From TechHelp

A Dana is a Palm based device that has an attached keyboard and is wifi enabled.

Contents 1 Palm OS Basics 2 Finding Applications 2.1 Accessing Menus 3 Basic Programs 3.1 Alpha Word 3.2 Classroom Use of Address Book 3.3 Classroom Use of Calendar 4 AlphaSmart Manager For Dana 4.1 Send List 4.2 Get/Print Alpha Word Files 4.2.1 Getting Files 4.2.1.1 Selecting Files 4.2.1.2 Saving Files 4.2.2 Printing Files 4.2.3 Viewing Files 4.3 Alpha Word Files to Send 4.4 Sending Information 4.5 Sending Other Files and Applications Using Dana Manager 4.5.1 Importing and Exporting Send Lists 4.5.2 Settings 5 UltraKeys 5.1 Typing Practice 5.2 Manager 6 Activities 6.1 Palm Desktop 7 Working with ebooks 8 Resources from AlphaSmart

[edit] Palm OS Basics

There is some great information on the general Palm_OS and what each of the applications do. However there are some additional things to note since you have the added advantage of a keyboard on the Dana.

[edit] Finding Applications

The Palm OS is great since it is based on some simple characteristics. There is always a home area which displays the different applications that are available to the user. When you power on your Dana and for some reason don't see a screen that you are familiar with or want everyone in the classroom at the same starting place just have everyone click on the button with the picture of the house and the abbreviation apps on it. This will get everyone on the same page, which will look something like this.

One thing to notice is that in top right hand corner of the screen you will see the word All this means that all categories are being shown as it relates to programs.

[edit] Accessing Menus

As with all Palm Devices to access the menus of a program you can simply tap in the top right hand corner of the screen to see the different menus. Each program will have a slightly different menu depending what additional functions it has. On the Dana you can also get to this menu by pushing the menu key in the upper right hand corner of the keyboard.

[edit] Basic Programs

[edit] Alpha Word

Alpha word is a basic word processing program and an easy way to start using the Dana right away. To open the program click on the AlphaWord Icon. Once you are inside of Alpha word you will see a screen that looks like this.

By default if there is no prior document saved it will open an Unnamed, as you can see the title of the document in the top left hand corner. You will also notice in the lower left hand corner of the screen there are a section of buttons. Much like Word these are short cuts to specific actions within Alphaword. The first thing you will notice is the [F1] link. The way that Alphaword holds documents inside of the Dana is by using the 8 function keys as mail slots. So at any one time you can have up to eight documents open and editable with the press of a button. This can be helpful in finding students documents. Say you have 8 periods or 8 groups, you can then use these slots to help organize students work.

The next key is the backwards P which stands for paragraph formatting.

When you click on this button it will take you to a screen that allows you to manipulate the paragraph attributes. You will see one of the following menus. This allows you to quickly create bulleted lists and work with line spacing. These two menus allow you to add tabs at the beginning of a paragraph, making double spaced paragraphs, adding a bulleted list, and different justifications.

Next to the paragraph formatting button is the icon for changing the justification of the paragraph. Just as in Word this allows you to quickly change the justification with out opening a menu. The next three icons are to bold, underlined, and italicize.

The button that simply says Plain is actually where you can change the font style. As you can see you can change the size and add a few different styles. There are definitely a lot fewer fonts to choose from, but this can also be a good thing.

One of the simplest way to start to use a Dana in the classroom is to use them as either note taking devices or collaborative story telling devices. A simple function that you can do with the documents that you create is to beam it to one of your peers. To do this you will need to be facing your partner and then whom ever the sender is needs to go to File>Beam Doc. At this point a small screen will appear on the Dana saying searching once it finds a device that it can transfer the document to it will show the status of the process. The person that is receiving the document needs to simply accept the document.

Another great thing about Alphaword is students are less likely to loose their work due to not saving. You do want students to save their documents and this can be done in Alphaword by going to the menu and clicking File>Save and if this is your first save you will be asked what you want to call the document.

Just as in any other program if this is your first save you will be asked to give it a name. So your screen should look similar to this. Also if this is going to be used by more than one group of students have the student save the document with something specific to identify them. For example their full name.

