Mobile Learning

Using mobile technologies for learning involves the classroom teacher and school leaders to develop a different mindset. The tools that new technology offers (like phones) are impressive and do enable you to expand the boundaries of your class room. And what about mobile phones? We give our students a timelineand tell them it is a crucial tool to help them keep track of their assignments and be successful students. What if a student wants to use the calendar program built into many of their mobile phones to help them keep track of stuff? Or what if they want to text message themselves – or their email accounts – with a reminder or some notes about an assignment? Or what if they want to use the calculator or memo features built into a lot of cell phones? Should we tell them not to?

This technology by itself is not going to make a subject interesting. You may see new excitement and increased learning gains, when you start using phones or other technologies such as blogs and wikis. Why?  First of all, it isn’t technology to our students. There’s nothing special about using their phone to them.   It’s part of their culture. As teachers, we are just now starting to pay attention and to understand some of what our students are doing, but it still looks like technology to us.  We see the machines, because we’re looking in from the outside.  To them, it’s the information — and more than that, it’s what they are doing with the information. Our students are connected. Technology is part of their lives. But. . . . it’s not technology, it’s information. These gadgets are their links to information.

Are we preparing our students for the 21st century?

We desperately need . . . we may not survive without . . . a generation of young people who are imaginative, inventive, fearless learners, and compassionate leaders. Yet, what can we say, as educators, about the students we are producing?  We can prove that they can read, do basic math on paper, and they are able to sit for hours filling in bubble sheets. No generation in history has ever been so thoroughly prepared for the industrial age.

Did you know?

Tweet This Post