HDUL Homepage | Overview of HDUL | Getting Started with WHDs | Selected HDUL Publications

Copyright © 2006 President and Fellows of Harvard College | Web-site Related Comments | Last Updated 11/01/2006

Overview of the Handheld Devices for Ubiquitous Learning Project

The Handheld Devices for Ubiquitous Learning (HDUL) project is an exploratory study that seeks to determine how wireless handheld devices (WHDs) can enhance learning and teaching in university settings. Our motives for investing in HDUL are based on the devices people own and carry, society’s cultural and technical movement towards ubiquitous computing, WHDs’ potential for harnessing situated and distributed cognition capabilities, and emerging media-driven learning styles. During the 2003–2004 and 2004–2005 academic years, HDUL integrated WHDs into eight diverse courses at both the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and the Harvard Extension School (HES) as summarized in Table 1 below.

Table 1 Summary of Courses, Implementations and Sessions

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The Promise of Ubiquitous Computing

In the late 1980’s, Mark Weiser began writing and discussing the potentials of ubiquitous computing –– computing in which computers are no longer seen and resides in the periphery of our daily lives (Weiser, 1991). Since then, ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) has become an area of study in computer science and electrical engineering (see for example Abowd & Mynatt, 2000). Furthermore, UbiComp is changing the way that people see and use computers.

The computer-human interaction trajectory, according to Weiser (1996), can be thought of in three waves. The first computing wave tied many people to a single mainframe computer. Users of such computers had highly specialized skills that were not representative of average citizens. The second wave connected individuals to desktop and laptop computers, thus providing a one-to-one computer-to-human ratio. The third wave is the era of ubiquitous computing, whereby many computers interact with one person, or many computers interact with many people. Using the foundation of UbiComp, Chris Dede suggested the potential of UbiComp in education through the characters of Alec and Arielle as they explore a museum with their handheld devices (Dede, 2002).

In addition, Dave Keefe, Phoebe Farag and Andy Zucker's (2003) "Ubiquitious Computing Project: A Brief History" summarizes the histories and findings of various initiatives and how they played out in educational settings.

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The History of Handheld Computers

Wireless Handheld Devices

While the literature on ubiquitous computing is purposely device non-specific, wireless handheld devices (WHDs) offer many of the features theorized by Weiser and discussed by Dede. As a broad class of devices, WHDs include but are not limited to cellphones, personal digital assistants, handheld gaming devices, and portable music players. Despite their dissimilarities, WHDs share five commonalities: 1) Connectability – they connect to the Internet wirelessly via wireless fidelity, or WiFi, 2) Wearability – they are wearable and therefore always at the fingertips of the user, 3) Instant Accessibility – they turn instantly on and off, 4) Flexibility – they can collect data by accommodating a wide variety of peripheral extensions, and 5) Economic Viability – they have much of the computing capability and expandable storage capacity of laptops at a fraction of the cost (Dieterle, 2004).

If you are interested in learning how to operate a wireless handheld device, please visit the HDUL Handheld Computer Getting Started page.

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Educational Software for Handheld Devices

Table 2.1 Examples of Commercial and Research-based Educational Software

Table 2.2 Handheld Drivers and Systems Software

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Probeware and Peripherals for Handheld Devices

Table 3.1 Peripherals and probeware for handheld devices. (Prices as of March 9, 2004)

Table 3.2 Probeware base units and probes. (Prices as of March 9, 2004)

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Exemplar Uses of Handheld Devices in Education

Overview

In "A Report Card on Handheld Computing," authors Jean Shields and Amy Poftak (2002) first provide a short history of handheld devices before examining their potentials for schools. By striking a balance between the strengths and limitations of handheld devices, Shields and Poftak portray handhelds objectively as they pertain to education. At the end of their article, they provide a variety of resources designed to help educators sort out different devices, find useful applications, and develop an implementation strategy.

