A New Tool in Education: Cell Phones? Journal 4

From Toy to Tool
By Liz Kolb

Author Liz Kolb explores the possibilities of audio blogging with cell phones in this article. At one time she was not fond of allowing cell phones in class and saw no advantage to using them in the classroom as an educational tool, rather a mere distraction. However with the recent and ever growing field of technology cell phones have become possible educational tools.
The idea of audio blogging has transformed the cell phone into an interview tool complete with recording device, and camera for photos. Complementing the cell phone is the formation of web sites specifically suited for downloading voice recorded interviews. Liz gives several examples of how this can be used to conduct interviews for various types of classes. She also explores many pros and cons of this type of lesson including privacy issues, cost, and control. Here are two of the possible cons of using cell phones in class.
Q1) How can you control what students will do with their cell phones once in a classroom setting?
A. Set boundaries for students concerning cell phone use. Only allow them to bring to class/or have them turned on when appropriate lessons are involved.
Q2) How can we ensure the privacy of the students posting on the web?
A. Although blogger.com is not password protected, other sites like Gabcast can be for a small monthly fee. Some students however may not afford that fee so the another option is to not identify students in audio blogs but rather focus on the actual interviews instead.
- I want to thank the author Liz Kolb for these questions and answers