Instructify

BY DAN FROELICH

With the ever-increasing adoption of smart phones in today’s electronics market, we find ourselves trusting these tiny devices with usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and personal data. What happens when this valuable gadget is misplaced? We panic! While many smartphone owners have an iOS device such as the latest iPhone, many more are choosing to adopt an Android device. Even though the specifications vary greatly, the spirit of the Open Handset Alliance lives somewhere deep within each device. Despite phone insurance, password patterns and PINs, we are likely to misplace our mobile device at some point during our two year contract.

So when you misplace your handset, AND YOU WILL, I have a great solution to ease your worries (unless you dropped your phone in the Atlantic Ocean). Where’s My Droid is a free application available through the Android Marketplace that helps you find find your lost phone. If you have a QR code reader, you can scan the code pictured at the top right and get a head start.

So why would I want to download this application? Where’s My Droid allows you to send a pre-determined text message to your Android phone that will activate the ringer for a previously decided upon length of time. Additionally, if some ne’er-do-well has your phone you can send a separate message that will activate your handset’s GPS and return a Google map and GPS coordinates of where your phone is.

I installed Where’s My Droid (I had to jump into the Marketplace and dig through the four possible entries that were listed under the same name) and tested it out in my home, while my mobile device was still in my own possession (as I recommend everyone do). It worked flawlessly. I used my Google Voice account to send a text message to my mobile number and received the messages you see here.

Is this application perfect? Probably not. But it certainly is a great option if you don’t have some enterprise level of security on your device. There are many other options available as you set up the default behaviors, many of these applications even offer a remote wipe option to clear all sensitive data from your mobile phone. If you have an Android device, make sure that this is in your top five applications when setting up your applications.

Where’s My Droid

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

The world does indeed seem increasingly smaller in scale, thanks in part to the array of technology tools now at our disposal. In particular, making a connection with another class somewhere in the world has never been easier, thanks to blogs, social media, and more. For instance, the online voice/phone platform Skype has allowed my students to talk and collaborate with students from other parts of the United States. And not long ago, a colleague of mine here in New England had her kindergarten students chatting away with kindergarteners in Hawaii. That’s a pretty powerful learning opportunity that was not really available five or ten years ago, other than with paper-based pen-pal projects (which still have a lot of value today, by the way).

Now, Skype is trying to make those learning connections a bit easier to make. Skype in the Classroom is a free and simple database of educators who want to collaborate with other teachers, using Skype. You add your name and your connections to other teachers grows.

The Skype directory is still in “beta” mode as of this writing but it is expected that it will launch publicly in December 2010. A teacher will need a Skype account, of course, but there are free levels of service as well as paid ones. Skype now comes with video conferencing and screen-sharing options.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

I often wonder about the potential for learning via social media, apps, and mobile devices. Take foursquare, for instance — it is an app that uses geo-tags, place locations, and community connections. Foursquare contains some intriguing possibilities for classroom use, particularly in virtual high schools and colleges.

If you’re not familar with foursquare, users earn badges and prestige by visiting real-world places. The foursquare app then shares information about their location with others in their network. The concept of earning points may turn some educators off from foursquare, since there are going to be winners and losers. But foursquare has more nuanced approaches, too, that can engage a wide range of students.

A resource website put out by a blog that tracks online education (Accredited Online Colleges) is a great place to mull over the possibilities of foursquare in learning. Here, they point out more than 30 ways that foursquare could be used for learning, from field trips to organized meetings to site-based research.

A few examples that I found interesting:

• Bring students from different classes together: Encourage students from different class periods to follow each other for more camaraderie, to enhance discussion, and create a bigger network.
• Track field trips with Google Earth: Google Earth now integrates with foursquare, so you can help your students remember where they’ve been on field trips.
• Create a place-based tour: Tag or check in to different venues you’ve mapped out ahead of time to take your students on a place-based tour. A University of Dallas professor and his students are working on an app to tie in audio, pictures, and video, too.
• Teach the history of your school: A library program at North Carolina State University uses foursquare to show students archived shots of the first freshman class, old school buildings, and other historical images based on the smartphone user’s location.
• Arrange spontaneous study groups: Check in at a location on campus and invite students to join you for a spontaneous review session or study group.

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BY DAN FROELICH

Just when I can’t get enough of Skype’s amazingly high-quality video conferencing, they add another new feature. Early this summer, Skype added a four-way video calling feature. After some testing and feedback from users, the latest Beta release now offers 10-way calling. Take a look at the sample screen shot to see what this would look like. You’ll notice one user doesn’t have a webcam, but they can still participate in the audio conversation while seeing friends around the world.

