Students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the use of cell phones as instructional tools for teaching and learning in Senior High Schools at the Ejisu Municipality of Ashanti Region

Abstract

The poor performance of students in WASSCE is cause for concern. Various factors such as teachers’ mastery of the subject and the pedagogical strategies used have been widely reported as the main causes of the low performance of students in the exams. Mobile device is a common sight today in our schools as you see students going to school/class with some of the most expensive and sophisticated mobile phones, tablets and ipads that has all the applications, facilities and software that can connect them to the internet and all forms of social media platforms, other web sites and so on, where they chat, access, stream, download, upload, exchange and play different kinds of media contents. Objectives of the study are to establish if students own and use mobile device on their campuses, determine the pattern of mobile device use among students of senior high school, determine if the use of mobile device in senior high schools have significant impact on students’ learning, determine if the use of mobile device in senior high school effect student’s achievement. A well-resourced mobile learning facility must be constructed by government, Parents and Teachers Association in each school and schools with it already must be improved, and it should be manager by well-trained facilitators to assist student in other to have the maximum benefit of the use of mobile devices. There should be a dedicated period for the facilitators to train and also sensitize students on the effect/ appropriate use of the device aside they assisting them to use for academic performance. Students are to be made to take more active role in the use of mobile device for learning specially department like science should be encourage to use in class with their teachers and teachers must be train to use more videos and audio lessons. Curriculum planners should consider student learning style base on this content developers and programmers should design and develop educational mobile phones.