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November 9, 2009

Cell Phones in a World Language Classroom

In the recent edition of Liz Kolb's Cell Phones in Learning Radio Show she talks with Katie Titler of Wisconsin. Katie teaches Spanish 2 & 3 in high school. Katie talks about how she used Voki in her classes this year. From the Voki homepage it says:

Voki is a free service that allows you to create personalized speaking avatars and use them on your blog, profile, and in email messages.

Katie also talks about sending text message reminders to her students to remind them of upcoming assignments, tests or quizzes. I think it is a great idea to use the students cell phones this way. Kids today are very attached to their phones (stating the obvious or what) and you will definitely get their attention if you contact them via this medium. My only caution is that if you use your own phone to contact them then they have your cell phone number. I remind students about detentions they have to serve but I use Outlook to perform this task (see my post here).

Great podcast Liz and Katie.

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Filed under  //   Cell phones   Cell Phones in Learning   Microsoft Outlook   Text Messages   Voki  

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October 21, 2009

Use Outlook to Send Text Message Reminders to your Students and even Schedule them Days or Weeks in Advance

 Want to send text message reminders to your students but don't want them to know your cell phone number? Use Outlook (or any email program). You can send a text message to any cell phone via your email account. To send the text enter the student's phone number in the address bar and add the proper suffix for the students cell phone carrier and the email will arrive on their phone as a text message. If a student's cell phone number is 888-123-4567 for example, and they use Verizon as their phone carrier, you would put 8881234567@vtext.com in the address bar for the email. Put in a subject in the subject line and type out a short message in the body of the email and hit send. This works with all phone carriers. Below is a list of all the extensions for all the major phone carriers.

If you want to send a text reminder for sometime in the future you can use the Delay Delivery option in Outlook. This option is found under the Options Tab in Outlook 2007 when you are drafting a new message. This feature is great if you want to remind students of a due date for a major project. First set up a distribution list with all the students cell phones numbers for each of your classes. Then type out the email and choose Delay Delivery and pick a date and time in the future when you want the email to be sent out. Then click Send. Give it a try. Your students will love you for communicating through their medium of choice.

 Alltel
@alltel.com

AT&T (formerly Cingular)
@txt.att.net

Boost Mobile
@myboostmobile.com

Nextel (now part of Sprint Nextel)
@messaging.nextel.com

Sprint PCS (now Sprint Nextel)
@messaging.sprintpcs.com

T-Mobile
@tmomail.net

Verizon
@vtext.com

Virgin Mobile USA
@vmobl.com

Note: If you do not know the person's cell phone carrier then just address it to  their 10-digit phone # at teleflip dot com.
Example: 2125551212@teleflip.com

 

 

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Filed under  //   Cell phones   Microsoft Outlook   students   Text Messages  

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