Most students have cell phones, and more than half of all US undergraduates own an internet-capable handheld device and more plan to purchase one in the next 12 months (ECAR Research Study 2009). Why not use them?

How?  Here are three ideas:

Cell phones and internet-capable phones can be used as polling devices, like clickers, to engage students during class. Poll Everywhere will supply an easy to use interface for small classes for free, or large classes for a fee.

Students could access information during class, to contribute to discussions or to inform critical thinking. How? Students could query Google or Google Scholar, access the library or librarian, use news sources, or specific applications for your topic.

Leverage student interest in texting to learn about their thinking during class, by setting up a backchannel, like Hotseat at Purdue University. A teaching assistant or other instructor can monitor the backchannel, and alert you to questions, problems, and student interest at appropriate points in the class.

Come to a discussion of using mobile devices for education, both in and out of class, on the second Tuesday of each month.

Meet with other  Duke faculty and talk about ideas for using cell phones (or any small, mobile devices) in teaching, both in and outside the classroom.

At a previous meeting, participants discussed using these devices in class to engage students and foster interaction.  Owen Astrachan demonstrated how he used Poll Everywhere with his class of 344 students.  Poll Everywhere allows students to use their own devices as personal response systems, to give answers electronically in class.

Other participants discussed using applications that provide information relevant to the course, like Epocrates for accessing drug information, Labs 360 as a medical laboratory guide, or other applications for medical students.  Other examples might be using the mobile version of the Wall Street Journal in a business class,  flash cards for organic chemistry reactions, or spreadsheet applications for laboratories.

We discussed how instructors could incorporate the social networking and connectedness of applications like Smule’s Ocarina to engage students, and how Twitter could be used to build a community of students in an educational program.

Join us:

• Register for our next discussion at 10 am on October 13.
• E-mail Andrea Novicki to suggest topics.

Now that many students carry a single device that can make phone calls, take pictures, record audio and video, store data, music, and movies, and interact with the Internet, how can we use this in teaching?  This fall, meet with other faculty to discuss and test ideas and software for using cell phones or other small devices in teaching.  We’ll meet once a month, for demonstrations and discussions.  Come and share your ideas and learn.

On Tuesday, September 8th at 10 am, we’ll discuss topics and ideas for this semester.  In addition, Owen Astrachan will talk about his plans for using Poll Everywhere, a simple polling system that uses student cell phones as “clickers” to gather student responses.  We’ll try it out.  Sign up to join us!

Read more from the Duke Digital Initiative.

Get more ideas and share the future of education.

Guest post by Julie Reynolds, Duke University

Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, but I discovered it takes slightly more than 140 characters to convince colleagues of Twitter’s value. I’ll try to make my argument for why professionals should use Twitter, and I’ll do it in just 14 tweets. Here we go.

#1) Professional use of Twitter 1 of 3: Post URLs for blogs, articles, & events that you want to make public to a larger audience

• #2) To promote publications, ex: “When Communicating with Diverse Audiences, Use Velcro to Make Science Stick http://bit.ly/4GD4fX“
• #3) To publicize students’ work, ex: “#DukeEngage interns turn dung into fuel in India http://bit.ly/c3u1a”
• #4) To publicize events, ex: “Citizen Science Training Opportunity July 19, 2009 http://bit.ly/16NYgc”

#5) Professional use of Twitter 2 of 3: Network w/folks who share interests or are using similar pedagogy/technology/research method

• #6) Networking tip: be sure your Twitter profile has a descriptive bio so people can find you, ex: http://bit.ly/Vqepp
• #7) Twitter can be like a virtual business card. Be sure your profile bio and webpage are up-to-date and informative
• #8) Join a twibe to find similarly-minded people. Visit http://twibes.com/ to search and join twibes
• #9) Add yourself to http://wefollow.com twitter directory so people can find you (I use #scientist #conservation #educator)
• #10) I posted ex of students’ use of edu software, was contacted by software maker to ask if they could showcase my students’ work!
• #11) Retweet to share info & build community, ex: “RT @saprasanna: Our DukeEngage project is on Duke News: http://tinyurl.com/nmuxkz”
• #12) Search for keywords http://search.twitter.com/ (or via Tweetdeck, my fav Twitr app) & follow people who have interesting tweets