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

For the past few years, the United States Library of Congress has been aggressively pushing its archives online through such sites as Flickr and others. This wealth of resources that was previously hidden away in stacks somewhere can now be utilized by educators thanks to the technological revolution. The latest push from the Library of Congress is its new App for iPhones and other Apple devices. The Library of Congress Virtual Tour is free for download at the iTunes store (I’m not sure if an Android version is coming in the future) and features galleries of exhibits along themes such as the Bible, Creating the United States, and Exploring the Early Americas.

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

Ever watch Pop-Up Video? Or have you noticed the first-down line that magically appears when you watch football on TV? These are examples of augmented reality — adding information to enhance a real-world view. Thanks to efforts like the American Civil War Augmented Reality Project, the concept is making its way into education. A few Pennsylvania teachers plan to use this technology to help visitors understand Civil War battlefields.

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This article also appears on LEARN NC.

BY CINDY PHTHISIC

A class of second-graders sits and waves to themselves on screen as the teacher tests the web camera. The students know they’re about to make a video call using Skype. This is the first time they have ever heard about Skype, so they are not sure exactly what’s going to happen. For now, they are fascinated with just seeing themselves on screen.

While waiting for word on the other end, the teacher pulls up a Google Map to show the caller will be speaking to them from many miles away in Louisiana. A message flashes at the bottom of the screen indicating the caller is ready. Students go quiet as they hear their teacher place the call.

When a familiar face appears on screen, the students whisper, “I know him.” “He was at our school.” The caller is author Mike Artell, who had visited their school just a week earlier. The rambunctious group becomes still and silent. The students sit completely captivated.

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BY BILL FERRIS

Are you one of those forward-thinking teachers who uses smart phones and text messages in class? Do projects like a 21st Century scavenger hunt make you excited? I’m going to go ahead and assume the answer is yes (a bold assumption I know, but please humor me) so I can tell you about textPlus, an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that lets you send unlimited texts for free.

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BY BILL FERRIS

The scavenger hunt, the good twin of the wild-goose chase, can be a fun way to exercise students’ creativity and problem-solving skills. This video from Howcast shows you how to put together a scavenger hunt using modern tools like cell phones and multimedia. Using smart phones, the hunters in the video solve riddles via text message, snap pictures of interesting landmarks, and dial a secret number for the next clue by solving a math problem.

While I haven’t done this myself, it looks like a fun way to fuse technology and education. This idea is swollen with educational opportunities — incorporating study questions into the clues, challenging kids to find creative solutions, or promoting collaboration and teamwork — and you can adapt it for just about any subject.

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BY BILL FERRIS

If you use the polling program Poll Everywhere, they’ve just added a few more features. Audience members can now add Tweets directly to your PowerPoint slides (you can still moderate them before displaying, of course). You can also collect donations for your fundraiser via MobileCause. And just in case you’re thinking of making the jump from the free (poll up to 30 students) option to a premium plan, they’ve recorded several short videos that explain PE’s advanced features.

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BY NICK YINGLING

When I was in school, time management was an issue. Video games robbed me of my attention span and desensitized me. Then the internet came along, chaining me to a computer for hours. To top it all off, I was incredibly popular and all the coolest people wanted me to hang out and share an Orange Julius with them at the mall. Things are much better now: the video game playing is under control; the 28k modem is gone so I don’t have to spend as much time at the computer; and most of my high school acquaintances are now in jail.

What’s the latest technology threat to the health and well-being of the American teenager? Text messaging, according to this article from The New York Times. Citing the Nielsen Company, it reports that “American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008.” That number, they say, is double the average from the previous year.

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Venerable note-taking app Evernote has rolled out a few new features that ought to help you and your students. You can now send Twitter messages directly into your Evernote account, use Evernote on your iPhone, or find tips on how you can use Evernote on their tips blog. You can also read the general Evernote blog for updates as they happen. All that is in addition to existing features like saving snippets websites you visit and recognizing text in pictures. -BILL FERRIS

Ron’s Evernote Tips Blog

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Whenever I see that I have a voicemail, I’m instantly demoralized. I’m not that busy, but man, am I impatient. Dial voicemail, dial in pass code, listen to robot tell me that there’s a new voicemail, dial number to listen to new voicemail, consider possible phone-related seppuku methods — you get the point.

Now, with K7 Unified Messaging, you can have your voicemails and faxes emailed directly to you. It takes a little bit of effort up front to arrange everything in a workable manner — after you set up your call-forwarding options to have your original number sent to the number K7 issues for you, you’ll pretty much be in business. The voicemails and faxes will arrive as attachments to the email that you receive. K7 will also have a private mailbox you can access directly by logging into the K7 website.

