Written by:
10/10/2009 11:28 AM 

Cross posted at The Innovative Educator

 Text messaging is the dominant form of communication for American cell phone users who are sending more text messages than they are making phone calls, according to a Nielsen Mobile survey. Innovative educators in New York City with employer-issued cell phones may be disappointed to learn that the NYC DOE has decided that,

ALL TEXT MESSAGING capabilities for DOE account holders will be disabled because it is the DOE position that communication thru text messaging is primarily for “personal use."

Five ways innovative educators are using text messaging to enhance their work.

For educators in schools, this has become increasingly important as they learn SMS Notification tools are increasing parental involvement in their child’s school life and Text and Email Alert Systems Can Increase Home - School Communication. This is something innovative educators support school-based staff in using. In addition to the obvious communication advantages of texting, the educational applications of sms have grown exponentially over the past couple years. The advantage of sms over other forms of communication of course is that it is the most ubiquitous technology available to students, parents, and educators. Additionally, when conducting meetings or classes, or workshops, while often many participants do not have laptops with them, nearly all have cell phones.

Free Audience Response System – To Those Who Can Text
Poll Everywhere is a great tool that can be used by anyone who knows someone with a cell phone they can send a text message from. It provides participants with a simple method to share their voice and ideas right from their phones enabling the presenter and audience to have a clear sense of where they stand on topics being discussed.

To use poll everywhere you can set up an account where you'll be assigned a number for participants to send their answers. Within the message participants enter the code corresponding to their response. This looks similar to what you see on popular shows such as American Idol. Without any additional equipment or need to download software within seconds educators will have audience responses. Another nice feature is that it doesn't matter what device your participants are using. Responses can be instantly combined.

SMS Tweeting from Your Phone to Gain a Collective Intelligence on Topics of Importance

Twitter is perfect if you want to know what your audience is thinking, feeling, or seeing. No software to download and all your audience needs is a cell phone to contribute anywhere anytime. Simply go to www.twitter.com and set up an account. You can Tweet from your phone by entering your number at http://twitter.com/devices. When exploring a particular topic, you need to select a short tag (an approximately 6 letters or less searchable word or acronym) and then have your audience’s tweets include that tag (i.e. Marta Valle High School might be MVHS). Users can contribute by simply sms texting on their phone. You can capture the Tweets in any number of forms. The easiest is to do a simple Twitter search for the tag. You can click here to see what the Tweets from a recent conference look like. Of course one of the more famous tags that made Twitter popular was IranElection. You can read how a group of school leaders used sms Twitter to follow conference activities and share reflections and plans at Leading By Example - Transforming Education for the 21st Century.

Google SMS as an Educational Tool That Can Be Used Directly From Your Phone
Anytime, anywhere you have access to a cell phone, much of the vast amounts of knowledge and information formerly available to only those with the internet are now available directly through sms texting. Educators can put a limitless amount of information at the fingertips of themselves and/or their audience by asking them to take out their cell phone and text "G-O-O-G-L-E" (466453). A FREE or inexpensive service to anyone with sms access.

Here's what you can access with just using GOOGLE text messaging listed by "Search Feature" and "Sample Query" below.

Search Feature - Sample Query
Q&A - abraham lincoln birthday | Translation - translate hello in french | Web Snippets - web hubble telescope | Calculator - 1 us pint in liters | Currency Conversion - 8 usd in yen | METAR - metar khio | Local - sushi 94040 | Weather - weather boston |Glossary - define zenith| Sports - score red sox | Stocks - stock tgt | Zip Codes - zip code 72202 |Directions - directions pasadena ca to 94043 | Maps - map 5th avenue new york |Flights - flight aa 2111 | Area Codes - area code 650 | Products - price ipod player 40gb |

You can see a demonstration of how this functions at http://www.google.com/mobile/default/sms.html. There is endless pedagogical and professional value of having the ability to access this type of information anytime anywhere. Whether it’s to help ELLs translate another language, support literacy by instantly being able to define or look up words and terms, help global studies or math students have knowledge on currency or metric conversions and more.

As more and more innovative educators lose some of their digital as a second language accent, sms has become a powerful, effective, efficient, convenient, and affordable educational and professional tool that has become integrated into the work we do. Employers of educators using sms features on their phones in innovative ways such as these are making a terrific investment in ensuring their staff have the tools they need to do their work effectively. Now that I've made my case, I can't wait to get this service turned back on.

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