There's a new Tablet PC math game in town thanks to the folks from Carnegie-Mellon. Unfortunately, I have not found any download links to the software, but I'll see what I can uncover.

From Peninsula On-Line

Carnegie Mellon University has developed an innovative Tablet PC based system for learning mathematics through games.

The system will integrate gaming as part of the process to encourage and motivate students to work on math problems. The mathematical concepts are mapped into gaming actions so that game can be controlled only by solving mathematical problems.

“The system has shown remarkable results. Flexible Tablet PC based interface encourages students to show work in Arabic or English and express their ideas through sketching that can be analysed by the teachers,” Al Obeidah said.

The Tablet Math System is made up of two main components. The first is a thin client installed on tablet PCs. The thin-client is used by students to practise various math problems. The second main component is the web application. The web application is used exclusively by teachers to perform administrative and analytical operations. Teachers can create customised worksheets for individual students or entire class, monitor student’s work online and can understand why a student or group of students have incorrectly answered a problem. The grading of students handwritten work is done by the computer so teachers can focus more on helping students who are having troubles in solving problems.

University of Louisville engineering students have formed a Student Tablet User Group and started a website to help educate fellow students about Tablet PCs, the software, and other general how-to's. They've produced ten video tutorials since January 1. One of my favorites is a video on what not to do with your tablet: play games like Ink Ball and Line Rider during class. Although I'd like to see a little more Tablet PC action in their videos, they've got some great humor and their effort is to be applauded.

In this latest episode, Jared talks about how to organize paper, something every student needs to tackle. I'm looking forward to seeing more from this excited group of Tablet PC users!

Here's another good one on the Tablet PC pen

We all know that Tablet PC technology really shines when implemented in schools. Bishop Hartley High School, one of the very first schools to implement Tablet PC technology, was recently featured in this story confirming the learning advantages that Tablet PC technology offers:

Research shows most students like the benefits. "Instead of carrying around a big old math book and a big English book in between periods, you just carry your tablet around," says senior Lindsay Brown. Human factors researchers immediately saw the learning advantages. The tablet PC's allow more interaction between the teachers and students. Teachers can embed live web pages and live video into lectures. "The richness that you can bring in when you've got a connection to the internet that you bring into class," says Carolyn Sommerich, Ph.D., a researcher at Ohio State University.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates says he wants to "equip a new generation of technology leaders with the knowledge and tools they need to harness the magic of software." So, he's giving away software development software to current high school and college students.

Any Tablet PC students out there want to draw a doodle for the Google homepage? This just might be your opportunity.

Google is running a contest for students in grades K-12 to design a doodle for the Google homepage. The winner will also receive a $10,000 college scholarship, plus a technology grant for their school.

Checkout Doodle4Google for more details. The design guidelines are below, which indicate you can use your Tablet PC and favorite drawing software ( ArtRage anyone? )

* The doodle should be presented on a white, landscape sheet of 8.5 x 11 inch paper.
* You can download the Google logo template from our Lesson Resources page.
* The winning doodle will be displayed on our U.S. homepage, so the Google logo should be clearly visible and recognizable.
* The doodle can be in pencil, crayons, felt tip or paint, or can be done using computer drawing or design software.
* Unfortunately, we can't accept entries which use additional materials to create 3D effects.

Watch Dennis Hwang, the original Google Doodler at work using a Wacom digitizer

We've said it before and we'll say it again: schools and Tablet PC's go together like peanut butter and jelly. They were made for each other.

Check this story out about the Sparta Township Public School System expanding their Tablet PC program, due in large part to a grant:

The Sparta Education Foundation Board of Trustees unanimously approved two grants totaling more than $53,000 to support technology improvements for Sparta Township Public Schools.

The second grant for $22,200 will be used to purchase 10 tablet PCs and 10 wireless projectors. This is to expand the pilot use of tablet PCs as an instructional tool to the elementary and middle school teaching staff. Currently, the district is piloting the use of the tablet PCs at the high school. The initial feedback from this project is very positive. The tablets are being used by the teachers and students during instruction. Along with the tablet PC, the pilot teachers also receive a wireless projector. The combination allows the teachers to utilize the tablet as an interactive white board.

Even though Bill Gates is headed into retirement this summer, Tablet PC will remain a focus of his as he continues to work at Microsoft part-time. This is evidenced in a speech he gave on January 23rd at the Government Leaders Form. Here are a few snippets, but you'll need to read the entire thing for context. In addition, there is some follow-up from one of the educators involved in the program in Spain:

Finally, the way we interact with these devices will change. To date it's been overwhelmingly the keyboard and the mouse, and those will continue to be important, but those will be added to as we have the ability to touch, to touch the surface of a table or a display to give a command. We'll have the ability to use a pen so that we can take notes and annotate things. We'll have the ability to use speech, so we can just say to our mobile phone, you know, where is the nearest gas station, where are my family right now, what are they doing, and it will understand our voice and be able to respond to that.

So, vision and touch and speech and ink, all of those I call natural user interface. And along with the lower cost computers, this natural interface will make computing far more pervasive. Something that today you would think of as very difficult, like organizing all of the photos and things you have about your child growing up, this type of new interface will make that very, very natural. And you won't think of a boundary as you move from your phone to your PC to the TV in the living room to your car; you'll think of all your information being with you wherever you go.

...

Well, now I want to talk about a program that I personally think is quite fantastic, and I hope we can spread very broadly, and that's what we call our Tablet PC Program. That's the idea of an individual student having a tablet computer that they can use so that they get to browse the Internet and do their homework, and even taking the textbook, the curriculum, and getting those down onto the PC so that it's interactive, it connects up to the Internet, and so you can actually take the money that was invested in printing those textbooks and actually spend it on making sure they can have a great tablet computer.

This is something we've been doing in a number of pilot computers around the world, and helping them with the curriculum, and really learning, having conferences with them and spreading this around.

One of the largest projects, actually the largest in the world, is in Spain, in Aragon, Spain, which, of course, is in northeastern Spain, and these are primary school students who are doing amazing things with their tablet computers.

This started almost five years ago, but recently they added a number of schools, 48 schools two years ago, and then just last year 170 schools, and so they're reaching a very high part of the region with this amazing approach.

You can see on the video some examples of the students using this thing. Our role was to provide the training, support, curriculum, a lot of the software, so that this wouldn't just be outside the normal learning experience, it would be a central part of it.

The reaction of the students and teachers has been amazing, and for people who like objective results, it's also been great to see that the PISA test scores, which are benchmarks used across all OECD countries, those have significantly improved as well, particularly in the areas like math and science where the tablet is being used most heavily, and there are now new ideas for using the tablet in even some new ways.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a five year anniversary article looking Tablet PC software companies. One of the companies that seemed to have dropped out of the scene altogether was Agilix.  Most folks know Agilix by GoBinder, a notetaking application they brought to market 3 - 4 years ago. While they have not updated GoBinder in several years, I have since learned that Agilix is still playing ball in the Tablet PC space by making ink a key feature of other mobile products they are bringing to market in the education space.

Last week, I had the privilege of following up with Mark Calkins and Jim Ericson, both Vice Presidents of Marketing at Agilix, and we talked a lot about GoCourse, a distributed instructional  and course management application which is capable of delivery multiple medium types: video, audio, pdf's, Word docs, etc. I'm not going to spend a great deal of time going over all the in's and out's of GoCourse, except to say that those involved in distributed learning really need to take a hard look at what Agilix is offering here. The authoring, instructional, and student features of GoCourse look to be a very compelling solution. Be sure to  checkout the GoCourse product page and watch their interactive tour - it is chock full of information that is too detailed for me to go over here. On my list of to-do's is to talk with our local homeschool study center, Collegium Study Center, about GoCourse.

So, what about the Tablet PC features? Well, Agilix still recognizes that many students and instructors use Tablet PCs, so they implemented their InfiNotes notetaking control throughout their Notetaking features, as was implemented in GoBinder. In addition to the regular notetaking features, Agilix also supports ink in Speed Notetaker, a small notetaking GoCourse app that sits in the system tray, much like OneNote's SideNote. In addition, instructors get ink support in Speed Grader, which allows the instructor to quickly grade the student's paper, mark it up in ink, and more. Those in the distributed learning space looking for Tablet PC enabled solutions should add Agilix to your list.

Agilix is going to set me up with a demo of their soon-to-be-released GoCourse 2.0, and I'll demonstrate GoCourse in much more detail, including the ink feature set.

Lora Heiny, the First Lady of Tablet PCs, sent us over a link on a Microsoft case study in Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), the largest school district in Kentucky. JCPS had been dissatisfied with the overall use of technology in the classrooms despite having a significant investment in Macs in the classrooms. After an assessment study, they decided to update the overall plan and gave the teachers Tablet PCs.

JCPS decided to deploy portable computers and digital projectors to teachers in some of its elementary and middle schools for the 2005–2006 school year. Before teachers were given their new technology tools, they completed 18 hours of training. Teachers at 12 elementary schools then received Apple iBook computers, and teachers at 20 middle schools received HP Compaq TC4200 Tablet PCs running the Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 operating system with the Windows Journal note-taking accessory.

... The Tablet PCs were so well received, in fact, that JCPS ordered more and switched its elementary-school teachers from iBook computers to Tablet PCs.

... “After seeing what teachers can do with Tablet PCs, our principals want them now, too,” says Petersen. “They recognize how easy the Tablet PCs make it to integrate handwritten annotations and electronic documents, give customized presentations, and keep organized.”

I found this interesting because so often we hear about Macs getting used in education and this case study shows how a Tablet PC can actually be easier to use, cheaper, and easier to support than a network of Macs. The ability to use digital ink was a key component of why this solution worked so well. The other key component - training! Even the wonderful, easy to use Tablet PC can be daunting to someone who doesn't know how best to use the technology. Face it, many teachers were never taught themselves how to incorporate technology into education. Even 18 hours of training on how to integrate the Tablet PC into their workflow apparently made a big difference. Too often I come across people who have a Tablet PC and never use it the the best of its capabilities because they don't know how. I give them 30 minutes of tutorial and suddenly they're converted. Makes me think that someone needs to come up with a really good tutorial on using digital ink. Something interactive that new users can walk through, like the training you see when you start a Windows Mobile device for the first time. It could make Tablet PCs better understood and more popular I think.

