January 2005 — Exclusive
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Life With a Handheld Computer: Confessions of a School Administrator
Always Something to Read
One of my mottos is “never go anywhere without something to read.” With my handheld, I am always prepared at a doctor’s office, while waiting for a meeting or anywhere else I may find myself with extra time. While I can always read and edit documents, my main reading sources are Adobe PDF files and e-books. The Internet is full of useful reading material for professionals in PDF format, and Adobe has a free application that converts and downloads them. Keep in mind that some PDF files — usually the ones full of graphs and diagrams — will not convert well. Straight text, however, works just fine.
While I don’t like reading much more on my computer than a screen or two — perhaps a sign of my age — I find that reading on the handheld is enjoyable and convenient. I have purchased several e-books from eReader.com and have enjoyed them a great deal. I like the ability to select and copy text, as well as electronic books’ marking feature. You also can have multiple e-books open at once without losing your place in any of them.
Contacts and Schedules
With the handheld’s contacts database, I no longer have a Rolodex cluttering my desk; instead, I have telephone numbers and addresses when I am away from my desk. I enter new contacts when I first have the chance in order to avoid losing information and handling it twice. I have a database of student information that includes parent names and contact information. When called to a classroom to deal with an unruly student, I can call a parent once I understand the problem. After I brief the parent, I hand my cell phone to the unsuspecting student with a simple comment, “It’s for you.” Cooperation usually follows.
Memory and Music
My memory card holds all PDF files, many photos, applications not in use, and even music. This is great, as handhelds have limited internal memory compared to computers. Mine has a meager 16 MB, which means I must pay attention to cleaning out unnecessary files. I have a 512 MB card that was about $100, although a 64 MB card costs about $40 and can be just as useful if you avoid large files.
RealAudio offers a free music player for MP3 files that can be placed on your memory card. You can also download a free copy of iTunes software from Apple.com, which can convert files on audio CDs to the compressed MP3 format. On average, you can store about 25 songs in 100 MB of space. My memory card from SanDisk came with their Cruzer device, which mounts the card as a removable disk via a computer’s USB port. This makes it easy to drag files from computer to card or vice versa.
I also have a Cannon digital camera that uses the same memory card. This means I can take the card from my Palm, put it in the camera, take pictures, and then use the Cruzer to transfer them directly to my desktop for future processing, printing and presentation. In short, the handheld’s memory card lets you copy files from one device to another, which also is a great form of backup. Think of it as a small high-capacity floppy drive.
While music may not make me a better administrator, I enjoy listening on occasion as I work, and I share tunes with students as well. In one case, a girl was wearing a T-shirt from the rock band KISS. I asked if she liked their music and she told me the shirt was a gift. She had never heard their music and as luck would have it, I had a few KISS songs on my Palm. When I played one for the girl and her friends they thought they had a seriously cool principal.
