Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Developers, Educators, and Learners

CHAPTER 1

Changing Education with Mobile Learning

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In our ever-changing marketplace, today's students are being educated, largely, for jobs that haven't yet been invented. Technology is being created and updated at a frenetic pace, and growing more pervasive and useful with each stride. As schools face dwindling resources and higher stakes than ever, does mobile technology hold the key to improving the educational system and reengaging students? Mobile technology offers a plethora of features and benefits that enable it to break the educational system wide open, engaging students in new ways and making educational experiences more meaningful, if schools can effectively utilize structured, integrated approaches for implementation of this new technology.

This interest in smartphones, tablets, and laptops is a major opportunity to present new and exciting educational experiences. To what extent are schools capitalizing on this, though? And how often are they getting in their own way in reaching students? One teacher notes with frustration that her school has several iPad carts that teachers are encouraged to use, but cellphones are banned categorically. “There are certain times we might be doing a lesson and someone asks a question and I think ‘This'd be a great time to all get out our devices and look something up,’ but we can't use cellphones and have to reserve ...