The smart phone in the classroom
This week you can preorder the new iPhone 4 in the USA. This Apple smart phone has had an incredible success in over 80 countries, including Germany. Since teenagers always aim at having the newest cell phone, it seems that it won’t take long and nearly all of our students will have one. So, how could we use it in the classroom?
The App-Store offers about 225.000 apps, some of which belong to the category called “education”. Depending on the age of your students, there are language tutor apps, math apps, geography apps, history apps etc.
German teachers of history, for example, depend more or less on apps in German, whereas we English teachers can use apps from English-speaking countries. The New York Times app, for example, sums up the most important news of that day. Many more apps are available and many more are yet to be developed. Since the smart phone can be used everywhere at any time, it is less time-consuming than the traditional computer labs we have in German schools.
At this moment, German students are not allowed to use cell phones in the classroom. They have to turn them off, and if they don’t, teachers confiscate their phones. Do you think this should be different for smart phones? Which problems could result from the use of these phones?
(image: free-software.ucoz.de)
Iulia
2 comments:
Why is it that children appear to be able to afford the more expensive phone than the adults? iPhone apps are really great for mlearning (mobile-learning). They actually take mobile-learning to a whole different level from just texting and messaging.
It's not that teens have more money than adults, it's that they tend to define themselves via status symbols much more than adults do. It is "cool" to have the newest and most expensive mobile phone and many parents would probably buy them as a birthday or Christmas present. That's why I think that smart phones will spread much more easily than smart boards, for example.
Iulia
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