MAKING YOUR CLASS MOBILE

Special thanks to Rachel!  When I was asking my students what they thought of a flipped classroom, Rachel said that it should be mobile!  Absolutely!  Many of my students do not have access to a computer or internet but most have some kind of smartphone.  I know we as educators cringe at the idea of using cell phones in the class room, but this is preferred method of communication amongst our students.  If we do not teach them how to properly use research and class time on the phones, we leave a void that will get filled with games and mindless time stealers! So teach we must!

I set to searching for that perfect way to create a mobile website and keeping with my main criteria of FREE, I stumbled upon DudaMobile.   They offer the ability to make your website a mobile site!  Don't fall for it!  If your website is small enough for a mobile device to work it smoothly, then your website is not working to its full potential and you don't need a separate mobile site.  If your website does all the things you want it to do, then its too big a file to run on a mobile device! Start from scratch and leave off all the fancy fluff things.  Keep the files small, including pictures if any.  That way students who don't have internet access on their phones can still access with little problems.  Check out my initial template to get a better idea. THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS!!  If you have a mobile site, I would love to hear from you!  With this mobile site, my students can:

• get the outline of the chapter
• get their homework assignment
• I prepared the audio reading of the chapter and the outline to be a you tube video in 3GP format (I googled up what the best format for cell phones)  This may be an unnecessary step  as the wmv format from window movie maker seem to work OK.  If you need to convert your video into any format, might I suggest Freemake video converter.  Need I say that it is free and works incredibly easy! 
• access the youtube videos you've made to explain the chapter or the lecture. 

My future plans for the mobile page include:

• call in the answer to some short questions (I've seen language teachers use this function)
• access to just the audio files for the chapters
• geo-caching! Pair up to follow the GPS coordinates, take pictures of you and your partner at each goal and submit to website!

You get the idea!  If the students are using these devices, they might as well be using them to some good.  We are not getting rid of them, they are only going to evolve to the "next best thing", and we need to keep up with these trends so that our students can compete in this world.

Wish Me Luck!