ITS, in partnership with the University Libraries and the College of Business, is researching interest within the university community for services and support of mobile devices (Palm OS, Pocket PC, WinCE Handheld devices). We are in the investigative phase.

See http://www.its.uiowa.edu/cs/sp/pda/ for full project details.

5. Tues, Nov 6 (students) 3:30 - 5 pm
6. Wed, Nov 7 (students & faculty) 1:30 - 3 pm

Our current investigations include (please note these are works in progress)

• Contact with other Universities to learn from their PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) pilot projects and information gathering about activities at other universities. A few examples include:
  • Carnegie Mellon - <http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~pebbles/> looking at the role of wireless PDAs in education.
  • East Carolina University - <http://www.ecu.edu/handheld> looks at wireless PDA usage in 8 courses.
  • George Fox University (Oregon) <http://brainstorm.georgefox.edu/offices/inst_technology/palmprof/> integrate PDAs into classroom use.
  • Harvard Medical School - extensive PDA program for course content, schedules, evaluations, and announcments.
  • Stanford Law School - extensive PDA program with nearspace includes faculty, maps, student services and more.
  • University of South Dakota - extensive PDA program with nearspace includes faculty, resources, maps, community and more.
  • Some Palm Success Stories (Penn State Abington, Pepperdine University School of Law, Wake Forest University).
  • Full Report (MS Word document) last updated: October 5, 2001.
• Comparing the features of the various devices. Report (MS Word document) last updated: Sept 27, 2001.
• Learning more about wireless possibilities and rich media.
  • Report on the Palm Wireless Test: CIC Marketplace Scan (MS Word document) - includes the webcast archive URL.
  • Wireless Summary Report.
• Researching the effort involved in porting applications to the PDAs. Professor's Assistant and webCT are two examples.
• Learning more about eBook technology, usability, standards, and digital information sharing.
• Keyboards and word processors. Would a PDA be useful for taking notes in the classroom setting?
• Printing and syncing in the ITCs. What is involved? What is the cost?
• Continuing the work already started by the Stead Media Center of the College of Business at creating and maintaining PDA friendly web pages through the use of AvantGo.com. View the Uof Iowa Sports Calendars on your favorite handheld:
  
  The Men's Basketball and Football and Women's Basketball are loaded by default. 22 sports calendars are available. Select Edit your Hawkeye Sports calendar on your PDA to select additional calendars.
• Continuing to explore the synchronization of Eudora e-mail and Corporate Time Calendars for all the handheld devices.
  • Corporate Time Syncing Report
  • E-mail Syncing Report
• Application for Instructional Improvement Computing Award.