Cell Phones Friends or Foes?

In the next 6-24 months, won’t most students have hand-held devices that combine the capabilities of current cell phones, digital cameras, audio/video recorders, PDAs, GPSs, Web-browsers, email readers, ….?

<Insert/imagine picture of a few students each using only-slightly-different gizmos to do some of the things listed above.>
If you can’t beat ‘em, use ‘em

• Student (mother of 3; part-time worker; full-time student; student govt president): “I’ve only known one other undergraduate in the last 3 years who didn’t have a cell phone.” But I almost never see a faculty member using a cell phone.


• Faculty member – who does instant messaging, blogging, etc. herself: “I can’t get some of the students in my class to listen to me instead of their iPods, phones, etc…. They’re always doing text messaging in my class. I don’t know how to stop them.”


• <Insert/imagine picture of a classroom with a bedraggled, frustrated teacher at the front and many students obviously doing things with their VARIED kinds of cell phones or iPods while not exactly paying attention to the teacher and not exactly ignoring him either.>

One to many?

• How can someone send the same text or voice recording to several cell phones at the same time? From a cell phone? From a computer?


• <Insert/imagine picture of a teacher sending a preparatory message the day before a class to all the enrolled students via cell phone or similar devices. Show the students receiving the message in a variety of situations all at the same time. Show some of them quite intrigued with the message, some irritated, some not really paying attention to it.>

Tree-Like Distribution?

• How can someone send the same text or voice recording to a few cell phones at the same time? With confidence that each recipient will in turn send the same message to a pre-determined few cell phones?


• From a cell phone? From a computer?


• <Insert/imagine picture of a teacher sending a preparatory message the day before a class to all the enrolled students via a “telephone tree”-like arrangement. Show the students receiving the message in a variety of situations all at almost the same time. Show some of them quite intrigued with the message, some irritated, some not really paying attention to it.>

Daisy Chain?

• How can someone send a text or voice recording to a single cell phone with confidence that the recipient will in turn send the same message to the next pre-assigned cell phones? And that the 2nd recipient fill send the message along to the next designated person in the chain. And so on.


• From cell phone only to cell phones? Beginning with and then passing along the message to any of several kinds of devices – ranging from cell phones to computers?


• <Insert/imagine picture of a teacher sending a preparatory message the day before a class to one enrolled student – and that student forwarding the message to another, and so on, one-by-one. Show the students receiving the message in a variety of situations all at almost the same time. Show some of them quite intrigued with the message, some irritated, some not really paying attention to it.>

Voting via cell phones or PDAs or …?

• [Like “PRS” – Clickers – Personal Response Systems]


• How can someone send a multiple-choice or short answer question to many cell phones at the same time? With confidence that each recipient will in turn be able to respond by “voting” for one of the multiple choices? Or submitting a short answer? And that the results can be automatically compiled and displayed for all participants to see? With or without protecting the anonymity of each response?


• From a cell phone? From a computer?


• <Insert/imagine picture of a teacher sending a “problem” or “question” within a classroom. All students respond simultaneously via their cell phones or similar handheld devices. The results are being displayed via computer-driven projector. >