Become a Ringleader: Teaching with Text Messaging
When I started experimenting with text messaging, I would text this student or that student, usually one or two at a time. Once I got all my seniors' numbers, though, I decided to try a broadcast. During my class, second period, I talked with the seniors about a variety of topics, so I thought I would follow up on one topic in a text message to all of them.
During third period, I thought of some points I wanted to make, so I gave them a blast. It turns out that the coordinator of our academy has all the seniors during third period. Around the midpoint of her class, every student's cell phone went off, almost simultaneously! She cried out, "The ringing! The ringing!"
After she climbed down from the ceiling, she called my classroom and gave me a dressing down. By the end of the period, though, when she came over to my classroom, she had been thinking about the potential of being able to contact every student at once. To her credit, instead of chewing me out, she walked in with lots of questions about how it worked.
Now, I regularly "ping" our students with updates on schedules, assignment reminders, even wake-up calls, and they answer with questions of their own. They even send me messages regularly to let me know what they are up to. My phone vibrates, though, so I never get "the ringing!"
- Ron Smith's Blog
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Great Post
Great Post
I don't think it is possible
I don't think it is possible to teach with text messaging. There are some other people trying to ruin the teaching by sending other text messages and it will only show a phone number. This however will be possible if you are trying some services that help you track who owns that phone number. Studies show that Free Reverse Cell Phone Lookup Directory Helps Verify Mobile Calls. with this advent of technology, teaching with text messaging might be possible.
Technology is white and sometimes black
I love to read about how you implemented technology in your daily work.
I am inspired by your ideas. The kids I teach for now, are a bit too young, but I have three of my own and I love to keep track of my oldest when he´s not showing up in time. Beth gave us a link to a cell phone lookup. I am not sure why, but if you read my profile, you´ll notice I am dedicated discussing children and security. Here´s a good resource if you find an unknown number on your kids cell phone. You can do a reverse cell phone lookup on any cell number. On a good day I love this world we live in but on a bad day, I wonder where we are going...If you have a look at my profile you´ll understand what I mean. Have a great day.
I have 4 children and I
I have 4 children and I believe that in today's society children are exposed to alot of technology like facebook, phones and texting. Many students and adults spend way to much time on their phones and computers and the hours slip away while on them. Today I feel that everyone is getting less social with texting and facebook. When texting or writing you cannot see the persons emotional response. I see so many people texting people on their birthdays, I remember a time when you enjoyed hearing and talking to people on their birthdays. cell phone lookup | reverse cell phone lookup
Quote: I think that text
I think that text messaging students has its ups and downs. Yes, you can text the students up-dates, wake-up calls, what ever. But, parents would not appeciate the children using cell phones in class when they are supposed to be learning. Some parents would not understand the use of the cell phones and only see cell phones as a nuisance and a way for students to do something other than be in class. If you let the students have their cell phones in class, they will more than likely use them during class time. Other teachers and principals will become upset and angry about the situation with cell phones. In my high school we were allowed to have our cell phones on us but they had to be on silent and we could not get them out during class time.
I agree with this point - to an extent. Children can be disciplined to carry their phones with them at all times while using them only when appropriate. This is my belief. reverse cell phone number lookup|reverse cell phone lookup
Great idea!
I definitely agree with you 97% on this, Ron. I am a Spanish Education college student currently, and I will be teaching a lesson to my colleagues about this very topic. All of the comments that have been posted have given me great insight on using texting in the classroom! The 3% of my hesitancy would be because I'm still learning all the aspects to this new idea, and many viable questions have been brought to my attention. Though, in the past 4.5 years since you wrote this, technology has sky-rocketed. I do look forward to incorporating technology in different forms into my high school Spanish classroom. There are certainly a LOT of great sites out there that allow the type of learning we're looking for. Thank you for posting about this, and I'll continue to look for any other posts you have on the topic!
ESL & Audio recorded on cell phones
Draft, revise, rehearse and perform - thats what I would like to happen & I feel the chance of achieving this by recording their work on the cellphone is high- but can anyone suggest ways to upload to me - to put on our classweb site. I don't have a cell phone - presume they all produce mp3 files. Know we could use video but was trying to start small, building confidence and then - hopefully the sky is the limit.
Look forward to hearing any suggestions you have.
I happen to be a senior this year. I live in a very rural community and it seems like everyone has cell phones these days. The faculty of my highschool can try to ban cell phones all they want but they wont be able to stop teenagers from texting in class. I personally feel that during class time teens should not b texting. But during lunch or in between classes i do not see a problem. They are not disrupting class or anything.
What is the use?
With a title like that you might wonder what my allegiance actually is. Well I don't want to leave any grey area; I am 100% an advocate of using technology in the classroom.
I am a relatively young teacher (23) with a lot of technology experience. Currently I am studying to get my Masters Degree in Education, and just recently focused my thesis on incorporating Small, Personal Electronic Devices in High-School classrooms. The initial results have been fantastic.
My school population is currently more than 78% free and reduced lunch with a very culturally and ethnically diverse population. Even though this school has such a high poverty rate almost every one of my students carries a cell phone (if you want to know more about the reasoning behind this please take a look at the works of Ruby Payne).
Online you can find several sites that allow you to pose questions to your students and get immediate replies via text messages that you can correlate to individuals. You can cross reference each question and determine how each student is replying in each situation. Imagine a set of clickers that is free and that allow your students to communicate in full sentences.
Students can also send text questions to google and other web-based services that will reply with definitions and examples. Phones with built in browsers have access to the internet at the touch of a button.
The question is not if we should let them use it, because they will regardless, but should we take the time to teach our future generations how to use the technology that they have responsibly?
We are all guilt of saying "If only I had the technology." Well, your students have it, why not let them use it!
If you have questions about how to integrate this technology in your classroom please let me know and I will help in anyway I can.
Mr. Fitz