Day: August 23, 2011

Mobile Research

I watched a webinar yesterday by Shelley Terrell (@ShellTerrell) about using mobile devices for research. She had great tips and tools, a couple of which I knew about, and a couple of news ones I’m testing out. (The webinar was from SimpleK12, and I expect it’ll be up on their webinar archive soon.)

Some of the ones I’m familiar with include EasyBib, Posterous, Instapaper, DropBox, Wikipedia and Show Me. (These are all available for iOS and Android.)

New ones I’m testing include LinoIt and Newsy. I’ll also test Wikitude on my phone.

Ran across this  quote this morning, and it fits perfectly:

Students are “asked to do research on a desktop computer that absolutely has less processing power than the computer in their pocket.”

— From “To Ban or Not to Ban: Schools Weigh Cell Phone Policies” by Audrey Watters on Mindshift.

But they’re Digital Natives!

Do we need to teach students about technology since they are digital natives?

Check out the discussion on iste.org.

I have to say I agree with the gist of most of the comments, and love this quote:

“Calling students ‘digital natives’ is an excuse for not actually teaching them about technology.”

Just because a child has grown up around these tools doesn’t mean they always know how to use them.

From watching my kids and their friends, it is obvious that kids have very different levels of fluency with technology, just like us “digital immigrants.”