Mobile Learning Lab

Tai Kimmerly

Tammy Maginity

CEP-812 - Apply Educational Technology to Practice

08/07/11

Mobile Learning Lab

      Honestly, I have absolutely no idea how I could involve cellular phones in my classroom in a meaningful and useful way. I see my students two or three times per week, and most of them do not have cell phones. I would actually have to buy a classroom set. I can think of many other things that I would purchase for my classroom before I would buy a set of cell phones. That being said, I would love to see how other music teachers use them in their classrooms. Maybe I am missing some wonderful application for them. Someone else in the class recently pointed out to me that he saw a concert where students did a rendition of a popular song on ipads. I am sure a similar thing can be done on phones as well. In the Cell Phones in Education group, I reached out to other music teachers to see what they have done with cell phones in their classrooms.

      In the polling section of this lab, I read about how teachers use cell phones to ask students questions through text messages. Maybe I am a 27 year old dinosaur, but I don’t have texting on my phone. I am cheap and do not want to pay the extra 5 dollars per month to become addicted to typing with my thumbs. That is exactly what would happen. I have however, done similar things with student clickers and it has worked very well. Since I do not have texting on my phone, I did not text the following survey to anyone:

 

      One thing that I do see as a possibility with mobile technology is the ability to text concert reminders to my parents. Right now, I send home countless reminders every year in paper form. I also send out reminders in the school news letter, email, class newsletters and planner reminders. However, I still get parents that tell me they never received the information. Maybe if they received a text message, they could immediately put the date into their personal calendars.