There was an article in the Washington Post on Sunday about how Universities are having trouble getting announcements to the entire student body when it comes to safety warnings or even just deadlines for enrollment.
While the students embraced the digital age most of the stuff they use to communicate is outside the realm of what college administrators can use to contact students themselves.
The article goes into a plethora of examples of what various Universities are doing to try and deal with this issue but the constantly recurring theme always seems to involve mobile phones.
Rave Wireless,Sprint, Motorola and Product Red have joined forces on the Campus’ of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore to introduce the Red MotoRazr for students to purchase for ONLY 5 bucks! And the full of that 5 dollars will go directly to helping make AIDS history in Africa. The phones come, of course, with the suite of services that only Rave Wireless can bring to a college campus.
The following is from RCR News, December 25th 2006 page 20 (I cant find the online version):
A new study by PBS found cell phones may be useful as an educational tool. Eighty parents with children between the ages of three and four were given video enabled Sprint PCS phones and asked to listen to literacy tips and allow their children to watch streamed letter video clips at least three times a week for two months. The study was designed to test the level of acceptance of using cell phones for educational content to parents of preschool children. Parents surveyed during the study said the video increased their children’s knowledge of the alphabet and provided them with tools to help their children with literary skills.
In a interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that points out the top 10 trends to watch in terms of campus technology, a big mention goes to wireless technology. A bit of a no brainer when you consider how much students themselves are already using them
When faculty members on many campuses were asked last semester how many received cable television via their cellphones, many responded with wishful and confused looks. As technologically sophisticated as many professors have become, they still seem to shun PDA’s — hand-held computers — to maintain their calendars when scraps of paper will do just fine, and they clearly do not believe they need to watch Katie Couric on a device designed to call home. Still, cellular technologies will likely transform significantly the ways students receive, and trust, information in the next decade. By the time this article appears in print, cable-television service should be available via cellphones in Austin, Tex.; B.; and Raleigh, N.C., according to an article published by USA Today in November. As carriers continue to expand their services, and as college students continue to use and trust them, it will not be long before their professors begin to experiment as well. In those moments, it is likely that the mobility, affordability, and ubiquity of the cellphone will position it as forcefully as the laptop as a teaching tool and information provider.
Papers come from such events, resources and organizations such as MLearn, the EU M-Learning Project and MobiLern a worldwide European-led research and development project exploring context-sensitive approaches to informal, problem-based and workplace learning by using key advances in mobile technologies.â€
Stephanie also sites more info from blogs, writers, luminaries and more.
There was an article in the Washington Post on Sunday about how Universities are having trouble getting announcements to the entire student body when it comes to safety warnings or even just deadlines for enrollment.
