How m-Learning Technology Has Improved Children Learning - Essay Example

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION by The of the The of the School The and where it is located The Date It is difficult to argue that the contribution that modern technologies have brought to our lives’ progress is almost unevaluated, because the opportunities we have now through the technological invasion are much wider than even ten years ago. Internet provides us with quick mobile access to any information we need. There are hundreds of databases with all available resources worldwide, with all kinds of information for all tastes. Information has never been so easily accessible as now. The information progress has essentially and irreversibly changed both the world and its inhabitants. Thus the educational realm has gained new levels of development and nowadays learning with application of mobile devices contributes a lot to children’s educational opportunities and enhances their intellectual development. Learning has become much easier with involving in its process of such mobile technologies like smartphones, tablets, and laptops. However, application of the newest technologies has changed modern students. As Marc Prensky notes in his article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”, modern students are totally different from those that studied in less technological era, even a few years ago. They are different not only in their realization that knowledge is very available for them and they can acquire it any time they want, but also they differ by their perception of this knowledge. Kids’ communication and analyzing abilities have changed with development of mobile technologies. Prensky calls this new generation of students “digital natives”, which means that technologies now are an integral part of their personalities and lives. From the earliest years kids can operate devices and find whatever information they want even better than their parents, because they intuitively know how to use mobile technologies. Thus institutions of early development have started to supply their pupils with special programs that are based on m-learning approaches. This new educational environment enables students’ learning and conducts it through certain gaming techniques, which is called Instructional Pervasive Learning (Chen, Shih & Ma 2014). Such kind of learning was created in order to maintain the tendencies of inspiration of students’ learning by mobile technologies. The point is that for modern children living without their mobile devices means literally being alienated from their entire generation and society. Although the development of technologies is happening rapidly, educational system has not yet completely estimated all the advantages of technologies. It is important to note that with such deep integration of technologies into their lives, kids’ perception of education has also changed, so they don’t learn the same way as so-called “digital immigrants” from the previous generations did (Yang, Hwang, Hung, & Tseng 2013). Thus the suggestion to implement gaming techniques is definitely efficient for modern education and contributes to modern kids’ learning. However, the attitude towards m-learning is rapidly changing every day. Many educational institutions strive to make learning more personalized in order to gear education to the needs of the new-age technologically-oriented learners. Thus such thing as cloud-based adaptive learning system was invented by developers of technological platforms of education (Nedungadi & Raman 2012). The system “provides teachers with real-time feedback about individual and group learners. Its scalable and extendable architectural framework includes the server-side pedagogical recommendation of content adaptation based on the users knowledge-levels and preferences” (Nedungadi & Raman 2012). It turns out that not only usage of mobile devices in educational purposes contributes children’s learning but also their usage by teachers helps to make educational system more flexible and generally efficient. Hence one of such m-learning techniques of learning is integration of mobile apps into educational process. Some researchers, conducted on the matter of usage of mobile apps, revealed interesting results: recent exploration by the Department of Education (n.d.) was considering the connection between some educational mobile apps for kids that worked on tablet devices, particularly on iPads. Thus after two-week usage of the app “Martha Speaks Dog Party” by children of age from three to seven raised the kids’ vocabulary level and improved it by as much as 31% (n.d.). Some similar researches, conducted at the Abilene Christian University (2010), set up an experiment on their students in order to figure out how usage of mobile apps contributes to their studying. The students were supposed to use the ‘Statistics 1’ app in and out of the classroom. At the end of the experiment both students and professors noted that usage of the app helped them to understand learning material better and perceive more information during lessons than they used to perceive without involving any technologies in educational process. Furthermore, professors remarked that students became more prepared for classes (2010). Another experimental program was conducted in a large school district in the USA. The point of the program was that all students and teachers of the district were provided with their own iPod devices, which they were supposed to use in purposes of English learning. The devices were used to “support language and content learning, provide differentiated instructional support, and extend learning time from classroom to home” (Liu, Navarrete & Wivagg 2014). Despite certain technical issues engaged with devices, the experiment revealed that the learning process with involving of devices eventually speeded up children’s language skills development, so they showed better test results than those kids who didn’t use any devices. The researches like these prove that the newest technological tendencies affect education in a positive way and not only support students while learning but also maintain their willingness to work during classes. Students’ learning platforms are especially convenient and satisfy all the learning needs. For instance, one of them is the already mentioned above ‘Statistics 1’ app is compatible with iPhones and iPods Tough and available on App Store. As it is released ‘Statistics 1’ was designed for experiential learning through an interdisciplinary research-based approach, merging empirical lines of inquiry from educational psychology, instructional technology, and game design” (2010). The app provides a