How do you use cell phones in the classroom?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gerard Jensen on August 10, 2012 at 4:23am

I have an interesting twist to this - and that as a computer trainer rather than as a teacher at a school. I hail from Namibia in Africa, and while we have an extremely high rate of cellphone propagation among all social groups here, most of them do not use "smart" but rather "feature" phones with very limited (and in terms of local buying power: expensive) Internet access.

What they do have, however, are local plans with loads of free SMS they can send around, so one of the ideas I have is to tap into that very limited ability to collect and access information by means of systems like Frontline SMS (http://www.frontlinesms.com/) that are very easy to deploy (take a teacher laptop, connect a 3G modem for Internet connectivity, install Frontline SMS plus an XAMPP stack like http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html on which to run web based applications to which Frontline SMS can interface, give them the cellphone number of the prepaid card you stuck into the 3G modem, and let the kids fire away at it).

Since Frontline SMS (at least in its older version) also allows the creation of "offline forms" (a Java based app is installed on the feature phone, which then sends the contents of a filled-in form again via SMS to the Frontline SMS server - usually as a simple key/value pair that can then be intercepted by scripts you can call on reception of an SMS with a certain keyword), numerous applications of this "student feedback" type of setup are possible.

The question I have (again: as a non-teacher) is: what would your ideas be that you would use such a setup for? Costs obviously are an issue as soon as you want to make that a bi-directional system (SMS sending does not come for free, and setting up an account with a web service that does it for you cheaper may not be an option if you do not own a credit card of some sort and/or sit outside the US). 

Creative ideas on how to get students engaged, collect more data from them (or their parents) easily to ease administration tasks, etc. - what would your idea be, if you can get 160 characters from your students (or more) and/or interact with them with 160 chars in return?

Integration ideas with email services (e.g. GMail - but which one you'd use would basically irrelevant, as long as you can reach the teacher and his laptop with it) also come to mind, so that those using smartphones (which, as in the case with the Apple iPhone, may not be able to use Java based forms - but may very well be capable to call up and send a web form). 

Since we have quite a number of schools in Namibia (all 1700 of them) that currently do not use such "interactive phone engagement" (with virtually every school instead having a policy of prohibiting the use of cellphones - what a waste: on the one hand they desperately wish to use information an communication technology in the classroom, on the other hand they ban the usage of the one ubiquitous ICT device virtually every student runs around with every day), your creativity here could help getting around 700000 school children and around 14000 primary and around 7000 secondary school teachers not only involved in using cellphones as an effective ICT device, but actually to allow things like "flipping the classroom", engaging parents more, allow distance education (mobile learning) for teachers, interact with peers, etc.

What are your thoughts on that, and what potential risks do you see or where would you (as an average teacher and not some tech-savvy computer "freak" like me) start to feel uncomfortable?

Obviously I'd also like to invite you to our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/edunet.namibia/ to engage directly with teachers, parents, university students and a (currently small - but growing) number of public servants in the educational sector of Namibia. My idea is less to "copy and paste" solutions and dump them into the hands of Namibian teachers, but rather to tap into your ideas, present them locally here in Namibia and with that create a spawning ground for lots of creative uses.

So yes: what are your experiences where things work great with phones in the classroom - and where do they become a nuisance rather than an aid in the "daily grind"?

Permalink Reply by Marc Schulz on December 2, 2012 at 3:52pm

I like Gerard idea to use the SMS function. I think would be a great option for students who struggle with writing or perhaps are ELL (English Language Learners) to leave responses. Unlike Gerard situation i believe most of the students in my area have SMS included. If they do not SMS then I could see using the voice memo device and then emailing the link in.

I happen to be in a classroom where all students have a laptop so use of the cell phone for internet is not necessary. But my students do use their phones to tweet, take photos or video, create calendars, and sadly at times to get off task. My rule classroom rule is, any and all technology is allowed at anytime as long as it is being used for educational purposes.