Dear Kapiolani,

I think mobile devices will play a big role in the classrooms of the future.

Reasons are:

- Nearly every child has an own mobile device nowadays.

- Nearly every child is connected with the intenet via the mobile device for many hours per day.

- So mobile devices are THE world of our next generation.

- And so it makes sense to deal with mobile devices in classrooms. To use the advanteages, to speak about the disadvantages,...

- Mobile devices are high performing computers. We can use them in so many ways. There is a big potenatil to use them for education. 

The proliferation of individualized education programs in many countries around the world, coupled with the explosion of household electronic devices have made the adoption of new technologies in classrooms are increasingly more oriented toward personal devices.

Widespread access, the gradual acceptance and declining costs of personal devices are some of the factors that are driving their use in the field of education. The market for these devices has experienced healthy growth in recent years, but the appearance of the tablet PC will be the catalyst for mass adoption in the future.

Studies indicate that the sale of mobile devices over the next five years will reach million units, of which most corresponds to tablets with 60% of sales. In short, this means that, by 2017, 8% of students and teachers will have a mobile computing device for learning center, while the rise of the strategy of using personal devices will increase further its penetration rate.

This clear tendency to take personal devices opens numerous opportunities for schools, but also many challenges. One of the most important issues is to determine how the students personalized learning favor. How it will impact on the study in the home and how learning will balance at home and at school.

The issue also has implications in the design of buildings and classrooms, to be more interactive and more models mimic the workplace. This will lead to encourage work in small groups where mobile devices and digital education based projects will demonstrate its true usefulness. It is increasingly common to see flexible teaching spaces capable of hosting small classes and larger groups.

It seems to dominate the idea that the use of personal devices increases student attention, increases motivation and helps teachers to adapt the content of the classes to the needs of individual students, which leads to a teaching model inclusive and customized.

The line between learning at home and at school is becoming blurred to extend educational activities beyond school hours. Students who are interested in a project based on digital content are more likely to continue with it when they get home. The flexibility offered by personal devices opens the possibility of access to information, resources and tools to study anywhere and anytime, which seems that is already having a positive impact on school results.

My middle-school aged daughter already does most of her assignments on a school-provided tablet computer; on that same mobile device, she can constantly be checking her grades with real-time updates, communicate with classmates, produce work in multimedia forms, share documents and projects, seek out additional instruction (like through Khan Academy), etc. Clearly, that type of technological integration is the future of educational technology. But there also are additional problems that get created by integrating these devices. While kids 20 years ago passed paper notes, kids today often have constant virtual backchannels, through various platforms, through which they can either be on task and focused on the learning activity, or completely off task, even to the destructive point of bullying. They now can play unrelated video games while learning activities are happening or get distracted on social media. So there are many major advantages to the integration of mobile devices in classrooms but also some significant issues that arise as well. I suppose filters will be developed and devices will be locked into certain types of activities. But that's sort of like weaving kryptonite into Supergirl's cape; the more restrictions that are applied to the technologies, the less valuable they become, which, I suppose, puts even more pressure on teachers to be engaging and motivating and to keep students dialed into whatever the learning activity is, which is a good thing, but also not always easily achieved. Plus, teaching with mobile technologies is a learned behavior, and I'm not really seeing a substantial effort to train teachers in this mode, which is why most teachers commonly revert to the ways in which they were taught to teach others, in apprentice-like fashion. So the dynamics here are very complex.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305627093_Exploring_the_Dimensions_of_Mobile_Banking_Service_Quality_Implications_for_the_Banking_Sector

Article Exploring the Dimensions of Mobile Banking Service Quality: ...

I love that this question was 3 years ago. I find that my view, experience and outlook about mobile devices in the classroom has changed significantly in 3 years.

I appreciate that almost all students carry smart phones so that I can know have them contribute electronically during a classroom conversation and then read their responses for consolidated findings. For example, I cannot listen to all 40 students, and their comments would blend together. But, if I ask them to write something in an online journal for 5 minutes, I can quickly see the outliers and unique contributions and call on those students to share in class.

Jill