The Trojan Mouse
Hello,
I used the camera when Mark Shuttleworth visited Butterworth. You know him, the first African to go into space. I also recorded his speech while making a lecture about his journey into space. How wonderful! ... it's now that I can feel myself as a professional. Warm greetings. Bye"
(Nomvulo, Eastern Cape)
Handheld computers provide an opportunity for making major changes in educational settings. Elliot Soloway from MIT's Media Lab calls this approach to technology the 'Trojan Mouse'.
Numerous research studies point to the potential of handheld computers in educational settings, though these are usually focused on pupil learning. There is currently very little reported research on the potential of hand held computers for the professional development of teachers, and almost none in development contexts, although the potential is being widely explored in other professional contexts, notably in medicine.
In DEEP, teachers are using handheld computers for their own professional development (reading and annotating the course materials, seeing videos of other teachers practice, producing lesson plans, taking photos and recording speech). They have also reported that the handheld computer is just as useful as the powerful multi-media laptop as a classroom resource, and if they had to choose one or the other, the handheld computer was the more popular choice.
You can find out more about 'the Trojan Mouse' in the 'Summary review of the literature on ICT and teaching and learning....', Appendix 3 of the project report 'DEEP impact'.
Case Study: Nomvula
One activity Nomvula (a project teacher in the Eastern Cape) speaks of with great enthusiasm was using the hand- held camera and audio recorder to capture a live lecture by Mark Shuttleworth, the first African in space, during a visit to Butterworth in the Eastern Cape. This has become a permanent classroom resource. Back in the classroom, Nomvula uses the audio recordings and photographs with her learners. Images were transferred to the laptop and printed, and pupils incorporate these into their own hand-written reports. Examples of the pupils' work are given in the scanned images below.
Download example images (pdf 627kb)