So now the document in slot F1 is called tadge obrien. So when I sync the Dana I can easily identify the document. Or if I have a student beam it to the teacher's Dana I can determine which student handed in the document.

[edit] Classroom Use of Address Book

One of the default applications on the Dana is the address book. There may not seem to be any application of this in the classroom, however with a little thought you can create viable uses for the address book. Each address book is a basic database of information. So if there is data to be collected for reports or class projects you can use this basic and easy to use application. For example if your class was learning about historical figures what an easy way to collect information in this regard.

So you could construct it so that each student or each pair of students has to do some research on each historical figure and use the fields within the address book to collect this information.

When students first open the address book they will see the default address in the book.

This might be a good place to put references to which field holds what. For this example it might look something like this;

Last name

The last name of the historical figure

First name

The first name of the historical figure

Title

What did they do? For example where they a president, a writer, or something else.

Company

Perhaps this is information about where they lived or more information about what they did.

Now the rest of the fields become a bit trickier to manipulate however you can choose fields from a list in the address book. Making them say Other is one way to have students fill in information that is specific to their research. Think of a bulleted list for outlines.

There are also up to 4 custom fields that you can add to the address book. If it was important that the students had specific information that you didn't want them to forget, perhaps the person's birthday then you can add these to the custom fields.

To add a custom field you will need to click on the menu bar and then select the Options bar. You will see a menu item called Rename Custom Fields.

Now it will open a list that shows the four custom items. By selecting one of these you can rename them to whatever it is you want. These custom fields will appear at the end of the address entry. Once this is done you will need to make sure that this is set up on all of the Danas that you plan on using.

So now that each student or pair has done research on their historical figure then they can beam this to their teacher or other classmates. To do this they first must select the person that they want to beam. Once they have the person they want to beam they need to click on the menu bar. From there they need to select the Record menu and choose Beam Address. Once the person has excepted the information you have completed the data transfer.

[edit] Classroom Use of Calendar

The calendar is another application that can be used in the classroom for something other then a scheduler. One way that you might use this is to have students observe what they are eating for meals. This can also be used for anything else that would be similar to a daily log, perhaps observations of a science experiment.

To keep any log is simple. Have your students click on the Date Book icon.

By default it will open the current date with a list of times. Once students open the calendar all they have to do is click on a time and they can begin to enter the details that they would like.

If there is more information that needs to be added then by selecting the event and clicking on the Details of the event you can add a note to expand on the information.

By clicking on the Note students can add information relating to the meal, perhaps they are looking at calorie intake or if they are missing some of the food groups.

[edit] AlphaSmart Manager For Dana

The AlphaSmart Manager for the Dana allows you to manipulate the files and settings of multiple Danas without having to touch each individual Dana. This can be a huge time saver as you begin working with the Danas. When you first open the AlphaSmart Manager one thing that you will want to note is that there are different tabs for moving through the menus. For example the Send List is one of the 5 tabs that are available.

[edit] Send List

The Send List is the opening screen when you open the Dana manager software. This shows what Danas are selected and and allows you to select and deselect the devices that you want to work with. It will also show you which of the Danas is plugged into the cart. This way if you have all of the Danas in the cart and notice that there are numbers 12 to 15 aren't showing up in the send list then they are probably unplugged.

Send list shows what information is going to be sent in a list within the main window. So in the list in this image the Settings are being updated.

A nice thing about the Dana Manager is that you can select specific Danas to send information to. So if you wanted to only send a selection of information to 5 Danas you can do this by using the Select Devices key you can choose which of the Danas you want to update with the information that is contained in the Send List window.

If you simply want to send the information to all of the Danas you can click on the send key will send the information listed in the main window to all the Danas, if you haven't changed the Send List.

[edit] Get/Print Alpha Word Files

This tab allows you to manipulate the Alpha Word files adding them to the Dana or taking them off the Dana and saving them to your computer.

