Cell Phones as Audio Recorders

Sunday, February 8th 2009 by Wes FryercloseAuthor: Wes Fryer Name: Wes Fryer
Email: wes@isteconnects.org
Site: http://www.speedofcreativity.org
About: Wesley is an international learning consultant, author, digital storyteller, educator and catalyst for educational reform focused on blended learning, differentiated instruction, and creative engagement. His bio is available on www.wesfryer.com/bio and complete vitae on www.wesfryer.com/vitae.See Authors Posts (74)

Presentations about the uses of cell phones to support learning both inside and outside the traditional classroom have been popular as well as contentious at educational technology conferences in the past year. I first become aware of the wide variety of constructive ways cell phones can be used to support learning through Liz Kolb’s presentation for the 2007 K-12 Online Conference, “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools.” Liz is the author of the blog “From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning,” and published the book “Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education” with ISTE in 2008. This past week, at the eTechOhio conference in Columbus, I heard Ohio technology director Ryan Collins’ outstanding presentation “Cellphones in the classroom? Yes way!” In his session Ryan identified seven different ways cell phones can and are being used to support learning:

1. Blogging and microblogging
2. Email
3. student response systems
4. Researching
5. Note taking
6. RSS reading
7. Organizing

Among all the potential and actual uses of cell phones to enhance and support learning, I am most enthused as well as optimistic about the cell phone’s ability to be used as a mobile recording device. The websites Gabcast and Gcast permit cell phone users (and users of ANY phone, for that matter) to directly record audio to the Internet in mp3 format. This process is similar to leaving a voicemail message for someone. Today, thanks again to Liz Kolb, I learned about the website PhoneCasting which also features mobile audio recording functionality.

In our statewide oral history and digital storytelling project, “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices,” we have had several teachers use these websites to record interviews with parents and grandparents who were not geographically close enough to interview in-person during our 2.5 day workshops. The videos “Richard Ivie-World War II” by Dawn Danker and “The Dirty Thirties” by Jeanette Hale are both examples of cellphone-powered digital stories. Dawn used Gcast to enable her mother, Shirley, to record World War II memories of her step-father over the phone which Dawn later edited for her final oral history story. Jeanette used Gabcast to enable her grandmother, who had just turned 90 the week of our workshop in Oklahoma City, to call in with the help of a relative from the Oklahoma panhandle and recount stories she remembered as a child growing up in the heart of the dust bowl. Without these cell phone audio recording websites, it is doubtful either of these digital stories would have been created at all. Even if they had been created, without the cell phone audio recording functionality they would not have included the priceless voices of family members who were eyewitnesses to history. These uses of cell phones to support learning demonstrate, in my view, clear examples of “transformative” technology use which enables learning to take place which would have been impossible without the use of those technologies.

The most basic problem when it comes to introducing cell phones as learning tools in most classrooms and school contexts seems to be that many teachers and school leaders aren’t interested in empowering students to share their voices and publish their ideas for a global audience. That learning objective is not on the state assessment. In addition, to coin a phrase frequently used by Nevada elementary teacher Brian Crosby, this type of learning is usually “messy learning.” Many teachers and administrators are not “into” messy learning, in which students are talking, collaborating, discussing, and actively working. Many educators prefer a sterile, quiet, entirely CONTROLLED learning environment in which students sit passively at their desks in neat rows, attentively listening to a lecture delivered by the teacher and taking copious notes with rapt attention.

The fact that most cell phones today have more power than the computers NASA had in the 1960s and 1970s when the United States landed men on the moon is remarkable. The fact that computers have now been in our schools and classrooms for THIRTY years and in many cases have not succeeded in changing predominant educational practices in schools is not only sobering but also potentially depressing.

Even if your school bans the use of cell phones by students AT SCHOOL, it is still possible for your students to constructively and legally use their cell phones for learning at home on their own time. Consider giving a homework assignment to students this year which involves their use of either a Gabcast or Gcast channel to share their thoughts and reflections with you and each other.

Are you aware of other websites in addition to Gabcast, Gcast, and Phonecasting which enable cell phones to be used as mobile audio recorders? I think tools like these sites have rich assessment possibilities which we have just begun to imagine and explore as 21st century educators and co-learners.

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