Class Session Report

Daily Reporter – Becky Stanton
Thursday, June 1 (12:30 to 4:00 pm)

As we arrived back from lunch for session six of our handheld class, we jumped right into a discussion of our assignment for the afternoon.  We were to produce a written response to an eBook, which Stan had beamed to each of us, earlier in the day.  Most of us groaned a bit, as the article was 196 pages (even though they were handheld pages—the thought was scary.)  Well as we listened for instructions we found out the assignment was to read, and then after we listed 10 new pieces of information that we gather from the article, then we could be done. Whew, that made that task a lot more manageable. But I personally found out that it only takes about 30 minutes to read 196 handheld pages. We also discussed our listserv assignment, which was not so bad, just a communication tool for us to connect with one another.

After our discussion of the assignments we spent some time learning to make eBooks. First we spent time on the internet, searching for palm database files or .pdf.  When we found books we wanted on our handhelds we opened them and hot synced them with our handheld computers.  And presto, there was a book for reading on our handhelds.  Some found books without too much trouble, others in class searched a little longer.  When some were done searching, they spent their extra time finishing up assignments from previous days in class.  One student reached their 1400 total score on our handheld game of Giraffe. 

Our next assignment was to explore eBook studio, and then discuss if we would want to purchase the software for our computers. So after downloading a trial version to our computers, we attempted to make our own eBook.  In our process, we hot synced a paper to eReader, saved it as a pdb file. Once we did that, we made a table of contents and hyperlinks. We spent time talking about the specifics of including pictures in eBooks, but didn’t actually do that.   Basically the rules include: Less than 65 K or it will be a thumbnail icon and it needs to be 150 pixels wide or less to fit the handheld screen.  Our consensus for purchasing eBook Studio was buying one copy for each teacher.

The next discussion included dates for assigning the handhelds to the students.  We’d like to get them to the students as early as possible.  Most of us think this will allow students maximum time to utilize their handhelds the best.

 

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