Preferences…
Hello I’m Lill, and I’ll be talking about the Preferences option on the Palm main menu. In this area you have three catagories, General, Communication, and Personal. Here are the following options on the Palm Preferences and it’s functions.
In the section General you will find…
Date & Time- In this option, you can set what your location is, your date and time.
Graffiti 2- Graffiti is writing on the Palm with your stilus, not a keboard. In the Graffiti 2 option, you select a letter to tune/change, and check the box if you wish to use the method they give you. If you don’t check the boxes, it indicates that you will use other forms of writing the letter.
Power- This option is for your auto-shut off time, if you want it on while charging, and recieving notes (which is called beaming).
Sounds and Alerts- This is your sound option. You select if you want your sound custom or silent. Under custom, you pick if you want your sound level high, medium, or low. Under the silent, it is all automatically off.
Writing Area- This is the option if you want to write on the screen or not. If you check yes, you will see a check box if you want to see your pen strokes.
Formats- In this option, you can preset the country, change how the time and date is shown, when the week starts, and how your number set-up is.
Keylock- The Keylock option prevents your palm from turning on if you accidentally push a button.
Security- This option is to set a password, set an auto-lock on your Palm, and about your private records.
Touch Screen- Here is were you can calibrate your touch screen with your stilus.
In the section Communication, you will find…
Network- These are your Internet settings.
Connection- In Connection, It will show your “Available Connections”.
Phone- These are your phone applications.
Under the section Personal you will find…
Buttons- In this option you will find the list of buttons on the bottom of the Palm. You can set any program on your Palm to automatically appear when you touch that button.
Owner- Here you write your name and personal info.
Color Theme- This is where you set your color theme (how you want your Palm to look)
ShortCuts- This is where you can set shortcuts for words.
There is also prefrences options for the other programs like Documents To Go and E-Reader. E-Reader is a program where you can read books. (or E-books as there called.) This is all about the Preferences on your Palm. Thanks for reading!
8)Lill8)
Bluetooth
What is Bluetooth? Bluetooth is a communication tool that sends information from one device to another device(s). It has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are you can “beam” information (like work and games) to multiple people (or one person) without walking out of your desk, beaming information saves paper, keeps student work organized and takes less time. The disadvantages with Bluetooth is when students are writing a test with their Palms they could try to cheat by using Bluetooth to share their work. Teachers can check students’ Palms to see who is on Bluetooth. If a student is on Bluetooth, an icon will appear at the top of the screen. The teacher can tell them to turn Bluetooth off and avoid cheating. Another disadvantage would be if Bluetooth is on, it will drain your batteries quickly so you will have to charge them more often. I recommend to turn off Bluetooth if you’re not using it.
In our classroom we use the beaming tool more than Bluetooth, it is quicker and does the same thing. See yah!
Ashley!
World Clock
If you need to know what time it is in Rome look in your hand and the Palm will have it. The Palm is a great tool for Social Studies classes. With this you can find out what time and date it is anywhere in the world at anytime. How cool is that? You could use this to see time differences in anyplace in the world. I have only used this during free times just to see what people in Tokyo and other places that I like might be doing while I am in class learning. There is one more thing it can do, you can make a new place anywhere in the world and it will show up as a place with a time in that time area. Right now in Social we are creating our own countries, so we could us this tool and it would give us the time, location and coordinates of our made up country. I don’t know if the world clock can do any more than this right now but I will keep exploring!
Lesley 
Another Video
This is a little off the topic of our Palm Project, but the opening sequence of this video sums up what our writing project is like. The rest of the video, with linking and mashing and all the possibilities of Web 2.0, is where we are heading with the connected world and one to one computing.
Palms? Paper? Write!
Students spent the last two weeks before their winter break writing up a storm!!Mr. Mac and I can’t keep up with all the editing!
In order to collect some data that will help us see if we have achieved our project goal we decided to do a control group with the students. They were divided into two groups, we tried to group students according to writing abilities so that they were even amongst each group. For two and a half days one group wrote with paper, while the other used the Palm handhelds. Students were allowed to chose their own topic. Groups switched after two and a half days and used the opposite tool for writing, again choosing their own topic. The third piece of writing was a topic given by the teachers regarding the Palm project and the control group. Students had a choice of which writing tool they wanted to use for this third piece of writing. Four out of twenty six students chose to do their third piece of writing on their Palm handheld. Three of these four switched to the palm because the editing process was quicker on the Palm.
After each day students were asked to journal their experience for the day in order to share their feelings about the Palm handhelds with others that are involved in the project. I also journaled about what I noticed as a teacher during these two weeks. These thoughts will be shared in the final written project.
While students wrote, Mr. Mac and myself edited stories and taught some writing skills. Time was an issue, and fortunately with project funding we were able to team-teach together for 8 afternoons allowing us to collect data necessary for this project. Time has not been on our side and we feel too rushed to effectively assess whether student writing has improved due to the use of the Palms. It is not realistic to accurately show improvement of student writing in a two week period. We do have some samples of student writing from the beginning of the year, however teaching the ‘6 Traits of Writing’ did not occur until January. However, in saying this, we are in the process right now of marking all of these stories using the rubrics from the ‘6 Traits of Writing’ and hopefully we will see some gains in certain areas.
As we continue uses the technology, we are reminded through research and observation that these devices alone will not improve student achievement. It is only through good teaching will we see improvement. Technology is in this case an amplifier.
Winter break is over and Mr. Mac and myself are using the month of March to collect all the data needed to complete our research action project! I guess it is our turn to write up a storm!!
