My class are really keen to have iPods in the classroom. Their iPods, that is.

So, when it came up as an issue across our four Upper Primary classrooms, I decided that the best way forward was for the kids to write a Position Statement to inform and persuade their peers and their teachers. As you can read for yourself, many of these Statements had well thought out ideas and make the case for the strategic use of personal iPods in the classroom.

Then Julie, the other coordinator came back yesterday after a Boys Forward conference run by Dr. Ian Lillico, where she posed the question that my teaching team have been asking, "What do you think about iPods in the classroom?"

She said that while he believed that iPods were ideal learning tools for recording and listening to specific educational content, he had concerns about kids using them as a "wall of sound" to block out distractions and improve their on task capabilities. So, I'm wondering what my readership thinks and whether you have kids utilising iPods in your classroom. If you read their Statements, they are mainly arguing for their use in non-instructional time where they have a specific task or assignment to work on, and it is at the teacher's discretion. They consider issues of equity, hygiene, health and appropriate content in the classroom. When I went Googling, I struggled to find many documented examples to inform my own perspective.

Maybe I'm not looking in the right places - what do you think?

Seeing that we've had our twenty wireless laptops running for the whole eleven week term in the four upper primary classrooms, it is a good time to review the program and make some observations. For me, I'm really interested to see how it has changed learning for my students, how it has impacted on my teaching methodologies and any management issues it has thrown up.

It's worth remembering how I (and the other teachers) managed prior to the laptop program. My school has a computing room with a class worth of desktops housed in the same building as the Resource Centre (Library) and it runs on a negotiated timetable catering for our 17 classes. I would always grab more time in that timetable than I was really entitled to a fair and equitable world and unlike many of my colleagues, would happily take the early morning slots. The time from the first bell until recess time is viewed by many of my colleagues as prime learning time - too valuable to burn on computing room time. (Shakes head in amazement - sighs in frustration.) So, I would always sign up for those unwanted timeslots especially on a Tuesday morning where a cancelled assembly could turn a one hour slot into two.

My class would use that computing time for mind mapping, web research, presentation creation and design, word processing or desktop publishing depending on the set and ongoing learning tasks they were involved with at the time. I would almost never use that time to just use a software program or website in isolation to my ongoing learning program and my students never got to use the room for "free time on the computers" as I have seen on more occasions than I care to recall.

With the introduction of an interactive whiteboard into my classroom in mid 2005, I started to increase my use of digital resources and tools. My computing room time became totally on-task time as any demonstrations or explicit instructions could be shown on the IWB prior to heading over to the computing room. However with the increased use of digital material via the IWB combined with the sort of inquiry based tasks my class were tackling meant that no amount of timetabled computing access seemed to be enough. This was part of the starting point for the introduction of a laptop program.

Being a public school with fixed funding, we did not have the luxury of even contemplating a 1:1 program (unlike some of my private and international school colleagues) but with flexible timetabling and thoughtful implementation, my principal and I figured we could get relevant technology into the hands of our students more often and as they needed it. We decided to start late last year with the twenty laptops housed in two secure trolleys in my classroom but timetabled across the four upper primary classes.

This would mean in an equal world that my own class would be entitled to the whole twenty for one quarter of the school week. In reality, this has been much harder to achieve. The first decision we made as a learning team was to keep both trolleys for each class booking (Tom Barrett has written about a different approach where their laptop fleet was divided permanently amongst his learning team's classes, giving his class full time access to 8 laptops) and negotiate a timetable that all teachers could operate on.

My co-planning partner (aka the teacher next door) made an interesting comment the other day about laptop availability. To paraphrase, she pointed out that it's hard to pinpoint exactly when you might need this technology at your disposal. When the laptops are booked in does not mean that the students can switch to that mode of learning. Sometimes when the students get really engrossed in their work and on a roll, the time will be up and the next class will knocking on the door demanding their slice of the timetabled pie. It would be really good to just have the laptops on standby, ready for the opportune time and know that there were no constraints on their use in terms of time or battery life. But this technology is a scarce commodity and has to be shared equitably. Interestingly, all of the upper primary classes have not given up their regular computing slots which was one predicted outcome I made prior to the wireless program.

