning resources and multimodal means of recording. However they would not be first choice if dedicated hardware was available and it is having the flexibility of choice of tool and always having one to hand which is so enabling/supportive of achievement.