In the course of our research we have been interviewing students at Sir Frank Markham school in Milton Keynes.
The interviews have turned up two unexpected points so far:
1.Only 40% of the students interviewed had mobile phones.
2.The use of Bluetooth by students in the school is huge.
The first was a surprise as the national statistics suggest that 95% of children in this age range have mobile phones - and this has been a basis of some of our assumptions. We believe the 40% is related to the sample of students (10 out of 300). We will compiling a full survey of the 300 Year 9 students in the near future to find out if this is a trend across the entire school.
The second point is of much more interest as our current software designs make no use of Bluetooth. We have assumed Bluetooth would only introduce set up issues and complications, especially between different handsets. We are now thinking of ways to engage students using Bluetooth - but still create personal learning spaces.
The high usage of Bluetooth has lead us to think carefully about activation of software. Using Bluetooth means that our software could appear on mobiles who have not paid for the software. As complimentary as this would be is it also an aspect we need to think about to make sure that our ventures and ideas can keep us properly rewarded.