Near-Term Technologies
In the near term--one year or less--those technologies include cloud computing and mobile devices.For education, the relevance of cloud computing this year--as opposed to last year, when cloud computing was focused more heavily on data systems--will be in allowing schools to expand the tools available for learning and teaching in ways that desktop software, with its restrictive licensing and often high costs, cannot.
"Schools are increasingly taking advantage of ready-made applications hosted on a dynamic, ever-expanding cloud that enables end users to perform tasks that have traditionally required site licensing, installation, and maintenance of individual software packages," according to the authors. "E-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, collaboration, media editing, and more can all be done inside a Web browser, while the software and files are housed in the cloud."
Mobile devices, of course, are already having an impact, but their potential, according to the report, has increased considerably with the launch of Apple's iPad, as well as the new and upcoming slate of Android- and webOS-based tablets that will help solidify the mobile/handheld device class as a well rounded and feature-rich technology category.
"With always-on Internet, mobiles embody the convergence of several technologies that lend themselves to educational use, including electronic book readers, annotation tools, applications for creation and composition, and social networking tools," the report said.
Mobile computing will continue to dominate the education landscape for the foreseeable future. Ubiquitous access, instant on features, and low price point will drive more adoption of these devices. I have seen a huge increase in adoption of the iPhone since it became available on Verizon in the school where I work.
Mobile devices are now found in the hands of most children, and school leaders are using that to their advantage by incorporating devices that students already own into classroom lessons and projects.
Concerns remain about students who are unable to purchase or borrow a device for use in the classroom, but districts might find creative ways—such as asking local businesses or community organizations for help—to provide devices in such instances, advocates of the trend say.
With access issues in mind, allowing students to bring their own devices from home can offer educational benefits, as well as some surprisingly positive results when it comes to creative thinking and classroom behavior.
You can read the full article here.
Mini Microscope is an attachment for the iPhone 4 that will allow you to use your Apple smartphone to conduct science experiments. The attachment comes with a 60X zoom lens and dual-LED lights to turn your iPhone 4 into a mini microscope that can come in handy for those who are working in the field.
At a recent Nokia Musings technology panel in Silicon Valley, Nokia had invited researchers from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley to talk about the intersection of technology and humanity. Those researchers, who used Nokia smartphones and outfit those devices with their own custom lens solutions to create their own mini microscopes, say that the quality of their miniature microscopes are almost as good as more expensive and bulkier systems in the lab, but are a lot cheaper and more portable. With mobile labs enabled by high-powered smartphones scientists can rapidly obtain results without having to send their data to a lab, which can save time and resources.
If the iPhone 4′s kit offers similar results as the Nokia solutions, this may help field researchers and scientists in remote areas obtain, gather, and analyze data relatively inexpensively. Unlike the custom Nokia solutions that research scientists had to create, the iPhone 4 kits are commercialized, similar to telescopic lens solutions for a faux DSLR experience on an iPhone, and can be obtained for £29.99,
In 1985, when Bruce Springsteen wrote “We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school,” he was talking about the lure of whatever might be waiting outside every classroom around the world. That youthful feeling of the world passing you by — the things you were missing as you sat in a classroom day after day — is an age-old challenge for educators. It’s one that’s about to be subjected to an even greater assault as the digital generation moves deeper into education.
The Internet was the first volley on the way a generation learned. Students no longer had to trudge to the library to research a topic. The encyclopedias of our parents’ generation were tossed into recycling bins, and a combination of Google and Wikipedia was all students needed to complete even the most ambitious assignments. Even with all their merit — the world’s opinions and research at your fingertips — educators shunned the tools in the class. They banned the Internet to the corner, equipping it with the dunce cap.
Mobile is the second volley in this assault on education, and the impact is going to be far larger and broader-reaching than the Internet and computers were before it. If the web brought research to the desktop, mobile brings all that power — plus context — to the hip pocket. We all have the ultimate ability to find, disseminate, discuss, opine, distribute and create on the fly, and this power is something educators will need to embrace — and quickly.
New mobile technologies such as augmented reality, Google Goggles and real-time language translation applications are helping smartphones become key tools in the real-time learning toolkit. And students are bringing this technology into the classroom.
This generation of students is far different from its predecessors when it comes to the consumption of technology. Students coming of age during the Internet revolution seemed to be much more engaged in the making of technology — building the foundation of bits and bytes — while students today are much more inclined to use the technology for other pursuits, including education. Using mobile technology to learn is as natural a move and non-disruptive for this generation as it was for their parents to bring encyclopedias out of the library and into the home.
