Mobile learning: where are the bluetooth apps?

In a previous post I noted that using bluetooth in the classroom might be a cheap and easy way for students to connect with each other through their mobile phones. In case you are not familiar with bluetooth, it's a technology that most mobile phones have (even very cheap ones nowadays) that allows the sending of files from one phone to another at distances of up to 100 metres. For example, if I want to send a photo or file from my phone to another person's phone, we both enable it on our phones, establish a connection and then the file/photo can be sent. The advantages of this technology are that:

- it is flexible: you can normally send a variety of files (notes, photos, video/audio files) and to different kinds of device (phone/laptop/desktop) assuming they all have bluetooth.
- it is secure: normally you have to establish a secure connection between the phones with a password to make sure only those two phones are communicating.
- it is instantaneous: once the file is sent, it appears immediately on the other person's phone
- Most importantly, it is FREE. Unlike, say, SMS or an internet connection, Bluetooth doesn't require a network or wireless connection and so doesn't use up any data/voice/text minutes the user might have.

At the same time, there are some obvious disadvantages:

- distance limitations: the two phones have to be in relatively close proximity for the transfer to take place, so the students/teacher would have to be in the same room.
- lack of familiarity: in my experience, people seldom use bluetooth on their phones and computer and may not know how to enable it or how to send files using it. There would have to be a period of familiarisation if using it with students, though no more than teaching them to use other features on their phones.

Clearly it's not really a technology that can be used OUTSIDE the classroom, but for those occasions when mobile devices are being used inside the classroom, I think it would be a great alternative to using wireless connections, 3G or SMS. Some possible ways I think it could be used in the ESL classroom are/would be:

- students sending messages to each other and/or the teacher during lesson. This would be similar to this idea of backchannelling I discussed in a previous post.
- Students recording their voices on their phones (either for pronunciation or other purposes) and then sharing them with their peers to compare/critique).
- Students sharing pictures about themselves or their families/places they've visited with their peers for discussion or for some form of getting to know you activity at the start of term.
- students are sent out on some kind of scavenger/treasure hunt, they take pictures to prove where they've been and then they send them to a computer in class for viewing on the board or via a projector.
- students do quizzes/tasks on their phone and then compare answers to them by sending them to each other.

These are just some initial, fairly vague thoughts on this, but I think this technology could really be exploited, especially in classes that don't have wireless connections. However, looking round the web I could find very few examples of where bluetooth has been used in mobile learning situations.

Next month I will be trying to implement a more structured use of mobile devices with one of my classes and I'm going to see what is possible using bluetooth. If anyone has any suggestions or personal experiences of using this technology in class or know of any any apps that have been developed that use bluetooth for learning purposes, I would be very interested in hearing about it.

Backchannelling as a means of feedback in class

I've just read an interesting article about the use of backchannelling in class as a means of getting feedback from the students, checking their understanding. What's suggested in the article seems somewhat similar to what's presented in this video from a professor at the University of Texas.



I think this idea of several 'conversations' going on in the classroom at the same time is an interesting one, particularly if you are lecturing to large groups of students. A great way to involve large groups and at the same time not necessarily disrupting the flow of the presentation or discussion. I think it would be particularly good for collecting questions to be answered at the end of the lesson.

For me, I don't really lecture, I'm more of a classroom teacher and my classes are quite small (normally between 10-14 students); however, I can still see situations where this would be useful. Maybe students have questions not directly related to the topic of the lesson (maybe a word they remembered or an expression the teacher used)and they would like to know about it. They could post it to a Twitter feed or Facebook and we could then either take a look at them at the end of the lesson time permitting or they could be picked up on in future lessons.

My only concern about this is that I'm not sure how realistic this would be for my students to be able to actually do during the lesson. You can see in the video that many of the students are using their laptops to tweet their ideas, but my students don't really bring computers to class since it's not just about taking notes. So they would have to be able to do it via their phones and while there is an easy way to do this - you can easily tweet via SMS - I'm not sure there is a cheap way. Each time they sent a message they would be charged by their carrier. I don't want my students' decision to contribute to be based on their data plans rather than on how much they have to say.

I would be interested to know whether there are any alternatives, possibly via bluetooth. I'm pretty sure all my students have bluetooth on their phones and we have computers in every classroom, so there must be some way for them to send messages that way and have them show up on the computer and subsequently the board (since we have SmartBoards in all our classrooms). Does anyone know of any way that messages can be sent via a mobile phone and then displayed on a computer screen? I think this would be a much more efficient way to doing this.

It's something I'm going to look into, but if anyone has any suggestions they would be most welcome. In fact, I'm wondering what other ways bluetooth can be used in class. After all, all phones have it these days, it's perfect for transferring pictures/files etc and most importantly it doesn't cost anything.

Well, once the new term starts I'm thinking I might try this with one of my groups and see if it works.