HGSE's Technology in Education 2004 Open Seminar "Ubiquitous Handhelds: Sifting Knowledge Through Our Fingertips" with Chris Dede, Ed Dieterle and Hal Kingsbury. | Streaming Video

The Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education’s "Stories From The Classroom." | Promotional Video

The Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education’s "Air Quality Experiment." | Promotional Video

palmOne has produced three short online movies showing how administrators, grammar schools, and higher education can use handhelds for teaching and learning. Learning in Hand: Administration | Learning in Hand: Elementary | Wharton School of Business (currently unavailable)

"Environmental Detectives Simulation" at the MIT Teacher Education Program. Using wireless handheld devices, students physically explore the MIT campus in augmented reality conducting virtual interviews and collecting simulated data of a theoretical oil spill.| Promotional Video

Robust Classroom Examples

Tony Vincent's fifth grade class from Willowdale Elementary School, Omaha, Nebraska uses handheld computers throughout their lessons in various ways.| Link to Mr. Vincent's Classroom

Dr. Charles R. Ward of the UNCW Chemistry Department began integrating Pocket PC into the laboratory sections of his general chemistry classes back in 1999 after becoming dissatisfied with the 3-to-1 ratio of students to laptops. Since then, he and his chemistry colleagues have constructed a 1-to-1 student to Pocket PC ratio for each semester’s 35 chemistry sections. | Link to General Chemistry Labs

Examples of Handhelds and Assessment

Classroom Wizard Homepage. Retrieved April 23, 2004, from http://www.classroomwizard.com/

Discourse Homepage. (2003). Retrieved November 3, 2003, from http://www.ets.org/discourse/about.html

eLearning Dynamics Homepage. Retrieved April 23, 2004, from http://www.elearningdynamics.com/

LearnStar Homepage. Retrieved April 23, 2004, from http://www.learnstar.com/

Quizzler Homepage. Retrieved April 23, 2004, from http://www.pocketmobility.com/quizzler/quizzler.html 

Wireless Generation Homepage. Retrieved April 23, 2004, from http://www.wirelessgeneration.com/web/

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Additional Resources

Abowd, G. D., & Mynatt, E. D. (2000). Charting past, present, and future research in ubiquitous computing. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7(1), 29–58.

Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education Homepage. (2003). Retrieved October 29, 2003, from http://www.handheld.hice-dev.org/

Dede, C. (2002). Vignettes about the future of learning technologies in 2020 visions: Transforming education and training through advanced technologies. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Dede, C., & Dieterle, E. (2004). Ubiquitous handhelds: Sifting knowledge through our fingertips. Seminar presented at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Technology in Education Open Seminar, Cambridge, MA.

Dieterle, E. (2004). Wearable computers and evaluation. The Evaluation Exchange, 10(3), 4–5.

Dieterle, E., & Dede, C. (2006). Straightforward and deep effects of wireless handheld devices for teaching and learning in university settings. Paper presented at the 2006 American Educational Research Association Conference, San Francisco, CA.

Dieterle, E., & Dede, C. (in press). Building university faculty and student capacity to use wireless handheld devices for learning. In M. van ‘t Hooft & K. Swan (Eds.), Ubiquitous computing in education: Invisible technology, visible impact (pp. 303–328). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Dieterle, E., Dede, C., & Schrier, K. (in press). “Neomillennial” learning styles propagated by wireless handheld devices. In M. Lytras & A. Naeve (Eds.), Ubiquitous and pervasive knowledge and learning management: Semantics, social networking and new media to their full potential. Hershey, PA: Idea Group, Inc.

Keefe, D., Farag, P., & Zucker, A. (2003). Annotated bibliography of ubiquitous computing evaluations. Retrieved June 25, 2003, from http://www.ubiqcomputing.org/Reference.pdf

Klopfer, E. (2003). Environmental detectives simulation. Retrieved February 10, 2004, from http://education.mit.edu/ED/EnvDet.mov

Klopfer, E., Squire, K., & Jenkins, H. (2003). Augmented reality simulations on handheld computers. Paper presented at the 2003 American Educational Research Association Conference, Chicago, IL.

Polsson, K. (2003). Chronology of handheld computers. Retrieved October 10, 2004, from http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/handheld/

Shields, J., & Poftak, A. (2002). A report card on handheld computing. Retrieved August 13, 2003, from http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2002/02/handheld.html

Vincent, T. (2003). Planet 5th homepage. Retrieved June 25, 2003, from http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/p5/index.html

Weiser, M. (1991). The computer for the twenty-first century. Scientific American, 265(3), 94-104.  

Weiser, M. (1996). Ubiquitous computing movies. Retrieved November 10, 2003, from http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiMovies.html

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Copyright © 2006 President and Fellows of Harvard College | This page was last updated 11/01/2006