Can you hear me now?

I felt this last instructional unit was unexpected but fun. This is what I would like to one day bring to a fifth grade class of my own. One of my favorite quotes from the second video that was in week #13 was "engage don't enrage." This is exactly what I feel teaching should be. In schools right now there are bans on cell phones and ipods. These valuable tools are seen as a nuisance rather than techniques. One way that phones and ipods could be used is using a scavenger hunt either on school grounds the way we did in class on Wednesday or a "virtual" scavenger hunt giving historical clues to follow and following the path of a GPS system on phones.

Podcasting would be a great way to keep students in touch. I remember there were times in elementary school when a student would break a leg or be out of town for a long period of time due to a death in the family or illness. Podcasting would be a great way for the away student to be able to stay in contact with his or her class and not miss out on any of what's going on. This would be great in combination with text messaging between the away student and his buddy. The buddy system not only helps the student who can't be in class for whatever reason but also gives incentive the buddy who is in school and volunteers to be a text buddy has the opportunity to help out and to get some extra credit points.

I would also like to put a new spin on "show and tell." I would like to be able to give the assignment over a weekend and tell students to take a picture of something fun or interesting and send it to 5 people and then have everyone on Monday talk about the favorite picture message they received over the weekend and then let the student that sent the picture elaborate on why he or she thought it was fun or interesting.

All of these methods would help "engage not enrage" the students. Cell phones and other mobile devices are a part of everyday life and so is school, may as well combine the two. When this is done it will help make communicating with fellow classmates more comfortable and learning something to look forward to.

This is a cool video to use as a field trip replacement. It would be cool to go and see a honeybee farm but maybe a little too scary.