How might this be useful to you in the classroom? Its not. But whenever your central office sends a caller to your voicemail after you’ve left for the day, or if your students call to beg for an assignment extension, getting it before you go to work the next morning can be pretty handy. Also, if you end up with a bunch of messages, you might reclaim some more of your time in the morning. -NICK YINGLING

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Another free service is going the pay route. Gcast sent out an email recently announcing that in order to call in, users will need to pay a $99 fee to make mobile podcasts (Gcast still hosts podcasts for free, however). Twitter and Plurk were abuzz with talk of this. While I respect Gcast’s right to make a buck on this deal (and not to go broke in the process), it’s not a “mission critical” service for me at this point, and there are other options that I can switch to that will not involve a big investment. I had only done a handful of podcasts on Gcast at this point anyway. So what are my other options?

Utterli is a nice service that allows you to post pics, video, and phone calls from your mobile phone. They have recently dropped providing international numbers, due to the expense. I’ve posted a question on the forum about their revenue stream. They do carry Google ads on their site. Since I tend to embed in other sites, that’s not a big deal. Here is a sample phone cast from Utterli. It has a player that you can embed as well.

You may know about drop.io, for “dropping” files (dead simple), but one of the “extras” they’ve added since I started using it is a call-in number. This will create a phone cast, and like Utterli, there is a conference-call option. Here’s a sample from drop.io.

There are no ads on drop.io. They do have a premium service, but I don’t know if that’ll pay the freight for all of this. My suggestions are this:

1. If you use a phone-casting service a lot, you should pay for it with a provider that looks like they can last for the long haul — there’s no sense moving around all the time. Buy yourself some peace of mind, and pony up the bucks, or have your school, a donor, etc. do it.
2. If you are conducting mobile podcast activities more intermittently, go the free route as long as it lasts. See about getting a portable digital recorder (the sound quality is better).
3. If you go the “free” route, understand that, without a revenue stream, the service won’t be free — or around at all — forever. Use the download option to “save” your work. Consider posting to your own server, or somewhere that will be in business for at least a while, for peace of mind. Both Utterli and drop.io will let you download in MP3 format. -ALICE MERCER

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Photo credit: Ocell on Flickr.

I wasn’t able to get back to the NCTIES conference today, but I’ve still got some material from Thursday. Tammy Worcester talked about a topic near and dear to my heart in her presentation “Cell Phones in the Classroom.”

Worcester began by asking us if we had our phones with us. In most social situations, this question is followed by “Please turn them off,” but she said we’d be using them during the presentation, so we should get them ready. I did, eager for an opportunity to show off my geektastic Android phone. (I kept hoping someone would notice it so I could bore them about how cool it is. Nobody noticed, which is probably for the best.)

Worcester first demonstrated GOOG-411, which Instructify has reviewed before but is worth bringing up again. It works like a free, automated 411 service. Ask for a business or business category, say your city and state, and Google will connect you for free. As a bonus, you can say “text” and Google will send you a text message with the business’ address and phone number. Slick, huh?

Speaking of Google, check out their SMS page for how to get lots of info by sending a text message. You can send a text message to 466453 (GOOGLE) to get weather updates, word definitions, movie showtimes, all kinds of stuff. For a full list of Google phone fun, no matter what sort of smart phone you use, head to  www.google.com/mobile.

If you have email on your phone, try making blog posts via email on your Blogger account (other blog services may also have this feature, but I’m unaware — let us know if they do!). On the Dashboard, if you click on Settings and Email you can set up an email address that, if you send an email to it, will post your emails directly to the blog. You’ll probably want to keep that address a secret, but Worcester set up a demo blog and gave us the address so we could try it out. If you’ve got a camera phone, it’ll also post pictures. This would be handy for a photo assignment for students — ask them to take a picture about, say, an indigenous animal and post it to the blog with comments, for example.

Worcester also pointed out the mobile podcasting service Gabcast, which lets you make a podcast directly from your cell phone. It costs around $10 for 100 minutes of recording time, which isn’t bad but you can probably find a free service somewhere online.

Finally, Worcester covered Poll Everywhere, a service that lets you set up live polls in which students (or whoever) can vote via text message. You can embed the poll results in your blog, website or PowerPoint presentation. Poll Everywhere is free so long as you have 30 or fewer poll respondents. However, those 30 people can take as many polls as you’d like to set up. Alice Mercer covered this one back in July, but once again, a friendly reminder never hurts.

All in all, it was a very informative presentation that explored what cell phones can do for education. So even if I didn’t get to show off my geek phone, I now know a few new tricks it can do. -BILL FERRIS

For more info, check out Tammy Worcester‘s website

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Photo credit: Milica Sekulic on Flickr.