Classroom On The Smartphone, Along With a Dash of Esteem

Education I believe is moving towards a more mobile form of learning. Similar to how Steemit has its own mobile app in the form of Esteem, it won't be long before the entire classroom learning is ported or migrated over to a smartphone.

Mobile Notebooks, Textbooks & More

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One of the biggest problems with pen, paper and books is that it forces the students to only one form of learning. Namely, you need to acquire knowledge from reading the textbook. The thing is, not every student can learn from reading. I for one, learn best through discussions and study groups. That requires everyone to meet at one specific place and in real life. That can be rather tricky.

With learning management platforms, discussions can be easily facilitated at everyone's convenience. I could even respond to discussion questions from the comfort of my own room. All this can be done via a smartphone. In addition, if textbooks and lectures are made into an app, students can not only study by reading but through using text to speech apps. After all, the current student generation are a multitasking generation. As such, I won't be surprised to see students studying via hearing their textbooks being read to them as they commute to school.

Of course, learning transcends just textbooks and lectures, individualized learning is also a big thing as well.

Student Results Tracking & Habits

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From my experience, I had some students write an online journal of how well they understand the lesson. The journal was anonymous, but from this exercise, I started cultivating a habit of having students reflect and question their learning. Other apps such as habitica and forest have similar functions, prompting students in a gamified manner to cultivate habits that are otherwise impossible in a traditional sense.

In addition, learning management systems and having students complete their homework on a mobile platform allows for easy analysis by the teacher or even an A.I . It has become rather impossible for classes in government schools to have less than 30 students. Even with that number, it can be difficult to analyse how all the students are performing.

Through having students complete their homework online, the manner in which students answer questions can be recorded. Once all the data is compiled, it can be easier to see which topics and tasks that students are not doing well in. Such data can help the teacher create lessons that tackle such issues instead of just blindly following the syllabus.

But What About The Rules?

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Well, I think rules are meant to be broken. The thing is, rules were made for the purpose of getting students to focus on the lesson. However, I believe the benefits of using smartphones in the classroom for learning outweighs it's disadvantages. Imagine the possibilities!

Also, I think the whole notion of students not being able to focus in class because the phone distracts them is just untrue. I teach a class of college students who are allowed to use laptops and smartphones anytime they want. What I notice is, make the class engaging enough and motivate the students enough, they will focus throughout the lesson.

As such, I believe the smartphone is not to be blamed as it's not the main reason why students aren't focused in the classroom.

Conclusion

I believe learning completely with the smartphone is inevitable due to its potential. Perhaps in a few years time, going to school will be a thing of the past as you can go to school in the comfort of your own home.

Just like writing long steemit posts on the smartphone will get easier. I know I'm jumping the gun here from smartphone learning to esteem. About half the post is written with the esteem app and I do this because it's been a few months since I have last used esteem.

After checking it out today, man is it smooth. Kudos to the team and @good-karma for improving the app so much!

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