Blog Post 2: Handheld Devices

In his article A Year Without Paper: Tablet Computers in the Classroom, John Fons speaks on the experience that he had in his classroom using tablet-pcs instead of paper. He describes the types of hardware and software used by himself and the students, as well as their reviews of the use of the tablet in the class.
The students used “Compaq TC4200 tablet computers” which allowed them “to imbed “digital ink” into documents by writing on the screen with an electronic stylus” (Fons 2010, 481).The use of digital ink has many applications for education. Although the use of digital devices is often freeing for students, in that they are not required to care heavy textbooks and binders with them from class to class, the use of keyboards can slow students rather than help them, if they have not had proper practice using them. When taking notes on provided presentations, it would be easier to jot a few words down with a stylus, rather than struggle to type. The use of keyboards can also create noise that could potentially distract students from the lecture being given or the task that they have been assigned. The quietness of stylus use would be a great advantage in a library. While the hardware used by Fons would be beneficial for libraries, the software that he utilized to share lecture notes and other documentation would bring about even more positive change.
Fons (2010) made use of a software called Classroom Presenter to give students access to lectures and other assignments needed throughout the class. The software allows users to employ digital ink technology and distribute information, such as a teachers notes, in real time. What can be gathered from this article leads me to believe that the system used by Fons is very similar to Google Drive, with the added bonus of including a polling system within the program. The use of such cloud applications would allow students to participate in more discussion based learning, and make project based learning more easy to accomplish in groups. Libraries could benefit from cloud programs on tablet-pcs, as students would be able to more efficiently collaborate and the use of polling systems would give librarian lectures a better understanding of the students’ retention of information.
Overall both the instructor and the students where happy with the paperless classroom experiment that they preformed and like the use of tablets in daily classroom use. Many students even said that they preferred the use of tablets, because they were much more organized and could find past assignments without searching through mountains of paper (Fons 2010). This absence of clutter would make the use of tablets in a library worthwhile. Instead of giving handouts the librarian could create digital folders for individual classes which would allow students access at all times and help with organization. Rather than loosing the information that was handed out during a lecture the student would know right where to find it.
Access to tablet-pcs for use in the classroom and library would be highly beneficial to students and library staff, especially with stylus integration and the use of cloud applications for collaborative efforts.

Reference:

 Fons, J. (2010). A year without paper: Tablet computers in the classroom. The Physics Teacher, 48, 481–483. doi: 10.1119/1.3488196.