The single, most powerful pull of mobile is the seamless connectivity it enables. There has never been a time in history where the earth has been flatter, where it was easier to have a social network that extended beyond a city or country or hemisphere, or that different cultures were as exposed in real time – and it’s all because of the smartphone. This power is global and comes to life through the 250 million mobile Facebook users, photo applications like Instagram and mobile video sharing services like Qik.
“The next wave of teaching, when you’re facing students who have computers in their hands or on their desks, really is about taking advantage of that connectivity,” says Sidneyeve Matrix, National Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Film at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. “So that’s just another reason for educators to push for mobile learning opportunities or to challenge themselves to figure out to utilize the technology their students already have.”
With this power, there’s the growing potential to also increase the gap between the technology haves and the technology have-nots, as well as the growing concern that “always connected” means never able to concentrate on the task at hand. The classroom is the perfect place to teach the potential of mobile learning and, at the same time, expose the technology to students who don’t have access to it. Teachers can start by bringing in games that leverage mobile. Quizzes and micro-learning opportunities abound during the school day; use mobile to capture them. Exposure can also come in the form of recording classes and turning them into podcasts, assigning teams to work on mobile video projects or even doing real-time scavenger hunts on campus or in the community.
This often leads to a profound argument that has been in our discourse since Google launched and became the Internet’s conduit to humanity’s collective brain: Are kids learning to learn or are they simply learning to find. It’s a subtle difference. Has information become temporary, or even disposable? Face it; we don’t go to school really to learn about things — natural curiosity will overcome learning lethargy to drive lifelong education — but we do go to learn to learn and that’s what will be impacted the most with mobile.
Learning is a skill. Teaching that skill happens every day in the classroom but it need not end there, and that’s where mobile can truly shine. Mobile holds the nascent promise of bridging the desire to learn about everything and the ability to learn about it anywhere. The key now is to start.
For almost 10 years Rob has been immersed in the middle of the mobile revolution in roles ranging from strategic advisor, board member and coach to VP Operations and President and CEO. Rob currently runs UNTETHER.tv where he interviews mobile luminaries about how they are building their businesses and he also strategizes with major brands on embracing mobile within their organizations.
Image courtesy of Flickr user mortsan.
There is a new free resource called Study Boost that connects with mobile phones. You create an account on Study Boost, then you can create your own "batches" of study questions. You can subscribe to the study questions via cell phone (you can also view them on the mobile web). In addition you can share your study questions with friends, teachers, and others so they can also review on the go. Study Boost would be a great project for extending learning and allowing students to study at their own pace (and on the go!).
Expert Perspective
We need a new educational model that makes learning personal and motivating, and helps secure our students’ future in the knowledge economy. Mobile technology opens the door to it.
Imagine a group of kids working together on a retrospective of the Civil War. One student is at the public library, going through microfilm of newspaper articles from 1861 to 1865. She finds a reference to the political ramifications of a certain battle--notably, a picture of an influential officer. The student then uses her smartphone to snap a picture of the microfilm screen and sends the picture and caption to her group for additional research.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE This commentary launches a new column in THE Journal offering an industry expert's view on a topic of vital interest to the ed tech community. |
Meanwhile, a second member of the group is reviewing gravesites and comes across some ambiguous headstones. He takes out his tablet computer and, after a quick bit of online research, locates the appropriate person. While all of this is happening, yet another student is conducting a face-to-face interview with a relative of a Civil War veteran. Rather than hastily throwing together handwritten notes, this student is using his MP3 player to record the conversation. Later, he'll upload it to the group's Web-based project space for the other team members to hear.
What makes these authentic, intimate learning opportunities possible? Mobile technologies. Mobile devices provide the platform and, as importantly, the incentive for students to take personal ownership of the learning experience. The lessons absorbed form deep connections for students and add to their cognitive framework in ways that no lecture ever could.
A Desktop in Your Pocket
Today's mobile technologies bear little resemblance, functionally or physically, to first-generation cell phones. They include a broad array of devices such as music and video players, cell phones, smartphones, tablets, and netbooks, all with access to cellular carrier networks, WiFi, or both. And while features and performance continue to climb, prices regularly drop, making mobile devices virtually ubiquitous.
The potential enormity of this user base has attracted software developers large and small. Nearly every available mobile device supports third-party application development, providing a rich selection of productivity, entertainment, and education applications, along with core functionality such as instant messaging, e-mail, calendar, and Web browsing. And advances in processor performance, storage, cameras, and sound have all contributed to providing users the same rich media experience they've come to expect from desktop systems. The integration of QWERTY keyboards is making obsolete the days of pecking out text messages using a numeric keypad. Also common are large, high-resolution displays that offer onscreen keyboards, multitouch gestures, and the ability to clearly view the screen both indoors and out. All of this combines to create the equivalent of a pocket desktop, in a portable, always-connected form factor.