[edit] Getting Files

This section of the Dana Manager allows you to select the files that you would like off of the Danas that are connected in the cart. So for example if you have students save a file called pbsand you will be able to save this file quickly off of each Dana. There are two options for from this menu that you may want to use. The first option is to save files by using the Save Files button in the lower right hand corner of the screen. The other option that you may want to use is the Print Files button. This option lets you print documents by clicking on the Print Files button in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

[edit] Selecting Files

The first thing that you will want to do to save or print the files from the Dana is choose the files to work with. When you first click on the Get/Print AlphaWord tab you will see a list of the Danas that are connected. Since each Dana has eight Workspaces with AlphaWord if multiply this by 30 Danas you can technically have 240 different files to choose from at this point. So AlphaSmart has given you a few options on how to sort through the information stored on the Danas.

The most basic way to select a file is to go through individually checking each file.

For most instances you will want to either sort by Workspace or Dana. This will let you see the different workspaces of each Dana or the specific Dana. Sorting by Workspace you will see each workspace by Dana with the file name. This will give you a quick overview of the entire body of work in the Danas. Sorting by Dana will show you each individual Dana, then workspace, and then the file names.

You will also notice that you can sort information according to the name of the file, or by the date the file was last modified. Any of these would work depending on what it is you wanted to do.

[edit] Saving Files

Once you have chosen the files that you want to save the next step will be to click on the Save Files button in the bottom right hand corner of the window. When you do this a new window will pop up that gives you the option to choose what to save and what format to save it in.

The first drop down menu is asking you if you want to save the files that you have: checked, a specific workspace, or All Files. So choose which of these things you would like to do. Your next option is the format that you want to save the file as.

Notice that there is a way to select two different file types, one is called text and the other is called RTF. In most cases you will want to save the file as RTF which means Rich Text Format and keeps things such as font types, font size, and paragraph formating. The option to save as text will eliminate all of this information from the file, and in most cases won't be what you want to happen.

Once you have chosen the files and the way that you want to save them you can click the save button and choose where you want to save them. Once you click OK the Dana manager will create folders that holds the files that you have saved. One way it does this is by creating folders for each Dana and placing the files in those folders. Usually it will create a folder depending on how you sorted your information. For example if you sorted by modification date it will create a folder called modification date that holds these files.

Note: If you are regularly saving information down using the Dana Manager you need to be aware that if the file names are the same you will want to be aware of overwriting the files. If you see this message take care what and where you are saving.

[edit] Printing Files

Using the print files function of the Dana Manager works in much the same way that the save files button works. However instead of saving the files down to a folder it will send them to a printer. You should be sparing with the number of files that you print this way. If using it at all you will probably want to wait until the end of the project.

[edit] Viewing Files

Another option that you have while working in the Dana manager is to view a specific file without having to save or print the file. You will notice in the lower left hand corner of the screen that there is a button labeled view file. By highlighting a specific file and then clicking on the view file button you will be able to see what information the file contains.

This is a quick way to check and see what file it is you are about to save.

[edit] Alpha Word Files to Send

One feature that is very nice if you want to create something to scaffold a writing activity with students or create a template for student work in AlphaWord is that you can create a single file and send it to all of the Danas with one click of a button. If you click on the tab Alpha Word Files to Send you will see a screen shows a list of the files that you can send, as well as a button that allows you to create a file right within the Dana Manager.

Working with this you will notice if you select Add to List under the Files of type you will see three document types that you can use:

.doc

Your normal word document, without tables or pictures, will be converted and sent to the Dana.

.rtf

Which is will create a file that maintains the text formating of a file.

.txt

Which is the lowest common denominator for text files.

This should allow you to take in most text based documents and place them in AlphaWord for use on the Dana. Once you click on the Add button you will see the document name show up in the list of documents that you will add to the Dana when you send the command.

You will also notice that there is a Create File button so that if you needed to quickly create a file for sending to the Danas you can do so right within the DanaManager. The first thing it will ask you to do is to Create the file by giving it a name and creating it in a location. Then it will open a small window where you can type out the document you want to create. Once you click OK it will add this document to the list of files to send.

