One thing that we don’t hear that much about is the Use of Cell Phones in the Classroom.. We interviewed Liz Korb a Ph.D candidate on the subject and popular blogger at Cell Phones in Learning to see if she could help us to shed some light on the subject.
Cell Phones.org: Give us Some Background about yourself and your studies:
Liz: I am a former classroom social studies teacher and school technology coordinator, so I come from a practical view of teaching and technology. As a technology coordinator, I was very much against using cell phones in learning and in schools. I thought they were distracting and annoying. About four years ago, I was blogging with some teachers and a message showed up on the screen that said, “audioblog from your cell phones.” Curious, I tried it, and found that it was the easiest way to create a podcast. At that point I began to think differently and reconstruct my own definition of cell phones and schools. In fact, it does have the potential to be a learning tool. If you can create an instant podcast, than you could use it to record interviews, you could create radio broadcasts, oral quizzes…etc. Therefore, I began to research the Internet, looking for others who were using basic cell phones in learning. I found nobody. I found some researchers using smartphones and PDAs but I was not interested in that, because most students do not own their own smartphone. They have a basic cell phone w/ text messaging and the ability to take a picture. I did find an article by Marc Prenksy (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants) that emphasized the significance of using cell phones in learning. That was about it. As a result, I started doing projects on my own, in my own teaching, with my own teachers (I teach inservice and preservice teachers at The University of Michigan and Madonna University). I found that there were numerous resources on the Internet that coupled with cell phones (basic cell phones, not smart phones) for free. These resources such as Gcast, Kwiry, Gabcast, ChaCha, Flickr Mobile…allow one to store, collect, and send multimedia via cell phone. I now have a collection of over 300 free resources that couple with cell phones.
Cell Phones.Org: Why would Cell Phones matter in Education?
Liz:
The reason why I think basic cell phones are so vital in education are because
1) Most secondary students have them (about 76% accourding to Speak uP Report 2007)
2) Students love them, and won’t leave home without them
3) Mobile skills will be important in the future workforce
4) Students want to learn anytime, anywhere, anyplace, at any pace
5) They are no or very low cost to schools
6) They bridge the digital divide (using the same tool inside of the classroom as they do outside of the classroom)
7) Turning a social toy into a learning tool
8) It’s an opportunity to Teach students cell phone etiquette and appropriate use.
9) Go Global. Many other nations are already using cell phones in learning (especially in Asia and Africa). Students need to be competitive in the 21st Century digital world.
Cell Phones.org: How can cell phones and mobile technology be used in the classroom?
Liz:
Wow! I could write about 1000 pages on this topic! But to sum it up, I like to call cell phones the Swiss army knife of digital learning tools for the 21st Century student.
They can be utlized both inside and outside of the classroom for learning activities!
Cell phones can be used outside of the classroom to collect data; such as using a cell phone camera to take pictures of scientific phenomena in it’s original habitat and send the images to a private class account on a Flickr site set up by the teacher, or to document a field trip experience by using the cell phone video recorder and taping discoveries, or to interview local authors and create an instant podcast. Assessment can be done through cell phone technology, such as oral quizzes, and text message homework assignments. For example, can you text message a summary of the last chapter we read in English class? Cell phones can also be used to listen to educational radio broadcasts through resources such as Lexy.com or Podlinez.com. Students can participate in geotagging activities that mix geography with content. For example students who are on Spring break and studying ecosystems can take pictures with their cell phone camera of the different species they encounter such as a star fish on the beach and send it to their exact location on a Google map (resources like Flagr.com are helpful in doing this). Then after Spring break is over, the teacher can open up the map to discuss and research why the particular species were found in those locations. Finally, cell phones can be used anytime, anywhere, anyplace, at any pace to gather information. For example using a resource called ChaCha (ChaCha.com) students can call a toll free number, ask any question, and receive a text message with the answer within minutes of asking the question.
