Students Keep Your Cell Phones On, Please

One of the more frustrating factors in teaching today is the ubiquitous presence of smartphones and other mobile devices in the classroom.  You just know the students are paying more attention to Facebook, text messages, and who knows what else (and you probably don’t want to know) than you.  Instead of fighting that battle, why not consider joining it?  Some of the ways I have found to capitalize on student mobile devices is to ask them to use them to contribute to class activities and discussions.  For example, we’ll use a weather app to see how conditions vary around the country that day, the calculator function to compute various formulas applicable to the class discussion, and Google Earth to view real pictures of various greenhouse companies located around the world.  I also ask students to conduct web searches during class and share their results.  I really like this when a question has come up that I can’t answer.  It is particularly handy to use my email archives to look up and link to a website showing an industry magazine article or a journal article that was originally sent out via email. In each of these examples, there is a need to be able to project the iPhone or iPad results on the screen and share your app/website with the class—running AirServer will help.  The podium computer is not appropriate because it does not provide access to iPhone/iPad apps and in our classrooms and it is cleared of all new downloads at the end of each day.  One last thing, I am not particularly techno savvy, so if I can do it, anyone can.