Twitter + cell phone = FREE Classroom Response System
I've posted before about embracing cell phones in education. That idea is coming closer to reality. I just know that I'm throwing my million dollar idea out the window. I also know that the edublogger community has a MUCH greater chance of pulling this together.
If you've been following the NECC chatter you've certainly read about how Twitter was the "rookie of the year" application. See posts from Jeff Utecht and Ryan Bretag.
David also has ideas churning about educational applications of Twitter.
Here's what's on my mind and I hope that the programmers out there can help.
As I visited the NECC exhibit hall, the "clicker" vendors were very popular. You know the ones where teacher posts a question and student use a $50 remote control unit to respond. A classroom set can be had for ONLY $2500-$3000.
So here's the alternative:
- Teacher and students establish Twitter or Jaiku accounts.
- Teacher adds students as friends.
- Teacher poses a question on Twitter as part of the lesson being delivered.
- Students respond using Twitter. The answer could be a simple ABCD or could be short answer.
- Responses come filing in on the teacher's screen.
So there are privacy concerns with this. There are equity concerns (not all have phones, not all have text plan, etc.) I'm certain there are concerns with policy as well. Many schools have banned cell phones.
The idea here is that we're not far from a $3000 system for effectively ZERO.
I'm not ready to discuss the educational value of the clicker systems. That's an animal of its own. Fact is, classroom response systems can help to engage students in the learning process, even if it's only the first step.
So what do you think? Can a Twitter-like app be tweaked to create a classroom response system using a browser and cell-phones? Why not? What about those one-to-one classrooms?
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5 Comments:
Kurt,
I paid very close attention to just the same thing: clickers. Here's the thing - two of the vendors specifically stated that they were working on Java-based interfaces for their systems (SmartTechnologies' Senteo and Turning Technologies vPad). BOTH vendors indicated that their Java interface was specifically being designed to run on cell phones. Students would log into a website, give their student ID, and be connected to their class. Then the teacher would push questions to the students, or the student could just respond to live questions.
Kurt--
I have had thoughts of clicker-less clickers for a long time. I think the greatest value comes in being able to easy analyze the data that comes from using them. SMART has a great solution-- senteo that currently you can use on the teacher station, but will eventually have a client based version which would be great for 1:1... now if we can program the kids' cell phones to work with it...cool concept
This is a thread I have been thinking about for quite awhile... lots of good potential here! Kurt, can you please send me your email address? I need to send you an email related to K-12 Online '07 - you can email me at wesfryer [at] yahoo [dot] com. Thanks!
I am sure you'll love this but I have tagged you for the 8 random facts meme.
Ken
Kurt,
Late getting to this conversation, but I have thought this very same thing.
Data/Text plans are a huge hurdle here as well as AUPs that ban the use of mobile phones during the school day.
Twitter is great for a classroom response system (especially coupled with TwitterCamp).
I'm thinking that if just one teacher could show the power of such a tool, word would spread. I wonder if anyone has tried to buck the system and try this out.
What if this was a way to connect two remote classrooms? During a video conference, participants could Tweet their questions or responses? Wouldn't that be cool?
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