Ask students to submit an assignment on their cell phone

Monday, May 18th 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)

Cell phones can be used in powerful ways by students and teachers as assessment tools. Most teachers are familiar and comfortable asking students to submit written work to assess their learning, but are likely much less experienced asking students to submit multimedia files as assignments. This needs to change. As teachers, we need to invite students to regularly “show what they know” not only with written texts, worksheets, and multiple-choice examinations, but also with multimedia software as well as websites which permit students to record their voices and use visual images to communicate messages.

Drop.io is now my favorite website for phone-based audio recording, since it provides 100 MB of free space to any user. This equates to approximately 450 minutes of recorded audio. After creating a free drop.io site, users are provided with an extension and phone number to provide to students, parents, and others who can leave recorded audio messages in a virtual “drop.” Unlike Gabcast, Drop.io does not log the phone numbers of people who call and leave messages. That is a real advantage of Gabcast, since it provides accountability for students and others who call in to leave a message. Both Gabcast and Gcast can also be used for cell phone and land-line phone digital audio recording, but neither Gabcast or Gcast offers this service for free. Drop.io does. If you need more web space and time for phone recording. drop.io only charges $10 per year for an additional gigabyte of storage space. I think this is an amazing deal, and I am not affiliated in any way with drop.io! Drop.io also offers “Drop.io Manager” to manage file sharing for larger projects, as well as other features.

Check out drop.io’s webpage, “leave voicemail on a drop” for more information about using the phone-based recording features. For more suggestions on using cell phones for learning with students, check out Liz Kolb’s book “Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education” and her 2007 K-12 Online Conference presentation, “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools.” Liz’ blog is “From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning,” and she is lkolb on Twitter.

I recorded a fifty minute podcast today comparing the features of drop.io to Gabcast, and also shared a little about a lecturecasting project with which I was involved this past spring.

If your school or school district prohibits students from having or using their cell phones during class, I am NOT encouraging you to break that rule. Regardless of your local cell phone use policies, however, it is likely fine for students to use a phone (cell or land line) when they are at home to complete an assignment. Consider asking students to submit an assignment to you via a phone and a drop.io account you create in advance. This could be a “regular” assignment or something for extra credit. It is a good idea to provide students with guidelines for their call’s contents, including the way you want students to identify themselves in the recording. Be aware the drop.io call-in number is a New York area code, so students will most likely want to use a cell phone to call which provides free long distance. Don’t get yourself in trouble asking students to make long distance phone calls to New York that result in new phone charges to parents! While Gabcast and Gcast are not free, they do offer toll-free numbers for students and others to call to leave messages. Gcast currently charges $99 per year for unlimited use of its cell phone call-in recording service, Gabcast charges 10 cents per minute for recorded calls. All three of these services use a server-based solution to convert recorded audio calls to mp3 format which are available to download and edit as desired, or link to directly.

Hat tip to Dean Mantz for sharing about drop.io’s phone recording capabilities several weeks ago at the 2009 PodStock Conference, hosted by ESSDACK in Wichita, Kansas.

Are you aware of other websites in addition to Drop.io, Gabcast, and Gcast which offer similar phone-based recording features, permitting students and others to create “no-edit” podcasts which are immediately available online? AudioBoo permits no-edit audio file publishing, but published files are NOT included in a personalized RSS feed / podcast channel as they are with Drop.io, Gabcast, and Gcast. AudioBoo also requires an iPhone and cannot (currently) be used with other types of phones. GeoGraffiti also permits location-based audio recording, but does not include its Internet-published audio files in a personalized podcast feed. I’d love to know of other services (particularly those with a basic level of free service, like drop.io) which permit “no-edit”audio  podcasting.

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