The New York Times today has an article titled “Cellphones Now Used More for Data Than for Calls.” It ledes with:
She taps out her grocery lists, records voice memos, listens to music at the gym, tracks her caloric intake and posts frequent updates to her Twitter and Facebook accounts.
The one thing she doesn’t use her cellphone for? Making calls.
“I probably only talk to someone verbally on it once a week,” said Mrs. Colburn, a 40-year-old marketing consultant in Canton, Mass., who has an iPhone.
For many Americans, cellphones have become irreplaceable tools to manage their lives and stay connected to the outside world, their families and networks of friends online. But increasingly, by several measures, that does not mean talking on them very much.
The article continues to describe many ways iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones are used by adults. Kids are mentioned for sending lots of text messages.
So what has education done to use this now pervasive adult tool? Essentially: nada, almost zero.
Education’s turned back to these devices is particularly absurd when using them would save billions of dollars in textbooks and other learning tools like binders, paper, and pencils. There are potential educational applications for each of the adult activities described in the Times article.
Thirty years ago, when Mrs. Colburn was in school, something similar happened. The desktop computer was moving into offices. Almost always, each individual office worker was provided with his/her computer — the machines were not shared. The young Ms. Colburn, though, would not have her own computer. Schools were slow to get computers and almost always locked them away in “labs” — making students share them for brief times during a school day.
Today there are a few enlightened classrooms where students use their smartphones for educational purposes. The rest of education echoes my own school days in the 1940s and 50s, when we thought a ditto machine was modern, and a public address system cutting edge.
Education’s resistance to change is inexcusable.
