Whitney Gaddis

FRIT 7232
Fall 2016
Article Critique

Article Reference
Domingo, M. G., & Gargant, A. B. (2016). Full length article: Exploring the use of educational
technology in primary education: Teachers' perception of mobile technology learning
impacts and applications' use in the classroom. Computers In Human Behavior, 5621-28.
doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.023

Article Summary
This study focuses on teachers perceptions of mobile technology and its impact on the learning
process. Data was collected from twelve schools located in Spain, which have completely
integrated educational technology in their schools. Each of the twelve schools provided the best
possible technological conditions to their members that included at least thirty tablets available
to be used complete with internet access, and more than eighty educational apps in all curricular
areas. One hundred and two teachers from the twelve schools were surveyed. The surveys
collected data of teachers perceptions focused in five different kinds of impacts of mobile
technology in learning. The five areas are providing new ways to learn, increasing engagement to
learning, fostering autonomous learning, facilitating access to information, and promoting
collaborative learning. The data was then analyzed. The findings provide significant information
on the impact of learning that teachers perceive with the use of mobile technology in the
classroom. Teachers feel that with the use of mobile technology, children have the opportunity to
explore what they are learning from a variety of different perspectives. The survey also revealed
that teachers feel that mobile technology is linked with the improvement of student engagement.
This study also shows that the apps teachers feel are most useful are content learning apps and
the apps that they feel impact learning are learning skills and informational management apps.

Article Critique
I found this study to be very interesting. I believe that it is very important to not only study the
impact of mobile technology but it is equally important to study teachers perceptions of the use
of mobile technology and how it is used in their classrooms. I felt that this study was very well
performed; however the study has two limitations. The first limitation is that there were a limited
number of apps used in this study. There are many more types of apps and app categories that
should have been included in this study. Because of this, the findings of this study would be very
different, had teachers been able to include other types of apps that they view as useful and
impact learning. Another limitation of this study is that the sample is not large enough and does
not truly represent a population. More researches need to be conducted for the data to be
considered more reliable and valid. Something that could have changed the results of this study
would be if the research was performed in only one content area. I feel that this would have
provided a clearer look at teachers true perceptions of mobile data.