Lots of people like to access information through computers. Computers have become part of our lives. It is also an important tool in the educational environment. But in a school environment, computers are usually set in the computer room or at the corners of the rooms because they require quite some space for installation. Thus, they are not really readily available to students. As wireless devices are becoming more and more popular, students may use handheld devices to facilitate their learning as students can carry the devices to places where learning takes place. The high degree of mobility encourage and facilitate the collaboration and sharing of information among students since group work can be recorded and forwarded to classmates most instantly.
It will be great if students can use handheld devices in the library as space is definitely insufficient for installing many computers and the most important is that students can bring the handheld with them as they walk around the library. It will be particularly effective for a library tour. Different parts of the library can be introduced and explained more efficiently with the library webpages shown at the same time. Library skills can be learned more readily. It will also be more convenient for TL to handle book acquisition as the library catalogue can be consulted whenever needed.
However, the screen size is really small. This limits the amount of information that can be displayed meaningfully. And the personal nature of a handheld device, to a certain extent, hinders the achievement that can be brought by collaboration. Therefore, tasks should be specially designed to suit the use of handheld devices.