student with all the required information on the subjects that are possible to be represented through the mobile devices. The information includes textual and audio materials, separate lessons, glossaries, and also contains a section with all formulas that are needed to accomplish tests and quizzes that follow after each learning section is obtained. Obviously, the app is very convenient for learning and allows a student to keep up with learning any time it is convenient for them. So it turns out that educational podcasts like this one literally mean education on-the-go, which is definitely a progressive and evolutionary tendency for modern people (Parette 1997). Some researches claim that one of the best advantages of such education is that it allows a learner to get involved into educational process any time one wants, which is a kind of self-regulated flexible learning system (Shih, Chen, Chang & Kao 2010). Such system provides students with freedom to chose what to learn and in which realm to develop one’s skills, which is more efficient, because in most cases the reason why student’s are not willing to study in educational institutions is that they are forced to learn a lot of information they don’t want to study or see no point in learning it. Thus educational podcasts provide children with the freedom of learning. One of the most significant advantages of mobile devices is that most of them have constant connection to wireless or mobile-phone networks, which means that all the Internet resources and services are available 24/7 for mobile devices’ users (Hlodan 2010). These internet databases and educational resources are multiple, so each and every person who wants to learn anything concerning any realm of science can easily get access to a vast amount of information available on the Web. Moreover, such thing as online education has gained a lot of popularity so far, because it provides people from all around the world with exceptional learning opportunities. The process of online education works in several ways. People can easily get any information they want on the web and start self studying any time; also, there are a lot of data bases and specialized scientific dictionaries provided by huge universities like, for example, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Still the biggest segment of online education is covered by massive open online courses that provide people from all over the world with free and sometimes pre-paid online courses on multiple disciplines. These courses are collections of particular courses, previously learned by students of different (and rather prestigious) universities (Mayadas, Bourne, and Bacsich 2009). The professors who teach them in the universities also work for the massive open online courses’ services and read the lectures for everyone who signs up for their courses online. Massive open online courses (MOOC) are internet classes with large-scale interactive participation and public access through the Internet. The learning content is available online and any person, who wants to take a course with no limit on attendance and has a mobile device like laptop or tablet, might enroll for any course. Furthermore, most courses don’t even have any age or qualification limits. The courses look very similar to traditional higher education courses (Martin 2012), where are provided such activities like watching lectures, reading assigned material, participating in online discussions and forums. At the end of each course a participant complete quizzes and tests on the course material. The online courses make online education even more effective than the traditional classroom methods (Kolukuluri 2013). Further claims have been made that short videos complement the optimal attention span of students and that discussion forums provide an adequate replacement of direct teacher–student interactions, which would be considered as normal for a class delivered on campus (Glance 2013). MOOCs are typically provided by higher education institutions, often in partnership with “organizers” such as Coursera, edX and Udacity, though some MOOCs are being offered directly by college or university (as Stanford does). Despite all the contradictions concerning m-learning of such type, online education gives a lot of benefits for those who have no opportunities to study in real universities (Wulf 2014). First of all, the education is mostly free and accessible all around the world, so people from different countries who can’t afford getting qualitative education can use the massive online open courses’ resources. Secondly, people who already have any degrees can extend the level of their knowledge learning online. Of course, this requires certain willingness and hardworking as most information is supposed to be learned by oneself. And finally, the courses have multiple specializations from scientific theories and complicated information to simple basic practical ones about very narrow topics like defining facial expressions or introduction to child care. Thus such educational resources available for each m-device owner definitely open huge opportunities for everyone, including children, to learn what they are interested in. Except for massive online courses Internet contains a lot of other kinds of educational resources which improve children’s learning by providing them with bunches of scientific information. Huge databases of literate resources nowadays contain vast storages of electronic issues of all scholarly journals, popular magazines, and even newspapers of the last hundred years. Availability of this information on public domain raises quality of children’s education and also increases the criteria to their learning. For instance, one of the most famous electronic archives is JSTOR and it has a vast amount of scholarly journals’ electronic issues. “The achieve begins with the first issue of Philosophical Transactions published on March 1665” (Taylor 2001) and runs through the up-to-date modern scholarly journals. Availability of the resources like this one improves the level of academic work in educational institutions. Moreover, existence of such online databases has raised the average level of academic scholar culture. Modern students are supposed to adhere to the policies of intellectual property and be kept updated about the newest standards of academic requirements. From the school children learn how to write academic texts and format them according to the scholarly requirements; furthermore, they learn how to use somebody else’s ideas and cite them properly, which improves academic culture worldwide and systematizes the sphere of science. Such progress in academic sphere wouldn’t be possible if the