MOBILE TRAINING TECHNOLOGIES IN THE PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR THE PROSPECTIVE RIVER AND MARITIME TRANSPORT SPECIALISTS

The article outlines the issue of professional training for the prospective river and maritime transport specialists by means of modern mobile technologies. The author analyzes mobile apps in app stores for Google Android, Apple iOS, and Windows Mobile Devices in order to find out the opportunities and prospects for mobile training of prospective maritime transport specialists. The study shows that the programmes and products for maritime specialists available in the Google Play, App Store, and Microsoft Store mobile app stores can be used for educational purposes. According to their purpose, these programmes are divided into the following groups: foreign language study programmes, seafarers' guides and dictionaries, professional test simulators, job search and maritime recruitment programmes, navigation programmes and maps, electronic watch logs, notebooks and seamen's planners, seafarers guides, seamen's health monitoring programmes, imitating maritime instrumentation devices, weather forecasting applications, seamen's informers about wind, waves, weather and tides. The author also analyses the possibilities of using smartphone sensors for fixing motion and time intervals for controlling the sequence of events or processes, for measuring various environmental parameters, for studying parameters of light, sound, acceleration, atmospheric pressure, etc. Based on mobile app analysis and Kherson State Maritime Academy student survey on the use of mobile devices in the study, it has been concluded that Google Play store programmes are effective in the process of prospective river and maritime transport specialists training due to their great variety, free of charge and the convenience of the app store itself.