Schools can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovation costs. A portable lab has the potential to make the poorest school in the country equal to the richest. Additionally, the Windows CE platform shares a similar user interface with Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. This means introductory computer classes can be taught on Handheld PCs at both the high school and college levels. Web browsing is an incremental improvement for education, but it's not revolutionary, said Cook.
Teachers have enough trouble getting through the material they have already.
In fact, decreasing the amount of information might be a better approach than bombarding educators with more. With a Microsoft Windows NT Server-based system that Cook developed, students can take examinations over the Internet. Also, with testing on the Internet, teachers can readily share exams. When it's time for the test, the teacher brings a cart of Handheld PCs into her classroom and distributes one to each student. The system, which is already used by some of Cook's undergraduate students, corrects the tests automatically, saving the teacher countless labor-intensive hours of paper correcting.