Moblogging

[Karen Richardson]

I must say up front that I start feeling my age when people talk about using cell phones in education. Prensky did not convince me at last year's VSTE keynote, especially when I read the article in Education Week about students using the phones to record teachers in less than flattering moments and then posting them to the YouTube.

Then, Hall Davidson showed two great uses of cell phones, one using Gcast to have folks record their responses on a website and another using text messaging to tell six-word stories. And, I started thinking how they might be useful, still concerned very much with the ethical issues.

This morning, this article from Converge about "moblogging" or blogging from your cell phone attracted my attention. The example they use is a teacher who uses his cell phone to capture moments in the classroom and the scouting program in which he is involved. It's a really interesting idea and left me wondering how we transfer moblogging to students. Again, it's really the ethics that are at issue, I think. In my mind, integrity is probably the most important 21st century skill. What does integrity mean to me? It means taking that moment to think before recording, think before posting. It's not a "new" skill, but in this day of push button publishing it is more necessary than ever.

[Rachel G]

"Moblogging"- clever term!

Another ethical issue that cell phones bring into the classroom is the temptation for cheating--- text messaging answers or storing information on the cell phone used to be the main concerns for teachers, but now students can even access the internet from their cell phones or store entire word documents on some models.

[Michael Scott]

Cell phones in education? I can cut my front yard with a pair of scissors, but that doesn't make them an appropriate tool for the job. I've seen a number of clever instructional things that people do with cell phones that can be adapted for a classroom,,, but the use of that particular device is clearly geared for something other than instruction in a classroom. My personal view is that whenever a technology has dual purposes, and the main purpose is peer communication, the use of the device for other purposes is quite likely to take the back seat to an instructional use. Consequently, I think the decision to integrate cell phone technology into a general classroom probably also includes comprehensive mental health treatment. Do we provide cell plans for students? Do we require them to have a cell phone? Assuming that all of our students have this resource, what are the consequences of uploading and sharing information to balance on the account of the student. Exactly what do I gain for particular learning objective by using this technology compared to something else? In terms of instruction, I have many tools at my disposal that allow me collaborate, share, use digital imaging, communicate and none of them have the drawbacks of the the aforementioned device.

Also remember,,, If we require or have an expectation of internet use of cell phones at school or for school projects, I'm pretty sure CIPA comes into play. If a student accesses web resources in that manner under the directive of the school, I'm pretty sure we are require to have a safe environment and I know of no way to control that.

Sorry to be a buzz kill on this issue..... .but geeze the negatives on this are so vast compared to the positives, I just don't see it becoming a common tool.

[Karen Richardson]

Way to be a buzz kill, Mike ;-) Seriously, I don't disagree with most of what you say...I particularly like your comparison to cutting your front yard with a pair of scissors. And, your comments about how to consider the important aspects of how a technology fits in the classroom are right on and can be applied to more than just cell phones.

At this point, I think the ethical/CIPA issues outweight the benefits, but I was just talking to a teacher in a school division who ended up using cell phones as a way to share and store data for a project because it was the most ubiquitous technology available to the students. If you were in a situation where you didn't have all those tools at your disposal, the cell phone, with its built in camera, video, and web, can fill in for many of those tools. I think at the K-12 level, it's got a long way to go, but for someone like me at the college level, I'm wondering how I can take advantage of it to engage my students. I'm lucky as I don't have to worry about the CIPA problem.