There is no doubt that the students enjoy using the laptops. They focus quickly, are eager to show what they have achieved via the network and the IWB with their peers. Being able to use this technology at their own desk where they can access their exercise books, their personal stationery, their "brain food" and discuss ideas with their work partners free from wires and cables. Being able to pick their digital work and bring to a new position in front of their teacher or their fellow students is another big plus.

The laptops also bring the dimension that I felt was missing in the use of IWB technology in the classroom. I could introduce a resource, an idea or a starting point on the IWB which allowed one student at a time to access and manipulate but once that was over, then the kids themselves would settle back to work in their non-digital exercise books. Now I can get the kids using the same stuff as I've just used on the board. For example, tomorrow morning we will be reviewing our progress for our Personal Research Projects, I will getting them to use the Lotus diagram tool on the Exploratree site. I could demonstrate it on the board because it is the easiest clearest way to show how a Lotus diagram can sort out information and then get them to do their work on a large sheet of A3 paper. But the benefit of working digitally will be that the diagram can be constantly refined and easily shared with the class via the class IWB. It's one thing for the teacher to have digital technology at his or her fingertips but the students deserve the same access.

We can't manage to make that digital technology ubiquitous - yet - but the wireless laptop program is a useful step in the right direction.

I've been really pleased with the way our upper primary laptop program has been going over the last month. We purchased 20 x $800 Acers that have been excellent performers and handling the wireless network extremely well in the classroom. They shipped to us with Vista so once our tech prised that OS off and re-imaged with the department's standard XP image (he also snuck a Linux alternative under the hood - Ubuntu, I think, but I'm no hands on FOSS expert) we were ready to go. We've been sharing this small fleet across 4 classrooms so timetabling equitably has been interesting to say the least. I can safely say that as the laptop carts get locked to the floor in my room means that my class gets access when other teachers pass on their timeslot. And really the more opportunity I have to use these tools with my class, the more time I want to have them there available for whenever they might be needed - not be dependent on waiting for the next timetabled slot.

$800 is a pretty cheap laptop - considering it's got all the bells and whistles of any student desktops around the place. But if the price barrier can go lower and the excess features curbed, then maybe more laptops can be there on the ready. It's probably leading eventually to a 1:1 laptop program which would be a significant step in this large government run system. I know many private schools have been down this route much earlier (my Victorian blogging colleague, Warrick Wynne says he wouldn't work in a school without one to one) but in this state, the dollars and government tech commitment haven't stretched that far. So, laptops suitable for the primary school classroom at a competitive price, stripped of unnecessary features and running open source software are what the focus should be on because even at $800, there isn't enough dollars in a typical state school budget to keep going down the regular sized laptop trail.

There's been plenty blogged about smaller, cheaper, un-bloated laptops that are surfacing on the market. Bill Kerr's blogged quite a bit about the OLPC project and recently compared it to another newcomer in the mini-laptop for education market, the Asus EEE. Interestingly, I saw one in a Myer department store catalogue for A$499.00 which I think is still too high a pricetag to be a contender. Whether a school or even an education system buying in bulk could drive that down figure would be interesting to see. Plus the word seems to be that if you're not prepared to use the standard Linux OS, the alternative XP tends to re-bloat and run slow. The other laptop mentioned is the Intel Classmate, which Bill has also analysed from a vision/marketing strategy point of view. Meeting with someone from higher up in the ICT department of our system, we had an offer to have a look at one of these machines to make a hands on assessment of its suitability. That would be worth blogging when and if it happens. I have no idea what these might cost per unit but it seems that Intel are only selling direct to government agencies so it would take a commitment from my own state system before the Classmates could be a common sight in primary school classrooms or appear as a booklist item.