#13) Professional use of Twitter 3 of 3: Back-channel conversation at conferences for feedback on talks & updates on things you missed

• #14) Ex: search for #NECC09 for examples of rich conversation and information resulting from back-channel conversations at a conference

You can follow this conversation on Twitter by searching for #TwitValue. For professional updates, follow Julie at http://twitter.com/JulieReynolds88.

Students in Victoria Szabo and Richard Lucic’s capstone course ISIS 200 have produced a “mapping toolkit” that includes a list of devices, directions for using the devices to collect mappable data, directions for creating maps with Google Earth, and a website to organize this material.

The initial purpose of this mapping toolkit is for Duke Engage students in partnership with WISER (Women’s Institute of Secondary Education and Research) to produce useful maps to facilitate the planning of community facilities and ways to impact gender disparities in health and education in Muhuru Bay, Kenya.

Students produced a helpful website:

The mission of ISISmapping.org is to help you map your world. We believe that maps are power, a power that should be shared by everyone.

During this course, students investigated mapping technology and devices, and decided which ones should go to Kenya as part of the toolkit, based on the needs of the project and the conditions in Kenya. They produced documentation and worked out best practices for mapping, in consultation with researchers in Kenya. The recommendations and documentation they produced can be used by anyone who’d like to map their world.

Watch Victoria Szabo, Sherryl Broverman and students in the course talk about the project.

At the final presentation of the project, students were asked about the challenges they faced when exploring the technology and creating the project. They described the challenges of coming together as a team, keeping up with rapidly changing technology to determine the best way to map, and creating a way for people in Kenya to make maps with their data despite intermittent electricity and rare access to the internet.

Looking for that perfect image for your class, but away from your computer? Now, search over 32,000 images from the Duke University Libraries’ digital collections on your iPhone, through DukeMobile, Duke’s integrated iPhone Application.

iPhone and iPod Touch users can browse and search twenty collections that range from advertisements and documentary photography to sheet music. You can save and download images to an album, and access all descriptive information.

Making digital image collections viewable on mobile devices is part of the library’s ongoing efforts to make its resources available whenever and wherever researchers need them.

DukeMobile, introduced in March 2009, currently serves about 50,000 users, providing mobile access to the campus directory, sports scores, interactive maps, event listings, the course catalog, and Duke videos on YouTube.

Join us on Friday, April 24th 2009  to meet colleagues and share stories at the Center for Instructional Technology showcase.

Talk with Julie Reynolds about using video to teach writing, Julie Perco about teaching with Second Life, Len White or Lucy Haagen about mobile devices, Victoria Szabo or Alex Glass or Peter Haff about using mapping in your course and student Jennifer Kim about effective blog assignments.

Talk with people who have been teaching in the Link (Liliana Paredes, Laura Florand, Sandra Valnes Quammen, Hugh Crumley, Susan Wynn and Deb Reisinger) and find out how to use the flexible spaces.

Learn how your colleagues have used VoiceThread or iTunesU (or find out what these are).  And more!

Register now to reserve your space.

NOTE: This post is part 3 in a series addressing concepts found in the 2009 Horizon Report. Part 1 can be found here. Part 2 can be found here.

In this series of posts, I’ve discussed blogs being used as personal web publishing systems and explored ways educators might use Web2.0 tools, originally designed for ‘personal’ use, to instead work with students to build knowledge together. It probably goes without saying that one of the key aspects of the World Wide Web is that it’s all (potentially) connected – but until a few years ago, these ‘connections’ were at best accomplished by creating hyperlinks to other sites and content, and later by smarter search engines. With technologies like RSS feeds, however, the Web 2.0 world has made it easier to link, share, and re-purpose content. We have increasing ability to view and publish content in any style/format/design we choose.

