Answered Questions

Interesting topic!

First, because the usage of portable, electronic wireless devices in the classroom is a very current topic, you may not be able to find a lot of information at this time. The peer review process can be lengthy and sometimes it takes a little while for the research to catch up with the times!  

That being said, I searched in some of our education databases and found some interesting results you may be able to utilize. I used the LibGuide for Advanced Education Research and clicked on the Middle Grades tab. From there I clicked into the databases suggested.

My first search was in the Professional Development Collection database offered by EBSCO. Often, less is more when searching - the more search terms you utilize the more confused a database seems to get. I thought to try specific wireless devices first, as that would yield different results than a general search for wireless devices.

I did a boolean search for middle AND ipad and came up with several results. The articles were only from 2010 until 2012, illustrating how new a topic this is and, while some were in well-recognized trade publications such as School Library Journal, none are peer reviewed. A search for middle AND iphone only led me to one trade result.  

My next search was for middle AND laptop. NOW we have some scholarly results! There are some strong results here regarding wireless access for students, getting rid of traditional textbooks and the benefits of multimedia in the middle grades classroom.

A search for middle AND wireless led to many results on cyberbullying on the first page, but on the second page of results you will see a few articles that have promise.

The strongest search I tried was wireless AND classroom in the Professional Development Collection. This search gave me 106 scholarly results. While the research here may not be specifically focused on the use of wireless devices in middle grades education, that is not a problem when writing a thesis. What you will be doing is utilizing the broad spectrum of knowledge that has been gathered about wireless devices in the classroom in general and then applying what you know of education to show how it applies to middle grades students. A synthesis of knowledge!

You can take these same search terms and try them in the other education databases as well - ERIC at EBSCOhost and the Education Journals collection at ProQuest. You could also try them in Academic Search Complete, a broad subject database, but one with the largest collection of journals in one location.

Many of the results are full text, however some you will need to interlibrary loan. There is a "Request Information Delivery" button beneath those items and we can usually have items to you within two weeks.

I hope this information has been helpful to you!