This week in 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning, there many great tools introduced to the educators to use with students.
I checked out Remind 101! It is great because the teacher is able to send out text messages to the students reminding them about readings, upcoming tests and quizzes, etc. Many children now a day walk around with a cellphone in their purses or pockets-24/7-if I may add. They never let go of their phones! Therefore, what a better way to directly send your students a text message with a quick reminder. I wish I knew about this when I was in high school! However, a few questions that popped into my mind when I was researching this tool was:
-Are there any charges to the sender's phone or the recipients phone?
-What would parent thoughts and opinions be on this?
-What would the school say about this form of communication between teacher and student?
I am taking another technology course this semester and we were introduced to Socrative which is an awesome tool for surveys, quizzes, etc! What is neat about this tool is that as the teacher you can create a class survey, have each student log in with a class assigned code and anonymously have students begin to answer the questions to the survey! Since the teacher created the survey or quiz, he/she can still see individual responses-the rest of the class cannot. Check out this instructional video!
I agree with your questions on this method. I see this used more in Middle to high school even though my k-5 kids already have better phones than I do...I think of my boyfriend, who used to be a high-school teacher...His students occasionally text him about what he is up to, what movie to see etc. and I always got a strange feeling about that, is it crossing the line? Teachers can have separate face book pages for home and work, but we don't usually have 2 cell phones and who is to protect us if there was ever a question of being inappropriate? I'm not sure parents would all love this move.
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