A recent post on the Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning blog, which is supported by the MacArthur Foundation, says that educators should embrace texting and tweeting. The article gives some examples of how you can use tweets in an English class. The articles quotes from Carol Tilley, a professor of library and information science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She says:

...more than 70 percent of teens have a mobile phone, the technology offers a “viable alternate means of engaging with that age group.” 

Instead of trying to figure out how to have a 1:1 laptop program I think it is more advantageous to figure out how to use the pocket computer that most kids bring to school everyday. 

The post goes on to reference a blog post from Ewan McIntosh's blog. He writes about what he calls Christmas Cracker Research:

What kids get for Christmas one year is nearly always the forerunner to what is really desirable in a few years' time. Where mp3 players were the hot item in 2003, the iPod shuffle and mini took until 2005 to hit the mainstream school audience. Where iPhones and iPod touches hit the Christmas pressie list in 2009, there will be something more profound and far more widespread in adoption in 2011. 

McIntosh's point is well taken. I have never considered the impact holiday shopping had on pushing new devices into the mainstream. In the school where I work I am seeing more smartphones and iPod Touches with each passing month. It will be interesting to see what changes the holiday season brings. 

Later on in McIntosh's blog post he references the pilot at Abilene University where they gave 1,000 freshman iPhones:

Each participating Abilene instructor is incorporating the iPhone differently into their curriculum. In some classrooms, professors project discussion questions onscreen in a PowerPoint presentation. Then, using polling software that Abilene coded for the iPhone, students can answer the questions anonymously by sending responses electronically with their iPhones. The software can also quickly quiz students to gauge whether they’re understanding the lesson.

... And if students don’t understand a lesson, they can ask the teacher to repeat it by simply tapping a button on the iPhone.

McIntosh ends his post by saying:

...a student in the story outlines why making these fundamental changes to access to technologies, whether that is giving it away for free (in Abilene) or just allowing students to bring ... in their Christmas 09 haul, is a no-brainer:

“They’re preparing us for the real world — not a place where you’re not allowed to use anything.”

I use my smartphone everyday for both personal and work related tasks. I would not want someone to take away my phone because I used it at the wrong time. I think we need to embrace student owned cell phones in school and educate students how to use them responsibly.

Both posts are good reads. Follow the links above to read each post in it's entirety.