PDAs Are Coming to Campus

Brand names of handheld computing devices, such as Palm, Blackberry and iPAQ Pocket PC, are widely known to American consumers. The popularity of these devices, also known as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), among busy professionals has especially boomed given their capacity for data storage, organizing information and various computing tasks.
Consequently, as campus administrators and faculty members have adopted computing devices for professional use, IT departments at colleges and universities have increasingly begun to service them and enable their users to access information on campus networks and databases through hardwired connections.
"PDAs are becoming important information technology tools on campus," says Dr. Margaret Schultz, director of academic and technology services at Pomona College in Pomona, Calif.
The growing use of PDAs comes at a time when the information technology revolution in higher education has seemingly slowed down — largely due in part to last year's dot-com meltdown of Internet-based businesses. The trend of PDA use, however, is significant enough that more than a handful of colleges and universities have launched teaching and learning projects that use handheld devices in the classroom.
In a few schools, such as the University of Minnesota-Duluth, academic departments have mandated students to use PDAs in their classes. At the university, this year's incoming freshman engineering and computer science students are required to use iPAQ computing devices in their computer science and engineering courses. iPAQ is the brand of handheld computing devices manufactured by the Compaq Computer corporation.
For most schools, the added responsibility of having their IT departments provide technical support for handheld computing devices would prove a daunting challenge, particularly given the numerous brands of devices that are available in the marketplace. Yet a number of IT departments have begun programs that provide support for faculty members and administrators who use PDAs.