In case you haven’t heard, the University of Leeds will loan iPhones with pre-load applications and textbooks to all fourth and fifth year medical students to help them connect to their fellow-students and teachers, so that they can be informed and share knowledge and doubts: of course, smartphones are changing the way we communicate and work and have become a very attractive and powerful learning and sharing tool. Most of us who already have an iPhone, Blackberry or any other Smartphone, are used to collaborate, to work while we are not in the office not being probably aware how much this is changing the way we work and communicate. We don’t have a plan or haven’t organize any kind of workflow or collaboration structure, but we are using our Smartphones to monitor and participate on what is going on while not in the working space, let’s not forget collaboration is a basic human instinct to prevail.
Truth is we are making our daily life more and more collaborative with most of the gadgets we have, but Smartphones are really leading the way into connecting a
nd co-working, and there is a real need, as we have already stated, to provide shareholders with the right tools to engage and be always on a real-time schedule.
No matter if you use your Smartphone to email, to adjust your agenda, to plan, to communicate via instant messages, to read the news, to monitor your team, to send and share files, to receive and send updates, to text or just to call, you are collaborating, you are interacting with others to pursue a goal and you need to know as well as to share what you know.
So, is it new that students use their Smartphones to learn and share? Since they had their first mobile phone, the answer is no, but the key is how much they can do with a Smartphone now with all the e-learning applications and tools to communicate and work. For those who think the iPhone loan to medical students is a waste, I would only say that investing on the future can only be an advantage, and the future is Communication, Co-work and Collaboration 2.0
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