What I look like when homework is not handed in. Apparently.

I have been thinking about using mobile devices in the classroom for a long time. Doug Belshaw and I used them to great success with Twitter and presented our findings at the National Schools History Project conference in 2008. The students found it very useful in terms of revision or asking questions quickly (I hasten to add this was sanctioned by the Headmistress at my previous school and at no time did I see the students’ ‘phone numbers). Twitter then removed its free text message service and the project had to dropped. I’ve gone on to use mobile devices in many ways, drawing on the work of many other educators but have still felt that I was not really tackling the issues within my classroom.

For me, they revolve around two key areas:

1) Organisation – how can I help my students become more organised in terms of accessing work set, completing it and reviewing their progress?  If possible, I want to link into the work on Assessing Pupil Progress mentioned in the last issue of Teaching History.

2) Collaboration – how can I get the students to work with each other inside and outside the classroom to create a piece of historical work that would remove the constraints we face in terms of time and location? Mobile technology, especially with the use of GPS data tagged to photos or uploading videos creates all kinds of interesting activities for field trips for example.

You will notice that History as such is not really mentioned and that is simply because that is my job not the role of the technology. I may be overstating the obvious here but sometimes, just sometimes, technology is viewed as the panacea to the problem in front of us. The two issues identified above are not really major problems in that they can be overcome using traditional methods (review sheets with target grades on, sharing pictures of visits once we get back to the classroom or my transformation into Megatron* wrecking havoc on pupils who dare to hand homework in late because they forgot it was set). However, I would like to try and claim back some of the time spent becoming the leader of the Decepticons and being the teacher who is able to create engaging activities.

In terms of what devices/technologies we will use, I’m pretty sure we will cover the iPhone/iPod Touch/Blackberry as the main devices (as this is what many of the students already have) but basically any device that has unlimited data connections. Moodle and a few other tools will be used too but that will require some work with the ICT dept. If anyone has any other ideas about how to promote learning using mobile devices, I’ll be glad to hear from you. My students will be glad too; as Optimus Prime says, ‘Megatron must be stopped’.

*One of the many nicknames I have acquired and the students share with me. I like to think it has something to do with my geekiness…

Megatron image from mdverde@ Flickr

This post is tagged History, iPhone, Mobile, Moodle