Last night I read about Wiffiti on Liz Kolb’s blog. At this site you can can set up a page to which people can text information. Using Liz’s idea of Wiffiti as a brainstorming activity, I set my students to work with the topic “What do you know about elements, compounds, and mixtures?” While this message was posted on the screen in the front of the room, students text-ed their responses. About half of my students had text message enabled cell phones and so far 50+ messages have been sent to my page. The experience has been…interesting. Here are a few things I learned.
1. Kids don’t text as fast as I thought they would.
2. In spite of posting a very clear topic, students will still post random messages. Fortunately, Wiffiti has filtering built in and you can always go and delete a message. You can also block certain senders. On top of that, I found the following warning to my students to be quite helpful and it put an end to the “hi” and smiley faces that kept popping up.
“I believe students can use cell phones as a learning tool. Think of the teacher you know who hates cell phones. If you post inappropriate or off topic messages you will be proving that person right and me wrong…and your phones will be disappearing forever into your pocket.”
3. For some reason Wiffiti numbers each message and from what I can tell there is no way to reset the numbers. I also noticed that there is no way to make your first post stay on the screen while others are added and there seems to be no “off switch” where you can still read the page, but senders can no longer send messages. If any Wiffiti people read this, please add those features.
Overall, I found Wiffiti to be quite useful. With a few additional classroom management tools thrown in our next experience should run a little smoother. My middle school students were fully engaged during this activity. Not an eye left the screen or cell phone and students were discussing and posting off of the messages that popped up. Pretty cool!
Joe
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Hi Joe,
As part of an assignment from Wilkes, I also have to ask you a few questions.. I have a bulleted list, if you could answer them for me that would be great! I really appreciate your time. Thank you.
• School policy-
Does your school have a current policy on Cell phones?
How long has this policy been in place?
What are the consequences for students who abuse the policy?
• Parental involvement and feedback-
What was the reaction of parents, if any for these types of lessons?
Did any parents refuse their child to participate?
Were there any complaints due to lack of funds or not owning a phone?
• Challenges, both technical and policy related
Was cell phone service ever an issue?
How many students did not follow the guidelines?
What do you do with students that have infractions and cannot use the phone?
What happens if a student doesn’t own a cell phone?
Hi Joe,
Your brainstorming activity caught my eye. In an effort to learn more about using cell phones in the classroom, I would like to ask you a few questions regarding your project. To begin, would you recommend your project be used as a first time cell phone project in the classroom? What is your school district’s policy on using cell phones in the classroom? Did you utilize a parent permission form? What were the major obstacles you faced while doing this project, both technical and policy related? What advice would you give to a teacher trying to utilize cell phones for the first time? Currently I am enrolled in a graduate class at Wilkes University. With your permission, I would like to utilize your responses for educational discussion within my class. Your thoughts to these questions are greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Monique Bredbenner
Wilkes University Graduate Student
Instructional Media with Discovery Education
Hi Joe, thanks for the insight on such a useful tool. Do you think we can use an iPod Touch with wiffity? If we are concerned that students needs unlimited text plan, we can download a free app that allows us to text unlimited. The app is called Text+
More info can be found at: http://www.videosurf.com/video/textplus-free-texting-app-for-ipod-touch-with-username-no-need-for-a-number-142934614?vlt=ffext
This will be useful for those who cannot afford a text plan but who already have an iPod.
But again, we are prompted to the next problem: will all of our students afford to buy an ipod touch?! right?
I tried sending this through email, but it is not allowing me to send it. I will post here instead.
Joe,
I enjoyed reading about your texting (Wiffiti) project with your students. As a learning support teacher at the high school level, I am always looking for new ideas for my students. I was guided towards your blog through a course that I am taking through Wilkes University and would love to interview you for an assignment. If you could, I would love to have you answer some questions.
How did you overcome the fact that some students didn’t have texting or cell phones?
Was there a large divide among students that had cell phones and those that didn’t?
Do you have the support of administration in your school?
Did you have to convince them of the importance technology in your classroom?
Do you have any parents that are concerned with the use of cell phones in the classroom?
Do you have any parental concerns with the expense of a cell phone?
Thank you for your time in answering these questions!
