Cell Phones as a Learning Tool

Wow! I didn’t realize a cell phone could do so many things until listening to Liz Kolb’s web cast about Cell Phones being used as learning tools. Not only did I not think of the many uses described here for the classroom but did not realize the vast amount of connections with the internet.

I will continue to learn more about cell phones and their resources. But I am not sold just yet on the idea of using them in an elementary classroom. First of all I don’t think many of our students have access to their own cell phone or even their parents for any length o time. In just the past few years we have been noticing that more of our population has internet access from their home. This has been changing. However, I still don’t believe the number of students at our school that have this available would warrant integration of this into the curriculum.

I think Liz is a very forward thinking person and eventually the cell phone will become a knowledge gathering tool in addition to a means of communication. Use of cell phones will create very enthusiastic learners. But until the cost of the phone, service and internet connection drop it is still a resource that many (especially elementary age students) do not have.

Personally I would like to try several of the resources on the web discussed. I found the audio recording and podcasting very interesting. This appears to be a very seamless way to create podcasts using software such as Gabcast, Gcast, Hipcast and Evoca. Once again, many of these tool are free on the web. Two other software programs that looked intriguing were PrivatePhone and Jangl for teachers who don’t want to give parents their private phone numbers. This is a convenience because it can be accessed by cell or land line and responded to by phone or email.

Some of the uses for in the classroom I feel are a little “out of the box” for most just yet. Rather than using cell phone to complete classroom projects, I would agree they will be used in the near future for things such as research and reference tools. Yahoo, Wikiipeida and Flickr are a few of the engines that are promoting this.

Nice work by Liz Kolb. She is very educated of cell phone and their capabilities. She is a forward thinker and an accomplished teacher of her topic.