PDAs - Beaming, A Handwriting Game and Spreadsheets

Chapter Four

In this lesson, this chapter's PDA tutorial continues practice with Graffiti, the specialized alphabet used by the handwriting recognition software.  To provide further practice and learn more about PDAs, the Graffiti drill and practice game called Giraffe and beaming will be introduced. Also, additional applications will be explored, including a spreadsheet program.

Wireless Networking or Beaming - Computer to Computer without a Diskette or Wires

There are many ways to move information from machine to machine using PDAs. Using the cradle and beaming (infrared wireless) are the two most common. The game of Giraffe is located on your instructor's handheld. It got there because a friend had downloaded it from a Palm web site to her desktop computer and then to her PDA and I had her beam it to me after she showed it to me.

Handhelds beam with infrared waves of energy. The beamer port, the infrared transmitter and and receiver, is generally located on the top or side of a PDA. Classic Palm units put it on the top. Handspring units put it on the side. The beamer ports must lined up, that is generally face each other. The maximum transmission distance is about 1 meter or a little over one yard. The signal cannot be sprayed to several receiving PDAs at the same time. Only one person at a time can receive. The Beaming capacity can also be turned off, which saves battery power and prevents students from being interrupted by senders attempting to transmit when they should not be. Beaming 1 file at a time to a classroom of over 20 PDA users would take a long time, but if organized properly, can take place very quickly using the concept of a binary tree. That is, as soon as one person has received it, there are two people who can transmit, then four, then eight, then sixteen and by this time just a few will remain so that within the time of five transmissions, over 32 people could have received the file. Think of this as a special kind of relay race. Instead of passing along a baton, data is being passed along.

 It is helpful to have some procedures to make this go quickly. Using the idea of standing and sitting to communicate who still needs help will speed the event along. In one approach, those who have received the file become beamers and must stand and keep standing until everyone has received the file and is standing. Of course the reverse could be done as well with everyone standing to begin with and then sitting down to beam to those standing once it is received.

In order to beam to someone, the receiver needs to have Beam Receive turned on. Use the pictures below to learn how to turn on beaming.

Click to see larger image.

From the desktop (tap the House or Home to get there), click Prefs (Preferences).

Data Beaming - Transmitting a Text File or Other Data

Pick a memo from the Notepad application. For practice just enter your name and a couple of words of comment. To beam a memo to someone, make sure the receiver has found Prefs on the desktop and set Beam Receive to On. Note the black triangles in the picture to the left. These must be clicked to see the pull-down menu and related choices if these settings are to be changed.

Finally, the sender must tap Beam from the pull down menu. Messages on the screen will indicate whether the two units synchronizing and are close enough to transmit, and then whether the sending was completed. The receiver will be asked if they do wish to keep what has been sent and must respond by clicking OK for the transmission to be completed.. Reading and Writing To use these skills in a more instructionally powerful way, imagine using memos for a Still Unsolved Problem or WonderWeb game that would support greater reading and writing activity. Each person enters a question topic on the first line, their name and date on the second and uses other lines for a question in a memo. They show their screen to others to ask if they can respond to it. If so, they beam it that person who must write something related to that question. The responder must add their contribution under the question and then look for others to beam to add on to the thread. After some period of time, the beaming stops and students must pick their favorite thread for additional writing and reflection. At the end of the exercise, students beam their chosen topic or favorite threads to a printer for paper copy and placement in their writing journal.

To beam an entire application instead of just a memo, address or appointment is a similar process. This beaming procedure will be reviewed twice more, as the applications of Giraffe (a drill and practice game) and TinySheet (a spreadsheet application) are beamed.

Application Beaming - Giraffe

To beam the Giraffe game to everyone, each person must turn on beaming reception. This will review the process one more time. To do this, first move to the PDA's desktop mode by tapping the house symbol. In the upper right hand-corner of this screen is a pull-down menu. Tap it and use the stylus to select System view or All. From one of these views, select Prefs (Preferences). At the bottom of the Preferences screen find the Beam Receive command and use its pull-down menu at the triangle symbol to select On if it is not on, otherwise if it is On then no changes needs to be made. Note the other choices that can be made in preferences including date, time, Auto-off power down and various sound settings. Keeping auto-off short as possible and sound levels low or off, as well as keeping beam off, helps to lengthen the time before the batteries need to be replaced. 

