Using Smartphones as Essential Tools for Learning: A Call to Place Schools on the Right Side of the 21st Century.

Abstract

Briefly, during those 1:1 laptop days, while each and every student had access to a computer, the predomi-nant use of computers was supplemental to the existing and relatively unchanged curriculum. That is, the same instructionalist/direct instruction/didactic pedagogy used before computers were introduced was still being used, but now computers were employed as glorified type-writers and front-ends for Google searches. In contrast, in this second wave of 1:1—a wave that will gain momentum over the decade—where schools are reporting upwards of 30 % improvement in stan-dardized test scores, computing devices are being used as essential to the curriculum, i.e., the students use the devices from 40–70 % of the school day and for periods after school as well, and the “active-learning ” pedagogy emphasizes student constructive and collaborative activities (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). The second wave of 1:1 will not be based on lap-tops, but rather the computing device of choice will be a mobile device, such as a smartphone, a tablet, or a netbook. The cost of the device + network is dropping and, sooner than expected, schools will be able to make use of student-provided devices, and thus schools will not even need to provide computing devices per se— all that schools will need to provide is the Internet access (a data plan) and educational software. In this article, we first describe the supplement to the essential conjecture, and then we give an example of how a mobile device is being used as an essential tool for learning in an elementary school in Singapore, where we are seeing significant increases in student achievement. We close with yet another conjecture, i.e., we speculate as to why mobile devices elicit such a positive response from students about learning, and we close with a prediction.