PDAs are now being used in the field of education as a vital learning tool. Educational institutes have commenced a trend of integrating PDAs into their teaching practices. With the capabilities of PDAs, teachers are now able to provide a collaborative learning experience for their students.
PDAs have recently been allowed for digital note taking. This has increased student’s productivity by allowing individuals to quickly spell-check, modify, and amend their class notes or e-notes. Educators are currently able to distribute course material through the use of the internet connectivity or infrared file sharing functions of the PDA.
With concerns to class material, textbook publishers have begun to release e-books, or electronic textbooks, which can be uploaded directly to a PDA. This then lessens the effort of carrying multiple textbooks at one time. Software companies are also developing programs with learning aspects in mind. Simple programs such as dictionaries, thesauri, and word processing software are important to the digital note taking process.
With the increase in mobility of PDAs, educational institutes have now encountered issues with these devices. They have modernized their computer policies to address these new concerns. Software companies such as Scantron Corp. have now created a program for distributing digital quizzes. The quiz software disables the infrared function on PDAs, which eliminates the element of information sharing among individuals during the examination. |