To be the sender or beamer, the beaming transmission controls must be found which are located elsewhere. Once again click the House symbol (desktop level). Next, under the house symbol, tap the pull-down menu symbol and select beaming. This is house beaming is selected from any software program that is running on the PDA. A list of files appears. Items that cannot be transmitted have a lock symbol next to them. Tap the item or file to be sent and then tap the beam button at the bottom of the screen. A dialog box opens indicating that it is searching. Line up a receiving computer a foot or so away and if beam receive is turned on, a message will appear on the receiver's computer indicating that it is receiving and requests permission to accept the transmission. Additional messages will indicate progress in transmission. As soon as the transmission is complete, each should look for another person to receive.

 

I now also have a copy of Giraffe on my laptop computer, and whenever extended power loss causes the erasure of all data, I can sit the PDA in its cradle and synchronize the PDA and laptop (or desktop) computer. The sync system compares both the laptop and the PDA, determines which computer is missing something and which computer has something, and moves it to the appropriate device. If my desktop computer lost this file, it can be retrieved again from Palm's web site and many others.

Giraffe - An Example of a Drill and Practice Game

Your goal is to see how high a score you can earn in the Giraffe game while in chapter four. Giraffe is a fine tool to motivate the deeper learning and faster use of the handwriting recognition alphabet. Once everyone in the class has been beamed the game Giraffe, it is time to play it. Tap the house symbol and look for the game of Giraffe. Use the up and down buttons to page through the screens of the current applications located on the PDA. Once found, tap Giraffe, then its Begin or Start button. As letters descend, the letter must be made before it hits the button to earn a point. If not made in time, a point is lost. If enough points are earned, the user moves to the next level. The game can interrupted at any point by making the bottom to top slide of the stylus of the display screen to bring up the Graffiti Help screen. If Help is used, the game is on pause and no points are lost. One strategy is to use this Help call to simply take a rest. The other strategy is to use this way of taking a break to learn a new symbol when it is first presented in the game.

Once the basics of the game have been learned, use some before and after class time for independent practice with Giraffe.

TinySheet - Math and A Spreadsheet Program

Your instructor will start the beaming tree for TinySheet. The spreadsheet program will require using some symbols that are not taught until the highest levels of Giraffe. Use Graffiti Help to learn to make the symbols for = (equal sign), + (plus), - (minus), * (times) and / (divide) or click these linked words to see the symbol stroke procedure. These symbols belong to the set of dot commands. That is, the strokes for these commands must be proceeded by a dot or tap of the writing space before the stroke is made. Use this knowledge to enter two numbers into the spreadsheet and use another cell to add them up.

Just like desktop spreadsheet programs, spreadsheets carry out a wide range of activities, from creating a list of student telephone numbers to organizing the events and times of a high school swim meet to handling business finance. A spreadsheet is first of all a table, so anything that a table can be used for to organized information, so can the spreadsheet. It is secondly a powerful calculator, all the more powerful because its display makes it easy to see and label what is going on, an impossibility standard handheld calculators.

For independent practice, try creating a survey of student's pets using the PDA spreadsheet program, properly labeling the different animals that are used. Total up the number of pets.

To delete an application, be at the desktop level (click the Home/House symbol) and tap the pull-down menu. Select the Delete command and a list of applications will appear. Tap a file name and then the Delete command.

Battery Protection

When finished using the PDA for a class period, go to Prefs (preferences) and set Beam Receive to off and make sure that Auto-Off is set to the lowest possible setting, either 30 seconds or one minute. Using these two settings alone will greatly increases battery life.

Summary

With this lesson, the functional value of handhelds is beginning to emerge for the support of reading, writing and math. Other content areas and other PDA applications will be covered in later chapters. An interesting place to price shop for PDAs is at www.pricewatch.com. Use the spreadsheet program to multiply different prices on their PDA list by 30 students to better understand the budgetary implications and compare this with the prices of outfitting a class with the same number of laptop and desktop computers. The concept of an inexpensive handheld computer that can be easily transported between school and home has a great deal to do with their value for education and classrooms of students. Much more remains to be discovered. Given current technology, what are the most important features that teachers should insist be in handheld computers for the most effective classroom use?

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