Mobile Technology in Education

 Nowadays, everyone needs a basic understanding of ICT and how to make fruitful use of it, just to be good students, workers and citizens. Educating people how to be competent basic users of ICT technologies is an important role of ICT education, so they will be successful in their academic and work careers, and so they can efficiently contribute in modern technological society. ICT is multifaceted and quickly changing, and it is confusing for many people. It is so pervasive in the modern world that everyone has some understanding of it, but those understandings are often wildly divergent. 

Therefore, I would like to conduct a research on the usage of mobile technology in private secondary school. Mobile technology could have a significant role to play in educational development. In recent times, research has begun to focus upon mobile learning but the potential of mobile devices (for example, the iPod, laptop, tablet, iphone) is only recently being explored. It has been suggested that language learning is one of the disciplines particularly likely to benefit from widespread ownership of mobile devices such as phones and media players (Kukulska-Hulme, 2006).

According to Shuler (2009), Mobile devices allow students to gather, access, and process information outside the classroom. They can encourage learning in a real-world context, and help bridge school, afterschool, and home environments. They also have the power to promote and foster collaboration and communication, which are deemed essential for 21st-century success.

I plan to conduct this research by adopting qualitative and survey method. Students and teachers from Sekolah Menengah Stella Maris will be my targeted sample for this study. This study will utilize the convenience sampling. In convenience sampling, the participants were willing and available to be involved in the study. Each participant will be given 15 to 20 minutes to complete a questionnaire. The time limit given is to ensure that they will not focus on any particular questions and the answers given will not be overanalyzed by the students and teachers. Next, 30 participants (15 teachers and 15 students) will be selected to involve in the interview session with the researcher to collect qualitative data. The collected questionnaire will then be analyzed through the newest version of SPSS to obtain the mean and also ensure the reliability of the result.

I chose mobile technology because the uses of portable devices in classrooms are beginning to emerge and the possibilities seem endless. I believe it is truly can support and enrich learning. It is the combination of ubiquitous and powerful mobile devices and their expanding applicability for teaching and learning which results into benefits for learners everywhere.

Most schools in Malaysia limit cell phone use in classrooms and some have banned their use altogether. Through this research, I would like to recommend the gradual introduction of mobile devices in schools.  By devising established norms of behaviour, we can build acceptance among teachers, parents, and students themselves to discover mobile devices’ educational value.

Lastly, I hope that this research will provide adequate information about integrating mobile technology in education.