Nowadays education goes hand in hand with technology, so their evolution is interdependent. The mobile revolution has fundamentally changed all spheres of life, including education. In fact, students generally find learning with mobile devices more enjoyable, interactive, and effective, while teachers appreciate the affordability, accessibility, and variety of education mobile apps currently available on the market.
The Growth of the Education Apps Market
Technavio, a leading market research company, has released a study which indicates that “the education apps market in the US is expected to reach USD 5.80 billion by 2019”. Also, the report provides an in-depth analysis of the market, dividing all education apps into 3 categories:
– Pre-primary education
– Primary and secondary education
– Higher education
Multilateral Benefits
According to the report, modern parents are overall tech savvy, thereby contributing to their children’s adoption of education apps. The report also predicts that with skills in this field of technology, modern students will enter the workforce as more skilled and digitally-driven professionals. As for teachers, they appreciate their speed and convenience, advanced tracking systems, real-time assessment, and on-demand access to student process, to name but a few.
Personalized Education
Individualized education is not uncommon in our days, and mobile solutions offer great opportunities in this respect. “Research in Turkey with 221 university students has found that e-learning was as effective as face-to-face instruction for learning English. A comparison of those who received training through electronic means reported more positive attitudes and equally effective results compared to traditional approaches” (Ekrem Solak and Recep Cakir, “Face to Face or E-Learning in Turkish EFL Context,“ Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education).
Darrel M. West, a vice president and director of Governance Studies and founding director of the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings, has written a curious article “Connected learning: How mobile technology can improve education” and came to a great conclusion that “mobile technology is a way to transform learning. It is a catalyst for creating impactful changes in the current system and is crucial to student development in the areas of critical-thinking and collaborative learning. Those are the skills that young people need in order to secure their place in the globally competitive economy”.