Instructional design/Tablet Technology/Introduction

The use of tablet in K-12 classroom
Mobile technologies have significantly developed and improved in past decades. It has impacted society in many ways. It is said that mobile technologies provide us with new opportunities, patterns of work, lives, and entertainments in academic and professional fields as well as in our daily lives. Mobile technologies enable people to utilize mobile devices as communication and collaboration tools.

Possibilities
Mobile learning may have created new possibilities to take advantage of its technological innovations to enhance learners’ creative/critical thinking, positive attitude, spatial ability, and executive function as well as learner engagement.

Mobile learning games can be motivating for learners, providing satisfaction and desire to recommend it to others and to play again. There are mobile collaborative learning applications to promote higher-order thinking skills, such as discussion boards, blogs, outdoor education scenarios, and games. Since mobile devices have the capacity to support a sense of individuality and community as well as learner motivation to learn through participation in collaborative learning.



Tablets
With the development of mobile technologies, specifically, tablets have created new instructional ideas.



Researchers in the mobile learning field have investigated how tablet technologies can enhance and improve the way people learn as well as interact each other. In the mean time, students’ use of tablet devices in classroom has encouraged their teachers to redesign traditional instruction. Tablet technologies can create an opportunity for students and teachers in classroom settings by supporting engagement, participation, interactions, or individualized learning.

Reflection
Let’s think about the following topics.
 * 1) How many of your students have their own tablets?
 * 2) Have you ever thought about the use of tablets in your classroom?
 * 3) If so, what was the instructional goal of using tablets? How was it?
 * 4) If not, why haven’t you used it?