On a long plane ride today, I took the opportunity to watch the Kent State’s RCET Ubiquitous Computing DVD. It was well-produced and had a lot of thought-provoking information. I was especially intrigued by vignettes about cell phone use for education and handhelds used as museum guides.
I have been thinking a lot about cell phones and schools lately. While a year or so ago, I felt that cell phones were not a viable or practical tool for use in schools, I’m beginning to rethink that. Clearly, today’s cell phones are becoming powerful computing tools. And a large percentage of the populations, especially kids, have them. So why not use this tool for educational purposes? Of course, there are many classroom-management reasons that this is challenging, and I’m still not sure I’d allow cell phone use in a classroom, but I am starting to think about it. 🙂
Anyway, back to the Ubiquitous Computing DVD…it provided several compelling examples for future mobile computing applications and also included good supporting resources and some much-appreciated research data. If you haven’t had a chance to get a copy, I’d recommend it. Visit this site to order your own copy.