Kristen Nalesnik
nalesnkr@wallenpaupack.org
I learned about Wiffiti at a workshop at my summer conference. I used it as a review for a test with students 9th – 12th grade and they loved it. When I tried to use it again, it was blocked. We are supposed to engage students in active learning and expose them to new technologies, but many, many times we find fun but educational sites are blocked in our District. Any ideas? I have submitted reasons to allow many blocked sites and never get a response. It is very frustrating!
What a bummer! I find talking directly to Technology Services leadership helps or just going through the Curriculum Department. Its also nice to have specific examples to show them. Have you given PollEverywhere a try? It has a free-response option like Wiffiti and it might not be blocked. Have you checked out Liz Kolb’s book Toys to Tools – Cell Phones in the Classroom? It might be worth a try.
Hello Joe!
I tried to send this via E-mail, but I could not get it to go through. I was wondering if I could ask you a few short questions about your middle school science project, “Brainstorming text messaging of science unit concepts”.
1) How did you go about implementing the project?
2) What was the school district’s policy on cell phone use in school?
3) What challenges, both technical and policy related did you face?
4) What type of parental involvement and feedback did you receive?
5) Any suggestions for implementing such a project?
6) Have you done any other projects using cell phones?
If you choose to participate the interview will be documented for educational purpose.
Thanks you in advance for you time.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Wojciechowski
6th grade learning support teacher
Wilkes University Educational Instructional Technology Graduate Student
I have recently stumbled on the Wiffiti page and plan to use it in my class to see how students can use their phones as an educational tool. We are trying to convince the county to stop banning and start embracing. Maybe I can video it and let them see the true educational benefit of cell phones. Thanks for the reviews and the information about the resource.
Interesting, I’ll have to check it out. I showed Wiffiti to a group of college teachers yesterday. They liked it quite a bit.
Joe
Great insights on how students are using Wiffiti. The ‘off screen’ feature is a great suggestion, I’ll add it to our wish list (I work at Wiffiti
We’re in the process of releasing the new version of Wiffiti with new features coming out every week. We’ve gotten rid of the ‘numbers,’ and we’ve added back the ‘delete messages’ feature. The interface is different now, but play around at http://wiffiti.com and see how you like the new version.
Not sure if middle school-ers are using Twitter yet, but it’s a great way to send messages to the screen using the web (that way they don’t have to worry about text message plans).
Good to know. I’ll keep my eyes posted on the Wiffiti site. Liz Kolb talks about Wiffiti in her new book.
I’m reading this, wiffiti.com is actually about to change a lot in the near future. Let us know what you think. Personally, I’m pretty excited about the use of this in Education though its not our primary focus, hopefully we can make everybody happy.
I haven’t tried sending pictures because I have the non-MMS iPhone. I wonder if picture text messages would work. Let me know if you find out.
Thanks for sharing and testdriving this resource. I will definitely add it to the group participation activities that I use during my geocaching workshops. Geocachers can log their finds during the workshop by taking and posting cell phone pictures to a web gallery, phoning in a podcast response to gabcast, and now by texting about a geocache find to wiffiti. I’m hoping that these resources will provide some ideas on how cell phones can be a tool rather than a distraction to learning.
Thanks for sending this to me, Joe. Looks very cool. I’m going to try it tomorrow. Good idea, Liz.
Joe
I can’t believe how quickly you were able to put the Wiffiti resource into action in your classroom! I only see my students 2 times a week, so it usually takes me a bit longer. Lisa made a good pt about the text messaging, but I have quickly been learning from the high schoolers in Southeastern Michigan that many of them have the unlimited text messaging packages (usually they have been cell packages than I do!?). I also like your idea for using Wiffiti as a question board, I might try that this week with my students. Great blog by the way, I’m a new subscriber, you won me over!
Good point! I forgot to mention that before we even started I gave my kids a lecture about only using their cell phone if they had unlimited text. I explained that should I have any phone calls I would be referring their parents back to them. Those who couldn’t’ text put their phones away. It seemed like most of my kids either couldn’t text at all (the feature was unavailable on their phone) or they had unlimited text messages.
My only worry would be those students with plans that require them to pay for text messages. I would hate to field that phone call about why their child was sending expensive text messages in class. As long as it is clear that they are allowed to text it could be a fun and engaging lesson.
This is really a fun activity for kids. I like your approach in controlling it so that they participated the way you wanted them to. Thanks for sharing!
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