Teacher in the mobile world

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss wireless technologies and their role in educational applications and in teachers' everyday work. Today we already have powerful handheld devices that have wireless internet connection. History has shown that new technologies are often applied to merely do the same tasks as previous technologies. Handheld devices could provide teachers with new opportunities, but not by simply transforming current WWW content to handheld devices. What would be the best way to apply these technologies? In this paper we present the results from the study of Finnish youth as users of mobile phones. Based on this study we can say that Finnish youth are ready to adopt new mobile technologies for everyday use. In addition we discuss three current mainstream technologies, namely Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Java MlDlet and PocketPC as examples of new mobile technologies and implementation platforms. In particular we try to focus on how teachers could apply these technologies in their teaching. © 2003 by International Federation for Information Processing.