The Student Mobile Device Survey was recently completed by Harris Interactive (News - Alert), and the results are quite surprising. In fact, findings have disproved a few assumptions in regards to just how many youngsters have expensive mobile devices. Of the students polled from elementary all the way to the high school level, more than 90 percent of students felt as though mobile devices will improve their learning skills and will make education more fun. 

In addition, ,any of these students feel that mobile devices (laptops, tablets, and smartphones) are the way of the future for education and would like to see more of these devices being used in a classroom setting.

Many college students who are taking classes in math and science use mobile devices as a study aid, and analysts suspect that this trend will spread amongst high school, middle school and elementary school students. In an e-mail to Information Week’s Ellis Booker,the senior vice president of Market Research at Pearson, Seth Reichlin, stated, “[We] found that students in grades 4-12 use tablets almost equally in math, science, history and social studies, and English/language arts.”

The survey also detected a few misconceptions among racial groups. Out of the racial groups polled who, on average, come from households with higher incomes, they found exactly the opposite when it came to children who owned tablets. Within the group of fourth grade students through the seniors in high school, Hispanics (36 percent) were more likely to own a tablet than white (30 percent) or black (28 percent) students. It also showed that black and Hispanic students, in the same grouping, were more likely to own a smartphone that white students (51 percent of black students, 49 percent of Hispanic students, and 40 percent of white students). More than one-third of the students from fourth grade through eighth grade currently own a tablet, while over 33 percent of the entire group polled said that they have used a tablet to do schoolwork during the current school year.

Moreover, the younger students appear to be more eager to get mobile devices into the classroom than high school students. "It is particularly interesting to note that as students rise to higher levels in their education, the way that they rely on mobile devices to support learning changes as well. While smartphones and tablets are still important tools for high school students, it appears that they are looking for more full-featured productivity devices, such as laptops, to support their learning activities,” commented Shawn Mahoney, the vice president of Product Design Research and Evaluation for Assessment and Instruction at Pearson.

Harris Interactive conducted the Student Mobile Device Survey online for Pearson from January 28- February 24. The study group consisted of 2,350 U.S. students, which was made up of 500 elementary school (4th-5th grade) students, 750 middle school (6th-8th grade) students, and 1,100 high school (9th-12th grade) students. The survey also included a national sample of 1,206 college students.