A common theme explored on this site is the fact that nearly all college students have mobile devices, and that increasingly those “phones” are smart phones. Why then, are we not taking full advantage of this fact to more effectively connect student learning to the community?
The post, Let’s Brainstorm with Mobile Devices! 15+ Free Apps for IOS/Android, from Teacher Reboot Camp, gives a pretty good overview of a category of mobile apps that people aggregating ideas in a community might find very useful.
I assume this data from Pew refers to uses in addition to making and receiving voice calls.
Source: Tatango Mass Text Messaging
I am a big proponent of capturing the voices of all the players in civic engagement activities. Now that most people are walking around with pretty high quality digital recorders, it seems to make sense to understand how we might make the best recordings possible. If you want some good fundamental advice, check out the following piece by Lindsay Kalter, on the International Journalist’s Network blog, “How to record clear audio on a mobile phone.”
The article Smartphones: Teaching Tool or Brain Candy? by Mark Frydenberg, Wendy Ceccucci, Patricia Sendall at Campus Technology, really helps bring home the point I am frequently trying to make in this blog. That is that not recognizing the potential value of portable, digital technologies in our campus community partnerships is a big mistake. The authors even include examples of civically-engaged teaching.
“. . . The smartphone’s potential as a learning tool is rapidly being discovered by faculty. Paul Wallace, assistant professor of instructional technology at Appalachian State University(NC), taught his students to use the Scvngr application as a way to apply their classroom knowledge to benefit the local community. Students partnered with Watauga River Conservation Partners, a local community organization, to create mobile scavenger hunts to help the community learn about wetlands and conservation. Not only did students learn to use mobile technology, they were also able apply their classroom knowledge in the field. . . “
Read the rest here.
Just about everybody has an audio recorder in their pocket these days. If you are involved in projects related to citizen journalism, oral history, advocacy, or key informant evaluation interviews, you might want to check out this post by Melissa Ulbricht, on MobileActive’s, Mobile Media Toolkit site. It contains links to a number of case studies and training guides that will help you use audio in a compelling and effective way.
“The United States and other industrialized countries can learn from experiments in the developing world that use the humble cell phone as a platform for innovation.” Read the full article, “Opportunities in Mobile Health,” at the Stanford Social Innovation Review.