My Day

What do you think of using mobile technologies for educational and other student engagement purposes here at UK?  Can we really do it?  Do we have the infrastructure in our network - room in our department budgets - or the culture to design strategies for its use by faculty and staff?  UKIT offers UK Mobile as an optional way to communicate with/among students via phone text messaging - and the Emergency Management folks have their Early Alert... Definitely, use of mobile technologies to access and contribute to NetworkBlue will be critical to its success.

 

Check out what 2 Stanford U students developed (via their company, Terribly Clever Design) and implemented for free - a Mobile Web Client that lets students access their university email, contacts, calendar, class schedules, registration and more.  Duke University has adapted this application suite for their DukeMobile initiative.  There are more mobile applications initiatives around: University of Cincinnati, University of Maryland-Eastern Shore,  as well the now-famous Abilene Christian University which was the first to distribute free iPhones to their incoming freshman class in order to launch their mobile connection initiative.  (NOTE: there is a combination of staff and faculty who lead this effort at ACU - housed within the teaching and learning center - and it is an English professor who is the Director of Mobile Learning Research).  For more see also the Chronicle's Wired Campus series on Mobile College Apps.

 

I'm sure we can roll something out similar here that combines various support services (including the library) and engagement activities (e.g., using NetworkBlue during summer conferences for the incoming freshmen).  My question is:  Are UK faculty ready to design the strategies - and research the effectiveness - of use of mobile technologies in the classroom?