Cell phones can become “assistive” technology devices for students with visual impairments. For example with free resources such as Jott.com, VI students can call Jott and say a blog post, and within minutes it will appear on the class blog as a text message (speech to text). Also, VI students can listen to any webapge that has a RSS feed on a cell phone.
Additionally, cell phones are valuable for students with hearing impairments, because they take advantage of text messaging on cell phones to communicate and network in the “spoken world.” For example a free uber-voicemail system such as Grandcentral.com creates automatic transcripts of voicemail messages and sends them to a cell phone.
Cell phones can also be used inside of the classroom for instant polling such as polleverywhere.com, for brainstorming to an interactive web-based screen such as wiffiti.com,or even to help students schedule/organize with resources such as Jott and Google calendar.
Cell Phones.org: What resources are available for educators that want to leverage cell phones in the classroom?
Liz:
There are hundreds of free web-based resources that couple with cell phones to create podcasts, instant polls, text message campaigns, calendars, digital storybooks and much more. You should check out my web blog at cellphonesinlearning.com for a list of the resources. I also have a book coming out in October which gives some research as to why we should be thinking about cell phones in learning, as well as some sample permission forms and examples of teachers using cell phones in learning.
Cell Phones.org: Most people perceive cell phones as being a negative in education – do you think will change? What do you think is needed to affect this change?
Liz:
I think it is starting to change. Historically, education is very slow to adopt new technologies. ten years ago many educators were still against using the Internet for learning, and now it is hard to find an educator who does not use it in some capacity. I believe that the same thing will happen with cell phones, especially as the amount of mobile users in the world continues to grow, I believe more schools will begin to adopt.
I think one of the first things that needs to be done for change is changing educators and societies views on cell phones. To redefine the definition of cell phones—from a social toy to a learning tool. Once educators define cell phone as potential learning tools, it is easier for them to start thinking about learning activities in or outside of schools with cell phones. Since most educators did not grow up using cell phones, they are often uncomfortable with the tools in general (let’s face it, it takes me about 5 minutes to send a text message where as it takes a 14 year old about 5 seconds). Therefore we need professional development to help educators get comfortable with these tools and to model using them as learning tools. I also believe that preservice education has an important role to play in helping entering teachers adopt an inclusive philosophy about using cell phones as a classroom learning tool.
Cell Phones.org:At what point do you think Cell Phones Will be fully integrated into the classroom?
Liz:
I’m not sure that cell phone will ever be fully integrated. Historically, it is hard to find any technology (outside of an overhead projector or whiteboard) that one could say is fully integrated in all schools. However, I don’t think that having 100% of U.S. teachers using cell phones in school on a daily basis is the ultimate goal. I think the goal is to allow cell phones to become an option in teaching and learning, which they really are not in most U.S. schools. If teachers can redefine a cell phone for their students by modeling educative and professional uses at times in their K-12 learning, than when the students enter the workforce, they may be able to more competitive with students from other countries who are already using them as professional tools. Additionally, cell phones allow learning to occur outside of the classroom walls, so they never really need to enter the school building to be effective in engaging learners.
We would like to have our hat in the ring when mentioning services where students can hear lectures, comment on them, bookmark, build community and pass tidbits around as CelleGrams.
It is part of our vision, and we want to start with any university that currently podcasts lectures. We can very easily present a solid list of advantages in cellecasting vs podcasting for the educational arena.
I am a student at Oklahoma State University studying to become a secondary History teacher. I think that a cell phone would be a great educational tool. Most if not all of your students will have cell phones (as stated in the article). However, I don’t think that cell phones will be used effectively because students will always want to use their cell phones to communicate with their friends instead of recording or listening to a podcast. Parents will also be skeptical because the technology is new to them. Small towns in Oklahoma will have students that either donot have a cell phone or have a simple cell phone that basically just makes phone calls, while other students in the same class will have an iphone in their pocket. This would make it hard to keep things fair in the classroom. This is unfortunate because I would love to try and integrate cell phones in my future classroom. these suggestions will be very useful.