INSIDE MOBILE: K-12 Education Needs Mobile Technology

Personalized lessons

Notice that, in this new environment, students are presented with new things to learn in a fundamentally different way: they are given lessons that they themselves personalize. The lessons are all personalized so that drill and practice (aka homework) is actually embedded into the lesson itself. Because of this, the student is constantly tested on what they are learning and corrections to mistakes are made instantly.

Teachers become mentors; they help each student with the problems each is having, instead of focusing on giving mass adoption lessons to everyone. They also do not have to focus on grading boring homework assignments.

And instead of focusing on giving the same test to all students, we'll be able to assess students who are creative and mentor those creative skills. We'll let others who are more quantitatively oriented migrate toward science and engineering. And we won't own this process; it will definitely be adopted worldwide over the coming decades.

We should see the change toward personalized education using mobile technology in place as we migrate into the 22^nd century.

J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., is the VP and Chief Analyst with the Frost & Sullivan North American Information & Communication Technologies Practice. As a nationally recognized industry authority, he focuses on monitoring and analyzing emerging trends, technologies and market behavior in the mobile computing and wireless data communications industry in North America. Since joining Frost & Sullivan in 2006, Dr. Purdy has been specializing in mobile and wireless devices, wireless data communications and connection to the infrastructure that powers the data in the wireless handheld.

He is author of Inside Mobile & Wireless, which provides industry insights and reaches over 100,000 readers per month. For more than 16 years, Dr. Purdy has been consulting, speaking, researching, networking, writing and developing state-of-the-art concepts that challenge people's mind-sets, and developing new ways of thinking and forecasting in the mobile computing and wireless data arenas. Often quoted, his ideas and opinions are followed closely by thought leaders in the mobile & wireless industry. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. He can be reached at gerry.purdy@frost.com.

Disclosure Statement: From time to time, I may have a direct or indirect equity position in a company that is mentioned in this column.  If that situation happens, then I'll disclose it at that time.