District Administration - February 2011 - (Page 50)

High School Algebra students in the Onslow County (N.C.) School System collaborate using smartphones as part of Project K-Nect, a research project begun in 2006 and funded in part by Qualcomm, studying the effective use of mobile devices in school by students without Internet access. SPECIAL TECH REPORT Mobile Goes Mainstream Brett Frazier, senior vice president at learning platform developer Blackboard, which sponsored the Speak Up survey. “I don’t think that there is anything more revolutionary that is happening more rapidly than the adoption of mobile technology in learning,” agrees Peter Cohen, CEO of K12 curriculum at multimedia education publisher Pearson. “Our company has taken an entirely new approach to product development, and mobile technology is one of the keys to our new direction.” Content Creation The effective use of mobile technologies also continues to develop, just as their acceptance and adoption spreads. One of the most promising developments is the ability of mobile devices to allow students to produce, rather than just consume, 50 February 2011 many types of content, all with one device. “Students are naturally content producers,” says Gross. “Mobile devices enable them to film videos, take pictures, create presentations, take notes or write papers, and upload and share them with their teacher or other students. It’s a two-way interactive process instead of one-way.” Camilla Gagliolo, instructional technology coordinator in the Arlington County (Va.) Public Schools, has experimented with a variety of mobile devices in her are very inexpensive, and using them is more focused than just telling students to ‘go online’ to search for a topic and coming up with thousands of choices,” she says. Keller ISD uses the learning platform Studywiz on its mobile devices across the district, and students are able to upload work, collaborate and complete assignments from their mobile devices because everything is completely online, Griffin says. “Students use their devices to take pictures, film videos, write documents, share “Mobile technology in schools is not going to happen— it is happening.” —Brett Frazier, senior vice president, Blackboard schools for years, from Nintendo DS game systems, to smartphones, to the latest technology: a set of iPads. She says productivity tools such as Apple’s Pages, Keynote and Numbers applications, as well as Google Earth, Google Maps and National Geographic’s atlas applications, are particularly useful, for students to create presentations, reports, slide shows and more. “The apps their work, post it to their own collaboration site, comment on their own work, they can create. Those abilities mobile technologies give to author, to publish, to edit—those are real-world applications.” Immediate Assessment Another capability of mobile learning that has excited educators and industry insidDistrict 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