Student diaries recorded on their mobile phones

Been a little too busy to post much over the last few weeks....ah, just basically been a bit lazy.

Anyhow, my attempts to create a mobile ESL group at my school are slowly progressing. The biggest difficulty - ironic given that the group is all about increasing and streamlining communication - is getting the word out about it. I've put posters up in classrooms and some teachers have told their students about it, but I don't think enough students know about it.

Still, we have now signed up to a service that will allow me to send an SMS to all the students in the school, so I'm hoping that will help me get the word out.

So, what was this post about? Ah yes, just a little thing I've been trying with my students - getting them to record their learning diaries as sound files on their phones and then send them to me. Normally they just do this as a text file in Blackboard, but not all of them seemed that enthusiastic about doing it, so I gave them the option to record it.

The results have been surprisingly good. Several of my students took up the option and the quality and quality of their diaries have improved dramatically. Clearly, they find it easier and more motivating to speak their diaries rather than write them.

Certainly it's something you might want to get your students doing, whether it's a learning diary or a short talk on a topic, and recording it on a phone is quick and easy.