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February 2011 | Volume 53 | Number 2 Make Parents Your Partners    Can Mobile Devices Transform Education? Rick Allen The popularity of smartphones, including Droids, iPhones, and BlackBerries, that now have GPS, texting, voice, and multimedia capabilities has prompted industry and education reformers to shine the light on these mobile devices as vehicles suitable for transforming K–12 learning for the 21st century. Although they present challenges as well as potential benefits, education experts reason that these powerful small computers motivate students; provide constant access to the wealth of knowledge, tools, and experts on the web; and are cheaper and more plentiful than laptops or desktop workstations. "A big c

"cognitive audit trail"

Students also said they used their wireless devices to look up information on the Internet and consult with other students to share tips for solving problems or clarify their understanding of concepts with the teacher.

mobile tech is the single best vehicle for addressing the confidence and practical needs of many of our kids with learning differences

I don't mean to say that the tech itself is the 'difference', what I am trying to say is that the tech -- and especially the personalized and always-on facet of mobile tech -- will provide the connection to the tools, the teachers, and the interventions that will make the difference in a way both unique and also requiring a re-thinking in terms of how we offer relevant services to students with learning differences.

we need to explain to developers what we and our students need from them

“Textbooks have really great things, but they’re also very limiting,” said Underwood, who is in her 24th year of teaching at Olympia High. “Our kids are digital kids. They respond very well to this kind of tactile environment, where they can get immediate feedback.”

hasn’t used iPads because they don’t work with the district’s technology system

as well as a pilot program at Olympia High where students in an intensive college readiness course known as AVID were issued district-owned iPads to use throughout the year for note-taking, research and organization.

"Well," said the President, considering, "it's an interesting parlor game, but what is the use of it?" "What is the use of a newborn baby, Mr. President? At the moment there is not use, but don't you see that this points the way toward liberation from the machine? Consider, Mr. President," the congressman rose and his deep voice automatically took on some of the cadences he used in public debate, "that the Denebian war is a war of computer against computer. Their computers forge an impenetrable shield of counter-missiles against our missiles, and ours forge one against theirs. If we advance the efficiency of our computers, so do they theirs, and for five years a precarious balance has existed.

"Yes. Well, Dr. Shuman tells me that in theory there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind cannot do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. Then human mind can duplicate the process."

"Well, Mr. President, I asked the same question. It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings. Those were simple computers, of course, this being before the time of the rational use of computers to design more advanced computers had been established.