Mobile Learning Lab

Alright, I played with Polleverywhere for quite a while.  I could see using it in my classroom as a formative assessment tool for sure.  I liked how quickly it registered responses (I sent several to my own question).  The display as a bar graph for multiple choice questions is very nice.  I have used my TI Navigator system in the same way, but it is cumbersome to set up and get kids logged into.  I am less optimistic about the open response questions.  The data isn't aggregated in a way that is as helpful as it could be.  For example I sent the same response twice because I wanted to see how it would handle the information.  The result was two separate answers that had the same text.  One cool thing about the Navigator system is that if it gets the same response multiple times it shows that in a bar graph by increasing the length of the corresponding bar.  I also don't like that you cant ask multiple questions on one poll.  I see using this as a way to get a quick fix on what students know and don't but prescripting questions might be difficult as I don't always know what direction students will go with a particular topic. Here is one of the polls I made.

Make a live audience poll at Poll Everywhere

On the Classroom 2.0 site people cited other potential issues with using it.  Cell phone reception seemed to be one possible limiting issue as well as those who don't have unlimited text plans.  Also, in reading through the 25 Practical Ideas for Using Mobile Phones in the Classroom there were some other issues raised about students who may not have a cell phone and possibly feeling embarrassed if they can't participate.

I have watched kids take pictures of homework assignments from the board so they didn't have scramble to write it all down.  I have even taken a picture of some students work with my phone so that we could save it to talk about the following day.  I think that there are lots of uses for phones in particular and I think as educators we need to learn how to encourage kids to use them creatively and not in the disruptive "I need to text my friend who's in German class right now" way.  Several of my colleagues refuse to believe that students are capable of doing much other than the former and I keep arguing that the reason for that is that we are not showing them what it means to use them appropriately.  That is a separate issue for now I guess.