today's learners do not go to computers – they take their computers with them

[Cindy Gunn]

Keynote speaker at OARIC, 2011, Jim Wedman, has suggested that today's learners do not go to computers – they take their computers with them (iphones, ipads, etc) and that this will have an enormous impact on education. In addtion Prof Wedman makes the claim that future learners may never touch a computer keyboard. Do you agree with him?

[Cindy Gunn]

They are taping all the sessions but I don't know if they are going to put them online or not. I'll post the link if they do.

He was talking about how useless investing in computer labs is now and even how investing in laptops is step in the wrong direction.  He  believes we should be looking at ways to incorporate smart phones - that's when he said future students may never touch a keyboard.

[Cindy Gunn]

The conference is being held in Thailand. It's an international conference but he was mainly talking abaout areas with limited funds for education so one of his points was that it's more economical for universities and schools to focus on using phones rather than laptops since many students have phones but not laptops. He also said that this is a trend that is becoming world wide (but didn't give any evidence for this).

I think this would be an interesting research to conduct in UAE - most of my students do not have to choose between either a phone or a laptop but I wonder which one they would choose if they had to.

[Mohamed EL-Zamil]

I do agree.Still I hope that computers won't distract learners and that they will use them to enahnce learning