Most educational institutions, especially primary and secondary schools never allow students to bring mobile phones at school premises. But does that really stop students from bringing this? The truth is, students do bring in mobile phones in their pockets and school bags. Bitter fact but we can’t deny the reality, why can’t we assume of different ways by which we can utilize mobile phones to educate them.
We all know how simply kids gets familiar with devices nowadays and how fast they learn to operate mobile phone technology. Now, the step towards betterment of child and its definitely teaching them how to use the technology for learning won’t be a difficult task.
- There are different types of mobile apps that enables the use of cellphones for knowledge purpose. There are few amazing teacher apps like Evernote and Dropbox that helps teachers and students share notes, write-ups and photos so easily over the phone. Evernote allows you to take down text notes, share photos and even clip a web page. While Dropbox, also a mobile phone app, lets you share documents, photos, etc. with others by just putting them in the Dropbox.
- One other smarter way to use the mobile phone in schoolroom is by teachers who can record their lectures, be it an audio or a video and let students utilize them at their ease. Save a lot time of schoolroom and let students utilize you tube in the most suitable way.
- One of the fastest and easiest ways for teachers to communicate with your students out of classroom is by a phone call. It’s up to the teachers to find ingenious ways to get students start using cellphones more commendably for learning. Swapping messages on homework and assignments can be made smooth using mobile phones.
- Teachers and students can make use of different learning boards available like the School Town and communicate with each other through chats and sharing learning fundamentals. This kind of platforms allows sharing materials from teachers to students and vice versa.
Use of mobile phones in learning: The problems
Every student can’t be expected to hold a mobile phone; but this problem can be met with a solution. Forming students group with a single cell phone can work out and can help in reporting out and delivering in any message to teachers. Besides, there might be connectivity problem, particularly when students go out of wireless network area. Most schools don’t offer wireless connection in school premises and most students tend not to use providers signal. In this case too, teachers can rely on group works where one student with proper connectivity can communicate with teachers on behalf of his group.
Mentioned above, the main task of teachers is to teach students how to make the right use of cell phones for learning. It is the responsibility of the teacher to guide students to proper usage of mobile technology without being victims of sexting, cyberbullying and other cybercrimes.