District Administration - February 2011 - (Page 48)

Mobile Goes SPECIAL TECH REPORT Mainstream affairs at Qualcomm, one of the sponsors of the conference. “We’re seeing a sea change in the acceptance of mobile technology.” Shawn Gross, project director for the mobile learning research program Project K-Nect, agrees. “The objections to using these types of devices in schools are quickly dissolving,” he says. “We’ve been absolutely ecstatic about the changes in perceptions that have occurred in such a short time span.” Project K-Nect began in 2006 as a pilot program that provided mobile devices to at-risk high school students without Internet access in the state of North Carolina, but it has since expanded nationally to research how to implement mobile learning effectively in K12 education. “We’re reaching a point now where administrators are accepting of mobile learning in their schools,” he says. “The initial backlash was based on fear,” says Cathie Norris, District Administration columnist, Regents professor at the University of North Texas and co-founder of mobile learning developer GoKnow. “But now administrators are realizing mobile devices do not create a “Wild West” atmosphere in the classroom, but can in fact be very useful.” An Inevitable Change For many, the shift toward embracing mobile learning has had a feeling of inevitability. In the Dysart (Ariz.) Unified School District #89, the school board voted unanimously in September to allow students to use their smartphones in class for online research, to work on assignments, or for other educational purposes, at the discretion of each classroom teacher. “We realized that for us to continue helping students develop 21st-century skills, to help them learn how to access information in the way they will in the future, we were not going to be able to have the budget or capacity to add devices as rapidly as we wish we could,” says Superintendent Gail Pletnick. “But we knew those resources were already in the hands of students, and frankly, we knew they were bringing them 48 February 2011 An elementary school teacher in the Arlington County (Va.) Public Schools using a set of iPads with her students as part of the district’s pilot program in partnership with the state of Virginia. into school anyway. So we wanted to provide the opportunity for students to use these tools to enhance their education.” Joe Griffin, chief technology officer for the Keller (Texas) Independent School District, faced a similar situation: “Like most districts, we don’t have the budget the superintendent to make suggestions on improving schools, recommended in October to relax the district’s ban on mobile phones to allow them to be used for learning. The group’s informal survey found that 86 percent of city students bring them to school despite the ban. “Everyone acknowledges that this is the direction education is heading now.” —Brandon Williams, education market lead, Motorola for ongoing technology purchases. We realized if we don’t allow students to bring in and use their own devices, we’re not going to be able to keep up.” “Students are going to push and push on this,” says Elliot Soloway, District Administration columnist, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan, co-founder of GoKnow and an international authority on mobile learning. “The change is happening exponentially. Three years from now, 75 percent of students will have smartphones. Schools will have to respond.” The Speak Up survey found that “the reality of school budgets” is a driver of adoption, but it also found that some 78 percent of students in grades 6-12 who owned smartphones said they prefer to use their own device over any technology supplied by their school. In the Chicago Public Schools, for example, the Mikva Challenge Council, a student group that meets regularly with Education Industry Responding As a result of these trends, the education industry is also rapidly shifting in a new direction, with multibillion-dollar corporations reorienting their business strategies as mobile technology is beginning to take hold in K12 even faster than some analysts anticipated. “In almost every school we talk to, everyone acknowledges that this is the direction education is heading now, and as a result, we’ve started to focus on the education market in the last year or two,” says Brandon Williams, education market lead at Motorola, which provides wireless networking systems for schools. Williams notes that the company has also decided to split into two main divisions, separating its consumer mobile technologies from corporate and education products, in part because of the growth in demand for more robust wireless networking in each of those markets. “Mobile technology in schools is not going to happen—it is happening,” says District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - February 2011

District Administration - February 2011
Contents
Going Out of Print
From the Editor
News Update
Technology Update
Safety & Security
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Successful Strategies for English Language Learners
Mobile Goes Mainstream
Virtually Possible
Problem/Solution
New Products
Product Focus
Superintendent’s Insights
Crisis Response
Student Counsel

District Administration - February 2011

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