I have seen that students definitely do become fluent users of technology and generally catch on faster than adults. It becomes the challenge of the teacher to teach students how to learn and communicate with these tools. The focus should not be on how the tool works, but what you can do with it. I didn’t realize this the first time I used handhelds with students. I went in with the intention of teaching technology skills and made what I thought was a brilliant plan that would take students through three weeks of Palm “boot camp”. At the end of the three weeks, students would have all the skills necessary to work a handheld. When it came to actually implementing these plans, I found that it took only a couple of days for students to gain all of the necessary skills (not three weeks). So, now when I teach with handhelds, the technology skills are secondary to the task at hand. For example, when teaching about editing writing, I introduce students to the Memos application. I beam students a memo that needs editing. Students learn how to navigate Memos’ menus, select text, copy, paste, and beam all in the context of learning about editing.

Check out Tony’s presentations at: http://www.learninginhand.com/presentations/index.htm

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