SMARTPHONE. A LABORATORY IN YOUR POCKET

The development experienced by smartphones in the last two decades is spectacular and everything seems to indicate that the phenomenon has only just begun. Never before has an invention had so much impact on individual and collective life, and so much so that today our agenda, our business, our payments, our travel guide, our relationships, our entertainment and even our information depend almost entirely on our phone.
Parallel to the development of mobile telephony, an important line of research has opened up in the Didactics of Experimental Sciences aimed at exploiting the possibilities of smartphones in science learning.
This book offers teachers, educators and students a perspective of smartphones as an effective teaching-learning tool for science, quite contrary to the negative conception of them as distracting elements and as agents causing many youth conflicts. Throughout the chapters of this work, a new vision of these devices has been offered, presenting them as stimulating resources for learning by experimenting, measuring or classifying in different scientific disciplines.

NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mariano Merino is Professor of Didactics of Experimental Sciences and a pioneer in his area of knowledge. He is a founding member of the Physics and Chemistry Teaching Section of the Spanish Royal Society of Physics. He has directed eight doctoral theses on science didactics, mostly on the school laboratory as a teaching tool and has published several books and numerous articles on this subject.
His research and innovation work has been recognized on several occasions. By the General Council of Colleges of Doctors and Graduates with the Award for Pedagogical Research and Didactic Experiences in Science in 1985, 1990 and 1998. The Royal Spanish Society of Physics awarded him the Physics Teaching Award in 2001. He represented Spain at the 2002 Physics on Stage international meeting held at CERN (Geneva) and the Royal Academy of Doctors of Spain awarded the 2010 Prize to the last doctoral thesis directed by him. He is currently an honorary member of the Spanish Royal Society of Physics.
He has recently published Logos y Cosmos, a book on cosmology and scientific epistemology, as well as an essay on medieval engineering entitled Artes Mecánicas Medievales, both published by the University of Valladolid.