Mobile phones predicted to help learning

Will Richardson shared this video on a recent blog post where he states that:
# In the next five years, every phone will be an iPhone. (And let’s not forget that there are already over 100,000 apps for that little sucker, many of them with relevance to the classroom.)
# We’ll soon be seeing what Steve Rubel is calling a “dumb shell” that takes the book idea in that video and creates a netbook sized (at least) keyboard and screen that your phone simply plugs into.

He then asks the question:
"If at some point in the fairly near future just about every high school kid is going to have a device that connects to the Internet, how much longer can we ask them to stuff it in their lockers at the beginning of the day?"

He concludes with this thought:
"When do we stop trying to fight the inevitable and start thinking about how to embrace it? Or, as Doug Johnson so eloquently suggests, when are we gonna saddle this horse and ride it?"

Steve Dembo's blog post quotes a Notre Dame High School Headmaster,Mr Haigh who said there was "little logic in allowing pupils to use a netbook in school while banning mobile phones, many of which could access the internet, record sound and take digital photographs." Dembo concludes by saying that
fighting to keep cell phones hidden or banned in schools is a battle that schools can’t win.

Luckily New Trier has come to the wisdom that things change; with smart cell phone devices here to stay and adoption rates are racing towards 100+%, teachers need to be proactive and think of creative ways to adapt their lessons to accomodate new avenues for learning.