Teachers Use Cell Phones to Tweet at Movies!

In order to help students improve their writing skills (and thinking around writing & literacy), principle Kipp Rogers at Passages Middle School in Virginia decided to have his teachers do an activity with their cell phones at the movie theater! Yes! They were asked to turn on their cell phones and text message to twitter during the movie Julie & Julia.

Your DailyBooth: PhotoTweeting for Classroom Learning

I have a few favorite sites that couple with my cell phone camera for posting images to the web. Three of my favorites are Pixelpipe, Photobucket and Flickr. I now have a fourth. It is called DailyBooth. DailyBooth is a "twitter" environment for photos. It is incredibly easy to set up and use. Once you create an account, you get a mobile email address where you can send pictures from any cell phone! The pictures appear just like twitter posts. The pictures appear instantly and with optional text. There are also some nice privacy settings on DailyBooth. I really like that you only need to set up one account and can use it with all of the student cell phones (thus no need for student accounts and the teacher can have control over editing).

Classroom Integration
Homework
The very first thing I thought of when I was playing with DailyBooth was image-based homework assignments! Students could easily capture images of everyday culture that reflects classroom learning. For example, students in a biology class could take pictures of different types of species they encounter everyday and send it to the class Dailybooth feed. They could comment on each others images to have an academic discussion on the images.

Image-Based Storytelling
Students could post mobile images to create a storybook. Especially if each student had their own DailyBooth account, they could have their own storybook (and it would be created in the moment--in real time).

Storyboarding
What a fun way to create a storyboard for a video project by texting in images and text describing the different scenes.

School Current Events/News Feed
With parents permission, the school could create a DailyBooth Image feed of school activities and events. Parents could follow and stay up to date as well as comment.

Research Report
Yes! I did say research report---twitter style! Students could put together their own inquiry-based image project to research a topic, provide evidence and a conclusion. For example they could use images to describe what they believe to be the greatest cause of the current economic crisis in the U.S.. Or evidence of whether or not global warming is a real phenomena. Images can be a powerful way to present a well-thought out research study.

Homework Quizes Via Phonevite

Wow! I'm really enjoying the ease of a resource called Phonevite. Phonevite allows you to record a message, send it to 25 people at one time on a scheduled time! You can also request an "RSVP" or "Message-Back". Therefore after recipiants hear the message on their phone, they are asked to immediately reply. The message can go back to the teachers' Phonevite private account where all the messages are compiled. The "RSVP" messages are multiple choice options (think quick multiple choice reviews--on the fly!), while the "Message-Back" messages are open-ended replies (this speaking quizzes, exams, reviews, discussions, summaries, elaborations, and speeches). In addition your original recordings are all saved in Phonevite so that you could send out the same recording message to different groups of students every school year (no need to reinvent the wheel!).

Accessibility for those without cell phones because Phonevite works with a landline, cell phone, or computer microphone to record. Phonevite also calls you! Rather than having to worry about dialing a long distance number, Phonevite will do the calling. In addition if students do not have access to a phone at all, they can receive the Phonevite messages via email (it appears as an MP3 file).

Limitations for Free Account: With the Free Account you can program a broadcast to up to 25 contacts (up to twice every 30 days).

Classroom Applications!
Quizzes and Exams
This is a wonderful tool for any type of speaking quiz or oral exam. You could tell students when to expect the quiz (since you can schedule a time) or you can do some "quizzes on the fly" by sending them out randomly. Because students need to respond immediately, they need to be prepared for the quiz that might come their way!

Homework Reviews
Instead of asking students to respond to the questions in the back of the book, we could do some homework questions or summaries orally via Phonevite.