Transforming Cell Phone Distractions Into Personalized Learning Interactions

Description

This workshop exposes educators to tools that increase their capacity to add an efficient digital learning component to their instruction by challenging the notion that there’s no place for cell phones and other mobile devices in the classroom. Participants engage in simulated classroom sessions using free and subscribed web-based applications. The workshop features and integrates technologies that can easily streamline the inclusion of cell phones and other mobile devices into the classroom for one or more of the following purposes: formative assessment, interactive lectures with immediate feedback, reflections, student portfolios, large and small group projects, and informal assessments.

By the end of this workshop, participants know or be able to:

• Identify how the presented technologies can be used to increase educators’ capacities to personalize student learning.
• Identify how the presented technologies can be used to reduce wasted time and paper and streamline communication through platforms other than email.
• Explore the benefits and potential challenges associated with using the presented technologies in classroom activities.
• Explore techniques that keep students on task while using mobile devices or laptops.
• Experiment with ways the presented technologies can be implemented by each participant (individual/small group work sessions).

Plans for Audience Participation and Interaction:

By the end of this session, participants will be more confident about how to engage students via their mobile devices, have more control over potential distractions caused by students using mobile devices, and possess strategies where students’ mobile devices are used as an asset to the instructor rather than a distraction.