Class Session Report

Daily Reporter –Doug Brown
Wednesday, May 31 (12:30 to 4:00 pm)

            We started the afternoon with a library video from the learning in hand website.  Many of the teachers used this time to warm up for this session, others used this brief time as an extra opportunity to reach the all time high score for the Giraffe/ Graffiti game.
            Then our judicious leader helped us learn about the relationship between the computer and the palms.  We discussed the PAAM website and hot synchronizing.  After the brief discussion we carefully and assiduously installed the palm software onto the laptops.  We spent the next half hour playing and attempting to hotsync pictures from the laptops to the palms.  Many of the young scholars/old teachers were able to change the background on the palms to the newly synched pictures.  We had much fun with this new skill, but it became apparent the new skill would have ephemeral popularity.  We were ready to move on.
            Our next adventure began when we wrote short stories using a word document and synchronized our stories with our palms.  We got new toys, small collapsible keyboards for our palms.  We continued with our stories by using our palms and keyboards, saved the stories, and synchronized them with our laptops.  The new keyboards were particularly enjoyable for the classmates with large hands.  One classmate that resembles Shrek (Bill Rogers) in size, his fingers are the size of small bananas, held back curses as he wrestled with the pint sized keyboard while attempting to edit his work.  Man, we are getting smarter by the second, and we feel smarter, but with slight headaches.  Of course the steps I have continually left out are the many cascaded beams that filled the afternoon and brightened our day on the inside and out.  The moods changed inside as the weather changed outside.  What a wonderful experience.
            Finally, we were beamed a new software program called ereader.  This software program allowed us to beam or download books onto our palm pilots.  We had great fun because one of our assignments required us to read and report a summary about an ebook after successfully using the ereader software.  Some of us were in a swivet and others were delighted about ebooks.  Some in the class eagerly began searching or reading handheld computers.
            Lastly, our dauntless leader beamed us a game called coconut fern.  Most of us were more familiar with the name connect four, which is the same game.  We spent the rest of our time attempting to beat this game, which many of us originally thought would be swift and easy.  We found out that connect four on a palm and against a computer challenges the mind to that place most people prefer to avoid, called never gonna quit!  It only took a few minutes for one in the group to finally win a game, but even this person became agitated when winning a second game seemed to be virtually impossible.  This internal fight continued on for the last ten minutes of the session.  These last ten minutes seemed to last hours. It is quite certain that most classmates will continue the struggle of connect four against the palm long into the evening.  It is quite possible that some even pushed the game into the wee hours of the morning before drifting off to sleep.  Now this report has come to an abrupt end, and there is no need for it to continue.  We were allowed to leave ten minutes early because we skipped a break. We packed up our belongings and left happily for home.

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