eachers lack the time, technical expertise, or subject matter background to fully exploit the potential of portable computing. Without lesson plans, guides to integration, and teacher professional development materials, the dream of integrating technology into every classroom cannot be achieved.

The Mobile Inquiry Technology project promises to radically alter this reality.

In the fall of 1997, the Hudson Public Schools, in collaboration with The Concord Consortium, began a small scale experiment in the use of a class set of small portable computers to enhance math and science activities in a fifth grade classroom. For example, students used the portable computers to record data and transform it into charts and graphs. We found that student understanding of math and science concepts accelerated. This instantaneous transformation and visualization ability advanced their understanding of data interpretation and the relationship between raw data and graphic interpretation.

This initial pilot project gave us the confidence to create a statewide technology project for the implementation of the math and science frameworks. As a result, in the spring of 1998, the Massachusetts Department of Education awarded a consortium of four Massachusetts schools, led by Hudson Public Schools and The Concord Consortium, a Technology Literacy Challenge Grant to develop important new ways of integrating computers and networking into elementary and middle school mathematics and science learning and to disseminate these strategies statewide.

The one-computer classroom and the computer lab models of providing student access to computers have been plagued by the simple problem of not enough equipment. These models do not allow students the in-depth, continuous experience with computer technology that they need. In addition, as the world of business and research shifts to mobile equipment that is transferable and flexible, education continues to be burdened by computers that are bolted to desks or, at best, on a moveable cart.

Often teachers cannot integrate computer technology fully into their curriculum because they cannot count on frequent equipment availability. New mobile computers dramatically open up the possibility of every student having access to technology and every teacher being able to fully utilize technology's instructional potential.

Mobile technology is important for many reasons. Manufacturers are exploiting new, powerful technology to reduce the price of computers so that schools can provide students with class sets of mobile computers. Reduced cost means schools will be able to provide students with regular and consistent access to computers so they can become competent in keyboarding, facile with the computer conventions, and masterful with complex applications within the context of regular school work.

The portability of these new computers allows learning to occur anywhere and anytime--on the bus, in the field, at home, or on a trip--so that students can ask, investigate, and answer questions in the contexts about which they are learning. Software and scientific probes present an integrated set of tools for writing, experimenting, calculating, graphing, communicating, and collecting data. With the addition of probes that test for motion, conductivity, current, dissolved oxygen, illumination, pH, temperature and more, these tools have the power and flexibility to support a wide range of student inquiry.

New low-cost, modest performance portable computers designed for education have no moving parts to break. Instead of using a hard disk, they rely on flash RAM and easy communication with a host computer. As a result, they are tough enough to be dropped onto concrete and tossed into a student's backpack.

Eliminating the disk drive gives it low weight, long battery life, and instant resume after sleep. Our 1997 pilot project in Hudson Public Schools was designed around the Apple eMate™. The eMate has a touch screen which serves the role of a mouse or drawing pad but is easier to learn and use. It uses the Apple Newton handwriting recognition, but also has a keyboard, and comes with software for word processing, drawing, spreadsheet layout, and graphing equations. (Apple is presently redesigning its portable computers, so eMate will not be used during the first year of the project. Students will use Macintosh portable laptops that also allow students to work in the field and to investigate in many contexts. By the end of the project students and teachers will be prepared to use the new generation of eMates as well as computers developed by other educational computer companies.)

The heart of the project is to seamlessly integrate new, portable technology with new math and science curricula by developing collaborative research activities that utilize the full capability of the equipment. In this way, we can integrate technology into the excellent inquiry-based approaches to mathematics and science that have been identified in the Curriculum Frameworks and are being promoted in Massachusetts by PALMS, CESAME and others.

At The Concord Consortium we will use our expertise concerning effective computer-based education to create inquiry-based materials that are practical, classroom-tested, interesting, and appropriate for a range of students. Outstanding teachers in Hudson, Shrewsbury, Northborough-Southborough and Westborough, Massachusetts, Public School Districts will test the materials. Within 18 months a set of materials will be completed that meet the new math and science frameworks and are ready for dissemination statewide.

The Mobile Inquiry Technology project will provide an activity guide for computer-based field study and applied research activities for 4th through 6th grade. The curricula will be tied to the basic topical units from such exemplary math and science curricula as Full Option Science System; Insights; Science and Technology for Children; Everyday Mathematics; Investigation in Number, Data, and Space; Mathland; and the Connected Mathematics Program.

The project will also develop a teacher's guide on mobile computing and scientific probes that will contain sections on applying these tools to inquiry math and science and managing their operation in the classroom and field. It will also cover mobile computing as a model for classroom technology use.

Through the use of the curricula, model classrooms in all four school districts will demonstrate effective classroom use of class sets of mobile computers. In addition, they will have regular and ongoing access to a set of scientific probes.

Finally, this project will create a leadership network that enables school districts throughout Massachusetts to make effective use of a new generation of portable computers to improve math and science education in the elementary and middle grades.

Carolyn Staudt is a curriculum developer at The Concord Consortium.

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