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No More Back Pack
Handheld Devices: Toward a More Mobile Campus
Most of the nation’s 3,913 accredited colleges and universities haven’t launched initiatives that recommend or require students to use handheld computers. Yet hundreds are experimenting with how to enhance learning with the mobile devices—hoping to leverage the coming convergence of wireless networks, Web services, and enterprise applications. Some pilot projects, like those at Western Carolina University in North Carolina and Loyola College in Maryland, are sputtering for lack of funds, or because they aren’t central to the college’s technology strategy yet.
...College educators can expect to be challenged by the paucity of academic software applications and e-textbooks for handhelds, the lack of professional development training on integrating handheld computers and wireless access into instruction, and the snail pace of providers of course management software to enable handheld computer access to their products’ learning tools.
"There has not been enough software written for academic purposes, and you can’t rely on faculty to create robust, enterprisewide applications for handhelds," says Ray Dannenhoffer, assistant dean for support services and director of medical computing at the University of Buffalo’s School of Medicine.
For the most part, colleges with handheld initiatives rely on basic productivity software such as word processors, spreadsheets, and calculators, and the ability of handhelds to view specially formatted Adode Acrobat Reader PDF files and a smattering of e-Books.
But there are some faculty who are exploiting the key attributes of handhelds to engage students in new ways and to assess their students’ understanding of subjects.

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