Jennifer+Wintergalen

Are Mobile Technologies the Future of Education? When asked this question, my answer is a resounding yes. Take a walk into almost any school in the United Sates. What will you see? TECHNOLOGY. With each year that passes schools are incorporating more and newer technology into the school day.

One of our greatest challenges as educators is how to keep our children engaged in learning. Our students come into our classrooms every day with their own set of worries and distractions. What better way to keep them engaged then through the use of technology? Studies show that 52% of children under the age of 8 have access to some kind of mobile device (Choney, 2011). According to The Washington Post there has been an increase of an hour and twenty minutes a day that students are using a mobile device since 1999. Students spend an average of 7 ½ hours a day using some kind of digital media including mobile devices (Ahuja, 2013). Clearly technology can keep our students engaged. Why not bring that technology into our classrooms?

Look at how technology has changed in the last 25 years. I can examine my own technology history to see that mobile technology is the direction we are headed. When I started my education we had the Apple IIe and Apple IIgs computers. There were no computers in our classrooms. We had just one lab in the school that we were so excited to visit once a week. We learned how to create things and how to play games like the Oregon Trail. As we moved into upper elementary our school started to add a few computers into each classroom for us to use to practice basic skills. By middle school we were learning basic keyboarding skills. As we progressed into high school our teachers were requiring us to do research on the internet and type our papers. In college many students had their own laptops and PCs. Teachers allowed us to turn in assignments online instead of face-to-face. As we started our student teaching classrooms were experiment with SMART technologies and Palm Pilots. The school I work I now is almost entirely eMINTS. We have 2 full iPAD classrooms, and are adding more each year. We are moving from desktops to laptops and tablets. How can anyone look at those kinds of changes and not say that mobile technologies are our future?

References

Ahuja, M. (2013). Teens are Spending More Time Consuming Media on Mobile Devices. Retrieved from: []

Choney, S. (2011). 52 Percent of Kids Under Age 8 Have Access to Mobile Media. Retrieved from: []

About the Author Jennifer Wintergalen is an Instructional Technology Coordinator for a small school district in South St. Louis County. Prior to this position she has been an Elementary School Teacher for grades 2-5 for 8 years.