CellPhones
Cellphones are becoming ubiquitous. Many of my students have two one on each of the two providers to capture the different offers that each company has. Their friends know which to use which day of the week to keep in touch at low or no cost.
I know of schools that ban cellphones, which is in my opinion an exercise in futility. People like David Warlick actively encourage the integration of cell phones and with good reason too. A students with a reasonably modern cell phone has (at no expense to the school too) access to a huge range of brilliant educational assets….
- stills cameras
- video cameras (and a way of sharing this and downloading it too)
- voice recorders
- web access
- instant communications
- GPS
- and so on….
….these can of course be a huge distract or properly leveraged a huge asset.
Here are some interesting facts and sites
The price of staying connected Globally
http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/map-cellphonecosts/
An article on kids and cellphones
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/cellphones/kids.html
from Ewen McIntosh’s Blog
Mobile Use in China and Asia
- 2.5 billion mobile users worldwide.
- 59% of them live in developing countries.
- Mobile user base grew by 500m in the past 12 months, 25% of which is in China and India.
- Mobile phones are going to be the primary device to access the internet: they’re cheap and you don’t need to read or write to access them or the material on them.
- The top mobile operators in the world include China Mobile (1) with 350m customers, China Unicom (3) and many other Asian countries.
- Every month there are 5-6m new customers in China.
- 1m of them are pay-as-you-go with 5m as contracts (they live in the countryside, so it’s not easy to fill up your phone).
- Estimates are that 80-100m Chinese mobile phone users log onto the Internet via their handsets every month
- They are sending 33 billion text messages per month.
- Google just partnered with China mobile to make it the default search engine, with access therefore to 350m customers.
- Location-based services are beginning to permeate.
- Xiaolingtong (or little smart) - a local cordless phone for those who don’t jetset. It’s cheaper to implement than GSM and easier to put in place. Old technology for rural markets is better, more reliable, cheaper and easier to use.
- Chinese mobile users can send text messages in multi-coloured text for different purposes: read for love or blue for jokes messages.
- 12.55m South Koreans are subscribed to broadband - almost every household
- 37.89m South Koreans have mobile subscriptions; 43% use the internet on their mobile.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
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February 15th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
[...] irina wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptCellphones are becoming ubiquitous. Many of my students have two one on each of the two providers to capture the different offers that each company has. Their friends know which to use which day of the week to keep in touch at low or no … [...]
February 15th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
[...] andrewch placed an observative post today on CellPhonesHere’s a quick excerptChinese mobile users can send text messages in multi-coloured text for different purposes: read for love or blue for jokes messages. 12.55m South Koreans are subscribed to broadband - almost every household; 37.89m South Koreans have … [...]
February 28th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Our system is one that refuses to allow the use of cell phone in the school - citing ease of drug users/sellers as the most prevalent reason. Also they say that having ringing cell phones and off-sides conversations is distracting in the classroom - and I would agree with this one.
However, the concern I have about schools having students use cell phones as part of assignments and lessons is the cost. Can systems guarantee that the requests made by teachers would not go over various plans? What happens when the plan is at it’s limit and the parents must pay overage charges? Will the school reimburse the parent? What about students who do not have cell phones? At the moment I don’t see a need for my 13 year old daughter to have a cell phone.
I am an educator and have been responsible for bringing alot of new uses for technology to my and others’ classrooms over the years. But I’m not sure that cell phones (and us) are ready for this yet.