As you work on adding documents to the Dana you will notice that there is a place to assign the workspace to a specific document that you want to create. So for each individual document you could specify a specific workspace. This could allow for an additional activity being placed on the Dana so once a student or group is done with the first activity they could move easily onto the next.

To assign a specific workspace to the document you simply need to highlight the document and click on the Workspace Assignment menu and choose from the letter one through eight. Once this is done you are ready to send the documents to the Danas.

[edit] Sending Information

This is where you will want to go back to the opening tab of the Dana Manager. Once you have selected the Send List tab, you should see a list of information about what will be sent to the Danas. There are some basic Administrative settings that will be sent and then below that you will see your AlphaWord file list that will be sent. Now you can simply select the Danas that you are going to use by clicking on the Select Devices button and selecting the Danas that you want to send the information to.

NOTE: You may want to make sure that you have saved any other information off of the Danas before syncing new information. Also if you are syncing with files that have the same names, you will be warned that you are going to overwrite the existing file.

Once you have clicked send you will see the progress of each file and Dana in a small window and then finally a Success message.

You can then remove files in much the same manner that you would add. Simply highlight the file you want to remove and then click Remove from List. This will take the file from the list so that when someone else syncs the Danas your files won't sync as well.

[edit] Sending Other Files and Applications Using Dana Manager

There are are other files that you can send using the Dana Manager. The most common Palm files are called PDBs. Things such as books and other files are usually stored as these file formats. So for example I have a copy of The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle that I want to have students read. So to upload this to the Dana I would select the Add Other Files/Apps tab so I could upload my book. I would then click on the Add to List button and browse for where the file is located. Once I have added the file to the list I would then have to go to my send list and click on the send button to send The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle to the Danas that I want.

I can send whatever type of file that has been created for the Palm based operating system. The only thing that I should be concerned about is whether or not I have the software on the Dana to work with the document type.

[edit] Importing and Exporting Send Lists

One thing that can be helpful year to year would be to create an export of information that you are sending to the Dana. This way next year when you are ready to do the unit all you would have to do is open the folder and import the send list and sync the Danas. This could be a real time savings as you begin to implement the devices into your classroom.

To export the send list you will want to go to File>Save Send List As... , which will ask you where you want to save the list.

This will create a folder with what ever it is you happened to name it with all of the information that related to the information that you wanted to send to the Danas. So next time I want to add the same information to the Danas all I would have to do is open the file called filename.dcf and it would open all of the information that I needed to sync with the Dana.

[edit] Settings

The Settings tab in the Dana Manager is where you can adjust the settings that are sent to the Dana. For the most part this is something that you shouldn't have to worry about.

[edit] UltraKeys

There are two basic parts to UltraKeys. One is the software for keyboarding practice, the other is the manager software.

[edit] Typing Practice

[edit] Manager

The Ultrakey manager allows you to collect, view, and print reports related to students progress.

[edit] Activities

Here are some of the PalmOS_Activities that you might want to consider.

[edit] Palm Desktop

If you don't have the Dana Manager software you will need to use the Palm Desktop to manage the Danas that you have available to you. When you are working with Danas the interface that allows you to sync information back to a computer for transfer information to the computer is done through the Palm Desktop. The Palm Desktop allows you to add programs to Danas and sync information off of the Danas.

This is the real management piece of the Dana. Numbering the Danas so that you can have a reference of which Dana is which is important.

Along the right hand side of the Palm Desktop shows all of the information that is synced between the Dana and your computer. In the upper right hand side of the screen is the user that will be synced or the information of the user that you are viewing. Managing a classroom of Danas or other Palm based devices can be simplified when you create names of devices within the Palm Desktop. Then as you sync with different student and teacher devices you can aggregate the information without having to switch to different applications. All you would have to do is move between user names.

Setting up the users can be done by simply going to either the pull down menu and selecting Edit Users or by going to Tools>Users. This will bring up another window, which allows you to edit current users and add new users.

To add a new user simply click on the New button which will open a window where you can add the new user name.

Once you have entered the new users name and clicked OK you will see the new user appear in the user menu. Now you can sync with that specific user.

[edit] Working with ebooks

Free ebooks

[edit] Resources from AlphaSmart

Dana Training Videos