Text Messenging Used to Help Students Learn Poetry

Students in a New York state middle school who used cell phones and text messaging to learn about poetry outperformed their peers who learned through traditional methods. Students used the phones to text the main idea of poetry stanzas. Those who did got 80% of poetry questions correct on state exams, while those who were taught in traditional methods of using reading, reciting and discussing answered 40% of the questions correctly. Details here.

A school that welcomes cell phones into the classroom

A pilot middle school program aims to see what happens when students use cell phones for instruction. Says one social studies teacher: "It's not really a phone, it's their computer for class." Details from CNN.

10 Ideas for Engaging Learners with Cell Phones Even in Districts that Ban Them

Interesting blog post from TechLearning.com. The author says: "with the help of other innovative educational leaders (mentioned in the article), I’ve come up with ten ideas for beginning to incorporate these tools into teaching and learning in meaningful ways."