More time to teach
with the H/PC

 By John Woodring

One of the things I hate about teaching high school is that you don't get to do as much teaching as you'd like. The amount of paperwork needed to maintain grades, parent contacts, etc, is staggering. On top of that, you have to come up with ideas for student assignments. And on top of that, with today's instant gratification society and short attention spans, you have to give students quick feedback on their assignments before their attention goes somewhere else. Classroom computers (mostly desktops) have helped in recent years, but they have limitations. Students are (or should be) using them for writing and researching assignments. This means that the teacher usually has to wait until after school to plan lessons and update grades. Another problem with desktop computers is they never seem to be there when you need them to provide needed information for parent conferences or phone calls.

My first experience with "long distance" teaching

In the fall of 1997, a close family member was hospitalized in another city for an extended stay. This required me to travel often and miss class on occasion. I soon realized that a portable computer would be handy to create and send lessons back to my classes when I was away. I had been faxing and e-mailing lessons from my desktop PC at home to school for years whenever I was absent, so I knew the concept would work. My first thought was to buy a notebook computer. However, I never could justify the cost for a computer I would use only occasionally. (Remember I am living on a teacher's salary!) Then I took a hard look at H/PCs using the Windows CE operating system. I had read about Windows CE and liked what I saw. The operating system and all the applications I needed, such as a word processor, personal information manager, and spreadsheet, were already built in to the unit. It could connect to the Internet, letting me send and receive email and surf the Web. Best of all, it was over a thousand dollars cheaper than the notebook computer I was looking at. I purchased a Casiopeia A11+ and a US Robotics Megahertz 33.6 PC card modem and I was ready to hit the road.

Staying on top of grades

Pocket Excel was the application that attracted me to Windows CE in the first place. One of the first things I did was to adapt a spreadsheet I kept on my desktop PC, for use in Pocket Excel (see Screen 1). I used the Microsoft Works spreadsheet on my desktop to track assignments and figure out grades. I had always thought that it would be effective to have it with me in class so that I could check homework or other assignments, enter the scores, and give students immediate feedback on how an assignment affected their overall grade. I was not disappointed. Soon, students approached me to make sure their assignments were put into my "little gizmo" or check their averages on my "pocket thingy."

Pocket Excel lets me keep classroom grade sheets with me all the time, and give students immediate feedback on their grades and how an assignment effected it.

Interestingly, students who normally did not do homework became motivated when they saw the immediate effect missing an assignment had on their grade. Needless to say, grades started improving. This past semester, one student achieved a high enough grade on class assignments to exempt him from the final exam for the first time in his high school career. Thanks goes in part to Pocket Excel, for giving me the information I needed to effectively hound him about his grade.

My Pocket Excel grade sheet also helps me fill out report cards at the end of a semester. Not long ago I used to sit down with my paper grade book and a calculator, and average grades the hard way. (Many teachers still use this method.) Since my Pocket Excel spreadsheet averages grades automatically, all I do now is sit down at the desktop PC in my classroom (connected to the school's main computer), take out my H/PC, and hand enter the grades from my H/PC to the desktop PC. Soon I hope to be able to connect my H/PC to my classroom PC and transfer grade data over a network. However, the Pocket Excel spreadsheet still saves many hours of calculating and printing.

Staying in touch with parents

Pocket Contacts is my next most valuable application. With Contacts and my Pocket Excel grade sheets, I have my most important student information with me at all times. I keep parents' name, address and phone numbers and even email address for the few that have them. I categorize the parent contacts by the class the student is in and use Contact's filter function to get a class list quickly. When I call a parent, I make notes about our conversation in the Notes field, for further reference. I also keep entries for the people I meet at conferences, vendors, and useful Web sites.

Contacts and Pocket Excel have come in handy many times. When a fellow teacher needs the phone number of a parent, I've been able to give it to them before the main office could provide the same information. And I run into parents almost anywhere. When we start talking about their kids, and we always do, it's so easy to pull out my H/PC and give them the information they want.

Long distance lesson planning

I constantly search the World Wide Web for articles and lesson ideas to use in my classes (United States History, World Geography, and Travel and Tourism). Normally I do this from a desktop PC, but the ability to do this on my H/PC is handy, especially when I'm away from home. It saved my neck once when I was stuck in Atlanta longer than expected. I called home and made arrangements for someone to cover my classes (assuring a skeptical assistant principal there would be lesson plans ready the next morning). Then I headed to the local library and got to work.

At the library I looked over the current issues of U.S. News and World Report and American History to find articles related to what I was covering in class. After reading these articles, I pulled out my H/PC and created class worksheets using Pocket Word. The worksheets consist of a number of questions testing the students' comprehension of the articles content. When I was finished at the library, I headed back to my hotel and logged on to the Web.

When I was finished at the library, I headed back to my hotel and logged on to the Web. The first thing I did was retrieve the articles I had read at the library (U.S. News and World Report's: http://www.usnews.com; American History: http://www.thehistorynet.com). I also checked out the USA Today Web site (http://www.usatoday.com) and the CNN Newsroom Web site (http://learning.turner.com/newsroom/index.html) to see if I could find further information on the topic of the lesson. I copied excerpts from the articles, pasted them into the Pocket Word documents, and created a couple more worksheets to go with the downloaded articles. Then I went into the H/PC's Inbox and composed an email to the teacher covering my class. I detailed the student assignments and other instructions, attached the documents, and sent the email message off. The assistant principal was amazed I could do this with something small enough to put into my pocket and never doubted me again.

Purchasing an H/PC is one of the best investments I ever made. My H/PC allows me more free time to concentrate on quality teaching and be with my family. I often pull out my H/PC while waiting at a restaurant or other places to work on ideas for class (and this article). Once, while a school board meeting droned on, I wrote an exam for a history class. My H/PC lets me keep vital student information with me all the time, resulting in better parent/teacher communication and better student achievement.

It's just not fair!

I knew my H/PC was a winner when I returned from the trip to Atlanta, I mentioned earlier. My students greeted me with long faces. "We thought we were going to have a free day when we found out you were not here. Then the substitute pulled out all of these articles and worksheets for us to do. That's just not fair Mr. Woodring."

Maybe I wasn't being "fair" to them, but I was being a better teacher, thanks to my H/PC.

About The Author 

For six years John was the Social Studies Department Head and Technology Coordinator at the Beaufort-Jasper Career Education Center. Before that, he developed a training program for the Communications Department at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center and was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle Instructor in the U. S. Army. He has a Masters Degree in Education from Converse College and lives in Bluffton, South Carolina with my wife Priscilla and three-year-old son, Drew. Note: Funding for John's position at Beaufort-Jasper ended at the end of this past school year. He is currently looking for a teaching or training position in the Atlanta, GA area. You can contact John at: jwoodring@hotmail.com.