EDUCATION INTO A MULTI-DEVICE WORLD

Let’s start with the facts: the world is going mobile so we must reconstruct the education for the app generation. A survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that young people (ages 8-18) use electronic devices for more than six hours a day, on average. Many are multitasking - listening to music while surfing the Web or instant-messaging friends while playing a video game. In Romania 35% of young students are using a mobile device.

The young generation, named digital natives, are used to have instant access to the information needed instead of going and getting it. The development of the internet enabled devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops, devices that are providing one to one personalization unlike anything else and this means we should start to deliver education through all this devices.

The transition between the traditional classroom and the classroom in the cloud is one step away.

This paper is aiming to present Distance Learning Department (acronym CREDIS) students’ point of view regarding the usability of mobile devices in the educational area. We want to see how much our students use a mobile device, do they use it during the classroom? and in witch purpose?
In a multi-device world we want every student to be able to take notes in the classroom, to be productive, to create and share documents and presentation and to have access to all this documents/projects/ notes everywhere at anytime. And what better way of doing all this if not by using the same web based tools that our students are using at home?

The rapid spread of the worldwide market for mobile learning is creating unexpected pathways for education and taking advantages from all this devices and apps.

This changes are affecting teachers and students among. It is time to stop saying “It’s impossible” when we are facing a new technological challenge of the 21st century and start research and learning to accomplishing "the impossible".

Today it’s a fact, but we have to move the way we think and deliver education from “today” to “tomorrow”, because we are preparing students for life in the real world and the issues they will have to face in 10 or 50 years are targeting communication and collaboration.

There is no teacher too young or too old to make changes in the way he teaches as well as there is no student who could not make a difference by participating in the real world learning projects.