Petri Purho, of Kloonigames,  wrote a cool application called Crayon Physics and Crayon Physics Deluxe. He just got around to testing it out on a Tablet PC, and I have to say it looks really, really cool. What kid or student wouldn't love this?

Watch the video below, then read more and download it here:

Five years of Tablet PCs and kids are still getting excited about using them in school. Check out this picture Tristan Hanna after getting his HP TC4400 Tablet PC at Monte Cassino School. Priceless.

From Tulsa World:

Teachers at Monte Cassino School think their students are learning a lesson from their new computers that has nothing to do with math, science or history.

The computers are teaching responsibility.

New laptops were given to two classes of fourth-graders Tuesday morning, bringing to 224 the number of Monte Cassino students who use the tablet PCs daily. The students can use the computers as long as they attend the school.

The entire seventh and eighth grades received computers earlier this year.

The school's director, Sister Mary Clare Buthod, wants every student in third through eighth grades to have one eventually.

( picture courtesy of Kelly Kerr of Tulsa World).

Lora over at WhatIsNew is also very interested in Tablet PCs in the education space, so I was very interested when she posted about a new book she found titled "The Impact of Tablet PCs and Pen-based Technology: Beyond the Tipping Point (2007)". The book is an update to a version printed last year, and the new edition appears to be a complete re-write.

From the Amazon editor's description:

A wide variety of disciplines are embracing Tablet PC's and similar pen-based devices as tools for the radical enhancement of teaching and learning. Deployments of Tablet PCs have spanned the K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels and have dealt with an amazingly diverse range of subject areas. This work is aimed at identifying best practices in the educational use of pen-based computing so that all educators may benefit from this next generation of technology.

You can get your own copy at Amazon.com (affiliate link for GBM)

This article was originally going to be about batteries and battery management. Well, it still is. But not in the way you might think. I wanted to write an awesome article about how I changed a few settings and all of a sudden I went from an hour of battery life to five hours of battery life.

This will not be that article.

Our readership on GottaBeMobile.com is quite diverse - from business people, to stay-at-home moms, to medical professionals, to students - we definitely cover a wide audience and diverse group of readers with some unique, yet common needs.

Andrew Ferguson, of StudentTabletPC.com, is going to be guest-authoring several articles for us, focusing on mobile issues that students face. His first article, to be published on Monday, will be on the topic of battery life. We hope the articles will be beneficial to students and non-students alike.

While you are enjoying Andrew's series on GBM, be sure to visit StudentTabletPC.com for more in-depth, student-focused articles and community discussions.

Jim Vanides from HP has started posting some short video clips aimed at showing educators what the Tablet PC platform can do to help them in the classroom. These are great videos for everyone, not just educators. The first tip on annotating with PowerPoint is an excellent tutorial for anyone who wants a short, compelling demo for their Tablet PC. In less than 2 minutes you can make most business professionals, educators, and students all say "wow!".

Tablet PC Tip #1 – Annotating PowerPoint

Tablet PC Tip #2: MS Journal - Better than PowerPoint?

Tablet PC Tip #3 – Save Time with Digital Homework Markups

Despite being focused on educators, these videos make an excellent tutorial for how to demo a Tablet PC to various types of audiences. I learned something from each one. Even if you think you know what he's showing, it can be so helpful to see someone else's perspective.

via The Tablet PC Education Blog

I've become even more interested in articles discussing using Tablet PCs in education now that I'm actually back in school again. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a nice article today covering several colleges that are increasing their use of Tablet PCs and wireless Internet access. I know that my school (Portland State University) seems to have WiFi available everywhere. For some students, though, it has drawbacks, because they can't seem to keep from surfing all class, although as University of Pittsburgh School of Law professor Kevin Ashley noted, "As long as the hands are going up and people are responding, I don't care what else they're doing." I hope my professors think the same thing.

University of North Carolina's Information Technology Services has built upon their previous faculty-based Tablet PC pilot, and have begun incorporating students for the 2007-08 school year.

From DailyTarHeel.com

First and foremost, ITS-TL identifies, explores and pilots different ways to integrate technology into the instructional mission of the University. A recent example is the UNC Tablet PC Research Group.

This year, the tablet PC is included in the laptop models available through the CCI program. Capitalizing on the availability of the tablet PC, and leveraging the knowledge gained through last year's faculty tablet PC pilot, ITS-TL has partnered with student government to conduct a student tablet PC pilot.

Tablet PCs are now on loan to 25 students for the 2007-08 school year. More than 475 students volunteered to participate in the pilot. Selected students attend a basic orientation program and follow-up training sessions, create regular blog postings and give their feedback through focus group meetings.

Results of this pilot will help inform the selection of future computer models through the CCI. Results will also be made available to aid incoming students in selecting the best CCI computer for their academic needs.