
This chapter describes a small-scale project, funded by the UK Teacher
Development Agency, where all teachers and trainee teachers in one secondary
school science department were given handheld Personal Digital Assistants
(PDAs) for the academic year. The aims were to build m-learning and m-teaching
capacity, to enable school based associate tutors to join the e-learning community linked to the local initial teacher training course, and to encourage reflective practice amongst trainee teachers. However, not all these aims succeeded. The handhelds were viewed as personal devices rather than enabling
access to a community of practice. Nearly all participants praised the personal information management functions of the devices; however, the teachers did not use the handhelds to access course information and trainees did so only rarely. The ability to access Google from any location to answer students’ and
colleagues’ questions was more popular. Most popular were the multiple methods of recording available on the handheld: video, audio, and written notes. Teachers used these to record observations on each others’ lessons, students’ work, student behaviour, and trainees’ progress in teaching. The concept of using blogs to reflect on practice was not taken up though trainees did record personal reflections on their teaching in Pocket Word for later use in course assignments.