So what is all of this doing for K-12 education? Nothing short of disrupting and transforming the established teaching and learning paradigm. To start, mobile technology is helping to solve the two challenges facing education today: students' desire to learn differently, and students' need to learn differently.
Kids today are captivated by the personalization and socialization of online tools--the ability to build large networks of friends; share their thoughts, feelings, and goals; and communicate as they wish. Students have become so invested in mobile devices that our society has coined a new term for them--digital natives--to represent their having only known a world where all of this is possible. And not only is it possible, it's possible anytime and anywhere, via a plethora of devices and widely available cellular and WiFi networks.
The upshot is, these digital natives now have in their hands the tools to shape their own education in once unimagined ways. They have the ability to interact with other learners at their convenience, with differences in time and place presenting no hurdle. They can research, on the spot, any topic of interest. And they can capture the moment, whether it's in a picture, a video, or a blog entry.
Blessed with all of these capabilities, students have what they need to function in a knowledge economy. It's the obligation of 21st century educators to prepare students for this new economy, which means providing them with the skills to locate the most up-to-the-minute facts, and then turn those freshly acquired facts into solutions appropriate for the task at hand. So students must become effective researchers, which in turn requires them to develop an understanding of how to identify quality sources of information. Developing these new information retrieval skills requires us to encourage students to push beyond old boundaries of space (classrooms), content (textbooks), and authority (teachers).
Mobile devices fulfill all of these demands. They give students a tool that allows them to express themselves in any format they wish, build networks of sources, and perform on-the-spot research to produce and act on the most current facts. Moreover, it puts in their hands a technology that engages and relates to them and sparks their curiosity. Students can now participate in an individualized approach to learning, which occurs through personal application--the student as doer. To get the fullest benefits of this new learning mode, occasions for personal application have to be available to students in any setting--in the classroom during independent study, in the library with small groups, walking home from school, while waiting in line at the movie theater, and on and on. It's mobile technologies that give students the means of owning their education on these terms.
Tools of Engagement
Mobile devices are not the first technology to promise great improvements in education. Similar claims were made about e-books, distance learning, electronic whiteboards, and many more. But there are several differences between those earlier tools and the opportunity presented by the use of digital applications, resources, content, and the Internet in tandem with mobile devices.
To begin with, mobile technology and Internet access are already ubiquitous, requiring little or no capital investment by schools. Students--or really their parents--are the ones making that investment. Earlier educational technologies required schools to deploy the technology, incorporate it into the curriculum, and train the users. Once schools made it past the deployment and infrastructure issues, they often ran right into training as the next stumbling block.
This time around, students, generally already expert users, need little or no support, and faculty and staff quickly become acclimated. In any case, as opposed to requiring specialized support from a handful of experts, newcomers have an enormous user base to tap for assistance.
Plus, previous generations' tech innovations mostly perpetuated the traditional classroom structure, and in doing so missed out on perhaps the single most potent enabler of academic success--student engagement. Mobile technologies have no such failing. Students need no extra encouragement to use them. They already spend virtually every available moment on them, texting, instant messaging, posting personal status updates, and the like. All of that energy can also now be brought to their schoolwork.
Can you imagine telling a kid to stop spending so much time on algebra? Or not to go overboard on researching historical sources? Sounds like pure fantasy, but that could become the new reality if we have the courage to discard an outdated teaching methodology that doesn't reach today's students, and instead embrace their bustling, burgeoning digital world. Mobile devices applied in the context of education will engage students, foster deep and meaningful learning, and result in today's kids reaching frontiers that generations before them could never hope to glimpse.
What is more disruptive, banning cell phones and requiring teachers to confiscate them, or embracing student cell phones and teaching students how to use them more responsibly. For the 2009-2010 school year we changed our cell phone policy at the school were I serve as an assistant principal. We allow students to use their cell phones in between classes and in the cafeteria during their lunch period. The rest of the school day is instructional time and their cell phones are to be off and out of site unless a teacher is using them as part of the lesson.
Additionally, we made another change to our cell phone policy. We no longer require teachers to confiscate a student's cell phone if they violate the policy. We tell the teachers to write up a conduct report and turn it in to the main office and we will handle it from there. Our goal was to eliminate the classroom struggle that ensues between the teacher and a student when there is a cell phone policy violation.
