texting in class

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How Teachers Make Cell Phones Work in the Classroom

May 10, 2012 | 1:23 PM | By

Erin Scott

A.P. Chemistry students use their cell phones to answer their teacher's question.

When we talk about using cell phones in class, we’re not just talking about using cell phones in class.

The idea of mobile learning touches on just about every subject that any technology addresses: social media, digital citizenship, content-knowledge versus skill-building, Internet filtering and safety laws, teaching techniques, bring-your-own-device policies, school budgets.

At its core, the issues associated with mobile learning get to the very fundamentals of what happens in class everyday. At their best, cell phones and mobile devices seamlessly facilitate what students and teachers already do in thriving, inspiring classrooms. Students communicate and collaborate with each other and the teacher. They apply facts and information they’ve found to formulate or back up their ideas. They create projects to deepen their understanding, association with, and presentation of ideas.

Guide to Mobile Learning

This is part four of a series exploring mobile learning co-produced by MindShift and Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning.

Other posts in this series include:

In the most ideal class settings, mobile devices disappear into the background, like markers and whiteboards, pencil and paper – not because they’re not being used, but because they’re simply tools, a means to an end. The “end” can be any number of things: to gauge student understanding of a concept, to capture notes and ideas to be used and studied later, to calculate, to communicate, to express ideas.

WHEN IT WORKS

In Ramsey Musallam’s A.P. Chemistry class at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco, cell phones are a natural extension of the way he communicates with his students.

As soon as kids walk in, Musallam sends out a text blast through Remind101, asking them a challenge question that’s related to the day’s lesson. “First person to tell me the units on K for a second order reaction gets chocolate,” he types and sends off. His students know he does this regularly, so they’re constantly anticipating the question during the day, in and out of class.

“Sure, that’s kind of cute,” he says, admitting that it can be seen as gimmicky. “But more importantly, in my mind that’s saying, ‘You’re carrying around something that I can contact you with.’ It’s a fun ways to stay motivated in our day, which can be pretty dry sometimes. It’s a chance to think about what we’re learning outside the context of state testing.”

“I want it to be as rich and as visual as possible. I want them to see things, not just know it.”

Once the class settles in and things are rolling along, the steady hum gets louder when kids are excited or working together, then quieter again when they’re working out problems on their individual little whiteboards (to be clear, these are not digital).

Musallam constantly walks around, sending out directives – “Write the answer on your table!” ““I Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, cell phones, mobile, Mobile Learning, Mobile Learning Series, Remind101, texting in class

New Etiquette for Using Tech, In and Out of Class

December 15, 2011 | 2:00 PM | By

Lenny Gonzales

By Doug Ward

If you want to see a teacher fume, just bring up the topic of cell phones in class.

Technology, especially social media and text messaging, competes for students’ attention as never before. When half of social media users say they check messages from bed, and 11 percent of those 25 or younger are willing to interrupt sex for a Twitter or Facebook message, what chance do teachers have of keeping students’ attention in class?

Then again, teachers often have their own problems paying attention.

We chide students for texting in class but then encourage them to tweet. We force students to put away their phones when we lead class discussions but then immerse ourselves in our own screens when colleagues speak. At meetings of all sorts, we have accepted a new posture: heads down, fingers tapping out words, eyes awaiting responses. Faculty members have adopted many of the same habits they condemn in their students.

We want students to be engaged because it fosters learning. And yet the rules of engagement are changing — in education, in business, in life.

It seems, then, that everyone, teachers and students alike, need to find new ground rules on how to engage when real and online life collide. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, multitasking, texting in class, Twitter

The Rise (and Fall?) of Text Messaging in Schools

October 18, 2011 | 11:33 AM | By

Getty

Over the last few months, there has been increased interest in using text-messaging at school. Although many schools do still have strict policies that forbid using cell phones in class, more are exploring ways to use text-messaging as a communication tool to bridge home and school.

There’s also been an explosion in new tech start-ups that offer services for just this purpose. They’re taking advantage of students’ and families’ access to cell phones, but more importantly perhaps, they’re tapping into the popularity of text-messaging among teens. They’re also working to make sure that the SMS communication is safe, that both student and teacher privacy is protected, and that records are kept so that any inappropriate behavior can be identified. Some of these startups include Remind 101, Cel.ly, and Snapp School. (You can read more about Cel.ly here.)

Just as text messaging may be on the cusp of widespread adoption in schools, there are rumblings in other sectors that it’s dead.

Interesting, at some of the most recent Startup Weekend EDUs — an event that brings together educators, engineers, and entrepreneurs to launch education startups over the course of a weekend — winning teams have built text-messaging apps: ClassParrot was the winner of the recent Mega Startup Weekend in Mountain View, and Text2Teach won first prize at Seattle’s Startup Weekend.

It’s an indication that text-messaging is becoming recognized as a powerful tool that schools should find a way to use. It’s one that can keep students engaged in class (though that idea Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Teaching With Tech, celly, Startup Weekend, texting in class

Seven Questions to Ask About Texting in Class

May 10, 2011 | 10:03 AM | By

Getty

Despite their ubiquity among students, mobile phones are still viewed as contraband in most classrooms. Students are told to turn their phones off, leave them in their lockers, or leave them at home. This response to what is arguably the most ubiquitous 1-to-1 computing device available in our schools today undoubtedly led many students to list bans on mobile phones as one of the biggest obstacles to technology use in the recent Speak Up 2010 report.

That same report also indicated that parents and students were paying for these devices themselves — and were more than willing to purchase data plans if mobile phones would be accepted in the classroom. This willingness on the part of parents to subsidize technology in the classroom could free up valuable school funds for purposes other than buying hardware. If for no other reason, this may be cause to think twice about blanket bans on mobile phones in the classroom.

Meanwhile, a number of projects underway are moving forward in exploring how these devices can be used for educational purposes in countries outside the U.S. where there are far fewer computers per household.

The World Bank‘s ICT and education specialist Michael Trucano recently highlighted a number of interesting pilot projects in Pakistan that are demonstrating how those with even very low-end mobile phones can leverage these devices to open up new learning opportunities.

Trucano describes a project at Asghar Mall College in Rawalapindi where students receive a daily vocabulary quiz via SMS (mobile phone text). The multiple choice quiz is addressed to each student individually. The students reply to the quiz via SMS, then receive an automated response based on their answer. This response notes whether or not the student was correct, and uses the correct answer in a sample sentence.

“This sort of thing is no substitute for school, of course,” writes Trucano. “But, given current test messaging rates in Pakistan — a country with some of the fastest growth in recent years in text messaging in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as some of the lowest tarif rates — it is quite cheap. It is ‘on-the-go.’ It is supplemental to what is being taught in the classroom, and increasingly easy to do, given the technology tools and code base out there. While Pakistan may not see high household penetration rates of desktop computers connected to the Internet for many, many years to come, most every household already has access to a small connected ‘computer’ of a different sort — the mobile phone — and this project is seeking to capitalize on this reality.”

Trucano also notes that some of these students may have been educated in very large, lecture-based classrooms up until now, and the feedback via SMS may be their first experience with this sort of “personalized” response.

In that vein, some questions to consider: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, Mobile Learning, texting in class