We have arranged to go on a trip with one of my morning classes. The trip is to the Science Museum to see two exhibitions on medicine, which is the topic we have been studying this month.
As part of the trip, the students will be working collaboratively in small groups to collect information which they will then summarise into a short, informal talk in the next class.
I decided this would be the ideal situation to try out mobile-blogging; instead of asking the students to take notes on paper, they can take photos and upload notes to their private group on facebook and then use this to create their summary later.
All the students in my group had a facebook account except one. I asked her whether she would like to use my 'test student' account or use a different platform but when I came to the class after break, she had decided to register herself for facebook anyway.
Out of the 12 students taking part, only two had the app downloaded onto their phones and only one uploaded information regularly so it was necessary to demonstrate how this worked to the class.
In order to protect their security, I advised them to 'friend' me but give me limited access to their account (eg. no access to their timeline/ photos etc). One of the advantages of groups on facebook is that members of the group do not need to be friends with each other. I also gave them an opportunity to request a partner/ group member or to see me if they had concerns about working with anyone in the class; no-one requested a partner or had a problem so I put the groups together based on who works well together in class. A further protection measure is that the groups are private or 'secret' so only the members can view anything posted to them.
There was a mixed reaction to the task at first. Three of the students seemed very excited about the project and started downloading the app straight away in class. I created the groups immediately, and those that had already 'friended' me were placed into their groups. Interestingly, one student started invited other members of his group who had not yet friended me, so i wondered whether next time I might create a 'spokesperson' or 'manager' who can friend me and then invite the other members of their group, instead of me friending everyone. As a note, these students were 18/ 19 years old and were from Japan and Korea. The two Chinese students in the class are familiar with the Chinese version of facebook but had only just joined facebook itself, so are taking a little longer to become familiar.
There were 3 or 4 other students who were interested in the project but had a lot of questions about how to get into their groups online, how to upload photos and text. These learners were a middle-aged lady from Iran, a woman in her mid-20's from Qatar and a man in his mid-20's from Thailand. They are able to post to their blogs and contribute to the class blog but are less confident in using mobiles/ apps/ facebook. I spent some extra time with these students and made sure they were placed in a group with someone quite confident in using facebook. However, this raises the idea of the digital divide and whether students can end up being marginalised by the use of technology in the classroom if not properly inducted and scaffolded.
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