Going mobile

• Article 10 of 15
• EducationInvestor, February 2013

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If there's one area of spending that seemingly everyone in education, from primary schools through to high education, is convinced is going to avoid budget cuts and could even expand it's mobile education. A survey by BESA (British Education Suppliers Association) found that by the end of 2015, 22% of all 'pupil-facing' computers will be non-Windows tablets. This makes the companies that produce such devices and those that create content and software for them golden investment opportunities. So what needs to happen to make mobile more than just the latest hype and which are the areas likeliest to continue growing?

In higher education at least, mobile devices are largely bought by students. According to an NUS survey of mobile device usage, the overwhelming majority of students have at least one device and a third own a tablet ebook reader. Nearly three-quarters of students use their devices for reading educational books, so to a certain extent, the opportunities lie in electronic textbooks.

Cengage Learning, for example, recently digitised all the first year textbooks for psychology students at Plymouth University. Student Rosie Rule says: "The ebooks are so much more accessible than the hard copies. I can now carry 12 textbooks round with me on my phone and iPad. I can read during the commute to uni and even whilst I'm queuing to pay for my groceries. Similarly, the search facilities are so much more effective and book marking and highlighting are especially useful."

Simple digitisation of books is just the beginning, however. Ebooks offer publishers the chance to provide multimedia content, such as videos and audio, and interactivity as well, such as tests. Cambridge University Press, for example, has developed 'Explore Shakespeare' apps that provide glossary definitions of Shakespearean language, include audio performances by the likes of Michael Sheen and Kate Beckinsale, give the option to separate out particular characters' actions, and include group and pair activities.

Nevertheless, outside of content provision, higher education doesn't provide many opportunities for anyone except the big mainstream IT companies, such as Apple, since universities tend not to buy and supply mobile devices themselves, leaving that up to students. Developers of "mobile device management" software will see some benefits, as institutions that want to limit the activities of students who want to "bring your own device" (BYOD) look for ways to lock down those devices. There are few benefits to trying to incorporate mobile devices into learning when there is no classroom, only a lecture hall, not everyone has a device and those who do may have completely incompatible operating systems and features.

Distance learning courses, particularly those that incorporate online content, are a different proposition, with many providers looking at how to adapt old content and include new content that will work on mobile devices. Most are looking to work with tablets rather than mobile phones: "For us, the content we create is quite rich, quite high impact so can't be used on lesser devices than smartphones," says Rich Townsend of the Greenwich School of Management, which offers a marketing course especially adapted to include tablets, right down to an 'augmented reality' app that superimposes course content onto the real world using mobile devices' built-in cameras. "Adapting content for a tablet isn't difficult, but adapting for a phone is a different experience that requires different skills and thought processes. You probably wouldn't watch our content on smartphones." However, for those that are looking to offer online content to countries such as those in Africa, where the mobile phone is ubiquitous, the PC scarcer and the tablet non-existent, the mobile phone presents a golden opportunity to access an otherwise unreachable market.

It's in primary and secondary education that mobile has the greatest opportunities. Here, schools are investing not just in content but in the devices themselves so they can be used in lessons. "There's a tablet frenzy in the UK. An overwhelming volume of our customers are currently planning classroom, year group or whole school deployment of this technology," says Gareth Davies, MD of learning platform developer Frog, which is re-architecting its software to work with mobile devices. "It's inevitable and brilliant for education. Getting rid of the beige box is the way to go."

Luke Noonan, purchasing director at tablet manufacturer Disgo, agrees. "What we are starting to see is that with costs involved in managing IT in education, actually this is a common and effective way of bringing more interaction into classrooms without having huge IT rooms without having bulky PCs and monitors."

BYOD is far less appealing to schools than HE, says Joe Warren, head of ICT curriculum at Cognita, the UK's largest group of independent schools. Schools are cautious, he says. "They have fear in their eyes and take devices off kids at the gates. It would be a huge culture shift for them to adopt BYOD."

While most schools are interested in Apple's iPads, the greater openness of the 'Android' tablet platform as well as the relative expense of iPads - starting price of £269 including VAT for just an iPad mini - means that hardware manufacturers as big as Dell, as well as much smaller companies such as Disgo (starting price of tablets: £59.99), are developing tablets especially for schools - and schools are buying them.

