Soloway: A Student Analysis

851 Words2 Pages

Smartphones became a tremendous trend for both young and adults. Ever since emergence of social media, smartphones were spreading like a wildfire worldwide. Because of its entertainment capabilities most everyone owns or plans to own a smartphone. According to the worldwide survey that Statista generated, by the end of 2016, there were 2.1 billion smartphones owners and expected to rise by 860 million by the end of 2020. Whereas during the 1980s before Simon, the world’s first smartphone, was created, people spend their time reading, playing sports, walking to the park or doing anything that could entertain themselves. Aside from that, communication consisted of patience and struggle. When the first phone was created, it gave relief and joy …show more content…

Because of its portability and capability to aid in doing homework or activities assigned by a teacher, it could help increase the learning potential of students. Furthermore, Soloway also mentioned about affordability and durability makes it suitable for students instead of using a laptop. Soloway implies that the advantages a smartphone brings in to the table when it comes to different circumstances is a perfect tool for learning. Despite all the benefits, Soloway addresses the most important issue when it comes to implementing smartphone usage in classrooms— “perception” (Soloway, 2011, pg. 2). Soloway states that to resolve the issue simply “turn off texting, and turn off voice functions” (Soloway, 2011. pg 2). Although there are some benefits when it comes to granting access to smartphones in-class, it does not rule out the other negative effects that Soloway fails to mention. The shortcomings of allowing students to use their smartphones for their studies outweighs its …show more content…

What Soloway does not recognize is with the ability to help comes the risk of students being lazy to think and reliant to their devices. There are applications that eliminates work for a student. An example of that would be the Mathway. It can be accessed online through its website while the application that works offline is also available for download. Mathway is an application that automatically solves any math equation, regardless of difficulty. Provided with few extra dollars monthly, it can also show you how the equation can be solved. With that in mind, knowing that there are available resources such as Mathway, students with Internet access will most likely use automated problem solvers, forums, online pdf worksheets or books with answers and search engines. Also, students are more likely to cheat during quizzes or tests because they developed a habit of searching everything they find it difficult to solve. In addition to portability and ability to help, Soloway also mentions that most students can afford the cost of a phone instead of a laptop. The phone’s ability to execute tasks; however, depends on the cost of the phone. High-end phones have better processing power are costly. Although when it comes to accessing the Internet, or merely conducting a web search, or calculating an intermediate equation, phones with

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