Mobile Exploration

• How indispensable are mobile computing devices in your life? Are they an "extension" of who you are?

Indispensable is such a strong word.  I don’t know that anything is completely indispensible, but I certainly use my cell phone a lot.  In the video that I posted from Simon Fraser University in Canada, students discuss the various ways they use their cell phones.  Contrary to the research we learned about in the video, “Digital Natives,” by Frontline, some of these students believe that they can truly multi-task; that they need multiple inputs happening at once to keep from zoning out.  Research shows that this isn’t true, but it doesn’t mean that these devices can’t be used for educational purposes.  As Ms. Roberts, the SFU Communications Director, states in the video, “these devices don’t come with rulebooks.”  We decide how we are going to use them and we decide whether they are merely distractions or whether they are something more.

Personally, my phone is an extension of who I am in many ways.  While none of these are permanent ways that would totally change who I am if I woke up tomorrow with no phone, my links to others in my life are expedited by my phone, if not determined by it.  I have not had a landline telephone in almost seven years.  Without my phone, I would lose a big part of my contact with other people – both from texting and from telephone calls.  But I also use my phone to track my runs, listen to music, find my way in the world (GPS), and various and sundry other tasks.

As an educational tool, I think we have not even begun to explore the enormous opportunities that phones present.  Many, if not most, educators feel more like the cryptically presented “Doctor Pavsek” in the video – that there is no real reason to change what they’ve been doing successfully and that technology is more to be feared that to be used.  While the students who made the video imply that Dr. Pavsek is in the minority or at least in the dark ages, I would argue that most teachers in classrooms today live by his philosophy by default even if they don’t subscribe to it consciously.  

As the two teachers discuss in the second video I posted, someone from the 1950s would probably only recognized the schoolroom as something familiar from his own time.  My hope is that within the next decade we can change the trajectory of American education to embrace the direction that the rest of the world is going.

References

Epic school project: Cellphones and education. (2011). Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ7sG5FN5BA.

Using cell phones to engage students in the classroom. (2011). Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mec1d1gMuTw.