As I did with a larger class last semester I just surveyed my current class on their use of mobile devices and various online tools. Whereas the large class represented students from 3 out of 4 faculties at MPOW the survey results below are from a current class of only 14 School of IT students taking a level 2/3 IT subject – advanced web applications.
As might be expected the group is heavily PC-centric and between them no tablets or e-readers are to be found. Laptops dominate netbooks. The 57% smartphone usage is close to double that found last semester (32%).
Virtually all (93%) use web-based email with Gmail (57%) being dominant (it was Live mail well ahead last semester at 72%).
My third chart has no equivalent last semester. The 93% using social networking is no surprise. Use of blogs and wikis (even if mainly for reading) is higher than I would have imagined. Obviously geolocation sites are becoming important more quickly than I expected. Use of microblogs (mainly Twitter) remains disappointingly low.
A final question asked for their popular sites visited regularly. I am still teasing out this information as it contains many software development sites that are new to me and need investigation.
