Going Mobile

What do you do with students’ cell phones in the classroom? Do you take them and keep them in a box? Or do you allow students to use them?

This has been a controversial topic since new technologies started to capture our students' concentration in the classroom as well as in their everyday lives. Many educators see this attitude as something that hinders learning more than  supporting it.

On the contrary, there are others who think that technologies have become an essential part of our lives and that we have to adapt to new realities; also, this will help us (teachers and students) to be prepared for what will come in the future.

We would like to introduce you to someone who supports the idea of including new technologies in the classroom to improve students’ learning and to develop digital literacies, her name is Nicky Hockly. In case you’ve never heard of her, she  has worked in the field of face-to-face and distance language education since 1987. She is well-known for delivering famous international workshops and courses on the application of technology to language teaching. (For more information about her, click here).

Just a few years ago we had the chance to attend to one of her highly valuable workshops here in Santa Fe. She gave us examples of many activities in which we can use mobile devices in an attempt to avoid using old-fashioned teaching and to engage students.

We will now mention some activities she proposed for you to take into account. One very interesting task would be to have our students take a photo of themselves (a selfie) at a given time (for example, at 8pm) and send it to a Whatsapp group or upload it to a Facebook group. In this way, they will be able to practice past continuous or past simple the following meeting (I was going to the cinema. I went to the cinema). When it comes to innovating, we will see that many options come up in connection with this activity in particular. For example, we can have them taking a photo of their favourite dish, of what they ate the previous night, or even of a place they've been in order to give directions if we ask them how to arrive there from school.

She then suggested activities like selecting some pictures from the photo gallery of our phones and talking about them with a partner. Students will use a wide range of vocabulary, and also different tenses and aspects by just showing a photo they could choose according to what they wanted to say.

As you can see, the possibilities are unlimited, you can use you creativity and, with cell phones in the classroom, innovation comes up in many different ways. We are really interested in hearing (or reading) about your own experiences, so please leave your comments on this topic!