What is Handhelds

Early research on personal digital assistants (PDAs), forerunners of today's Smartphones, shows they have the potential to support pre-service teachers' learning and teaching on placement in schools. This article reports results from three such projects conducted with small groups of graduate student teachers in the UK which indicate that handheld devices are particularly supportive of management of learning and teaching and of building knowledge across contexts. However, mobile phones are viewed in schools as disruptive devices and it became apparent that social pressures on trainees using devices that are, in most schools, banned to pupils were impacting negatively on their use of the technology to support their learning. It is therefore argued that, whilst schools are mostly viewed as learning organisations that support staff professional development, in the case of emerging technologies, this isn't always the case and we need to do more to enable the realisation of these benefits of using mobile devices to support initial teacher education.