Through Liz’ Live Session, she gave many awesome ideas for using mobile devices in the classroom. These ideas ranged from poll apps to gauge student understanding and comprehension, reminder programs, recording programs to transfer audio clips from a cellphone directly to a website, and so on. These all seem very useful in the classroom, but also very daunting to master and use successfully. When given the task to reflect on future teaching opportunities and using this technology in the classroom, I decided to reflect on internship and figure out where my teaching style would benefit the most from using cellphones in the classroom.
I decided that Celly would help get rid of many of the problems I faced during internship. I often had students complaining that they forgot about an assignment, or missed a class and didn’t know about homework, and other regular excuses. This site will not remedy excuses all together, but would help get rid of some of the obvious ones. Celly is a site which sets up a 2-way messaging (alternative to Remind 101’s one-way messaging which also has its uses). This site hides your number as well as the students’ and parents’ numbers. You can text them reminders and concerns and allows for the recipient to respond, if you want to make that an option. I would take advantage of Celly by being able to remind students and parents about everything going on in the classroom. This combined with a contract on the first day (which would be taken home and signed by the student and their parent) would set up an easy way off communication between the student, teacher, and parent.
I feel that Celly is a good place to start because it is fairly straight forward, yet very useful. As I move through my teaching career, mastering Celly would open up doors for me to try other cellphone-related apps to help the class flow more smoothly. Since BYOD (bring your own device) is blowing up in Saskatchewan schools right now, this would be a great way to integrate this into my classroom. I can’t wait to try Celly in my next classroom!
Shane Markham 