Mobile Learning | Feature

Learning Apptitude

If you're an educator, mobile devices are in your future—if they're not already a big part of your life. This month we've curated stories to reflect the great potential of this growing trend.

• By Michael Hart
• 11/07/11

In preparation for pre-conference coverage of FETC 2012, scheduled for Jan. 23-26 in Orlando, we've been interviewing a number of the speakers. They'll be talking about a wide range of issues, so we're hearing lots of different things from them. There are a few points almost all of them are making though. One of them: If you're an educator, mobile devices are in your future—if they're not already a big part of your life.

Logic tells us the same is true with their students. In fact, if anything, in most cases they're way ahead of their teachers. That's why Speak Up--Project Tomorrow's annual survey of educators, parents, and kids--asked students from kindergarten through the 12th grade what they thought the ideal mobile app for learning was. With the help of Project Tomorrow, we, T.H.E. Journal editors, sifted through the entries and came up with 15 that we feel most vividly speak to the power of mobile technology in learning.

Then we asked our designers to illustrate the descriptions the students wrote for us and, in the November/December issue of T.H.E. Journal, we have spread them out for you to see.

In the same issue, we asked a number of school district CIOs to talk about the mobile apps they use most in taking care of the IT needs of their districts. This is your chance to read how an app helped one IT expert in Ohio save his district from sure disaster. It's a short story but, trust me, a page turner.