AT THE 2007 Schoolworks programme in Tipperary Institute, Transition Year students are learning from mobile phones by using a Nokia N70 to snap and send images directly to Flickr. And why not? Social media is part of the global neighbourhood. Every teenager in the classroom has a mobile phone and our Schoolworks classroom is the first learning environment where the phones are squarely in the centre of the education process. Many Irish schools ban phones because they distract the flow of teaching and learning. We want to follow Marc Prensky's line of thought and embrace mobile phones as a pedagogical tool. It's an idea based on research offered online more than two years ago.
We also have a hidden agenda--we want future students to arrive in college with smarter phones. Multimedia students need phones that can accept mini programs that allow them to receive newsfeeds, send photos directly to social photosets and review photos stored online. Ideally, the smart phone can catch podcasts without using a web browser. Mobile phones can be used for online polls, to display animations from lessons and to browse lightweight parts of Moodle, our online learning centre.
It's fun to see mobile phones from teenagers used this way.
Mark Prensky -- "What can you learn from a cell phone?"
Shel Israel -- "If you want to understand what the business world will look like in a few short years, look at the generation that will be coming in to it and replacing the boomer generation."
