Week 10: Everybody's got one!

Everybody's got one of what? A mobile phone! In the Student Tech Survey conducted by Computer Services last fall, 97% of respondents indicated they had a mobile phone with them on campus.

While there are benefits and disadvantages to the proliferation of student mobile phones and devices, I'm going to approach this week's post with a few positive ways to take advantage of the ever-connected student body.

Texting:
Have you had an instance where sending a text to students would be extremely convenient, but you simply don't want to give out your mobile phone number to the class? Enter remind.  Remind is a web-based texting tool. You create an account or login using your Google account, then create a class. You'll get a URL to email to your class. The students in your class subscribe to your messages by supplying their mobile numbers. You can then type a message to send to all students. You can remove people from your class list, and you can schedule text messages for future delivery. Check it out at www.remind.com
  
Polling/Surveying/Quizzing
You can create on-the-fly poll questions, quiz questions or in-class surveys using Poll Everywhere.  When you create a question, the site provides a unique number and code for texting results. Students follow the directions for submitting a response, and answers are immediately recorded. You can embed the questions into a PowerPoint or you can simply present them from the Poll Everywhere interface.

Sharing/Capturing
Dropbox is "a place for all your stuff, wherever you are." It's a cloud-based file storage system. Dropbox also has the option of sharing all or some of your stuff. "What does this have to do with my students bringing mobile phones to class?" you ask. Well, let's say you're an avid user of the white boards in your classroom. And let's say you just spent the last 50 minutes composing the most incredibly brilliant collection of notes on that white board. Instead of simply erasing it before the next class starts, you could set up a shared folder on Dropbox for class notes, then ask a student to capture the notes with a mobile phone and put the image in the shared Dropbox folder. It's quick and immediate.

How do you use your own phone for productivity? Do you have a policy regarding mobile phones in your classroom? Do you have other tips to share regarding students and their mobile phones?