However, according to Frog's Gareth Davies, there's a certain element of novelty behind the rush towards tablets, as well as "a lack of direction anywhere else", that's causing schools to invest in tablets. This means schools are buying devices, particularly iPads, without really being sure what they'll be used for. "They think buying the iPads will sort everything out but find out it doesn't. They can't get into their network, all the information in the pupils' apps they can't get to, they don't know how to manage them and so on."

As a result, BESA's survey showed that 85% of schools are worried about security and management, and 71% are concerned about the installation and purchase of apps. While there are options available for managing iPads in volume, companies such as Disgo can offer more complete packages of ready-managed, cheaper, Android-based tablets. "Android is much more suitable for education. We can be much more flexible in what we provide," says Luke Noonan. "Products have to be locked down and people can't mess with settings."

Avantis has similarly developed the LearnPad tablet-based ecosystem for schools, which as well as including an Android-based tablet, includes apps, an app store, management software, volume licensing options and more, all targeted at educational institutions. "When schools come to us, they don't know what they want from the tablet. They don't know what to do. They know they want the light, portable, battery-powered tablet tech but that's it. In a lot of cases, they've already bought iPads, but they don't know why, and they don't integrate well with ICT, content or the curriculum," says Avantis MD Nik Tuson.

But, the issue of what to actually use tablets for is one of their biggest problems. Geoff Mulgan, the chief executive of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta), says that despite more than £1.4bn being spent on technology in schools in England in the past three years alone, "The emphasis is too often on shiny hardware rather than how it is to be used," adding that too often it is not being used to its "full promise and potential".

Elizabeth Burd, an IEEE senior member and professor in the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences at the University of Durham, has conducted research into the use of tablets. She says there is a missed opportunity in many schools to uses tablets for collaboration and to display pupils' work. Schools also have a tendency to have banks of tablets given out for a lesson then returned to racks, which limits the abilities of pupils to use the tablets in their own time for work. She also argues that it's the multimedia aspects of tablets that schools should concentrate on: "Text, especially to younger kids, is one of the least interesting aspects of the educational experience, so tablets are a very good way of engaging today's multimedia students."

Part of the problem, says Cognita's Joe Warren, is the time needed to locate good resources. "Not all devices are content rich. Even though there are lots of educational resources becoming available all the time, it requires lots of research time by the teaching team to find apps and resources that are suitable." He adds that the schools he works with would like more education-focused material available, "especially ebooks at A-level and that level".

Content provider ClickView's CEO Harvey Sanchez agrees. "Content is massively available - the challenge is relevancy, finding something that's specific to the curriculum. That's something very few companies do well."

Avantis's Nik Tuson adds that a lot of content is unavailable to many tablets, since iPhones and iPads can't play content created in the Flash format, which is a popular for educational videos and interactive apps on web sites. While Flash will die out in the long-term, having been discontinued for most applications by its creator, Adobe, in the short-term, the need of educational tablet users to access existing Flash content will remain.

Content creation by teachers is also an issue, says Cognita's Joe Warren: "A lot of teachers in the sciences just want them as recording devices: students can record with them and film each other doing experiments. If it's just a research tool for that and looking things up, teachers find that easy, but you can do that with anything." As a result, he would like to see more tools for creating lesson resources, as well as applications that children could explore, something that ACS Hillingdon International School is doing, according to its IT integrationist Sue Wakefield-Gray.

"Teachers are beginning to create curriculum content using the iBooks Author app which allows complex eBooks to be produced containing text, audio and video files. Students are also creating eBooks that allow them to showcase their own learning or to be shared with other classes such as storybooks for younger students or non-English."

Tablets and mobile devices are certainly seeing short-term interest from education institutions. Their longer-term viability will depend on several factors: whether good uses can be found for them that don't take up too much time or resources; whether there's good content appropriate to courses being generated and made available in tablet-suitable formats; and whether there are content creations tools that allow teachers to create lesson resources easily. If these obstacles aren't overcome, tablets are liable to end up being under-used or even ignored as educators move on to the next piece of "shiny hardware".

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