Read an article for this activity about adopting a smartphone. Do Smart Phones Make Smart Learners?
The key points of interest for me were:
- Studies where technology was on loan in the research swayed the results as people don’t invest in learning and personalising a new technology if it’s on loan/temporary.
- Important factors in the success of new devices
- How to learn about it
- Look and feel
- Preparedness to substitute existing technologies/tools
- Individual context
- Technology problems – eg wifi connection – how to.
- Peer learning in learning the new technology was very valuable. Drop in sessions were offered but hardly attended but those who did attend rated them very highly. They were ran by peers, so better than IT experts as they spoke the same language and could deal with personally found solutions, people had little time for the group sessions, but one person would have liked a sequenced online activity to learn how to use the device.
- Technological barriers/problems – difficulty getting wifi and other functionality to work- deters adoption and satisfaction. Disincentive. Failure kills enthusiasm- you’ve got to get it right, one or two failures of the technology and you’ve lost the individual. (Eg Natalia)
- Choosing a device – difficult. So many functions and features and consumer patters. Keyboard attractive to some but not others.
- Quantity to learn – because the function on the smartphone are so explicit people think there is a lot to learn and reluctant to use it. However, PCs have lots to learn, and very little of their functionality is not used but functions are less explicit so cause less fear.
- Referring back to the title of this paper, smartphones may not make smarter learners because some people felt starting with a simpler device would be better.
- Key learning point about learning new technologies based on Vygotskian vicarious learning insights of learning from others who are at the same point as you .
