Apple's iPhone has caused a revolution devrim in the way we interact iletişim kurmak with mobile phones and access erişim the internet. With early sales of the new iPad breaking records, and many pundits alim predicting öngörmek, tahmin etmek that this will be the educational mobile device alet to transform dönüştürmek the classroom and make e-textbooks accessible to students (who can afford an iPad), I decided to have a look at how mobile devices are impacting etkilemek on the practice uygulama of English language teaching.
In June I launched çıkmak an online survey to discover how teachers viewed the use of mobile learning, how many of them had access to web-enabled web erişimli mobiles and to find out öğrenmek if and how they were using them.
My first surprise was the number of teachers who could already access the internet via yolu ile their mobile phones.Almost hemen hemen 80% of the 500 teachers who responded to the survey claimed oynamak to have some form of web-enabled mobile device. When asked whether teachers planned to buy a mobile device in the near future, almost 60% responded positively, with 50% planning to buy either an iPhone or an iPad.
It would be easy to assume ummak that the teachers responding to the questionnaire were all of the younger generation of "digital natives yerli", but this isn't the case olay. Almost 80% of teachers who responded had 10 or more years of teaching experience and more than 60% were qualified nitelikli to master's level or higher.
And the data was not only collected toplanmak from the more technically developed and richer countries. The responses show a wide geniş geographical spread yayılma from across South America, to Asia and eastern Europe.
Having a device capable kapasiteye sahip of accessing mobile internet, however, is very different from having the ability and willingness isteklilik to use it as a tool araç for teaching. Again, the majority çoğunluk of teachers who responded were very positive about the potential of mobile learning. More than 70% agreed that mobile learning would play an important role in the future of English language teaching, with only 6.7% disagreeing (the remainder geri kalan were unsure emin olmayan).
A striking dikkat çekici 34% of respondents claimed to be already using mobile learning with their students.
Accessing dictionaries, either online or dictionary applications they had downloaded, was a common yaygın activity. Many teachers are enthusiastic istekli about this because it means that students don't have to carry around heavy dictionaries and also because the dictionaries they are accessing often have audio examples of pronunciation.
Podcasts are also popular and teachers are finding and recommending podcast materials for the students to download and listen to. Some are creating their own podcasts with their students.
Many are also using the video or audio recording capabilities of their phones to get students to record themselves or each other during speaking and pronunciation activities.
Teachers' use of mobile isn't limited kısıtlı to the more expensive smart phones. Many are also using simple phones with SMS texting capability to enhance artırmak learning. These are used to send quick quiz questions to students to help them revise gözden geçirmek or check their understanding of new vocabulary.
Many are sending their students definitions of vocabulary and expressions as they learn them. Some teachers are even sending their students gapped sentences for them to complete to check their grammar.
But this is only half of the 70% of teachers who claim they and their students have access to the technology. So, what is holding back durdurmak the rest geri kalan?
The obstacles engel mentioned are cost, mainly charges for mobile connectivity, and worries about students or the teachers themselves having to pay to access their mobile course materials. Another problem is the variety çeşit of different mobile devices being used by students and the fact that not all students have them. Last, and possibly the most significant, is the lack of available content specifically designed for language learning.
Whereas oysa teachers and students seem willing to embrace benimsemek this technology, ELT publishers are lagging geri kalmak behind. Services such as iTunes now provide simple payment and distribution platforms as well as the digital rights security that should allow publishers to start to generate large scale büyük ölçekli online sales of e-products at much lower prices (their dmany mobile applications cost between 10% to 20% of desktop equivalents benzer). Yet the response from many publishers has been slow. This is the ideal time for publishers to jump on the mobile wave and start delivering teslim etmek interactive and affordable para yetirilebilir mobile content.
Nik Peachey is a freelance serbest çalışmak[em]learning technology consultant and teacher trainer. For more information about the survey go tobit.ly[/em]