High school teacher Steve Dembo blogs that he is fed up with arguments that keep mobiles out of classrooms because they distract from learning. He writes:
Paper clips are a distraction. Spiral notebooks are a distraction. And as we’ve seen recently, students certainly do NOT need a cell phone to cheat on an exam. So off the top of my head, I decided to rattle off a few things that cell phones could be good for. Such as…
1) Check the spelling/definition of a word
2) Research a topic
3) Look up reference images
4) Pull up maps (even with satellite imagery)
5) Document a science lab with built in digital camera/video
6) Fact check on the fly
7) Mail questions to the teacher that they might be embarrassed to ask
Classroom response system
9) Take quizzes
10) Record and/or listen to podcasts
If you check out the list on Steve’s blog, he will point you to examples for most of his list.
Via The Wired Campus where writer Catherine Rampell invites visitors to send in more ideas.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Plus I use it to demonstrate gender diffs, looking at kept messages, a discourse analysis opportunity.
Plus as a game for showing how small the world is; how quickly we can ping a message around the world.