Journal 4

Form Toy to Tool
by Liz Kolb


Here the author outlines the way to audio blog and how to incorporate the daily use of the cell phone into a creative useful tool for the classroom. She states that there can be many resources for using the cell phone as a bloging tool. You can record interviews and post them directly onto a blog. There is no risk of loosing the information because it is automatically downloaded online. Afterwards the students can go directly to the blog and edit the information as they need. This it turning the distraction of a cellphone in the classroom into a tool for learning and presentation. As a great resource she listed some free sites that I would like to copy here for reference.
Blogger: http://www.blogger.com
Blogzy: http://www.blogzy.com
Cyberbee Copyright: http://www.cyberbee.
com/copyrt.html
Gabcast: http://www.gabcast.com
Gcast: http://www.gcast.com
Skype: http://www.skype.com


Question1: What are the risks involved? The article is great in that it not only sells the idea of using phones as a learning tool it also takes into consideration the risks. The risks of privacy and copy right are important to think about with these types of projects but can also be a building block for the future in writing and research ethics.

Question 2: How to deal with cost issues? I know that many if not most kids now a days have cell phones. However what about the kid who's family can not afford it. How do you be sure that they don't fell less than? I like the idea that the author has about getting some classroom phones. I also like the skype idea. I think I would rather use the classroom cell phone idea in order to eliminate the chance of making someone feel badly that they don't have the finances to do the project on their own.