Mobile devices can help us take the necessary steps to keep kids healthy

Here a step, there a step, everywhere a step step. You may have noticed that today, steps matter.

So, how many steps have you taken today:

If you haven't caught on, the latest data tells us adults need at least 10,000 steps a day to remain healthy and steps they are a taking.  From walking the stairs, to parking further away to taking a few laps around the block while reading the latest research paper.

Pedometers are on the rise and considering that they're built into many of the mobile devices teachers and students own and love, it's no surprise that this healthy and affordable trend has taken off.

So, how are our students doing?

Ummm...

Uh...

Well, no one cares about our child obesity. Life/death-Peh!  We measure student achievement not by how healthy young people are, but on how well they've mastered the finger exercise of drill, kill and bubblefill on standardized tests.

Interestingly, if we allowed children to get up and move as nature intended we'd find that activity, movement and play is not only crucial for boosting brain power, it also is a great way to alleviate ADD/ADHD symptoms.

Parents, teachers, and young people would agree that health and movement is important. Let's refocus priorities from memorization and regurgitation to ensuring our students reach their optimal daily movement of  about 12,000 steps a day for young people. Let's restore a move to the endangered practice of free time or recess and let our children get out and do, run, play.

Let's close down schools who keep our students sedentary and don't respect their personal fitness.

If you are an educator who is concerned about the health of yourself, your colleagues, and your students, start a knowledge movement.  Track steps. Chart steps.  Take a step in the right direction so that adults and young people can beat this obesity epidemic and move toward the road to a healthy life.
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You can find even more ideas for using mobile devices in the classroom by reading Teaching Generation Text: Using Cell Phones to Enhance Learning. 

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Free Guide! Mobile Devices for Learning: What You Need to Know

Cell phones in the classroom: a boon or blight? That's the question many educators are facing these days.

Edutopia helps educators find the answer with their latest Classroom Guide, Mobile Devices for Learning: What You Need to Know. Not only is the guide packed full of resources and examples that show you how to effectively use mobile devices in the classroom, but it also features material from The Innovative Educator blog.

Innovative educators know that mobile technology is here to stay. The author of the Guide agrees writing, "Put simply, mobile devices are becoming as essential to students' daily lives as, say, breakfast." 

 

Download the Guide today to see how the use of iPads, smartphones, e-book readers, and a variety of cool apps are enhancing the classroom environment and engaging students like never before. 

You can find even more ideas for using mobile devices in the classroom by reading Teaching Generation Text: Using Cell Phones to Enhance Learning. 

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5 Building Blocks for Success with Mobile Learning - Featured in Edutopia!

The mobile learning revolution is alive and growing in popularity every day. As schools begin to consider the movement towards mobile learning, it's important to support teachers with strategies for success, particularly if they are new. 

Toward that end, my  friend Lisa Michelle Dabbs asked my Teaching Generation Text co-author Willyn Webb and I to write a piece for Edutopia about how a new teacher might begin to use mobile learning in the classroom.

Check it out at Mobile Learning Support for New Teachers where we share the five building blocks that will help ensure you have just what you need in place for a smooth integration of mobile devices into your teaching, learning, and connecting with students and parents.

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Cell Phones: Tools of engagement or distraction?

I have the opportunity to speak with Greg Graham author of Cell Phones in Classrooms? No! Students Need to Pay Attention on BAM Radio’s Educator’s Channel.  As the author of Teaching Generation Text, which encourages students to use the devices they own and love for learning, it is no surprise we disagree on the subject.  Graham is one of those educators who has yet to update his outdated practices and is holding students prisoners of his past.  To justify this, he uses advice that creative thinker, speaker, and writer Howard Rheingold.

1. Rule Number One is to pay attention.
2. Rule Number Two: Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.

Graham goes on to use these rules to support his belief that we must ban students from using the devices they need for success in their worlds. Oh how disappointed Rheingold must be in having his advice misconstrued by an educator who hasn’t a clue about how technology can be used to engage learners.

Had Graham gone beyond the 1997 advice, he would have found that in his article M-Learning 4 Generation Txt? Rheingold laments the outdated educator who doesn’t bother to instruct students “on how to use the online backchannel to augment class discussion, conduct concurrent search or group note-taking during a lecture.” In the article he acknowledges that there are “students that arrive at our campuses with such experiences already under their belts” but points out that, “In the absence of instruction in IT etiquette, students IM, chat, game and find their own way through the pedagogical cyberscape while lecturers try to cope.”

