The reading for week 10 "Futurelab Mobile Review" written in 2004, discusses various strategies for implementing the use of mobile phones in the classroom. There are some great ideas in this article.
At the moment I am working with a wide variety of students from many different high schools, both state and private, on the Gold Coast in Queensland. I have been asking my students if they have ever used mobile phones for a teacher directed task in the subjects they study and about their blogging experiences. The only reported legitimate use of the mobile phone has been as a calculator and not one of these students has ever written a blog!
The reason for this situation maybe that, as yet there is a lack of training for classroom teachers in this area. One of the roles of the teacher librarian could be to help rectify this situation. It could also be that the technology available to students is not uniformly capable of the types of tasks suggested by the article.
I asked a group of year 9 girls from a lower socioeconomic high school how many of the students in the all girl class had an iPhone. The reply "everyone has one" surprised me. No doubt as more students aquire mobile phones with iPhone capabilities there will be a greater uptake of the opportunities that the use of this ubiquitous device provides.
Karen
Hi Karen. As Michael D pointed out on the site, the Futurelab review is now very outdated so you might do well to do a search for more recent articles, perhaps also following up authors of interesting studies from that review.
ReplyDeleteYou also mention the low SES girls saying that 'everyone has one', referring to the iPhone. I would be inclined take this with a pinch of salt. For example, I am reminded of David Buckingham's work some years ago published in the book "Talk about Television" suggested that even very young children know that talk about media participation is an part of everyday socialisation and they were able to converse about TV shows that they were not even allowed to watch or had never seen. Having said that, obviously many young people DO have 3G phones but it's just a caution to consider when thinking about implementing a technology on the basis that 'everyone has one'. On the other hand, I guess it would be quite difficult in practice for schools to provide 'class sets' of them! Helen