Lora pointed me to the Tablet PC Educators Guide on Micrsoft's education site. Great idea. The 62-page document lists the standard features of the Tablet PC which is good for the first time user. The document probably has too much user-guide-like detail for someone who's never used a Tablet PC though.
Actually what strikes me about the document is how feature-oriented it is versus task oriented. Where's the step-by-step guide on how to use a Tablet PC in a lecture? How to hook it up to a projector? What do you do about portrait or landscape modes? Or how to have students submit their work electronically so you can grade them? Or how to take roll? How can you use it in art class? And so on.
Instead, it's a generic "How to Use the Tablet PC" with a couple references to education sprinkled in. I think it mentions the words "classroom" once, "student" five times, "school" twice, and grading once. Most of these occurrences are in the first couple paragraphs.
For ideas on how to actually use the Tablet PC in a classroom setting, check out Teacher's Into to Tablet PCs on WhatIsNew. Lora needs to expand upon this, but it may help you get more productive in the classroom with your Tablet PC.
I think what teachers really need is an education-geared Tablet PC site complete with how-to's that goes beyond features but instead into actual uses. Seems like there's a lot of potential here. How about it Lora, you have any free time?
Posted by Loren at September 16, 2003 02:55 PMLike this?
http://www.whatisnew.com/guides/FacultyTPCuses.htm
It is a spreadsheet with 2 worksheets: Common Faculty Uses and Specialized Faculty uses. (The second is a little more messy.) Have been working on this for a while, and a few colleges/ universities have found it helpful. Need to update the hardware part and some new software products have been updated/ released. It's continual :)
You want more HOW-TOs also?
Posted by: Lora on September 16, 2003 03:34 PM