Because email’s going away.
I read some time ago that phone text messages were the most common means of communication in the world, by a wide margin, surpassing email. It’s increasingly obvious to me in the way I use my own computer. I have my RSS reader and Twitter running all the time in addition to my email.
I want to be able to type a text message, click the mouse button, and have it sent to all the students in the class who want to receive texts.
I hacked a crummy solution in the spring semester: I created a list of students in Google Voice. The problem was, I could only send one message to one person at a time. So I had to cut and paste and send for each student. The list was short, so it didn’t take up that much time, but it took minutes when it could have taken seconds.
If anyone has a solution... yeah, I’m a dinosaur, email me.
Photo by neutralSurface on Flickr, user under a Creative Commons license.
Hi, some LMS's have an SMS option. There are also separate tools, for example in the UK, ones like EduText , John Traxler at University of Wolverhampton pioneered a lot of these.
ReplyDeleteIt is possible to set up one yourself using a modem or a phone, but you will need to pay bulk charges Clickatell , IntelliSMS are cheap, but I'm not sure for US. (It would take some time to set up and manage)
Judy Brown based in the US is a leader in the mobile learning space, one of her sites Mlearnopedia has some options.
It may be that another part of your university such as marketing or recruitment are already using a service which you can join too as another option.
Hope you find something suitable, happy to help further if I can.
Nicola