Mobile phones educate

A wide range of apps on the iphone that could enhance children's learning experience. For example, the downloadable dictionary app. 

I can remember many instances where I have had to furiously scribble words down from lecture slides and leave the lecture theatre with a damaged right hand. However, on one occasion, while I looked up to take a breath, I noticed a fellow student with his phone up in the air. My eyes squinted to see what he was doing. He was taking photographs with his mobile phone of the lecturer slides.

After this incident I started to think about whether mobile phones have a place in an educational setting. The debate around this issue largely circled around Secondary and Primary education rather than Tertiary education. There is large contestation around whether children should be able to have mobile phones at school.

Many believe that mobile phones can enhance children’s learning experience. Firstly, with the use of a mobile phone it is now easy to use mobile phones to access the internet in order to receive endless information. The internet at school can be used for research purposes or reading current affairs and also provides access to online dictionaries.

Phone pornography problem

A phone showing Mxit contacts. An application that has attracted paedopiles.

Recently I watched a ten year old navigate her way around a mobile phone. With a click of a button she had accessed the internet and with a few more thumb movements, she was checking her inbox for recent messages. Nowadays, it is easy to spot children with their own mobile phone. It concerns me, however, that children with mobile phones can access the internet or applications at ease.

This is problematic in that there is a large debate around the easy access of pornography on mobile phones. Now, children can access pornography literally at a push of a button. The question is what is being done to avoid children accessing pornography on their mobile phones?

 Instant messaging software applications allow for children not only to chat to their friends but it also enables them to join general chat rooms. People of all ages can access these applications and it is extremely difficult to control. Mxit for example, is just one application that has fallen victim to dissemination of pornography and paedophiles on their application.