So, whose fault is it that these lectures haven’t updated their classroom management skills and turned these tools of distraction into tools of engagement?  

In my technology innovation work in public schools the teachers and leaders I work with marvel at how much more engaged their students are when they allow their students to use mobile devices.  

Graham asks Always On author Naomi Baron about her thoughts and she says, "A classroom is many places at once, a room for sharing ideas, a space (literally) for contemplation, a setting for social interaction. None of these functions harmonizes with intrusion from the outside."

I’m frightened by one who thinks of connecting to and making meaning with the world as an intrusion.  Heck, Rheingold himself shares that he is hooked on Twitter which is an amazing tool to use with mobile devices for reasons such as, it is:

• A way to meet new people
• A way to find people who share interests
• A window on what is happening in multiple worlds

My advice to Graham and the rest is that it does not make sense to issolate yourself and your students from the world. Stop fighting and start embracing the tools students own and love for learning and if you don’t know how, you can start by reading with this. Those who do, not only will you be better able to connect with students, but they’ll also be more prepared for success in the connected world in which they live.

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14 interesting facts about text messaging

Why are texts limited to less than 160 characters?  Does texting result in less talking on the phone? When do people feel texting in public is acceptable? How often do teens text? Check out the handy infographic below to find out the answers to these questions and more.

Via: CellPhones.org

Discover how to use texting for learning. Check out Teaching Generation Text: Using Cell Phones to Enhance Learning.

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Does Apple Care About Education?

Editor's note: This post was born out of a Twitter conversation between myself and Steve Kinney. 
I Tweeted: "iPads are only meant for a single user"@thomasdaccord at #blc12 Apple fails as an ed company when this is the case. 
He replied: ‏@InnovativeEdu Is Apple trying to be an ed company?
After a few more Tweets the challenge was put forth:
I Tweeted: @stevekinney Sounds like the seeds of a "Why apple has shifted focus from learning in school" or something ;-)
And, the following post was born!

Guest post by Steve Kinney | Originally appeared at http://stevekinney.net 

I get asked from time to time whether or not I think Apple cares about the education market. Apple, in specific, comes up because we’re knee deep in implementing a one-to-one iPad pilot in the seventh and eighth grade and also because education was Apple’s thing back in the 1990s.

My answer is yes and no. 

On one hand, they obviously still care. In his biography, Walter Isaacson described a conversation with Steve Jobs, where he talked specifically about revolutionizing the textbook market. In addition, Apple did have a big event for education last January. At this event they announce partnerships major textbook publishers and—more importantly—released the free iBooks author software to anyone and everyone interested in creating rich, multimedia textbooks for their students. At the same event, they also rolled out a major overhaul of iTunes U. The expanded service allows universities to get a full course materials for interested autodidacts who want to play along from home.

At the same time, if you compare Apple over the last decade to the 1990s, it’s clear that they’ve lost some of that fire and passion for the education market. I should point out, that I think that this has nothing to do with the return of Steve Jobs to Apple. NeXT, Steve’s company while in exile from Apple, was exclusively focused on the education market. And part of the reason Mac OS X is so easy to manage in a school environment is because it is based off of the NeXTStep operating system.

The Verdict

It’s not that Apple doesn’t care about education as much anymore; it’s that education doesn’t care about integrating technology as much. In the 90s, very few people had computers at home. You went to university computer lab or used the Mac in your classroom if you needed to use a computer. Getting computers into the classroom was a way for Apple to expose students to their potential. Now, the opposite is true. Most adults have exclusive access to a least one computer at their workplace and many have access to more than one. Adults as well as students carry computers in their pocket with them on a day-to-day basis. 

The situation is much more dismal in schools. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (2010), the ratio of students to computers in the classroom in 2009—the most recent year that data was available for—was 5.3 to 1. In addition, even if students do have powerful computers in their pockets, most school district policy forbids them from using them in their schools.

