Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Twiddling thumbs: An interview with Phil Gosset, Head of Future Studies R&D at Vodafone (25 Jul 2004) Phil Gosset, Head of Future Studies, R&D at Vodafone explains their position: "We do not actively promote mobile phone use amongst children under the age of 16 as we have committed to observing the recommendations of the Stewart Report in the UK. However we recognise that young people do have mobile phones and are therefore looking into ways with which to help educate them on their responsible use," he explains. "As a communication device that every child carries, it clearly has huge potential," he says, and offers some pointers to the possible future for mobiles in schools: "Vodafone supports the judicial use of mobile phones as an educational tool. It is obviously not ideal for delivering lessons - the screen size is a definite handicap. However, it is useful for discussing homework and in the future could be used for scheduling and delivering reminders. I recently saw a mobile phone being used as a way of remotely assessing comprehension, which is interesting, although it is clearly still early days," he says. Phil also expects to see children making creative use of picture phones. "Having the time, space and incentive to create small works of art using the camera phone, and having a distribution channel at hand and an understanding of how it was done could be very interesting," he says. Article URL: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/viewpoint/art28.htm Read 114 more articles from NESTA Futurelab sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: A Day in the Life of HCI     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy