Thing #22 Your Cell Phone as a Tool

I'm not quite ready to jump on the bandwagon just yet. While there are some cool features and fun things to do I'm still old fashioned. There are a few reasons that it might be beneficial. Most students already own a cell phone, a cell phone is relatively cheap compared to other digital tools. Although, in order to be effective every cell phone would have to basically be the same and have all the same features. Text prices and viewing pictures could become costly and who would cover these fees?

Edutopia talked about a few cool tools. The Bluetooth dongle sounds like a fun tool. It allows wireless transfer from say a cell phone to a computer. At just $20 this is a fairly reasonable price. They also talked about using a laptop for just about everything. One person had the idea to put every textbook online and the student wouldn't have to carry around books and it would save a ton of money for the school. I can't really see the cost being better unless every student has a pc. If the school had to supply and upkeep that many laptops, ouch!

I'm not sure which way I sway on the effectiveness of these tools. I would probably be easily swayed if I saw all of these tools in action with classes doing hands on projects and they loved it!