Growing up connected: these two Kansas districts are giving thousands of students handhelds, and seeing the rewards.

It may be romantic to imagine a well-thumbed paperback copy of Moby Dick or A Tale of Two Cities being handed down from one high school student to the next. The reality, however, finds that tattered copy with pages missing, and its replacement copy expensive, in Olathe District Schools in Kansas, students have the opportunity to read any of hundreds of classic books simply by loading them into their palmOne handheld computer.

Enrollment in this suburban district has more than doubled in the last 20 years; a new school opens here almost every year. This year's grand opening is Olathe Northwest High School, a new-from-the-ground-up technological showpiece set to demonstrate Kansas' 21st Century Schools Initiative, the state-wide push for a higher level of technology in the schools. Every student in the high school is issued a palmOne handheld.

"We needed a way," says Rita Lyon, executive director of technology for the district, "to provide more access to technology for every student." Laptop computers were deemed too expensive, plus they had lifecycle and connectivity issues. Desktop computers, also expensive, were already available in school computer labs, and would take up too much space. "We needed something affordable and practical, that allowed students the ability to do writing anywhere," Lyon recalls, so the decision was made to purchase a handheld computer and add-on keyboard for every student and staff member at the new high school. The handhelds would be with the kids 24/7, just like textbooks they carried from class to class. And like a textbook, the student was made to understand that they would have to pay for a new one if their handheld were lost or damaged.

Staff training began in April of 2003. The teachers being hired for the new high school were aware before they signed on that this training would be expected of them. In fact, many reportedly made the choice to work in the new school because of its technology. Once trained, staff was encouraged to do their own research into what software applications would work best for them. There are advantages to starting a school from scratch. With the handheld computers in place, Lyon realized there was no need to purchase new literature books for the school. In the past, teachers were limited on which titles they could teach by the number of classroom sets of actual books available. "Usually each teacher had about eight books to choose from," says Lyons. "We purchased The Classics Collection, and got 400 titles of eBooks for $900 for four high school sites. The same books in print, I guarantee you, would cost a lot more than $900. And the teachers are enjoying taking advantage of the range of books they can have the kids read." Freeware like Palm Reader and discounted-to-schools Palm eBook Studio just add to the savings they earned by using eBooks from Palm Digital Media (www.palmdigitalmedia.com).

For the new high school, the district purchased m515 handhelds plus add-on keyboards at a cost of about $300 (per duo) from palmOne. The technology staff spent three weeks in July registering and deploying the nearly 1,000 units for the 850 students and 100 staff, only to have the units run out of battery power on the first day of school in August. "We were too eager, and we charged them up too early. We learned from that one," recalls Lyon. "For this next roll-out, we've timed it so they'll be ready to go and fully charged the day school starts." Next year's new high school will get Tungsten T2 models, bringing the 23,000-student district up to nearly 4,000 handheld computers.

While Lyon is happy to see the growth and the excitement the handhelds have generated, she also acknowledges that it was initially hard for the technology department to keep up. At first, tech support at Olathe Northwest was overwhelmed with students bringing in their units with complaints of "there's no more room." Students needed to learn that they couldn't load their new handheld with games and software that wasn't applicable to school. "We told the kids, it you put games on that interfere with what you're supposed to be doing, then those games have got to go." After the initial excitement wore off in a couple weeks, the calls on the tech department dropped dramatically.

The new student influx--averaging from 500 to 800 students annually--brings extra funds from the state. But it also brings 500 to 800 kids who each need a seat, a teacher, and now, a handheld computer. "It's exciting and a little scary to think of adding 2,000 new handhelds next year," Lyon admits, "but it's worth it to get this going."

The response has been almost overwhelmingly positive from students and teachers. "We provided recorded lessons for the kids to learn how to use the handhelds, but they figured most of it out for themselves. They accept these as part of their everyday world. By the third week of school, the kids used them as second nature. Some of them were even teaching the teachers."

Snowball Effect 

To get handhelds accepted as a school tool, building enthusiasm with a "... and they tell two friends, and so on ..." strategy seems to work at every level for students, teachers and administrators alike. For example, in Wichita Unified School District, Instructional Technology Specialist Jim Clark started a Handheld Education Leadership Program in the summer of 2002. He began with 21 educators who then trained other teachers in the use of handhelds and talked about their experiences to a wider audience at education conferences.

Clark got excited about handheld use when he was accepted to attend palmOne Education Training Coordinator training and then started a committee to look into getting units for his district. The district started with 100 handhelds in four different classrooms: one in a high school, one in a middle school, and one in two different elementary schools. "We told the teachers who volunteered to pilot this, you can have some money for peripherals and for software, and we'll train you, and then you can go for it. Let's roll it out and see how well it works." What they could do was wide open.

"We had all these questions and we wanted to make sure we could get some answers," Clark says. They felt a scattershot approach would be more likely to cover more bases than a structured, more confined exploration. At the monthly support meetings, seven schools were represented (the four pilot schools and three that had purchased handhelds on their own). These meetings were "mostly dialogue, some training," as the educators shared their successes and frustrations and learned from one another how best to use the new tools.

This year, there's not enough time, money of instructors to run the old HELP program. So Clark has devised HELP2 by using master teachers from the previous round of training to oversee training and resources. Seventeen schools in the Wichita district now have handhelds--roughly 2,000 in number-comprising a mix of m130, Tungsten E and Zire 71 models.

In a district of nearly 50,000 students, this is, Clark admits, just a drop in the bucket. What's needed is a support structure for the handhelds already in use before he can recommend the district purchase more. Still, the next phase of the district's handheld acquisition is already in progress.

"I can't say what recommendation our committee will come up with," says Clark, "but we're looking now at how our third, fourth and fifth graders seem to really benefit, so maybe we'll recommend that every third, fourth and fifth grader get a handheld. But then, if we think the technology is good then we should recommend that we get one into the hands of every student, at every level." The support structure that would need to be in place before such a thing could happen is, says Clark, "just a bump in the road. It'll happen."

"There isn't a single teacher who has tried these who isn't excited about using them. Especially at the elementary schools, they eat these up," notes Clark. "I had a teacher stand up and tell the [user's] group about how she had documented that by using the handhelds in her class, on one writing and editing project alone she had saved two full days of class time over her previous paper method. There's not another product out there that can make such lofty claims."

Zire 71 Captures Youngsters' Hearts

Since palmOne offers a "buy 30, get 3 for free" deal to schools, the Olathe District received 183 new handhelds on top of their original order. These, however, were Zire 71 models, not the m515 units they had purchased. Not wanting to set up any rivalry at the high school by introducing a different model to only some of the students, the technology department at Olathe looked for other options. "We decided to put them in the elementary and junior high schools as classroom sets," Rita Lyon says. That way, the image-capture capabilities of the Zire 71's built-in camera would be under supervision, and the younger kids could get a chance to learn the handhelds' software and hardware before they began using it daily in high school.

"These five little fifth-grade girls came and did a presentation at our February board meeting," says Lyon. "It was absolutely amazing what these kids were doing" Their teacher reported that all the students were really focused when they were using the handhelds. Non-English speaking students in the class also "really lit up when they could get on the handhelds and use them," Lyon reports, "even for ordinary tasks. All the kids were really engaged."

One special-education teacher takes her students on field trips to everyday locations like the grocery store, and the Zire 71 handhelds have proven key to the learning experience. "The students use the image-capture function to remember what they're seeing, so when they get back to class they can more accurately report on their trip," says Lyon. "They love using them." She plans to stay with the Zire 71 for the junior high and elementary schools, and upgrade to the Tungsten T2 for the high schools.

Parents Feel the Excitement

"One thing we didn't expect to see," says Jim Clark, instructional technology specialist at Wichita USD, "is the way the parents have really jumped on board." In the past, parents couldn't seem to get a handle on how the schools were integrating technology into the classrooms. "They couldn't really see the desktops, and they were reluctant to buy into it." When the handhelds started going home, however, parents could see for themselves how excited and engaged their children were by the technology, end they wanted to see more. "We have parent training nights for the handhelds and get almost 100 percent participation. It's been awesome." says Clark. "This technology is so enticing that it allows us to make connections with parents that we couldn't seem to make any other way."

Elizabeth Crane is a freelance education writer based in San Francisco.