December 15, 2010
Nielsen’s new whitepaper on Mobile Youth Around the World [1] reveals that most young people with mobile phones chose their own device. In fact, across all the countries surveyed, only 16 percent of young people reported that their parents selected their mobile phone. Price was the most common consideration among youth in selecting a mobile phone, though that is true among other age groups, too. Youth aged 15 to 24 in all countries surveyed put price as the first purchase driver, with the exception of Russian youth, 21 percent of whom placed design/style first. (Some grown-ups care about design, too. Around 14 percent of Brazilian adults say design/style is the most important consideration, compared to seven percent of U.S. adults.)
[2]
[3]
Out of all the countries examined, Italy leads in smartphone penetration with 47 percent of young people ages 15-24 owning a smartphone, compared to 31 percent of adults over 25. Smartphone penetration among European youth averages 28 percent in the countries surveyed, while penetration among older adults in Europe is 27 percent. Twenty-eight percent of U.S. mobile subscribers have smartphones. Youth in the United States exceed the population average smartphone penetration by 5 percent.
All countries tend to skew male in smartphone adoption with one notable exception, the US, where 55 percent of smartphone users age 15-24 are female. In the overall U.S. smartphone population 55 percent were male.
[4]
Article printed from Nielsen Wire: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire
URL to article: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/a-global-view-of-cellphones-and-youth/
The Knox County Board of Education is considering a more lenient policy when it comes to students using cell phones, including in some cases, allowing them to be used during classes.The new policy would allow high school students to use the phones at various times during the day. Some schools already allow it, and are even finding them to be valuable tools.
Last year a few of our teachers successfully used Google Voice in some of our World Language Classrooms. They use Google Voice to quickly capture audio recordings of the students speaking in the target language. The use of student cell phones and Google Voice allows the teachers to provide opportunities for students to improve their oral proficiency and creates a forum for the teacher to assess that ability.
GOOGLE VOICE:
This year students will be asked to record themselves using Google Voice. This is a tool for me to easily record and assess student pronunciation and oral communication. It is free and I can access the recordings through the internet or my phone. It is completely private and the recordings are sent to my Google Voice account. Students may use their cell phones or home phones to create these recordings. I have a separate Google Voice line so no students will be communicating using my private home or cell number. I am able to text them through the Google Voice number or have the message sent to their email. This makes feedback easy and accessible. Students can also hear their own recording if I send it to them so they can listen and make improvements. This will be a useful tool on days when we will not have access to the lab, or when I ask for a recording for homework. I used it successfully last year with the support of Administration. I respectfully ask for your permission to request the cell phone number of your child in order to implement the use of Google Voice recordings. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.
Here are two articles featuring our use of Google Voice in the classroom last year:
http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/Google-Voice-Helps-Students-Learn-Spanish.html
NAME OF STUDENT: ______________________________________
Parent/ Guardian Contact Information: I would like to have this information so that I can communicate with you about your child’s progress.
Parent/Guardian Name: ____________________________________________
Email address: ___________________________________________________
Phone: Home__________________________________
Work___________________________________
Cell ____________________________________
Parent/Guardian Name: ____________________________________________
Email address: ___________________________________________________
Phone: Home__________________________________
Work___________________________________
Cell ____________________________________
Student email address: _____________________________________________
*Student cell phone number:_________________________________________
*I understand that my child will be using his or her cell phone to create recordings and text messages using Sra. Taylor’s google voice phone number.
Parent Signature ___________________________ Date _______________
Q: In my middle school/high school, kids aren’t allowed to use cell phones during the day (although we all know they do). To “set a good example,” our principal has decided that teachers shouldn’t use them either.Frankly, most of us consider this a ridiculous ruling. Phones are available for teacher use in the faculty room or the office, but it’s much more convenient to call a parent, for example, on a cell phone from your own classroom. And I’ll admit that it’s also more convenient to make appointments or take care of all the other business everyone has to contend with. How can I convince my principal to move into the age of technology?
A: You might refer your principal to a survey done by the Pew Research Center last spring. The survey found that 75% of kids age 12-17 own cell phones. Twenty-four percent say their schools ban cell phones, but 65% bring them to school anyway and 58% admit to texting in class!
No. They can't. There is no legal floodwall even remotely big enough to stop this one.Yet, we keep trying ... and causing ourselves even more policy trouble in the effort because as we are trying to build the wall higher and stronger we are also trying to bail out the water already on the other side.Is it time to switch tactics yet? Is it time to go with the flow and help direct the waters in responsible directions? We legal types are the ones that need to let administrators know when it is appropriate to stop trying to plug the dam. That is our responsibility as their advisors.Meanwhile, the kids are waiting for us ...
