Can you imagine a world without a mobile phone? Don’t know about you, but I can’t. I remember when they first became large when I was in high school in the early 2000s. I was one of the early adopters when mobile phones first became big. There’d been a promotion on the Alcatel One Touch Max DB mobile phone. It enabled first time mobile buyers to purchase the phone for $79. That’s a total bargain when you consider what iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones retail for these days.
So anyway, I got my sweet little hands on this mobile phone. And that is where the addiction to mobiles begun. It was a gradual thing though. First of all, I started taking my mobile with me everywhere I went. This started with school. That mobile didn’t last long though. It drowned in some fizzy drink.
Mobiles weren’t as widespread as they are nowadays. You could still go out without them. However, when I was in one of my History lessons, the teacher caught me with my mobile. She confiscated it for the rest of the lesson. This was bad at that time, but imagine if it happened now? How would you actually survive without your phone?
Well, a few years after being in high school and having my mobile taken off me in class for texting, I was out at a nightclub with some friends. Somehow, I lost my mobile phone. To this day, I still don’t know how that happened. All I know is that one moment, it was in my bag, and the next it wasn’t. I was able to go the whole weekend without a mobile though.
That type of thing would be unheard of these days. As it stands, I’m typing this blog post on my desktop while watching a video on my laptop. And, playing on my iPhone.
I’m going off on a tangent when really, what I want to talk about is how mobile phones have changed the way we learn. Back in the early 2000s, you’d have to go to the library to borrow a book, and that was assuming it was actually in stock. Sometimes they weren’t, so you’d go to the university book shop and buy the book. You’d probably only use it for that semester and then never pick it up again.
Now that mobile phones have widespread access to the internet thanks to the late Steve Jobs and his team, the whole world is at your fingertips. You just type in a Google search and away you guy, you’re ready to learn about the world.
Of course, with loads of information readily available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, a technological divide is being created, with people who lack access to technology suffering from an inability to learn at the same standard as those with access.
Mobile phones are fantastic devices, without which, people wouldn’t be able to learn as much as they can. They wouldn’t be able to access information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And they wouldn’t be able to connect with people in different locations.
During my second year at the university, the iPhone had just been available. And face to face tutorials were still the way to do things. Blogs and online discussion boards for university were only just starting to introduce. By the time I was in my post graduate study, blogging and online research were mandatory components. Without those stuffs, you would not pass the course.
All in all, mobile phones, especially the iPhone have changed the way people learn for the better. What are your thoughts though? Do you find it easier to learn because of mobile phones?
