What are your experiences with using cell phones in the classroom?

I recently blogged about The Value of Using Cell Phones to Enhance Education and Some Concre.... I was contacted by a reporter in relation to my post who asked me if I knew of educators who were using cell phones to enhance instruction and if so what was their experience, and if not, why not? I told the reporter I wasn’t sure, but I could find out. So, is anyone actually doing this and if so, how’s it going???

The story will be released Friday in conjunction with a class we offer on using sms in instruction. I will update this discussion with a link when that happens.

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Nielsen on May 15, 2008 at 11:46am

I wonder if silence around this issue means nobody's doing it or nobody wants to talk about doing it?

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Branzburg on May 15, 2008 at 5:45pm

Hi Lisa

The person I know of who is extremely knowledgeable about the use of cell phones in education is Liz Kolb; her blog, "From Toy to Tool - Cell Phones in Learning" is at http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/. She has a book on the topic coming out in the fall.

Jeff

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Nielsen on May 16, 2008 at 8:15am

Oh. Fabulous. I actually share that in my post as a resource to use.

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Nielsen on May 16, 2008 at 8:14am

Here's the NY Sun Piece on this issue.
Despite School Cell Phone Ban, Course Sees Them as Aid

The blog post is at The Value of Using Cell Phones to Enhance Education and Some Concre...

By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | May 16, 2008

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Nielsen on May 18, 2008 at 10:54am

Here is the Cell Phones to Enhance Education - Update . It's a new post style for me. I hope people find it interesting.

I'd love to find people's actual experiences incorporating the use of Google SMS or ways of using cells for education. If you are doing this, please share.

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Mirtschin on May 18, 2008 at 3:24pm

Hi Lisa I have just started using cell phones (we call them mobile phones) We are commencing digital storytelling and even though phones are banned in our school, everyone has them. So what a valuable resource!! They are taking their photos and videos with them, and downloading them using bluetooth through one of our interactive whiteboards. We will try podcasting next for those students who have recorders on their phones. I also used them last year for exam preparation. At a designated time, (8pm), when sms were mostly free, they all asked each other a question (via sms) and their colleague had to reply with the answer. Some students continued firing questions at each other for 15 mins or more. Some even gave each other a mark!! I teach with jess mcculloch who has also been trialling some interesting uses. See her post at http://www.technolote.com/?p=234

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Permalink Reply by Shuchi Grover on May 20, 2008 at 6:01am

You may find this article interesting, Lisa. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/do_mobile_games_have_a_place_i.... Incidentally Eric Klopfer's group at the MIT Media has done a lot of stuff with handhelds in the classroom. I guess cell phones are a logical next step for those apps...

Also, a while ago there was a discussion about this on a forum of educators in India. Here are their thoughts on the subject - http://educatorslogin.com/using_mobile_phones_for_education

-Shuchi

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Permalink Reply by Sue Palmer on May 20, 2008 at 2:06pm

I am very interested in using cell phones with my students to create simple podcasts with Gabcast. One of the problems I have encountered is that our students have to pay for minutes. How do we deal with the fact that their is a cost associated with this? Texting also costs money? My district is very interested in letting me do this with my students, but concerned about the issue of cost.

How is this being handled in your situations? Is this an issue?

Sue

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Permalink Reply by Carol Good on March 17, 2009 at 11:03pm

Hi Lisa,

I don't know if you are still looking for feedback on this or not, but it popped as a hit in my research to implement cellphones farther into my classroom. I just started playing with technology in classes. I'm using them in conjunction with polleverywhere.com which allows for instant feedback from students during class. One of the major issues I ran into nearly immediately is with a specific cell carrier... Cricket phones do not allow text messages to be sent to the online source. Some students were able to use the SMS aspect while others weren't able to accomplish the send. Additionally, even though teachers tend to assume that ALL students have a cellphone, this is NOT the case. By asking who had cellphones and who had text messaging the day before I began using them in class, I was able to plan the activity to be a paired response.