in the classroom. Just from the infographic, it is evident that more than 70 percent of principals and administrators use smartphones and more than half use tablets. With district instructional technology budgets lower than past years, the greatest concern of education leaders is adequate funding. To solve the budget situation, administrators are (46%) using digital textbooks and (42%) using tablets in place of laptops. Principals say that the benefits of using student-owned mobile devices are: (80%) increase student engagement, (58%) extend learning beyond school day, (58%) provide way to personalize instruction, (54%) provide access to e-textbooks, and (45%) improves teacher technology skills. Their concerns for using student-owned mobile devices are: (50%) theft, (45%) network security, (43%) teachers are not trained, (43%) not every student has a device, and (40%) devices could be a distraction. (Speak Up, 2011) An article from THE Journal complements the data from Speak Up nicely with a narrative. The title of the article is Top 5 K-12 E-Learning Trends, and “Cutting the Wires: More Mobile Learning” is the first subheading. Julie Evans, the CEO from Project Tomorrow, a national educational non-profit in California, is quoted in the article, saying that the “leveraging of small, portable devices to facilitate anytime, anywhere, un-tethered learning” is popular right now. It offers the benefits from the 1:1 laptop programs for a lower cost. (McCrea, 2012) The National Primer on K-12 Online Learning by iNACOL also recognizes mobile learning as “the art of using mobile technologies to enhance learning experiences” and predicts that “smartphones have become a viable way to access the Internet and their popularity will likely increase, becoming the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020. Smartphones have introduced the concept of the phone “app” which, in some cases, provides an alternative to a browser for accessing Internet content. The changes in how
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