Google Android Phones In the Classroom

A mobile phone that can only send calls and receive texts is “so 2005” – the capabilities of those little slivers of ingenuity have multiplied over the course of months, not decades as they had in the past.  They can send email, surf the web, and even scan a credit card.  What will they do next, teach a class?

Not quite, but you’re getting warmer.  Lawrence Angrave, an instructor of computer science at the University of Illinois, is currently teaching a class in the Department of Computer Science which involves 100 Google Android phones donated by Google and a throng of eager freshmen.  The goal of this foray into mobile technology “is to create a community of students bound together with mobile apps that they wrote themselves,” said Angrave.

The students will be given open-ended projects in order to prompt creativity and brainstorming tactics, applied to the field of computer science.  Since the majority of the students in the class are freshmen, the emphasis is on learning how to create new things the students never thought were possible before.  The mobile nature of the programs will also endeavor to link the students together, an aspect which can be especially helpful during the first semester of one’s college experience.

However, the computer science courses at Illinois have been no strangers to mobile technology before this semester.  Angrave’s vision for the freshman class compliments another class, taught at the junior level, on "Mobile Learning Communities.”  This class also uses the Verizon phones from Google to “educate and engage CS Juniors,” while using education applications written by senior undergrads in the same computer science program.

Ultimately, Angrave has a golden idea in mind for the program, namely, to “make students realize that they can change the world.”  And while that might sound like a lofty goal for a beginner course in programming, Angrave’s hopes are founded in good, sound logic - computers are becoming smaller, and phones and portable devices are featuring more prominently on the personal and commercial scene than ever before.  New programming for these devices has already changed the world in profound ways, and there’s no way of knowing where it will lead us next.  Besides, pessimism is so 1999.