Blog Post 2

    

A study of middle school students whose teachers used cell phones to teach math concepts showed a high level of student engagement in the instructional activities, increased motivation, greater understanding of concepts, and increased innovation in problem-solving. 

First, student learners were able to and encouraged communicate collaboratively via the cell phones and the appropriate applets that enabled the math skills to be practiced and mastered.  This communication and collaboration took place in a setting (outdoors) that made the experience entirely out-of-classroom and re-framed the whole learning experience in unique ways.  Appealing to young people’s learning styles, these activities’ successes resulted from unique and stimulating context.

Second, students used their cell phone cameras to observe in new ways the objects they were asked to measure.  They used the cameras to capture angles and perspectives that in-classroom instruction would not have afforded them.  The complex nature of some of the mathematical tasks were possible only because the students were able to photograph, zoom, observe, study, measure, and record data that would have, otherwise, been unavailable to them.  Their observational skills were stimulated and practiced to higher levels than in typical classroom settings with pencil and worksheets.

Third, the relationship between learning skills and applying the skills in real-world contexts is always a difficult one to establish.  The question of ‘why are we having to learn this?’ takes on a whole new meaning when one is actively using a desired technology to find answers to problems they are standing in the midst of.  The applets used by the cell phones required active problem-solving and creative strategies to reach successful conclusions in a real-world setting.  The knowledge becomes useful and not just more data to store in their mind-banks until test time.

Teachers were able to bring the students closer to their learning goals by giving the guided instruction and practice in the classroom and then transferring the class to the independent learning classroom outdoors armed with their cellphones and applets.  Concepts such as length, height, point, coordinate system, linear function, etc. were all specific concepts learned in different modes:  the traditional low-tech classroom and the untraditional outdoor high-tech classroom.  Students even showed that they changed their learning habits through the use of their cellphones.  Attention to detail, not skipping steps in a multi-step problem-solving strategy, better listening of peer contributions to the problem-solving process, and anticipating the next problem set were all skills and habits honed through cellphone use.

Daher, W. & Baya'a, N. (2012). Characteristics of middle school students learning actions 

     in outdoor mathematical activities with the cellular phone. Teaching Mathematics and 

     Its Applications, 31, 133-152. doi:10.1093/teamat/hrr018