Influence of Age and Training on Planning Instruction Using Mobiles Phones by Pre-service Social Studies Teachers

Abstract

Effective planning of instruction enables the teacher to set out different strategies that can make both teachers and students achieve stated objectives. Teachers are expected to put a lot of effort into planning their instruction, and with the emergence of different technologies (hardware/software), planning can be done with considerable ease. These technologies such as computers, mobile phones, tablets, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and so on create a platform for teachers to explore, gather facts, sort, edit and re-arrange information about a topic before teaching it. Therefore, in this study, pre-service social studies teachers were trained on how to plan instruction using the Mobiles, this was done using a Mobile Learning Lesson Plan (MLLP) template, the influence of age on how pre-service teachers plan instructions using mobiles was also examined. The template is a blueprint of what is to be taught using the mobile phone, it enables teachers to organise, plan, design, and evaluate the lesson effectively. The results show that after the training, the pre-service social studies teachers were able to acquire requisite skills to plan instruction using mobile phones. Also, age does not significantly influence on the ability of pre-service social studies teachers to plan instruction using mobiles.