Mobile phone

Mobile phone in class

1-collect every day language.

Ask students to:

use this feature to take notes on the English they read or hear outside of school and either present the notes to the class or send them to you as a text message.

2-take pictures of English text

This can be achieved by using the Camera feature

on their mobile phones.

3:  to organize language samples.
An extension to Ideas 1 and 2 is to use a free program to upload notes and pictures

4:  to record language from media outlets.
Most phones include a memo recording feature that can collect language samples from TV or radio. The students’ collected samples give you an opportunity to analyze the language, discuss

where they were collected, and provide feedback.

5:  to record conversations outside the classroom.

Students can record interviews or conversations they engage in outside the classroom.

6:  to reinforce vocabulary learning.

you could text the words covered in class to encourage students to review them outside the school context.

7:  to make flashcards for mobile phones.

You or your students can create vocabulary flashcards that can be retrieved, shared, and practiced anywhere.

8:  for circular writing.

One activity is circular writing, where students create a story together by contributing one text message at a time. Each student writes a sentence or two and then sends this on to the next student, who adds another message, and so on until the story is complete.

9:  for tandem learning.

Interactive writing can be encouraged through tandem learning.  In this activity two students who wish to learn each other’s native language pair up and exchange text messages.

10- to keep a blog.

Students use the Text Messaging and Camera features to add messages and post pictures to

their personal blogs.

11:  for micro blogging on Twitter.

Micro blogging involves sending short messages (limit of 140 characters, including punctuation and spaces) from a computer or a mobile phone.

12:  for social networking.
Like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are enormously popular social networking tools that allow groups of “friends” to meet, post and chat to.

13: for a language exchange.
Using phones for speaking may not seem like an original idea, but one way to encourage reluctant students to start speaking is to establish a language exchange.

14:  for “phlogging”.
To encourage students to practice individual speaking, they could start phlogging, a recent form of blogging that entails calling a number and leaving a message on a website,

15:  to distribute listening material.
Many phones have memory for graphics, photos, and music that you can use to download listening material for your students, who can in turn transfer them to their phones or other media.

16:  to distribute reading material.
Similar to the listening idea above, you could download reading materials for your students. There are numerous sites with free reading material, including Project Gutenberg  which also has many audio-books available.

17:  to play games.
Many of the free games for mobile phones, such as Scrabble and crossword puzzles, involve a focus on language.

18: to keep a portfolio.
Most learning inevitably takes place outside the classroom. Students need to process new information and assimilate it into their inter-language, which is their current stage of second language development as reflected by their control of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary.

19:to check student comprehension and get feedback.

Mobile phones can also help you in your teaching.

One way is to add an element of interactivity to your classes through audience participation.

20:  for research and data collection.

Mobile phones are now becoming indispensable for research and data collection.  Being small and light, they are excellent portable tools for researchers to collect socioeconomic, health, and other critical information from communities worldwide. 

'Connecting over Skype makes learning an adventure!  It brings the curriculum to life by experiencing real-time the people, places and things we are studying. 

This dramatically changes my students’ engagement. Best of all, my students learn empathy for others, becoming compassionate global citizens. '