More and more schools in my country are moving toward mobile learning in the classroom. The most popular mobile learning devices are Netbooks, iPads, cell phones, e-readers. Mobile learning technologies offer teachers and students more flexible aproach to learning. Computer labs are great, but the "digital natives" use the latest technological gadgets not only in the classroom. This new phenomenon has a profound effect on the ways in which the young people learn. They are more engaged in learning, because it is what the technology is most used to interacting with. The new technological gadgets are easy for children to use, and come with Wi-Fi to access the Internet. You can explore the world with Google Earth, you can use the dictionary on Dictionary.com,
create your story with author-book. Mobile learning devices can enrich the learning process for students. They are motivating and active learning tools. But we cannot forget the problems. Teachers - digital immigrants - are often unsure about how to integrate technology in their lesson plans.Adding digital technology is generally disruptive to what schools and teachers do, and the pressure of high-stakes testing exacerbates this problem only.
The social barrier to technological adoption is more challenging. Schools resist change. Though some observers, including multiple-intelligences guru Howard Gardner,
www.howardgardner.com point to schools as the "conservators" of our culture, and therefore instinctively conservative in what they do, the resistance comes more from the fact that school system has evolved an extremely delicate balance between many sets of pressures -- political, parental, social, organizational, supervisory, and financial -- that any technological change is bound to disrupt.
For the digital age, we need new organization, new architecture, new teaching, new student assessments, and many other elements. Change is the order of the day in our kids' 21st-century lives. It ought to be the order of the day in their schools as well.
www.theconnectedclassroom.wikispaces.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8_ehGLqzBVM
