Five Key Considerations for Networking in a Handheld-Based Mathematics Classroom.

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Handheld devices, most familiar to educators today in the form of graphing calculators, are rapidly improving their interface, computational, and communication capabilities. Communication capabilities allow participants to rapidly share mathematical objects among their handhelds, potentially contributing to improved classroom discourse. We have had the opportunity to explore the pedagogical uses of these new capabilities by extending our SimCalc technologies and curriculum with two significantly different forms of networked handheld computers. The contrast helps us to understand several pedagogically relevant distinctions among types of electronic communication. In this report, we describe list five key networking considerations and illustrate them with three classroom activities that have proven productive. (Contains 2 footnotes and 1 figure.) [For complete proceedings, see ED500860.]