First of all, I would like to state that I am a trained secondary school English teacher - not primary trained, and certainly not trained in the teaching of basic literacy and numeracy skills to new entrant students.  However, I would like to evaluate TeacherMate in the context of handheld-devices and personalised learning in the classroom.

In a way, the TeacherMate could be seen as a disruptive technology - in much the same way that mobile phones are a disruptive technology and in my opinion will have a profound impact on the way technology is in the future used and integrated in to our classrooms - however, that is a separate post!

Why a disruptive technology? Because the TeacherMate does everything it sets out to do and therefore, is accessible as a tool that schools can conceivably invest in and make this particular technology part of the classroom for their students.  What do I mean by this? The TeacherMate doesn’t try to be everything to everyone.  It is simply a tool that employs the functions it needs to achieve its purpose - teaching basic literacy and numeracy to students.  Yes, it uses only proprietry software - but to see this as a down-side would be to miss the point of the device itself.

For me, the beauty of this device lies in the way it makes authentic differentiated learning a real possibility - so often the practicality of ‘differentiated learning’ seems to translate to group work, or a standard classroom activity - with an extras for experts activity…  but the TeacherMate allows teachers to gather information from all of their students and as a result set a learning opportunity that tracks students’ progress and allows them to work at the level at which they are currently at.

Imagine having a tool that provides an individualized lesson plan for each student and delivers up-to-the-minute student progress reports based on data automatically uploaded from the handheld computers.

I love the way that the TeacherMate activities have been developed to engage students - particularly in the way that they integrate the use of a variety of different methods for collecting data from the students.  Students are presented with game type activities, they are given instant verbal feedback about their progress.  Activities require students to enter a value, select an option, or my favourite - give students a reading task - the student’s voice is recorded on to the device and played back for them to hear for themselves.

The device has been developed to teach students to read - therefore, the whole TeacherMate system has been designed to be used for students with little or no reading ability - navigation is by colour buttons and arrows and students are clearly guided through activities with spoken instructions.

Affordable and accessible - for me, the TeacherMate epitomises the future of mobile learning - one-on-one devices, highly personalised with two way information streams - providing feedback to both students and to teachers.  There is no attached camera, you can’t upgrade by adding new activities or harder materials - once the student has worked their way through the activities - the device has done its job and the students move on.
As a disruptive technology the TeacherMate offers a solution that currently no $1500 laptop can provide - firstly its price puts it in to the hands of the users, but secondly, the teacher has such great control over directing the learning activity for each student and the teacher is provided with infromation that allows them to build a picture about the true capabilities of their students who are learning to read and to do mathematics.

I look forward to seeing the direction for this device as the developers of TeacherMate work with Stanford University to take the device to rural communities around the world. (click here to read more)