Thirty-seven percent of children between Kindergarten and Year 2 have their own mobile (of some sort), with one fifth having access to a smartphone. By Year 8, that figure has risen to eighty-five percent, with fully one-third using smartphones.
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The next years are an interregnum, the few heartbeats between the ‘before time’ – when none of us were connected – and a thoroughly hyperconnected afterward. This is the moment when we must make the necessary pedagogical and institutional adjustments to a pervasively connected culture. That survey from last year found that even at Kindergarten level, two-thirds of parents were willing to buy a mobile for their children – if schools integrated the device into their pedagogy. But the survey also pointed to opposition within the schools themselves:
“When we asked administrators about the likelihood of them allowing their students to use their own mobile devices for instructional purposes at school this year, a resounding 65% of principals said “no way!”
Mark Pesce — Hyperconnected education