Writing using Mobile Phones in Class

John Gerard at Meldrum Academy has been making great use of the cameras on his pupils' mobiles to improve their writing. It's a really easy process (honest) which is fully explained below.

Working through a piece of writing in stages he follows modelling of, for example, an introduction, by asking his pupils to photograph their progress on their phones and send it to his computer via bluetooth. He then opens these files so that they display onto the whiteboard for class discussion before they move onto a new section. Here's one pupil's offering to let you see how it looks:

He adds comments from their discussion onto the screen and when the process is complete, pupils get a printout of a set of notes entirely produced by the class. This seems to me a superb way of involving pupils more in their learning, giving immediate feedback, encouraging peer-assessment and using technology relevant to pupils' lives. And let's not forget that they must love working this way!

You don't even need an interactive board for this, just a projector connected to a PC. One thing you will need though is a blutooth dongle like this one:

They cost around £5 and plug in to your PC just like a pen drive, allowing your PC to receive bluetooth messages. (they're a great thing to have to get your own mobile phone pictures onto your PC at home!)

to receive a file from a pupil, plug in the dongle and right click on the bluetooth icon on your desktop:

then ask the pupil to send the file to your PC using bluetooth. The PC will appear in their phone with it's network name, shown here in red.

You then select "receive a file" from the menu on your PC and follow the prompts to save the file to your computer. It would be a good idea to create a folder specifically for these images.

And that's it! Remember that the pupils will know how to do this much better than you already, so if you're not one of those control-freak teachers, let them help you and writing could become more fun and productive for everyone! Thanks to John for the instructions!

If you're doing something similar, leave a comment and let us know. If you give this a try, I'd love to hear about your progress.