The Smartphone as an Educational Tool
This week we bring you articles on the use of smartphones as support for virtual education, use of digital technology in the education sector, promoting education with fun, interactive spaces to promote education.
The use of smartphones promotes distance education in all around the world. Internet access in recent age continues to grow significantly and likewise the use of smartphones as the main tool to connect.
According to the research in 2017, 96% of Pakistani already have a smartphone to communicate and this, added to new technologies such as 4 G, to which at least 83 already have access% of people, project that, very surely, this figure will continue to grow during 2019.
A panorama that has been enhanced by distance education platforms, a trend that reached the country in 2014 when the first programs of these characteristics were opened and since then it has grown by 98.9%, according to data registered by the Ministry of Education. These figures indicate that this learning modality takes more and more strength and the high penetration of mobile technologies in society, will allow more and more people to decide to access E-learning content offered by platforms such as Canvas LMS, with a wide offer of programs linked to universities around the world. A case of success in this sense has been evidenced in the Virtual University, an institution that has begun to encourage the use of new technologies within its distance Learning / training programs, which can be accessed through of mobile phones, making the academic experience simpler and more dynamic.
In general terms, the learning modalities that are supported by the use of mobile devices make students feel more motivated to meet their goals, achieving a perfect balance between classes and other work or family activities. Through the analysis of different applications on the internet and games, the Virtual University has encouraged knowledge in its students to expand and improve their skills in different topics .The dynamics we handle allowed the students to be involved so that they themselves would analyze the tools, be able to rate them and, later, use them in the classes and in the development of some topics,” added by different research report. After several analyzes and the collection of records to measure the impact of the use of mobile tools in the development of the academic semester, the institution managed to show that the use of applications or games for learning allowed students in a high percentage to take ownership knowledge in a better way, making the learning curve easier.
As well as the Virtual University, other institutions have joined this virtual learning environment offered by Canvas LMS, the most used in Higher Education in the developed countries like the United States, and which is growing strongly in Pakistan. This open platform, available on iOS and Android, allows students to find assignments, files, modules, and course materials, such as videos and texts, directly on their cell phone screen, making it much easier and more productive to invest their time to train and to strengthen their knowledge. “Mobile phones are becoming important allies so that people around the world can access courses and materials that allow them to strengthen their knowledge to boost their professional profiles. Now it is not necessary to move to a particular place or look for spaces for learning, since these new technologies allow any scenario of daily life to be the ideal space to learn. This is a dynamic that we see consolidating through Canvas.
The benefits of using cell phones are many.First of all, the cost is reduced, since it is cheaper to use the student’s own material for the classes.It is also available 24/7, as this type of platform makes any moment ideal, whether it is the daily trip by public transport, the peak and plate or the hours of dawn and midnight. The Canvas app allows you to submit tasks in real time from most cloud-based mobile apps, such as Drop box, One Drive, and Google Drive.It is also possible to answer questionnaires, participate in discussions and other learning activities, as well as establish private communication and send text and media messages to peers and scholars.
