A study on the impact of mobile devices on teaching and
learning found technology is helping students achieve more in their studies.
Making Learning Mobile 2.0, a two-year study by wireless service provider
Kajeet and the educational nonprofit organization Project Tomorrow, looked at
one-to-one tablet implementation to evaluate how students used the devices in
and outside of the classroom.
The research focused on 127 fifth-graders from Chicago.
A majority (93%) of the students were low-income and 45% were considered English
language learners. About a third said they didn’t have home Internet access at
the beginning of the study.
The report found that home Internet access increased by
53% after the tablets were issued, which led to more reading and writing
homework and an increase in reading and writing fluency. In addition, 60% of the
students said the tablets helped them improve their reading and writing skills.
“As technology spreads through schools, students are
proving eager to embrace it, but that same technology increasingly demands
mobile Internet connectivity—preferably broadband—to be fully effective as a
tool,” Daniel Neal, CEO and founder of Kajeet, said in an article for eSchool News. “There are still many schools without adequate wireless
Internet connectivity to allow mobile devices to function to their full
capability. Studies like this one show teachers, students, parents, and
administrators the value of not only the technology, but the necessity for
connectivity as well.”
