Education receive a helping hand
Allowing mobile phones in schools have been debated by various educators for some time now. Some argue that the phones are only a means of distraction, with pupils focusing more on texting and browsing social networks than on their teachers. Others, however, see it differently.
Personal Digital Assistants (abbreviated PDAs) like the iPod Touch, can be a handy tool when looking from an academic and educational perspective with productivity in mind. These devices can organise the students personal information such as to-do lists, assignments and even access the schools website, thus helping the students to perform better perfect for those a little less organized.
PDAs are hand-held and easy to fit in a pocket or backpack, thus making it more popular and convenient than a laptop whilst possessing the same qualities: access to a spectrum of resource materials only a search away.
There are a number of fun, educational apps and tools available to help improve students knowledge in any educational field. Athletes can track their nutritional intake and physical activities to see whether they reach their fitness goals. Science students can store and graph data collected via experiments done, while Math students can turn their phone into a graphing calculator. English students can record essays and Foreign Language students never again have to carry another heavy dictionary after installing a digital dictionary on their hand-held device. Another great initiative worth mentioning is the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign (in North Carolina) who introduced the Birds and the Bees text line. Through this campaign they respond to sex-related questions via text sent by anonymous teenagers.
According to a recent study PDAs can improve the performance of students struggling with mathematics. In the study, the group of kids who used the interactive app created solely for this purpose performed 25% better on the final Algebra exam than those without the extra support given by the app. At the recent BETT conference, the worlds biggest educational technology show, it was said that schools need to adapt and prepare for the 21st century, for more pupils are rejecting the current educational system. When you search for virtual schools in Google you receive 387 000 references. The children decide where and how they learn and if the schools arent enticing enough, theyll go somewhere else. In your opinion, what role will
mobile technology play in the future of education?
