Journal#8
Envisioning the Future of Education
By Mark van't Hooft: March/April 2008


Reading this article made me really think about education and children. This article talks about mobile learning, and all of its ups and downs. In my day I had a piece of paper and pencil when it came to mobile learning. Today’s youth has laptops and PDA’s, and many other devices. This way of learning is great, but also can be a little dangerous. Some students might not know the power of technology, and use it in a bad way. If a teacher is going to allow for mobile learning, then he or she must prepare their students on the proper way to go about it. The first thing a teacher should asses is the maturity and responsibility every student posse. Also a teacher must asses the skills each student has. Once these are out of the way, mobile learning can take place.
Does mobile learning take away from classroom learning?
In my observations the answer to this question is still up in the air. Students can gain useful knowledge from learning outside of the classroom, but at the same time learn something that is invalid, or not useful. The world is growing and technological devices are becoming the way of the future. It is inevitable that students of tomorrow will be learning outside of the classroom more then inside.

Does the real world have anything to teach to students, or does the classroom fulfill this need?
I believe that a student of today’s society needs to experience both real life learning, and classroom learning. Today’s world relies too much on personal experiences and real life situations. Students need to be exposed to real world lessons, and how to solve them. The classroom can only take a student so far. The real world will open student’s eyes and make them understand how tough it can really be.