The web is continuing to spill over from our computers to all of our other everyday gadgets, including our music players, televisions, and radios – in some cases, even our refrigerators. On the Map of Future Forces Affecting Education (created by the KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Institute for the Future) this concept is described as ‘The End of Cyberspace’ and is listed as one of of the key ‘Drivers of Change’ in the coming years:

“Places and objects are becoming increasingly embedded with digital information and linked through connective media into social networks. The result is the end of the distinction between cyberspace and real space.”

(more…)

Andrea Novicki and I (Shawn Miller)  attended the Educause Learning Initiative’s 2009 Conference January 20-22 in Orlando.

Link to Educause conference archive (videos, ppts, etc): http://connect.educause.edu/term_view/eliannual09

The conference: the meta-experience

ANDREA: ELI is attended by people who are excited about using technology in teaching. The attendees (faculty, learning center folks, instructional technologists) may also be excited about technology in general, but the focus is on the possibilities that technology provides for education.  The organizers and attendees are the sort of people who are willing to try things to find out what works. Therefore, there are many experiments at this conference: types of sessions, varieties of activities, and how people learn at the conference (which is the most interesting to me). It’s like being able to see into the future, or, even better, getting to play in the future.   (more…)

According to the 2009 Horizon Report, “Geo-Everything” will significantly impact teaching, learning, research and creative expression within the next two to three years.  (The report covers 5 other technologies, but geo-everything is my favorite.)

What is it?

Geolocation (geocoding or geotagging) means using data about location, whether it’s where you are or where a photo or other data was taken.  Every place on earth has a unique set of coordinates (longitude, latitude and altitude) that can be detected by GPS receivers.  These receivers are now being included in many devices.

Geolocation is not new; people have been tracking their movements (and the movements of animals) for years. I’ve used a GPS device to record and create tracks of where I’ve been and to tag photos to map on Google Earth for several years. What is new are small, multifunctional devices like the iPhone that have GPS built in,  so it is easier to record or use location information. For example, students could be investigating the distribution of a plant species, or investigating medical care in an underdeveloped country.  Students can take pictures, video and record notes, while the device automatically records the location and displays it on a map. The new devices eliminate the need for a separate GPS unit while simplifying the steps to create annotated, precise maps.  The devices also allow communication based on location.  For example, imagine a student waiting for the C2 bus, worried about her German class.  The device in her pocket may let her know that someone within a few feet of her is also taking German and would like to practice German as they wait for the bus.

What are these devices?  Some are pictured here.  Wired has a comparison of 5 currently available devices, including the iPhone; it’s likely more will be available soon.

People are already using geolocation here at Duke.  For example,

• Victoria Szabo, and Richard Lucic (ISIS) are exploring devices for creating multimedia maps creating multimedia maps with their research capstone course and Duke Engage
• Julie Reynolds‘ (Biology) citizen scientist project maps the location of invasive plants
• Trudy Abel (History) has collected historical information, including maps for Digital Durham
• Peter Haff’s students (NSOE) mapped their field trip to the southwest desert using Google Earth
• Pat Halpin’s Marine Geospatial Ecology lab uses mapping to look at marine ecology, resource management and ocean conservation issues
• Alex Glass’s (NSOE) course mapped the location of virtual oil field
• Gary Gereffi (Sociology) has created maps demonstrating North Carolina’s role in the Global Economy
• Ken Glander (Evolutionary Anthropology) is working on tracking the daily activity of lemurs

For a more frivolous, but more concrete view of current possibilities, see Wired’s description of 10 applications that make the most of location.

For a short description of how geolocation works and how it can be used in teaching, see the pdf “7 things you should know about geolocation”, or read more in the Horizon Report (pdf).