Mobile Learning Blog Post

I really enjoyed navigating through all of the mobile learning tools provided during this lesson.  I think that incorporating all this technology our students are currently using into our classroom and turn it from our enemy to our friend.  No matter how many rules we put into place about phone use in the classroom our students will try and use it.  So why fight a battle we ultimately won't win?

I checked out a few different tools from the lab that I really enjoyed.  So many of our students have iPods/iPads/iPhones etc and there are so many great apps they can download to assist with their learning.  This website was great for navigating through the different apps that are available and they're even organized by subject matter to make finding the perfect tool for you easy.  In the foreign language section there were different translators that your students can download and use as well as a Spanish tutor that can help your students learn those harder concepts (sadly, there's no French... yet).

Another site that I really enjoyed was Poll Everywhere.  This is great for in class work (especially movies!) to see if your students are understanding whatever it is they're working on.  All you have to do is create an account, post a question and your students will send a text with their answer to a specified number and you get a visual of what everyone's responses were.  This, I believe, would be really great with movies to make sure you're students are actually following along.  Another great benefit to this is that it is completely free and there is no need for Internet connection!  Even if your students don't have a cell phone you can still have them write out their responses onto a sheet of paper to turn in at the end so you know they were working as well.

Overall, I thought this was an extremely beneficial because nearly every single one of our students has a cell phone that is constantly attached to their hip.  If we can find ways to incorporate that technology rather than forbid it I think we can really make some positive steps in student learning.