One of the criticisms I've heard which will get OLPC advocates up in arms (and rightly so) is the assertion from some educators that the mini-laptops look like toys, kids won't like them and take to them because they "don't look like real computers" or because they aren't Windows based and will be a mystery to the majority of teachers trying to weave their use with their students. In a conversation I had with Peter Ruwoldt recently, he pointed out that the OS and power of the laptop will be less important than a strong pipe connection to the internet where browser base applications and storage will enable education systems to shift costs offline and onto the big web giants' servers. So, I'd take as many laptops of whatever description I could - as long as I can get them to connect to the wireless network, access whatever of the filtered web is currently allowed, my students have a better chance of just-in-time digital learning in the classroom. A good example is how much more was achieved in our Spin The Globe wiki project once we had regular laptop access. Going off to the computer lab or being IWB spectators does not compare to having the laptop on the student's desk being used as part of their regular school day.

In the red corner - the battered but always ready Ipaq 1930. Nearly four years old and onto his third battery, he's handled a workload of blog post starts, calendar details and to-do lists with less than a dozen soft resets. In the blue corner, the sleek, new and very cocky Nokia e65 with ambitions to push the elderly Pocket PC into permanent retirement. He's got a camera, voice recording, Symbian task management and scorns the use of the old fashioned stylus. Does he have what it takes to manage the ever complex and befuddling world of the South Australian primary school coordinator?

I am a terrible diary user. Being bad at writing what I had to do in a paper based diary forced me to buy the HP Ipaq nearly four years ago. I figured it might make task management fun and then I wouldn't forget so many deadlines. Well, it turned out to be my first dabble in mobile computing and my Ipaq is now the equivalent of my old VL Commodore with over 200,000 k's on the clock. Still does things as well as the day I bought it but of course, the new models have more features and do fancier stuff.

I also got sick of having two devices to lug around - together, my old Nokia mobile and then the Pocket PC meant something fell out of my pocket whenever I wanted change from my wallet. I started with one of those PDA belt clips but I broke that pretty quickly. So this year when I decided that my mobile "brick" needed to go, I figured that maybe a decent mobile phone with the right feature set would be the right move and I could retire the faithful Ipaq. I went shopping, but being a bit of a tightwad I wanted the best phone for the lightest plan and that's why I ended up with the e65. I know that North Americans have been drooling over the iPhone and the iTouch but a recent post from Leonard Low has confirmed that there are deficiencies in their offerings. And it's a moot point because these products aren't available to regular Aussie consumers at the moment. I looked at a Palm Treo but there was no plan here that was below A$80 a month and the guy at AllPhones said that upgrading the software on them was a pain in the proverbial.

The e65 is a pretty good phone for the money but how does it stack up as a replacement for the faithful Ipaq? Well, I now have an anywhere anytime camera which can be pretty handy - photos aren't too bad - so there's one advantage straightaway. The onboard miniSD card means there is stacks of room for data and files. I can view documents, spreadsheets, slideshows but I can't create or edit any of these. Probably just as well - I am a lousy texter and it takes me ages to do the simplest of messages. The wireless capability is a big advantage and I could add a foldout keyboard (a la Mike Seyfang) and create via the web if I so desired. But opportunities and reasons to do so will be few and far between, so checking twitter without booting up my laptop over breakfast is convenient if not entirely necessary. The calendar and tasks functions are very similar and eventually can sync to Outlook if I ever get organised to have that up and running on my work laptop. That was a lot easier to run on the Pocket PC.

What do I still need from my old faithful that the Nokia can't? I still like starting blog posts using Pocket Word during opportune moments and inputting data is much easier using text recognition rather than my clumsy thumb keyboarding skills. But it's much less necessary to have the Ipaq close at hand with me at all times during the work day. So as I'm using it less, I now have to consider whether to purchase a new sync'n'charge cable as I killed my last one the other week and a new battery pack as the current one seems to lose 15% of its charge within the first ten minutes.

The e65 has more capability than what I'm prepared to pay for - Skype, 3G web access, Foxtel - but it's probably the winner for the moment. It's not a knockout by any stretch.

My mobile learning journey continues.

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