Smartphones in education

Modern technology has become an integral part of our life but its implementation into school education is not so fast. Most of the population own a smartphone. While some people say that smartphones should be used in the lessons, others would prefer a partial or complete ban on them in schools. This work summarizes strengths and weaknesses of smartphones in education based on the literature review and discusses some recommendations on their use. Use of smartphones in education was studied in an application which helped with the basics of Russian alphabet. It was shown that most of the users did not read license terms, preferred their own gender for application voice and tended to leave the application prematurely. The users from primary and secondary schools seemed to prefer to use the application more at weekends than on working days, and the application was willingly installed more by older users. A questionnaire survey at a school was used to grasp the whole topic. It was revealed that that touch devices would be welcome in education by students, and they were prepared to use their own smartphone for studying, but at school rather than in their free time. Mobile phone is the preferred device for games playing and internet browsing, but the most used applications include social networks,...