Apple sells more devices through just one of their New York City retail stores in a month than they sell to the entire year to the New York City Department of Education—the nation’s largest school district—an entire year. In addition, most large school districts are known for being notoriously hard to work with. To this day, the New York City Department of Education still has not found a way to allow its schools and teachers purchase apps for school-owned iOS devices. Word on the street is that they’re demanding their own App Store despite the fact that Apple has Volume Purchasing Program in place.

The point is this: if Apple or any other technology company wants to get their devices into the hands of the artists, scientists, writers, thinkers, and creators of tomorrow, then going through the education market is the absolute least efficient way of doing that. Why cut through the red tape when you can bypass the middleman? 

There needs to be a shift in our priorities. And there needs to be a drastic reduction in the amount of bureaucracy involved in deploying technology in schools.

This is important, because while a lot of students and families have computers at home, a lot more don’t. For those that do, is not uncommon for that one computer to be shared by the entire family. 

A moral imperative for schools is to provide equity and access to education. Part of an education in the 21st century requires being able to use and solve hard problems with the tools of the world today. Until schools prioritize this for all students, we will continue to do students a disservice and the education market will continue to be tangential to companies like Apple.

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Enriching literacy with cellphones: 3 ideas to get started

Cross posted at SmartBlog on Education

September is National Literacy Month, and what better way to celebrate and promote literacy than focusing on the tools that students own and love: their cellphones! Using cellphones to enhance learning does not require that they be used in class. If you are in a school where cellphones are banned, the ideas shared here are also applicable outside of class.

Cellphones are a great tool for enriching literacy instruction. Here are three ways innovative educators can use the tools in their students’ pockets for learning inside or outside the classroom.

Texting drafts

Students are reading and writing more than ever. In the 21st century, reading and writing often takes place through the lightening fast thumbs of teens. Although some parents and teachers complain that text messaging is ruining the language, research shows that it is, in fact, a benefit to students’ phonemic awareness, spelling and use of words (Yarmey, 2011; Plester & Wood, 2009, Malson & Tarica, 2011; Fresco, 2005; Dunnewind, 2003; Miners, 2009; McCarroll, 2005; Elder, 2009). When we rethink and re-envision what is happening when our teens and tweens text, all sorts of learning possibilities emerge.

In the classroom: Texting has become the shorthand of the 21st century. When writing first drafts, allow students to write a draft on their phone or laptop and use text abbreviations to get their thoughts down. Encouraging the quick, free flow of ideas in a format they prefer can help young writers capture, compile and create new ideas. These can be translated as they edit and revise, resulting in a final draft written in standard language.

Oral reports

Google Voice is one of many tools that can capture students’ voices. It is free, easy to use and enables educators to capture voice messages from students without providing them with their direct phone number. The power of this kicks in when you realize that what Google Voice does is become a repository for oral reports, assignments or sound bites. Teachers can also write notes on each clip, share and post them. Get an account.

In the classroom: Have students do their oral reports using Google Voice. If they don’t like how they sound the first time, they don’t have to send the message. They can rerecord until they have something with which they are happy.

Video

Most cellphones today can shoot video. This can be a powerful learning tool even if there is only one video-enabled phone in the classroom. Allowing students to take video can help them with their speaking and listening skills by providing them the opportunity to see and listen to themselves speak as well as listen to others’ recordings.

In the classroom: Have students record themselves acting out chapters of a book they are reading. Acting out a chapter helps solidify understanding.

Let’s take the devices students own and love out of their pockets and into the classroom for learning. Even the simplest, voice-and-text-only cellphones have more complex and powerful chips than the on-board computer that landed a spaceship on the moon! Children deserve nothing less than for their teachers to embrace the power of this technology and support them in becoming learners who can use the powerful computing tools to which they already have access to soar to new heights. For more ideas on using cell phones for learning, check outTeaching Generation Text and The Innovative Educator blog.

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Cell phone etiquette poster for your school or classroom

If your school or classroom has updated outdated practices and policies and you are empowering students with the freedom to learn with the tools they own and love, then it is important to discuss responsible use.  This poster below does a nice job of bring up important etiquette tips when it comes to using communication devices.  Is there anything you disagree with? Anything missing?


Via: Cell Phones

Want ideas for using cell phones for learning? Check out Teaching Generation Text: Using Cell Phones to Enhance Learning.

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