archives of scholarly journals weren’t available, so children wouldn’t be used to the advanced searching opportunities that these electronic resources provide them with nowadays (Chepesiuk 2000). However, along with the appearance of vast electronic scholarly materials’ databases, the problem of intellectual property violence has occurred so far and put up a great problem of plagiarism that modern scientific sphere is fighting with. Although online databases have opened great opportunities for those who are used to plagiarizing somebody else’s ideas, a lot of plagiarism checkers have also appeared on the Internet and they indeed prevent a lot of cases of plagiarism (Scollon 1999). Such plagiarism detecting software as Turnitin is being used by multiple educational institutions worldwide, as helps both student and teachers to check texts for presence of somebody else’s stolen ideas (Batane 2010). This improves quality of academic achievements of students from all around the world, as now it is not possible for a person to go to a library and just copy somebody else’s text, pretending it to be one’s own (Reyman 2008). Now it is twice as difficult to get away with stealing somebody’s intellectual property and get a credit for a borrowed material. Thus it is possible to say that development of technologies has established certain scholarly policies and made education more fare and qualitative. Another significant impact on children’s’ leaning can be traced in the appearance of e-reading, which became possible with availability of reader programs on mobile devices. Hence, there is no need to pay a lot of money for paperback books, because almost all the books in the world are available in electronic versions and might be easily accessed through mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, and E-books. These individual portable digital devices are being used as e-book readers to support mobile personalized learning (Huang, Liang, Su & Chen 2012), which enhances children’s learning. Many schools, colleges and universities worldwide have switched their learning materials to electronic variants, because such kind of learning is much more convenient and portable. This has raised the rates of usability of reading materials, so students started learning more, because all the assigned readings are available for them wherever they are and in any time they need to get access to them (Larson 2010). However, scholarly usage of educational resources and software is not the only one that is being used by children in terms of their m-learning. Another important aspect of m-learning is that it makes modern people, especially children, as they are the most active Internet users, not only academically smart but also so-called street smart personalities. As far as Internet provides its users with all the newest information about what is happening in the world, children retrieve all the new social tendencies from there. The implications of such kind of knowledge are multiple. First of all, being in touch with current tendencies develops children’s ability to integrate into global culture, which in fact maintains intellectualism and expands an omnifarious knowledge among children (Robinson 2001). In terms of intellectualism, Gerald Graff claims that in order to become a real intellectual, a person should be street smart first (2004), because street smarnesst and concernment in ordinary information from any realms of human life develop a person’s intellectual abilities and analytical skills. Thus street smart people are often interested in the realms that are far from scholarly significant researches. Hence, being interested in some topic makes a person to start exploring it thoroughly, which develops one’s analytical skills and critical thinking. Constant accessibility to Internet resources makes it possible for children to get involved into the exploration at hand. Furthermore, technologies help children to create vast educational communities and share knowledge. When a topic is also interesting for some other people, the person might join the community of the same interest and communicate with its participants concerning the topic they all are interested in; and as far as nowadays almost everyone has portable gadgets, people can communicate on the go (Reed 2013). Thus mobile technology creates a kind of informal learning, maintaining kids’ street smartness and better adaptation to the globalized environment. Apart from all the previously mentioned advantages of m-learning, one of the most crucial among them is that mobile technologies made it possible for children with physical disabilities to learn and obtain educational degrees without any limits. Thus children with special needs now have a wide access to learning resources and it makes their lives much easier. For instance, those kids who have autism spectrum disorders or problems with speaking, hearing, or seeing might use the “Proloquo2go”, “an assistive technology app available on iTunes. Thus the students with special needs might use the apps library of symbols and text-to-speech conversion to communicate easily and naturally with others. This type of assistive apps helps broaden students horizons both in and out of the classroom” (Wylie n.d.). Such kind of learning is more convenient for students with disabilities for multiple reasons. First of all, they might chose whether they want to get involved in rather restrictive school environment or not (Scarborough & Deck 1998). According to UNESCO report on personalized learning for students with disabilities (n.d.), the involvement of technologies into studying process has made a huge progress in educational realm. The point is, and many teachers confirm this fact, that often school environment emphasizes on such children’s disabilities, so they feel themselves alienated and different in school environment, which disturbs them from normal learning. Thus availability of educational resources on their devices allows the children to obtain education right from their homes, avoiding getting traumatized by school environment. Second of all, it is simply not convenient for many children with disabilities to attend school classes, so it takes a lot of physical efforts for them to get to school; however, m-learning technologies prevent them from the unpleasant experience and provide them with all the required information to learn at home. Hence, mobile learning impacts a lot into the development of modern education and enhances students’ learning in multiple ways. Availability of huge informational resources allows children to learn at hand and makes their education much more accessible and interacting. 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