Literature Review

Aykac 2008 argues that cell phones are “disruptive and distractive” and that they have no use in the educational environment, however Castells 2006 notes that the new language brought about by having to summarise text in SMS text messages sparks creativity in the younger generations. Castells goes on to cite Fortunati 2003, the action of texting makes adolescents discover “the attraction of the written word”. Hale, Poulter and Whiteside 2005 state that a third of British schools have a mobile phone mast within 200 meters and go on to say their findings come “days after Government experts warned of a genuine radiation risk to young brains, particularly in children of primary school age.” On the other hand an Ofcom report cited on the World Health Organisation Fact sheet 304, 2006 explains that “Ofcom has performed over 500 measurements around masts, predominantly near schools and hospitals. The highest radiofrequency emission level recorded was 1/279^th of the ICNIRP guidelines.”

Reimer 2006 cites Chelsey that mobile phones have lead to an increased level of spill over between work and home and has noted that this has had negative effects to family life. Interestingly, Reimer went on to describe how the mobile phone is increasing gender inequalities at work as women were more often contacted by children or family than men. Devitt and Roker 2006 find that mobile phones play an important part in family life and allow children to gain independence whilst the parents still have an element of control through the mobile phone. Older children use the mobile phone for a courtesy text/call to worried parents. They also find that the parents prefer to physically hear their child’s voice whereas children prefer to text.

“Developing countries are driving an explosion in global mobile phone use” says Tryhorn 2009 who then carries on to say that from 2002 to 2007 mobile phone usage increased by about 3 billion users, two thirds of which was accounted for by developing countries. Tryhorn compared this to a modest increase of only 0.27 billion using landlines over the same period, suggesting that developing countries are skipping straight to mobile technology. Oxfam 2007 shows that mobile phone coverage in developing countries is still not excellent with mainly the big towns and cities having coverage and that people still may need to rely on a satellite phone, which is more expensive.

VARK Reflection

Visual: 3

My result for the visual learning is quite low and this is understandable. I find I learn from diagrams better if I actually re-draw the diagrams in my own way as this makes use of the Visual and Read/Write learning styles.

Aural: 1

This result is expected. I do find it difficult to learn from listening to someone speaking and need to take notes, visualise and use the information I have gained before I am happy I have learned the information. I find it easier to learn this way if the speaker includes jokes and speaks more personally as this is more memorable for me.

Read/Write: 3

I find it easier to learn by writing as the information does sink in better. When I read I tend to get bored easily and it is a struggle for me to carry on reading. However I find it better if I read then write the information, going over the information twice and not allowing myself to become bored.

Kinesthetic: 7

I was not surprised by this result as i find it much easier to learn things by actually putting knowledge into action and even easier if I can find a relevance to me. The trial and error method works very well for me and as people say, you learn from your mistakes, I have found this rings true throughout my life. I feel this is a slight disadvantage to be mainly a kinesthetic learner as it is probably the hardest one for lecturers to implement in lectures.

Conclusion:

I find the results quite true to life as i do learn best by doing, however if this is not possible i need to use multiple learning styles to help me learn. I need to work on my aural learning skills. I have looked on the VARK website for information on how to implement each learning style and found the information interesting and I shall try to use some of the methods in my study. I found the VARK websites description of a "K" learner frighteningly similar to myself.