ISEM sees opportunity for packaging handheld solutions

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, Feb, 2001

Current activity for handheld computing in education comes down to pilots on the part of academic institutions, and experiments on the part of companies. The largest deployment is probably 3,000 Palm units in a school district just outside of Chicago. More common are the experiments in a single classroom, or perhaps with select students in a single university department. Even so, nearly any Palm reading predicts explosive growth for this particular OS and handheld computing in general. Opportunities abound not just for content providers, tool makers and hardware makers, but for integrators.

It is already a bit baffling for a new Palm user to uncover the possibilities of these devices from the wide range of new downloads and add-ons. Making the potential value of handheld computing clear in a school environment is an enormous task.

ISEM sees especially strong potential for those companies who can expand upon Palm's efforts to aggregate applications for education, to study best practices and to provide professional development. The rapid growth of the Palm economy is likely to make it difficult for schools to understand the best possible use of the devices. Beyond the volume of activity, Palm's inability to advocate one application over another is just one factor that limits what they can do in this arena.

MindSurf, which works with both the Palm OS and Microsoft CE, is an example of a company well positioned to package handheld computing as a valuable solution to the schools. Their mission of individualized instruction, of course, goes beyond a goal of using handhelds, but they have established an early standard. There will also be a market space for less-comprehensive packages that facilitate a school's entry to handheld computing and integrate the option with the overall IT plan. And while K-12 schools will be most responsive to assistance through the turbulent waters of the mobile web, companies already assisting higher education with campus communities are in an ideal position to smooth an institution's entry to handheld computing.