A SNAPSHOT APPROACH OF A SMARTPHONE-ENABLED IMPLEMENTATION

Abstract

Smartphones are being adopted en-masse throughout the world. Its adoption in education has witnessed a diversity of implementations with various outcomes. In particular, seamless learning is a broad pedagogical approach key in mobile learning design. With the goals of enhancing academic achievement and self-directed learners, a trial smartphone-enabled implementation was carried out for a unit in the Primary 3 English Language curriculum. The paper will examine the smartphoneenabled implementation with the snapshot approach: from the infrastructure snapshot, advanced infrastructure snapshot, functional snapshot and finally through an example snapshot. These
snapshots build on each other and provide a fuller and richer picture of the implementation. The study found that academic achievement and self-directed learning of students was affected with the smartphone-enabled curriculum. Students had higher academic achievement with the smartphone-enabled curriculum compared to the worksheet-based curriculum. However, the results for selfdirected learning were more complex. Although the smartphone seems to encourage self-direction, the extent of the learning depends. The example snapshot identifies possible reasons including blind practice and the fostering of word consciousness. Implications and future directions are provided.