Are cellphones and other mobile devices powerful learning tools or intolerable classroom distractions?
For Elliot Soloway, the answer is a no-brainer. Cellphones, hand-held gaming gadgets, and netbooks鈥攁ll relatively cheap, seemingly ever-present mobile devices used (and often abused) by today鈥檚 teenagers鈥攃an engage middle and high school students in learning inside and outside of school, he and other advocates of mobile learning say.
鈥淭hese kids sleep with their devices,鈥� Soloway, a University of Michigan education and computer science professor, said at a mobile-learning conference earlier this year. 鈥淜ids prefer these devices to computers or anything else.鈥�
Then why not tap their allure and instructional potential? Because not everyone is convinced that mobile tools have sensible or effective applications for schools. Many schools, in fact, ban the devices during the school day because of the tendency for students to use them in class for texting classmates or other disruptive purposes. And at a time when many school leaders demand evidence of a product鈥檚 academic effectiveness before spending precious budget dollars, mobile-tech applications are hard-pressed to satisfy that requirement.
鈥淭he enthusiasm for [mobile learning] is based on observation and just expert thinking, and not on a lot of hard data,鈥� says Robert Spielvogel, the chief technology officer and director of applied research and innovation at the Newton, Mass.-based Education Development Center. 鈥淭eachers鈥� experience so far, because there aren鈥檛 instructionally validated applications, is that cellphones and the like are only a distraction.鈥�
Gathering Evidence
Mobile-learning proponents are now working more aggressively to document the effect that small, hand-held technologies can have on learning, and to come up with evidence-based recommendations for using them.
Soloway has seen results firsthand in the classrooms he and his colleagues have been studying in Detroit, and he says there鈥檚 a growing body of anecdotal evidence about the impact of portable electronics on student motivation and engagement.
鈥淭he state of the research is that it is still emerging,鈥� Soloway said in an interview. 鈥淭he problem is, how do you use what might appear to be a toy as a real tool? To use them effectively, you need a learning-management system, a curricular rationale, evidence of the best practices, and those are coming out now.鈥�
Soloway isn鈥檛 alone in suggesting that schools use mobile technologies to enliven lessons, encourage student collaboration, and promote greater communication between students and teachers. The Mobile Learning Conference this past winter drew educators and researchers from around the world, and a research conference in London this fall on hand-held learning devices is expected to draw some 1,500 participants, many of them already convinced of the value of the tech tools. The topic is also slated as a key focus of formal and informal events this week at the National Educational Computing Conference, or NECC, in Washington.
鈥淎s we start showing what鈥檚 an appropriate use for mobile learning devices, and as people get more comfortable with having them available in the classroom,鈥� Spielvogel says, they will be viewed by more teachers as valuable instructional tools.
There is already some evidence to support the enthusiasm. Studies over the past five years by the Research Center for Educational Technology at Kent State University in Ohio have found that using hand-held devices in the classroom can improve students鈥� motivation, engagement, conceptual understanding, and problem-solving skills.
Carefully designed research projects that equip students with cellphones to allow collaboration on math assignments鈥攕uch as the Learning2Go initiative in the United Kingdom and Project K-nect in North Carolina鈥攁re showing similar outcomes.
Soloway鈥檚 work in Detroit includes some encouraging results in raising student achievement as well, he says, but those studies have not yet been peer-reviewed or published.
The EDC is working with market-research experts and education organizations to gauge cellphone usage among young people here and abroad for clues to how easily the devices might be utilized in schools.
鈥淭he studies are all pointing in the right direction,鈥� in supporting the use of mobile devices in the classroom, says Soloway. 鈥淲e just need more of them.鈥�
Workplace Tools
In lieu of independent evidence, commercial providers of hardware and content applications are trying to make the case for themselves by publishing case studies and conducting research projects in schools that use their products.
Even though the literature on mobile devices is thin, there is strong evidence that the kinds of instructional approaches that they enable have a significant impact on students and teachers, says Bob Longo, the executive vice president of Studywiz Spark, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that markets learning-management systems with desktop and mobile applications.
鈥淲e know that if you put more time on task, you鈥檙e going to get a better result, so if you give students and teachers access to [content] 24/7, the learning experience extends outside of the 45-minute class period,鈥� Longo says.
鈥淭here鈥檚 no question that the more data we can accumulate, the easier it is for people to make decisions鈥� about how to use mobile technologies in schools, Longo adds. 鈥淏ut K-12 education is one of the only markets where we鈥檙e still trying to justify the importance of technology. Every other place, like in the workplace, it鈥檚 taken tech for granted as an environmental necessity.鈥�
Many educators, however, are skeptical. Earlier this year, a representative of the American Federation of Teachers, for example, questioned industry officials鈥� claims that cellphones are effective educational tools. And many teachers have spoken out on blogs and in newspaper opinion pieces about how students鈥� unauthorized use of cellphones in school has undermined learning.
For Soloway, the proliferation of mobile devices among young people and the devices鈥� critical role in the workplace are reasons enough, for now, to begin integrating them into the classroom.
鈥淭his is the knowledge-worker age, and every knowledge worker has mobile learning, mobile computing; the mobile device is their hub around which all work takes place,鈥� Soloway says. 鈥淚f we鈥檙e going to prepare kids for the knowledge-work marketplace, then mobile learning鈥檚 got to be what we prepare kids to use.鈥�
